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Comment by declan | Hacker News Reader

> campaign contributions made by Google to the Congressional representatives...

Sigh. It is illegal for Google, like any other company, U.S. or foreign, to donate even $0.01 to any "congressional representative" (by that I take it you mean candidate for federal office or a current federal office-holder).

Google has never done so, and nobody, except you, has ever accused the company of doing so. Not only is this a slur, is the FUD equivalent of chemtrails, and it has no place on HN.

Source: "The law also prohibits contributions from corporations and labor unions. This prohibition applies to any incorporated organization, profit or nonprofit." http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/citizens.shtml#prohibited

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I would like to present: http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recips.php?cycle=2014&id=D00...

Many of the Congressional representatives on this list have signed letters on behalf of Google asking the EU not to intervene in Google's business.

Those are individuals choosing to donate money, not Google. As I said above, any corporation is prohibited from donating even $0.01 to any candidate for federal office.

Pretty sure corporations are people now. :)

And if Sergey Brin and Larry Page and Eric Schmidt are tossing millions of dollars at the government, I'm sorry, but that's Google paying off candidates for federal office. Particularly when those same candidates turn right around and advocate for Google on the international political stage after they're elected.

And what if it's some of the many thousands of people who happen to work at Google donating money? The data you have cited is incapable of distinguishing between the two. A spot-check of the top name shows a politician who just happens to be a candidate to represent an area many Googlers would be expected to live in.

So what you want me to believe, is that the list of Congresspeople going outside of their duties to citizens and asking other governments to not regulate against Google, who also happen to have all collected substantial donations from Google employees are doing that completely objectively and coincidentally?

I'm saying that if you want to make the case that a couple of rich people are buying influence, you need to so better than "BIG NUMBER!". Like evidence on how many people that big amount of money came from. If it all came from two people, you'd have a case. If $85k came from 10000 people, your case might be a lot weaker.

Also, many people would consider advocating for the interests of their constituents to be exactly what the duties of a Congresscritter are.

I don't think any Congresscritter job includes protecting businesses in foreign countries from litigation.

Promoting local interests is part of the job. Sometimes that might mean dealing with interests in foreign locales. Local interests means the interests of the local people, which does not always mean things that take place in geographically local location.

Putting a smiley face on it doesn't mean you're right. :)

Under federal law Sergey and Larry and Eric can each give a maximum of $2,600 to any federal candidate, $5,000 to a PAC, or $32,400 to a national party committee. This is not "millions of dollars." And, again, the unsupported and false allegation of "paying off candidates" is chemtrail-istic. HN deserves better.

Source: http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/contriblimits.shtml

Or, you know, they can pay 25000 to honor a chairman of the FTC, which then proceeds to give you a clean chit in its investigation of their practices despite having previously found evidence of harm :P

Also I guess ocdtrekkie should have linked this other table on opensecrets, showing how Google spends more on lobbying than any other tech company, which is how it's "really done" as opposed to "chemtrail-istic" claims: http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=B12&year...

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