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Foreign influence in congress may not be the biggest threat to Democracy, but it is one of my biggest pet peeves. A country has vastly greater resources that an

Foreign influence in congress may not be the biggest threat to Democracy, but it is one of my biggest pet peeves. A country has vastly greater resources that any other individual, business or entitity. A foreign country's intentions are also potentially far more nefarious than a company lobbying to make more profit in a capatilistic system or an individual wanting government policies to be shaped more according to his needs. A foreign country should not be allowed so much access. This kind of reminds me how in one of the Wikileak emails, Clinton removed a country from a list of human rights violators for a mere donation. China is far far worse than a small country and this is peanuts in the grand scheme of things. I sincerely don't understand why no one can publically reprimand China for turning into a dystopian dictatorship before our eyes. Xi orders complete video and cellphone surveillance, black bagging without trial, abolishes term limits, makes disappear any rival billionaire or elite, and no one says a darn thing. Instead, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerburg are in the front row clapping. Literally. Xi announces all this and they congratulate him and clap in the front row. We take a lot of tech freedoms for granted.

telltruth 9y ago
To me it looks like US Congress is dirt cheap. Just few thousand dollars to pass laws that would have massive impact! Top countries spend billions on military and trying to revive their economies. With a tiny fraction of that budget you can buy lots of US politicians legally and easily generate desired effect. The beauty of this whole thing is that everything is legal. Rich folks even made sure you can have unlimited "donations". BTW, this is used to be called bribes and people were used to sent to prison for accepting that. I can't stop but wondering if there is a startup opportunity here. What if it was possible to create a market to buy and sell politicians which was more efficient? May be we can dress it up little better... How about buy and sell "political cause"? Unlimited money allowed for each auctioning! Each political cause can then have underlying actual politician that gets part of the proceeds via campaign donations but all parties get to remain anonymous. No need to debate gun laws. Who ever is able to beat auction gets their say.
- glenstein 9y ago
  I think it only looks dirt cheap if you're looking exclusively at campaign contributions. But the real influence of lobbying comes from managing entire networks of influence surrounding a person. A politician will suddenly know people who can help them manage their money, set their best friend up with investors so they can start their new business, help get their kid into the best school, help them find a lucrative career after politics, etc. I'm sure it's all extremely expensive.
  - RepressedEmu 9y ago
    I guess thats like the difference between money and power. Money can make things happen but true power is about getting things that can't be bought.
    - glenstein 9y ago
      While that's all true, I'm still specifically thinking of cases where money is being utilized to purchase beneficial arrangements. It's just that a lot of those dollars are being spent on things not found in retail stores, to acquire influence in ways beyond campaign contributions. So only looking at campaign contributions vastly underestimates the "price" of a politician.
- michaelt 9y ago
  To me it looks like US Congress is dirt cheap. [...] No need to debate gun laws. Who ever is able to beat auction gets their say. The cost of a bribe depends on multiple factors - but one of the most key ones is how important an issue is in terms of publicity and re-election chances. A senator won't take a bribe that lets them buy campaign ads that get them 3000 votes if it requires them to take a position that loses them 4000 votes. So it's cheap to bribe a politician to support some trivial matter that won't make the news, like not auditing the use of subsidised water for agriculture; but expensive to bribe a politician on matters voters will find out about and care about, like abortion and gun control. This is part of what gives groups like the NRA their power; by keeping their members informed, they convert trivial, cheap-to-bribe issues into important, expensive-to-bribe issues.
shams93 9y ago
Thanks to the Citizen's United decision that Chinese transnational corporation has the same free speech rights to contribute to a political than an individual US citizen has. While a foreign country can't directly give money to a politician its trivial for them to use a cutout corporation to pass money and influence. And since we recognize corporations as people the US subsidiary of the Chinese cutout has full free speech rights and the ability to give effectively unlimited contributions to campaigns.
- coldcode 9y ago
  I long for the days when you had to bring bags of cash to bribe a congressperson. CU made it simple and hard to trace and even harder to prove.
  - alasdair_ 9y ago
    I thought all you had to do now was pay them for a "speech" and you could give them as much cash as you wanted to.
pas 9y ago
> This kind of reminds me how in one of the Wikileak emails, Clinton removed a country from a list of human rights violators for a mere donation. Could you dig that up so we can see it?
- omarforgotpwd 9y ago
  Yeah, I'd love to see info on this. What country was it?
  - Shivetya 9y ago
    Algeria
    - skj 9y ago
      http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/apr/28/joe-scarborough/scarborough-says-algeria-donated-clinton-foundatio/ http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/apr/28/...
      - pjc50 9y ago
        Key sentence: "The problem with all of this isn’t the donation, or questions about a quid pro quo with Algeria. It’s the fact that Algeria wasn’t ever on the terror list. "
        omarforgotpwd 9y ago
        lol I was almost 100% sure this wasn't true. Thanks for confirming.
        alasdair_ 9y ago
        Read the whole thing. The Politifact article states that it's false that Algeria was removed from the "terror watch list". That's not what the grandparent poster actually claimed - the GP is talking about human rights violations. It IS true (the same politifact article even mentions this) that Algeria paid $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation and immediately got a lot more state department access to lobby on their human rights record.
sien 9y ago
The article bangs on about how China got a single US congressman. Israel has enormous influence over the whole of congress. http://original.antiwar.com/smith-grant/2017/07/17/aipac-still-biggest-foreign-agent/ http://original.antiwar.com/smith-grant/2017/07/17/aipac-sti... Mearsheimer and Walt is still the big book on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Foreign_Policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Fore... The US give Israel billions of dollars in foreign aid every year. Allows them to disgregard UN resolutions and prevents the recognition of Palestine. Israel has nuclear weapons and is outside the Non proliferation treaty and yet the US goes crazy about other countries that try to get weapons. Meanwhile AIPAC isn't even registered as something foreign. This can be happily discussed online and in every non US country it amazes people how a tiny country like Israel can get the US to support them no matter what they do. Now even Jerusalem is recognized as the capital of Israel, by one country in the whole world.
- joejerryronnie 9y ago
  The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
  - Udik 9y ago
    And the enemy of your friend is your enemy. And when you're big and powerful, some friends might be using you just for that.
  - lithos 9y ago
    The enemy of my enemy is the the enemy of my enemy, nothing more and nothing less. There's a fair chance they earned that status for a good reason.
- shliachtx 9y ago
  > Israel has enormous influence over the whole of congress. No, Israel has enormous support by Americans so it gets a lot of support by Congress. No surprises there, that is how a democracy should function. > The US give Israel billions of dollars in foreign aid every year. Because they are a democratic ally with a stable government in a highly volatile region. Of course, there can be legitimate debate if that level of funding is a good idea, but it is entirely within reason. Additionally, much of the funding was in exchange for repeated concessions from Israel in peace talks which were always rebuffed and rejected by Palestinian leadership. > Allows them to disgregard UN resolutions and prevents the recognition of Palestine. ...by which they are uniquely singled out and targeted by countries with tremendous human rights violations such as Syria, Iran, etc. > Israel has nuclear weapons and is outside the Non proliferation treaty and yet the US goes crazy about other countries that try to get weapons. Because Israel is a stable democracy under existential threat by it's neighbors, as opposed to, say, Iran or North Korea which are destabilizers. > Meanwhile AIPAC isn't even registered as something foreign. Because it isn't. AIPAC is made up of and supported by American citizens. And this is where these arguments begin to take an undertone of antisemitism. The assumption that AIPAC is a foreign organization implies that it's members (primarily Jews) are foreign by virtue of being Jewish. > Now even Jerusalem is recognized as the capital of Israel, by one country in the whole world. Because it is their capital. America recognizes Seoul as capital of South Korea and Pyongyang as capital of North Korea, does it not?
skj 9y ago
FYI: http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/apr/28/joe-scarborough/scarborough-says-algeria-donated-clinton-foundatio http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/apr/28/... Unless you meant something else, just more garbage.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
Vinnl 9y ago
I have a different but somewhat similar concern: whatever the US (or other influential country's) government does also largely impacts my country, yet we have no democratic say in that what-so-ever.
learc83 9y ago
>This kind of reminds me how in one of the Wikileak emails, Clinton removed a country from a list of human rights violators for a mere donation. This is just flat out wrong. There was a rumor going around that a donation got Algeria taken off of a list of state sponsors of terror. The problem is that it was never on that list in the first place.
- conistonwater 9y ago
  That's pretty fucked up, http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/apr/28/joe-scarborough/scarborough-says-algeria-donated-clinton-foundatio/ http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/apr/28/...
  - malmsteen 9y ago
    Politifacts is funded by the guys who fund hillary :/
    - azemetre 9y ago
      If you can't disprove the claim, slander the source.

telltruth 9y ago

To me it looks like US Congress is dirt cheap. Just few thousand dollars to pass laws that would have massive impact! Top countries spend billions on military and trying to revive their economies. With a tiny fraction of that budget you can buy lots of US politicians legally and easily generate desired effect. The beauty of this whole thing is that everything is legal. Rich folks even made sure you can have unlimited "donations". BTW, this is used to be called bribes and people were used to sent to prison for accepting that. I can't stop but wondering if there is a startup opportunity here. What if it was possible to create a market to buy and sell politicians which was more efficient? May be we can dress it up little better... How about buy and sell "political cause"? Unlimited money allowed for each auctioning! Each political cause can then have underlying actual politician that gets part of the proceeds via campaign donations but all parties get to remain anonymous. No need to debate gun laws. Who ever is able to beat auction gets their say.

glenstein 9y ago
I think it only looks dirt cheap if you're looking exclusively at campaign contributions. But the real influence of lobbying comes from managing entire networks of influence surrounding a person. A politician will suddenly know people who can help them manage their money, set their best friend up with investors so they can start their new business, help get their kid into the best school, help them find a lucrative career after politics, etc. I'm sure it's all extremely expensive.
- RepressedEmu 9y ago
  I guess thats like the difference between money and power. Money can make things happen but true power is about getting things that can't be bought.
  - glenstein 9y ago
    While that's all true, I'm still specifically thinking of cases where money is being utilized to purchase beneficial arrangements. It's just that a lot of those dollars are being spent on things not found in retail stores, to acquire influence in ways beyond campaign contributions. So only looking at campaign contributions vastly underestimates the "price" of a politician.
michaelt 9y ago
To me it looks like US Congress is dirt cheap. [...] No need to debate gun laws. Who ever is able to beat auction gets their say. The cost of a bribe depends on multiple factors - but one of the most key ones is how important an issue is in terms of publicity and re-election chances. A senator won't take a bribe that lets them buy campaign ads that get them 3000 votes if it requires them to take a position that loses them 4000 votes. So it's cheap to bribe a politician to support some trivial matter that won't make the news, like not auditing the use of subsidised water for agriculture; but expensive to bribe a politician on matters voters will find out about and care about, like abortion and gun control. This is part of what gives groups like the NRA their power; by keeping their members informed, they convert trivial, cheap-to-bribe issues into important, expensive-to-bribe issues.

shams93 9y ago

Thanks to the Citizen's United decision that Chinese transnational corporation has the same free speech rights to contribute to a political than an individual US citizen has. While a foreign country can't directly give money to a politician its trivial for them to use a cutout corporation to pass money and influence. And since we recognize corporations as people the US subsidiary of the Chinese cutout has full free speech rights and the ability to give effectively unlimited contributions to campaigns.

coldcode 9y ago
I long for the days when you had to bring bags of cash to bribe a congressperson. CU made it simple and hard to trace and even harder to prove.
- alasdair_ 9y ago
  I thought all you had to do now was pay them for a "speech" and you could give them as much cash as you wanted to.

pas 9y ago

> This kind of reminds me how in one of the Wikileak emails, Clinton removed a country from a list of human rights violators for a mere donation. Could you dig that up so we can see it?

omarforgotpwd 9y ago
Yeah, I'd love to see info on this. What country was it?
- Shivetya 9y ago
  Algeria
  - skj 9y ago
    http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/apr/28/joe-scarborough/scarborough-says-algeria-donated-clinton-foundatio/ http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/apr/28/...
    - pjc50 9y ago
      Key sentence: "The problem with all of this isn’t the donation, or questions about a quid pro quo with Algeria. It’s the fact that Algeria wasn’t ever on the terror list. "
      - omarforgotpwd 9y ago
        lol I was almost 100% sure this wasn't true. Thanks for confirming.
        alasdair_ 9y ago
        Read the whole thing. The Politifact article states that it's false that Algeria was removed from the "terror watch list". That's not what the grandparent poster actually claimed - the GP is talking about human rights violations. It IS true (the same politifact article even mentions this) that Algeria paid $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation and immediately got a lot more state department access to lobby on their human rights record.

sien 9y ago

The article bangs on about how China got a single US congressman. Israel has enormous influence over the whole of congress. http://original.antiwar.com/smith-grant/2017/07/17/aipac-still-biggest-foreign-agent/ http://original.antiwar.com/smith-grant/2017/07/17/aipac-sti... Mearsheimer and Walt is still the big book on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Foreign_Policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Fore... The US give Israel billions of dollars in foreign aid every year. Allows them to disgregard UN resolutions and prevents the recognition of Palestine. Israel has nuclear weapons and is outside the Non proliferation treaty and yet the US goes crazy about other countries that try to get weapons. Meanwhile AIPAC isn't even registered as something foreign. This can be happily discussed online and in every non US country it amazes people how a tiny country like Israel can get the US to support them no matter what they do. Now even Jerusalem is recognized as the capital of Israel, by one country in the whole world.

joejerryronnie 9y ago
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
- Udik 9y ago
  And the enemy of your friend is your enemy. And when you're big and powerful, some friends might be using you just for that.
- lithos 9y ago
  The enemy of my enemy is the the enemy of my enemy, nothing more and nothing less. There's a fair chance they earned that status for a good reason.
shliachtx 9y ago
> Israel has enormous influence over the whole of congress. No, Israel has enormous support by Americans so it gets a lot of support by Congress. No surprises there, that is how a democracy should function. > The US give Israel billions of dollars in foreign aid every year. Because they are a democratic ally with a stable government in a highly volatile region. Of course, there can be legitimate debate if that level of funding is a good idea, but it is entirely within reason. Additionally, much of the funding was in exchange for repeated concessions from Israel in peace talks which were always rebuffed and rejected by Palestinian leadership. > Allows them to disgregard UN resolutions and prevents the recognition of Palestine. ...by which they are uniquely singled out and targeted by countries with tremendous human rights violations such as Syria, Iran, etc. > Israel has nuclear weapons and is outside the Non proliferation treaty and yet the US goes crazy about other countries that try to get weapons. Because Israel is a stable democracy under existential threat by it's neighbors, as opposed to, say, Iran or North Korea which are destabilizers. > Meanwhile AIPAC isn't even registered as something foreign. Because it isn't. AIPAC is made up of and supported by American citizens. And this is where these arguments begin to take an undertone of antisemitism. The assumption that AIPAC is a foreign organization implies that it's members (primarily Jews) are foreign by virtue of being Jewish. > Now even Jerusalem is recognized as the capital of Israel, by one country in the whole world. Because it is their capital. America recognizes Seoul as capital of South Korea and Pyongyang as capital of North Korea, does it not?

skj 9y ago

FYI: http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/apr/28/joe-scarborough/scarborough-says-algeria-donated-clinton-foundatio http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/apr/28/... Unless you meant something else, just more garbage.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

Vinnl 9y ago

I have a different but somewhat similar concern: whatever the US (or other influential country's) government does also largely impacts my country, yet we have no democratic say in that what-so-ever.

learc83 9y ago

>This kind of reminds me how in one of the Wikileak emails, Clinton removed a country from a list of human rights violators for a mere donation. This is just flat out wrong. There was a rumor going around that a donation got Algeria taken off of a list of state sponsors of terror. The problem is that it was never on that list in the first place.

conistonwater 9y ago
That's pretty fucked up, http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/apr/28/joe-scarborough/scarborough-says-algeria-donated-clinton-foundatio/ http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/apr/28/...
- malmsteen 9y ago
  Politifacts is funded by the guys who fund hillary :/
  - azemetre 9y ago
    If you can't disprove the claim, slander the source.