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There's a difference between "bribes" and "bribes". A bribe is usually understood to be of benefit to the politician personally. This sort of corruption is act

There's a difference between "bribes" and "bribes". A bribe is usually understood to be of benefit to the politician personally. This sort of corruption is actually incredibly rare in the US. What is, unfortunately, very common are payments to their campaigns. These are legal and, since Citizen United, basically unlimited. There are, however, rather strict rules as to how they can be used. And as that Republican idiot from California is currently experiencing, these rules are enforced. I'm not making apologies for the undeniable harms of the latter practice. But it is different, and marginally less evil . As to the relative evilness: the "traditional" bribe is strictly more useful to a politicians, because they always had the option to convert it to campaign money. That option does not exist in the other direction. I think it's important to appreciate such nuances. First, because it stops the corroding effect of cynicism on your soul. And, second, if we condemn everything at the same level of maximum evilness, any change that is not instant paradise is indistinguishable to the status quo. Because Paradise no longer exists (or is now a strip club), nothing will ever happen.

iscrewyou 8y ago
Bribes buy influence. “Payments to campaign” buy influence. Unlimited “payments to campaign” buy unlimited influence. With a given amount of resources at the congressman’s office, unlimited “payments to the campaign” buy up influence at the expense of other constituents. Which is what bribes do. Before Citizens United, I may have agreed with you. Not anymore.
- Pyxl101 8y ago
  Citizens United does not allow unlimited (or any) payments to a campaign. Citizens United was about the rights of a corporation to spend money publishing its own speech. Political speech is expressly protected by the first amendment, and the court decided that restraint of it was unconstitutional: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf > Because speech is an essential mechanism of democracy—it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people—political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it by design or inadvertence. Premised on mistrust of governmental power, the First Amendment stands against attempts to disfavor certain subjects or viewpoints or to distinguish among different speakers, which may be a means to control content. (...) Political speech is indispensable to decision-making in a democracy, and this is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation. (...) All speakers, including individuals and the media, use money amassed from the economic marketplace to fund their speech, and the First Amendment protects the resulting speech. What Citizens United wanted to do was distribute a documentary film critical of Hillary Clinton. If someone feels that Citizens United was wrongly decided, then I would encourage that person to read through the case in detail to understand the issues evaluated by the court - specifically, the contradictions in reasoning, chilling effects, and violations of precedent that would result from deciding the case in the alternative. Difficult topics would need to be untangled such as: why should it be unlawful for Citizens United to distribute a political documentary when it's OK for media producers like Fox News or CNN or 60 Minutes or Netflix to do so? They engage in political speech whenever critiquing a policy position or candidate. One must consider the sweeping consequences of what it would mean to restrain corporations, including the news media, from engaging in political speech. How does journalism and freedom of the press remain in this world, or what bright line distinguishes Citizens United from any other producer of documentaries like e.g. Michael Moore (Fahrenheit 9/11)?
  - Latteland 8y ago
    The entire sweeping consequence of citizens united was to vastly increase the amount of money in politics, now hidden behind the free speech rights of corps. Corps should not be considered people. all this did was provide a mechanism for very wealthy people to influence politics and hide it much better than before. can you possible claim this is a good thing?
    - queensnake 8y ago
      There was a politician and activist from Montana on (US) NPR radio today who advocated getting congress to pass an act that /corporations aren't people/. If anyone's new to the issue, Google 'Thom Hartmann corporate personhood', you'll get the flimsy history of how it came to be. Making them not be people would solve a lot of the problems of money in politics. Too bad there's now so much precedence, I guess.
- matt4077 8y ago
  I believe it's almost tautological that a politician would prefer personal cash instead of campaign donations. Among other things, campaign donations cannot be used to buy themselves a boat or ensure luxury in retirement. It's a pretty good example of the point I'm trying to make that my post is being downvoted, presumably by people of the mindset of the other reply, i. e. "Nope. U STUPID. Burn all politicians". I completely agree that Citizen United is atrocious. But blanket hate and cynicism is the surefire way to populism, and the ensuing wide lurches across the political spectrum. It just seems far too many people think everything is so bad it's time to get out the guillotines. That proposition strikes me as rather shortsighted, considering today still would seem to be the best time in history to be alive. A revolution acts a lot like random shuffling. If you consider society as a puzzle, which is not done, but more complete than ever before, throwing it in the air and letting the pieces fall where they may seems unlikely to produce a more perfect arrangement, just by the principles of entropy.
  - akiselev 8y ago
    That assumes that progress in civilization is a forward path and that there are no local minima that are both extremely difficult to get out of given the institutions that got them there and dangerously unstable. Entropy eats away at systems no matter the path we chose and there is no guarantee that the end result of our current path won't be worse than a traumatic reshuffle now. I'm not advocating revolution, having seen the end result of one first hand, but to say that revolution is shortsighted entirely misses the forrest for the trees. All complex systems, be they biological organisms or deep learning neural networks, need randomness injected into them or they will fail to respond to the randomness of the environment around them. In the case of societies and organisms, that could very well mean extinction. It's a risk-reward calculation like any action.
    - whatshisface 8y ago
      I'd want a revolution like I'd want to have my molecules scrambled by standing in the LHC beam - sure, maybe I'll end up in a superior configuration, but the odds are that if I am at all happy today in even the slightest way, a randomly chosen state will regress me to the mean of complete, brutal dysfunction.
- cat199 8y ago
  nonono, you're not hearing me - if something is wrong and illegal, you just change the law to make it legal and then it's not wrong, see. so these 'bribes' you are talking about arent really bribes, because they are legal. obvious. duh.
craftyguy 8y ago
No, actually, there's no difference.
- nonbel 8y ago
  There is a difference when it comes to politics. Politicians take a dimmer view of bribery and smear campaigns when they occur outside an election season context.
  - fjsolwmv 8y ago
    It's always election season
    - nonbel 8y ago
      I know, I was making fun of the NYT's ridiculous apologetic attitude towards politicians: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18466253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18466253
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
What was once cash in a brown envelope is now the high paid job once they leave office. Envelopes stuffed with cash have become rare, the latter have grown hugely. The net effect on a politician's personal wealth and the likely effects on ethics of public office are similar. Some sort of politician's equivalent of a ten year non-compete clause seems in order.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  Obama ran that as a campaign promise for his cabinet and then promptly ignored it.
  - vuln 8y ago
    I remember when he campaigned for whistleblower's rights and repealing 'bush era spying'...
    - queensnake 8y ago
      ... promised to be "the most open administration ever" - and ended up being more closed even than GWB. There's really something to the idea that paying lip service mentally gets you off the hook.
      - moate 8y ago
        But remember how quickly he followed through on closing Guantanamo Bay?
lobotryas 8y ago
Donating to a campaign is far from the only way to buy influence. I can donate to a politicians charity or invite them to an all expenses paid speaking engagement where I also pay a speaking fee. Im both of these examples the politician will have MUCH more discretion in how to spend the money.
jjoonathan 8y ago
That's a counterproductive distinction to make because you lose the soundbite game. If you have a paragraph to make the point it's reasonable, but pushing back on the rebranding of lesser bribery as "lobbying" is a very important first step.
boomboomsubban 8y ago
Politicians getting rich isn't the main problem I have with bribes, so I don't really see why this is a meaningful difference.

iscrewyou 8y ago

Bribes buy influence. “Payments to campaign” buy influence. Unlimited “payments to campaign” buy unlimited influence. With a given amount of resources at the congressman’s office, unlimited “payments to the campaign” buy up influence at the expense of other constituents. Which is what bribes do. Before Citizens United, I may have agreed with you. Not anymore.

Pyxl101 8y ago
Citizens United does not allow unlimited (or any) payments to a campaign. Citizens United was about the rights of a corporation to spend money publishing its own speech. Political speech is expressly protected by the first amendment, and the court decided that restraint of it was unconstitutional: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf > Because speech is an essential mechanism of democracy—it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people—political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it by design or inadvertence. Premised on mistrust of governmental power, the First Amendment stands against attempts to disfavor certain subjects or viewpoints or to distinguish among different speakers, which may be a means to control content. (...) Political speech is indispensable to decision-making in a democracy, and this is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation. (...) All speakers, including individuals and the media, use money amassed from the economic marketplace to fund their speech, and the First Amendment protects the resulting speech. What Citizens United wanted to do was distribute a documentary film critical of Hillary Clinton. If someone feels that Citizens United was wrongly decided, then I would encourage that person to read through the case in detail to understand the issues evaluated by the court - specifically, the contradictions in reasoning, chilling effects, and violations of precedent that would result from deciding the case in the alternative. Difficult topics would need to be untangled such as: why should it be unlawful for Citizens United to distribute a political documentary when it's OK for media producers like Fox News or CNN or 60 Minutes or Netflix to do so? They engage in political speech whenever critiquing a policy position or candidate. One must consider the sweeping consequences of what it would mean to restrain corporations, including the news media, from engaging in political speech. How does journalism and freedom of the press remain in this world, or what bright line distinguishes Citizens United from any other producer of documentaries like e.g. Michael Moore (Fahrenheit 9/11)?
- Latteland 8y ago
  The entire sweeping consequence of citizens united was to vastly increase the amount of money in politics, now hidden behind the free speech rights of corps. Corps should not be considered people. all this did was provide a mechanism for very wealthy people to influence politics and hide it much better than before. can you possible claim this is a good thing?
  - queensnake 8y ago
    There was a politician and activist from Montana on (US) NPR radio today who advocated getting congress to pass an act that /corporations aren't people/. If anyone's new to the issue, Google 'Thom Hartmann corporate personhood', you'll get the flimsy history of how it came to be. Making them not be people would solve a lot of the problems of money in politics. Too bad there's now so much precedence, I guess.
matt4077 8y ago
I believe it's almost tautological that a politician would prefer personal cash instead of campaign donations. Among other things, campaign donations cannot be used to buy themselves a boat or ensure luxury in retirement. It's a pretty good example of the point I'm trying to make that my post is being downvoted, presumably by people of the mindset of the other reply, i. e. "Nope. U STUPID. Burn all politicians". I completely agree that Citizen United is atrocious. But blanket hate and cynicism is the surefire way to populism, and the ensuing wide lurches across the political spectrum. It just seems far too many people think everything is so bad it's time to get out the guillotines. That proposition strikes me as rather shortsighted, considering today still would seem to be the best time in history to be alive. A revolution acts a lot like random shuffling. If you consider society as a puzzle, which is not done, but more complete than ever before, throwing it in the air and letting the pieces fall where they may seems unlikely to produce a more perfect arrangement, just by the principles of entropy.
- akiselev 8y ago
  That assumes that progress in civilization is a forward path and that there are no local minima that are both extremely difficult to get out of given the institutions that got them there and dangerously unstable. Entropy eats away at systems no matter the path we chose and there is no guarantee that the end result of our current path won't be worse than a traumatic reshuffle now. I'm not advocating revolution, having seen the end result of one first hand, but to say that revolution is shortsighted entirely misses the forrest for the trees. All complex systems, be they biological organisms or deep learning neural networks, need randomness injected into them or they will fail to respond to the randomness of the environment around them. In the case of societies and organisms, that could very well mean extinction. It's a risk-reward calculation like any action.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    I'd want a revolution like I'd want to have my molecules scrambled by standing in the LHC beam - sure, maybe I'll end up in a superior configuration, but the odds are that if I am at all happy today in even the slightest way, a randomly chosen state will regress me to the mean of complete, brutal dysfunction.
cat199 8y ago
nonono, you're not hearing me - if something is wrong and illegal, you just change the law to make it legal and then it's not wrong, see. so these 'bribes' you are talking about arent really bribes, because they are legal. obvious. duh.

craftyguy 8y ago

No, actually, there's no difference.

nonbel 8y ago
There is a difference when it comes to politics. Politicians take a dimmer view of bribery and smear campaigns when they occur outside an election season context.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  It's always election season
  - nonbel 8y ago
    I know, I was making fun of the NYT's ridiculous apologetic attitude towards politicians: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18466253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18466253

NeedMoreTea 8y ago

What was once cash in a brown envelope is now the high paid job once they leave office. Envelopes stuffed with cash have become rare, the latter have grown hugely. The net effect on a politician's personal wealth and the likely effects on ethics of public office are similar. Some sort of politician's equivalent of a ten year non-compete clause seems in order.

fjsolwmv 8y ago
Obama ran that as a campaign promise for his cabinet and then promptly ignored it.
- vuln 8y ago
  I remember when he campaigned for whistleblower's rights and repealing 'bush era spying'...
  - queensnake 8y ago
    ... promised to be "the most open administration ever" - and ended up being more closed even than GWB. There's really something to the idea that paying lip service mentally gets you off the hook.
    - moate 8y ago
      But remember how quickly he followed through on closing Guantanamo Bay?

lobotryas 8y ago

Donating to a campaign is far from the only way to buy influence. I can donate to a politicians charity or invite them to an all expenses paid speaking engagement where I also pay a speaking fee. Im both of these examples the politician will have MUCH more discretion in how to spend the money.

jjoonathan 8y ago

That's a counterproductive distinction to make because you lose the soundbite game. If you have a paragraph to make the point it's reasonable, but pushing back on the rebranding of lesser bribery as "lobbying" is a very important first step.

boomboomsubban 8y ago

Politicians getting rich isn't the main problem I have with bribes, so I don't really see why this is a meaningful difference.