4 ms·

Lamar Smith: Campaign Finance/Money

27 points by llambda 15y ago

bane 15y ago
So it's clear to me that congress is essentially corrupt. What's not clear is what this kind of data is supposed to do outside of waiting patiently for the next election cycle and voting the incumbent out -- ending up with somebody who is probably just as corrupt. - Who do we report this to who can prosecute this? - What laws make this illegal? (or similarly, how do we make this kind of behavior illegal if the gatekeepers to the law are the people who are taking part in this?) - If we can't make it it illegal, how do we make it unethical? - How do we, as the citizenry, punish this? I'm convinced at this point that the kind of people who make it into Congress, incumbent or not, are just going to be more of the same kind of quasi-criminal we have there now, so fighting with the vote is simply not enough. Is there a way to use the courts? The DoJ? Or are we simply going to have to wait for critical mass to develop behind some political movement that will stamp this out? In other words, with Congress in single digit approval ratings, what seems to be the road block that we as the citizenry can grind into dust to affect the change we want to see but haven't yet done so?
- dantheman 15y ago
  We need to have the states start to challenge the power congress has, and reduce the power that congress has by electing people who will start to reduce the size of the government. As long as the government is handing out trillions of dollars it is in anyone's best interest to see as much of that comes to you as possible.
  - ajays 15y ago
    Come on, man. Enough with this parroting of Ron Paul's talking points. (I do support most of RP's ideas, BTW). I'm not attacking you personally, but the post you made. It is the Federal Government's responsibility to regulate interstate commerce. The Internet is not limited to 1 state; it falls right in the purview of interstate commerce. I get the "small government", "low taxes", etc. arguments. But there's a place to make them; discussing how the Congress is trying to kneecap the Internet is not one of those places.
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  Those are some good questions about what people can do right now to stop them. But ultimately you want to remove all the bad incentives that keeps pushing them to choose money over principles, otherwise this will keep happening, even if you replace all of them at next elections. Larry Lessig has some interesting ideas about how campaign funding should work: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111214/17245817090/lessig-daily-show-corruption-extortion-congress.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111214/17245817090/lessig...
- nhaehnle 15y ago
  You have an important point here: transparency is not enough. Here's Lawrence Lessig's proposal, in case you haven't seen it yet: http://lessig.tumblr.com/post//the-grant-and-franklin-project http://lessig.tumblr.com/post//the-grant-and-franklin-projec...
- cynicalkane 15y ago
  Campaign finance isn't illegal, nor is it a sign of evil. It's a sign of a broken system, but we have to distinguish between an evil system, and a good system filled with evil people. American activists would be better served if they had a good notion of a theory of government. The dominant attitude in activism, on any side, these last three or four years, has been one of making the government do X, where X is some extraordinary ill-defined goal. So people are offended when X doesn't happen, and begin to suspect Congressmen are evil. The truth is probably more like this--Congressmen are good people in general, but selected by their appeal to moneyed interests and influential political causes. Then they are thrust into an environment where everyone wants them to do their bidding, and so condition themselves to ignore most sources of information, particularly sources outside their own interest, or sources they don't understand. This appears to an outsider to be like cronyism and willful ignorance. The reality is they haven't a clue about certain things, and in fact that's part of the reason why they got elected... TL;DR: don't fix the people. You won't get anywhere making unrealistic demands on anyone forced to conform to a bad process. Instead, fix the process.
  - bane 15y ago
    Campaign finance isn't illegal, nor is it a sign of evil. I agree with the first part, but not the second. Otherwise there simply wouldn't be a reason to push these numbers out as if they were a sign of some kind of badness. In a representational democracy such as ours, Congress is hired to represent the interests of their constituents not the interests of who pays the most money. That the voice of the constituents appears to not be heard or represented at all is the thing that's wrong. Simply buying your a vote for your interests is not how this is supposed to be working. And the people who can actually change it are the ones who are being bought -- virtually guaranteeing no opportunity for change to occur, despite immense desire from the electorate for exactly that change to occur.
- ChuckMcM 15y ago
  " ... ending up with somebody who is probably just as corrupt." Are you corrupt? Are there people in your circle of friends who aren't corruptible? Do you know anyone with integrity? Why not vote that person in instead? Yes its an emotional response to the defeatism. Congress people are people not some select pool of corrupt toadies. There is no requirement that you be a person of low character to be a member of congress, rather its that folks who have adopted this defeatist attitude that there is nothing they can do to change it gives people of moral turpitude an advantage, they are willing to run for office. How about a kickstarter for public service? People sign up and say what office they are running for and changes they want to make and we crowd source them? How about creating a youtube channel for people who want to change the world can speak easily to the folks who might elect them without having to pay extortionate television fees? How about we kick out the corrupt congress people by applying technology to the problem of surfacing the better candidates?
  - bane 15y ago
    "Why not vote that person in instead?" Who? Nobody I know personally who isn't corrupt is running. I'd vote for them. But sadly the way things are setup to work guarantees I pretty much get two equally bad choices. Even when some group gets lots of support and gets themselves stealth elected -- the recent tea party elections are a fantastic example (despite my personal disagreements with their political philosophy), they find their ability to change the broken system reduced to almost nothing.
    - ChuckMcM 15y ago
      Then you suggest your own solution. "Who? Nobody I know personally who isn't corrupt is running. I'd vote for them." Get to know the people who are running. By law they are contactable (Election Commission rules) and by design they care about you voting for them. So take a moment this round of elections and personally talk to everyone you can who is running. Really, its not that hard. If you put the sweetener in that you've got your $100 donation to the campaign of the person you find acceptable, its even easier. It is very important to note that "almost nothing" is not "nothing." The tea party has had a disproportionate effect on the republican party votes because they are enough to swing votes one way or the other. The 'career' politicians give every impression of hating them (from both parties). Personally I find the tea party 'line' way more conservative than I like but I massively respect that they chose to volunteer for serving the public. "But sadly the way things are setup to work guarantees I pretty much get two equally bad choices." This misplaces the blame and that is why it doesn't get 'fixed'. It is not 'the way things are setup', it is the participation of the electorate (or lack thereof) which currently creates the situation you dislike so strongly. A majority of elections for Congress in 2010 were decided by significantly less than half the number of people who didn't vote. Think about that for a minute. The people not voting are screwing up the country. They have been 'trained' to not vote by stories and folks who would rather they not realize that their not voting gives folks who want to run the system power. Talk to people running for office. Vote for the one that isn't corrupt. Get at least two and as many as you can of your non-voting neighbors and friends to vote. You will help change the world, I guarantee it.
- newman314 15y ago
  For a start, make it so that Congress and Senate are not able to profit off of insider trading.
cyrus_ 15y ago
Is it just me or are those amounts really low? Surely the tech industry can pony up another $50,000 and get this guy on their side?
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  They seem low to me, too. Perhaps OpenSecrets doesn't have all the data.
semisight 15y ago
Try checking our biggest ally Zoe Lofgren (of reddit fame http://www.reddit.com/r/SOPA/comments/nfhhy/member_of_house_judiciary_committee_ama_on_sopa/ http://www.reddit.com/r/SOPA/comments/nfhhy/member_of_house_...). She's taking money from tech and VCs. She's really no better than he is, she just happens to be right this time.
- CamperBob 15y ago
  She has to take money from somebody, or she doesn't get elected. Hence the problem.
md1515 15y ago
I'm not so sure we even need a congress anymore. Honestly...hear me out. The purpose of congress is to provide representation for American citizens who could not travel to Washington D.C. to vote on the bills and amendments that congressmen take part in. These days reporters in D.C. can blog about all bills or report them in news stories instantly. So U.S. citizens are always in the know. More importantly, American citizens can easily vote with the current technology we have. Youth can use the internet, elders the telephone etc. What do you guys think? I doubt it would happen...congress is too ingrained in our constitution and 'murica in general...
- JimmyL 15y ago
  I think your core assumption - that "US citizens are always in the know - is optimistic (here's a survey to whet your thinking - http://pewresearch.org/politicalquiz/ http://pewresearch.org/politicalquiz/). I think most Americans reading this site are, but we're not exactly a majority. There's a whole lot of people who don't live in the top-thirty cities in the country and don't have the time to spend a few hours a day reading up on politics. And even those who do, certainly don't have the background to have an informed opinion on everything that Government deals with. To pick an example at random, could you deliver informed comments and votes on issues relating to the work of the Bureau of Land Management in southern Utah, and how their grazing policies affect farmers? I know I couldn't. The bottom line is that governing is hard, and doing is adequately requires a lot of knowledge about a lot of different things. Pick the Senate committee with the least-interesting sounding name - for me, that'd be the Subcommittee on Jobs, Rural Economic Growth and Energy Innovation or the Joint Committee on Printing - and try and watch a video feed of it in session for a few hours...the amount of things they have to deal with is amazingly broad, and way beyond the ability of any one person to capture (hence the importance of having a class of professional political staffers). It's a similar reason why I'm in favor - generally - of lobbying. Is the way it's done now right? Not at all. But is there room in a well-run government for external subject matter experts with agendas? Certainly. Lastly, I just don't think direct democracy works especially well. Check out California for the canonical example of what happens when you let people vote on complex issues in isolation of one another, with the information dumbed-down to target people who are willing to only budget an hour of their time per week on thinking about politics. Complex issues with national and international repercussions should be debated and decided by people who can study them in-depth and who represent a cross-section of the population, as opposed to those with the economic freedom to pick one or two to become involved with - I'm not saying that we have this now, but it's more what we need than a platform where OWS/Tea Party crowds can overwhelm a web vote on something.
tzs 15y ago
I think the point the submitter is trying to make is that Smith has high contributions ($87k) form the tv/movies/music industry (followed by $64k from computers/internet). At first that looks bad. For comparison, look at Senator Wyden, who has been prominent as a SOPA opponent. He doesn't have any tv/movies/music industry donations in his top 20! However, if you look deeper, the reason he doesn't have any in his top 20 is that he has such big contributions from others that it pushes the tv/movies/music industry out of the top 20. If you expand the list to show his top 50, you find tv/movies/music at $75k, not far behind the amount they gave to Smith.
gyardley 15y ago
We might disagree with his policies, but this isn't evidence of corruption in the slightest. These not-particularly-large donations could very well be a consequence of his political opinions, not (as everyone seems so eager to assume) their cause. That's how most political donations work, after all - you give to people you already agree with.
sehugg 15y ago
That's nothing. Senator Leahy, the other major supporter of SOPA, and who equates the internet to a "warehouse" besieged by criminals, has had quite the payday over his career: http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=Career&cid=N00009918&type=I http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=...

27 points by llambda 15y ago

bane 15y ago

So it's clear to me that congress is essentially corrupt. What's not clear is what this kind of data is supposed to do outside of waiting patiently for the next election cycle and voting the incumbent out -- ending up with somebody who is probably just as corrupt. - Who do we report this to who can prosecute this? - What laws make this illegal? (or similarly, how do we make this kind of behavior illegal if the gatekeepers to the law are the people who are taking part in this?) - If we can't make it it illegal, how do we make it unethical? - How do we, as the citizenry, punish this? I'm convinced at this point that the kind of people who make it into Congress, incumbent or not, are just going to be more of the same kind of quasi-criminal we have there now, so fighting with the vote is simply not enough. Is there a way to use the courts? The DoJ? Or are we simply going to have to wait for critical mass to develop behind some political movement that will stamp this out? In other words, with Congress in single digit approval ratings, what seems to be the road block that we as the citizenry can grind into dust to affect the change we want to see but haven't yet done so?

dantheman 15y ago
We need to have the states start to challenge the power congress has, and reduce the power that congress has by electing people who will start to reduce the size of the government. As long as the government is handing out trillions of dollars it is in anyone's best interest to see as much of that comes to you as possible.
- ajays 15y ago
  Come on, man. Enough with this parroting of Ron Paul's talking points. (I do support most of RP's ideas, BTW). I'm not attacking you personally, but the post you made. It is the Federal Government's responsibility to regulate interstate commerce. The Internet is not limited to 1 state; it falls right in the purview of interstate commerce. I get the "small government", "low taxes", etc. arguments. But there's a place to make them; discussing how the Congress is trying to kneecap the Internet is not one of those places.
nextparadigms 15y ago
Those are some good questions about what people can do right now to stop them. But ultimately you want to remove all the bad incentives that keeps pushing them to choose money over principles, otherwise this will keep happening, even if you replace all of them at next elections. Larry Lessig has some interesting ideas about how campaign funding should work: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111214/17245817090/lessig-daily-show-corruption-extortion-congress.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111214/17245817090/lessig...
nhaehnle 15y ago
You have an important point here: transparency is not enough. Here's Lawrence Lessig's proposal, in case you haven't seen it yet: http://lessig.tumblr.com/post//the-grant-and-franklin-project http://lessig.tumblr.com/post//the-grant-and-franklin-projec...
cynicalkane 15y ago
Campaign finance isn't illegal, nor is it a sign of evil. It's a sign of a broken system, but we have to distinguish between an evil system, and a good system filled with evil people. American activists would be better served if they had a good notion of a theory of government. The dominant attitude in activism, on any side, these last three or four years, has been one of making the government do X, where X is some extraordinary ill-defined goal. So people are offended when X doesn't happen, and begin to suspect Congressmen are evil. The truth is probably more like this--Congressmen are good people in general, but selected by their appeal to moneyed interests and influential political causes. Then they are thrust into an environment where everyone wants them to do their bidding, and so condition themselves to ignore most sources of information, particularly sources outside their own interest, or sources they don't understand. This appears to an outsider to be like cronyism and willful ignorance. The reality is they haven't a clue about certain things, and in fact that's part of the reason why they got elected... TL;DR: don't fix the people. You won't get anywhere making unrealistic demands on anyone forced to conform to a bad process. Instead, fix the process.
- bane 15y ago
  Campaign finance isn't illegal, nor is it a sign of evil. I agree with the first part, but not the second. Otherwise there simply wouldn't be a reason to push these numbers out as if they were a sign of some kind of badness. In a representational democracy such as ours, Congress is hired to represent the interests of their constituents not the interests of who pays the most money. That the voice of the constituents appears to not be heard or represented at all is the thing that's wrong. Simply buying your a vote for your interests is not how this is supposed to be working. And the people who can actually change it are the ones who are being bought -- virtually guaranteeing no opportunity for change to occur, despite immense desire from the electorate for exactly that change to occur.
ChuckMcM 15y ago
" ... ending up with somebody who is probably just as corrupt." Are you corrupt? Are there people in your circle of friends who aren't corruptible? Do you know anyone with integrity? Why not vote that person in instead? Yes its an emotional response to the defeatism. Congress people are people not some select pool of corrupt toadies. There is no requirement that you be a person of low character to be a member of congress, rather its that folks who have adopted this defeatist attitude that there is nothing they can do to change it gives people of moral turpitude an advantage, they are willing to run for office. How about a kickstarter for public service? People sign up and say what office they are running for and changes they want to make and we crowd source them? How about creating a youtube channel for people who want to change the world can speak easily to the folks who might elect them without having to pay extortionate television fees? How about we kick out the corrupt congress people by applying technology to the problem of surfacing the better candidates?
- bane 15y ago
  "Why not vote that person in instead?" Who? Nobody I know personally who isn't corrupt is running. I'd vote for them. But sadly the way things are setup to work guarantees I pretty much get two equally bad choices. Even when some group gets lots of support and gets themselves stealth elected -- the recent tea party elections are a fantastic example (despite my personal disagreements with their political philosophy), they find their ability to change the broken system reduced to almost nothing.
  - ChuckMcM 15y ago
    Then you suggest your own solution. "Who? Nobody I know personally who isn't corrupt is running. I'd vote for them." Get to know the people who are running. By law they are contactable (Election Commission rules) and by design they care about you voting for them. So take a moment this round of elections and personally talk to everyone you can who is running. Really, its not that hard. If you put the sweetener in that you've got your $100 donation to the campaign of the person you find acceptable, its even easier. It is very important to note that "almost nothing" is not "nothing." The tea party has had a disproportionate effect on the republican party votes because they are enough to swing votes one way or the other. The 'career' politicians give every impression of hating them (from both parties). Personally I find the tea party 'line' way more conservative than I like but I massively respect that they chose to volunteer for serving the public. "But sadly the way things are setup to work guarantees I pretty much get two equally bad choices." This misplaces the blame and that is why it doesn't get 'fixed'. It is not 'the way things are setup', it is the participation of the electorate (or lack thereof) which currently creates the situation you dislike so strongly. A majority of elections for Congress in 2010 were decided by significantly less than half the number of people who didn't vote. Think about that for a minute. The people not voting are screwing up the country. They have been 'trained' to not vote by stories and folks who would rather they not realize that their not voting gives folks who want to run the system power. Talk to people running for office. Vote for the one that isn't corrupt. Get at least two and as many as you can of your non-voting neighbors and friends to vote. You will help change the world, I guarantee it.
newman314 15y ago
For a start, make it so that Congress and Senate are not able to profit off of insider trading.

cyrus_ 15y ago

Is it just me or are those amounts really low? Surely the tech industry can pony up another $50,000 and get this guy on their side?

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
nextparadigms 15y ago
They seem low to me, too. Perhaps OpenSecrets doesn't have all the data.

semisight 15y ago

Try checking our biggest ally Zoe Lofgren (of reddit fame http://www.reddit.com/r/SOPA/comments/nfhhy/member_of_house_judiciary_committee_ama_on_sopa/ http://www.reddit.com/r/SOPA/comments/nfhhy/member_of_house_...). She's taking money from tech and VCs. She's really no better than he is, she just happens to be right this time.

CamperBob 15y ago
She has to take money from somebody, or she doesn't get elected. Hence the problem.

md1515 15y ago

I'm not so sure we even need a congress anymore. Honestly...hear me out. The purpose of congress is to provide representation for American citizens who could not travel to Washington D.C. to vote on the bills and amendments that congressmen take part in. These days reporters in D.C. can blog about all bills or report them in news stories instantly. So U.S. citizens are always in the know. More importantly, American citizens can easily vote with the current technology we have. Youth can use the internet, elders the telephone etc. What do you guys think? I doubt it would happen...congress is too ingrained in our constitution and 'murica in general...

JimmyL 15y ago
I think your core assumption - that "US citizens are always in the know - is optimistic (here's a survey to whet your thinking - http://pewresearch.org/politicalquiz/ http://pewresearch.org/politicalquiz/). I think most Americans reading this site are, but we're not exactly a majority. There's a whole lot of people who don't live in the top-thirty cities in the country and don't have the time to spend a few hours a day reading up on politics. And even those who do, certainly don't have the background to have an informed opinion on everything that Government deals with. To pick an example at random, could you deliver informed comments and votes on issues relating to the work of the Bureau of Land Management in southern Utah, and how their grazing policies affect farmers? I know I couldn't. The bottom line is that governing is hard, and doing is adequately requires a lot of knowledge about a lot of different things. Pick the Senate committee with the least-interesting sounding name - for me, that'd be the Subcommittee on Jobs, Rural Economic Growth and Energy Innovation or the Joint Committee on Printing - and try and watch a video feed of it in session for a few hours...the amount of things they have to deal with is amazingly broad, and way beyond the ability of any one person to capture (hence the importance of having a class of professional political staffers). It's a similar reason why I'm in favor - generally - of lobbying. Is the way it's done now right? Not at all. But is there room in a well-run government for external subject matter experts with agendas? Certainly. Lastly, I just don't think direct democracy works especially well. Check out California for the canonical example of what happens when you let people vote on complex issues in isolation of one another, with the information dumbed-down to target people who are willing to only budget an hour of their time per week on thinking about politics. Complex issues with national and international repercussions should be debated and decided by people who can study them in-depth and who represent a cross-section of the population, as opposed to those with the economic freedom to pick one or two to become involved with - I'm not saying that we have this now, but it's more what we need than a platform where OWS/Tea Party crowds can overwhelm a web vote on something.

tzs 15y ago

I think the point the submitter is trying to make is that Smith has high contributions ($87k) form the tv/movies/music industry (followed by $64k from computers/internet). At first that looks bad. For comparison, look at Senator Wyden, who has been prominent as a SOPA opponent. He doesn't have any tv/movies/music industry donations in his top 20! However, if you look deeper, the reason he doesn't have any in his top 20 is that he has such big contributions from others that it pushes the tv/movies/music industry out of the top 20. If you expand the list to show his top 50, you find tv/movies/music at $75k, not far behind the amount they gave to Smith.

gyardley 15y ago

We might disagree with his policies, but this isn't evidence of corruption in the slightest. These not-particularly-large donations could very well be a consequence of his political opinions, not (as everyone seems so eager to assume) their cause. That's how most political donations work, after all - you give to people you already agree with.

sehugg 15y ago

That's nothing. Senator Leahy, the other major supporter of SOPA, and who equates the internet to a "warehouse" besieged by criminals, has had quite the payday over his career: http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=Career&cid=N00009918&type=I http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=...