6 ms·

It seems like this whole hubub is about someone stating openly what's a well known open secret in US politics: He who pays the piper calls the tune. I mean, re

by sequoia 15y ago

It seems like this whole hubub is about someone stating openly what's a well known open secret in US politics: He who pays the piper calls the tune. I mean, really, EVERYONE knows this. "Why did my industry's trade association spend 1.8 million dollars on various candidates who may be voting on legislation that makes or costs us 10 times that much? Oh, no reason... we just think they are very nice ladies and gentlemen and we love to be helpful. :)" Chris Dodd just stated more plainly what is 115% clear to all the recipients of this cash: "We are paying you to make specific legislative decisions in our favor. Stop doing that job and we stop paying." i.e. quid pro quo i.e. bribery. I'd really like to hear ideas of how we can stop this racket; I'm afraid asking Barack Goldman Sachs Obama to "look into it" isn't going to work (tho I did sign the petition).

pavel_lishin 15y ago
> I'd really like to hear ideas of how we can stop this racket The simple solution - in the sense that it's an obvious one, and a naive one - is to just forbid campaign contributions altogether.
- camiller 15y ago
  Then only independently wealthy candidates or publicly funded candidates could run.
  - pavel_lishin 15y ago
    Yup, that's why it's naive. One possible patch for this issue is to forbid spending money on elections, but again, that just opens up new cans of worms.
    - dwiel 15y ago
      As long as we have an uneven distribution of wealth, we will have an uneven distribution of power. It doesn't matter what laws you try to pass or what government you try to have. The entities who those laws threaten will fight against them.
      - functionoid 15y ago
        You sound a lot like Obama, who wants everyone's paycheck to be same except his own.
      - functionoid 15y ago
        Down voting is not going to help, have you heard his any speech in last year? in most of his speeches he has talked about distribution of wealth. What motivation does the smart people have if that happens? Entrepreneurs work hard and give up their social and personal lives to become successful and at the end of it if distribution of wealth happens who would want to do that? So my comment was not just a remark but is a fact and he talks about wealth distribution any chance he gets.
        deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
    - politician 15y ago
      As a society, we need acknowledge that using money to influence voters is simply a way to increase voting power beyond "1 man, 1 vote". One way to mitigate that is to ban independent advertising on behalf of candidates (SuperPACs), require all donors to donate into a common pot which candidates may draw equally from, and require all media companies to provide equal time to candidates on their networks. A downside of this approach is that many insincere candidates may exhaust the common campaign financing pool. Requiring failed candidates to pay back a percentage of their spend may be a way to mitigate that (e.g. a "co-pay").
      - pavel_lishin 15y ago
        > Requiring failed candidates to pay back a percentage of their spend may be a way to mitigate that (e.g. a "co-pay"). Doesn't this also create a pretty powerful disincentive for the non-wealthy to run?
        politician 15y ago
        There would need to be a mechanism which prevents insincere candidates from looting the common campaign financing pool. As you pointed out, the challenge is to find the least bad one. In this country, many health plans require a co-pay of $10-$20 in order to see a doctor. The purpose of the co-pay is to deter would-be patients from flooding doctors with trivial inquiries who would then be able to bill insurers for their (wasted) time. So, yes, a co-pay is a disincentive, but arguably less so than the disincentives present in the system it's proposed to replace.
- eftpotrm 15y ago
  Which is why we finesse the obvious but naive solution. Campaign contributions are becoming / have become de facto bribery, but without campaign contributions only the independently wealthy can stand for office. How about limiting how much an individual entity can donate? We don't allow the rich more votes because they've got more assets so could we not also restrict the amount they're able to donate? How about restricting donors to entites entitled to vote in an election? Whatever my opinion on (say) Julia Gillard, I'm not eligible to vote for her or for any of her opponents because I've got nothing to do with Australia. Logically therefore (and my knowledge of Australian electoral law is almost nil, so this point is purely hypothetical), what is the justification for allowing me to influence the election by funding candidates? Corporations don't have votes beyond the individual votes of their owners and employees in spite of their legal personhood, and that's good. Likewise, I think there's a case to be made that as unenfranchised legal persons, they shouldn't be able to influence elections financially.
  - mahyarm 15y ago
    There are already limits. Around ~$2k per person per politician and around ~$30k for a party committee for a single person. Encouraging people you have influence over to donate can help overcome this limit.
    - eftpotrm 15y ago
      And yet we regularly see corporate donations to individual campaigns well above that level; clearly there are ways around the rules as they stand.
portman 15y ago
Larry Lessig (the same guy who single-handedly designed Creative Commons) has spent the last 4 years investigating how to "stop this racket", and summarizes his thoughts in this book: http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress/dp/0446576433 http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress/... If you want to know what to do, a nice first step would be to buy and read Republic, Lost.
- greyish_water 15y ago
  Why not just pirate it?
- bh42222 15y ago
  The fact that it's a whole book makes me nervous. A strategy which requires a whole book to be explained sounds like giving up on anything simple and claiming we can go through 1001 non-radical steps to eventually get to a happy place. This to me is a form of denial. You realize simple solutions can not be practically implemented and you convince yourself a marathon of tiny changes is the way to go. (Disclaimer: I have not read that book.)
  - a1k0n 15y ago
    > The fact that it's a whole book makes me nervous. At least 3/4ths of the book beats you over the head with countless examples of the corruption, how it came to be, and why it's not technically illegal. The very last part covers potential solutions, none of which have a great chance of success due to the vested interests but should be tried anyway. e.g. a constitutional convention is one way out, if we can convince enough states to call one.
    - bh42222 15y ago
      The very last part covers potential solutions, none of which have a great chance of success due to the vested interests but should be tried anyway What happens if we try them all and they (as expected) do not succeed? If they don't have a great chance of success, why can't we find other solutions?
Game_Ender 15y ago
What is the difference between that behavior, and groups of people deciding they don't want to donate to representatives who don't represent them anymore?
- drumdance 15y ago
  Magnitude.
Osiris 15y ago
I'd really like to hear ideas of how we can stop this racket I can think of a way to get money out of congress: remove elections. Think of it: serving in Congress could be like Jury Duty. Everyone's in the pool and every election cycle random people are selected from the pool and asked to serve. With no elections, there are no campaigns to donate to. It would be illegal for any Congressperson to accept any gifts or money from anyone other than their paycheck from the government and a ban on working for, directly or indirectly, with any person or corporation that was affected by any bills in which the Congressperson participated or voted. Would there still be corruption and political favors? Absolutely. People would still have a tendency to push for laws that would benefit either themselves, family, or friends or the industry in which they worked. The lack of up-front monetary gain would likely have a significant impact but corruption is a problem of honesty and integrity which human nature tends to lack and tacks personal disciple to evolve. Until mankind becomes entirely focused on building social welfare (what's good for all) instead of personal welfare (what's good for me), these problems will always be here.
- TeMPOraL 15y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but without elections, you also don't have democracy, right? I of course do not mean to say that democracy is The Answer to All Problems, but this idea seems to touch the very core of the political system in place.
  - philwelch 15y ago
    Random selection (qua jury duty) is still "statistically democratic" and without bribery may very well be more democratic than what we have now.
- mjwalshe 15y ago
  Well Athens had that system and made some bad kneejerk descisons - for example The Mytilenian Debate. And you would be handing much more power to unelected civil servants. I think both parties going to OMOV and doing away with primary's go back to state delegates deciding who the presidential candidates are - Oh and I would ban mandating of delegations.
Jeng 15y ago
>I'd really like to hear ideas of how we can stop this racket; The law not only has failed, but the lawmaking process has become 100% corrupt, therefor one should consider options that are not lawful.

by sequoia 15y ago

pavel_lishin 15y ago

> I'd really like to hear ideas of how we can stop this racket The simple solution - in the sense that it's an obvious one, and a naive one - is to just forbid campaign contributions altogether.

camiller 15y ago
Then only independently wealthy candidates or publicly funded candidates could run.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  Yup, that's why it's naive. One possible patch for this issue is to forbid spending money on elections, but again, that just opens up new cans of worms.
  - dwiel 15y ago
    As long as we have an uneven distribution of wealth, we will have an uneven distribution of power. It doesn't matter what laws you try to pass or what government you try to have. The entities who those laws threaten will fight against them.
    - functionoid 15y ago
      You sound a lot like Obama, who wants everyone's paycheck to be same except his own.
    - functionoid 15y ago
      Down voting is not going to help, have you heard his any speech in last year? in most of his speeches he has talked about distribution of wealth. What motivation does the smart people have if that happens? Entrepreneurs work hard and give up their social and personal lives to become successful and at the end of it if distribution of wealth happens who would want to do that? So my comment was not just a remark but is a fact and he talks about wealth distribution any chance he gets.
      - deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
  - politician 15y ago
    As a society, we need acknowledge that using money to influence voters is simply a way to increase voting power beyond "1 man, 1 vote". One way to mitigate that is to ban independent advertising on behalf of candidates (SuperPACs), require all donors to donate into a common pot which candidates may draw equally from, and require all media companies to provide equal time to candidates on their networks. A downside of this approach is that many insincere candidates may exhaust the common campaign financing pool. Requiring failed candidates to pay back a percentage of their spend may be a way to mitigate that (e.g. a "co-pay").
    - pavel_lishin 15y ago
      > Requiring failed candidates to pay back a percentage of their spend may be a way to mitigate that (e.g. a "co-pay"). Doesn't this also create a pretty powerful disincentive for the non-wealthy to run?
      - politician 15y ago
        There would need to be a mechanism which prevents insincere candidates from looting the common campaign financing pool. As you pointed out, the challenge is to find the least bad one. In this country, many health plans require a co-pay of $10-$20 in order to see a doctor. The purpose of the co-pay is to deter would-be patients from flooding doctors with trivial inquiries who would then be able to bill insurers for their (wasted) time. So, yes, a co-pay is a disincentive, but arguably less so than the disincentives present in the system it's proposed to replace.
eftpotrm 15y ago
Which is why we finesse the obvious but naive solution. Campaign contributions are becoming / have become de facto bribery, but without campaign contributions only the independently wealthy can stand for office. How about limiting how much an individual entity can donate? We don't allow the rich more votes because they've got more assets so could we not also restrict the amount they're able to donate? How about restricting donors to entites entitled to vote in an election? Whatever my opinion on (say) Julia Gillard, I'm not eligible to vote for her or for any of her opponents because I've got nothing to do with Australia. Logically therefore (and my knowledge of Australian electoral law is almost nil, so this point is purely hypothetical), what is the justification for allowing me to influence the election by funding candidates? Corporations don't have votes beyond the individual votes of their owners and employees in spite of their legal personhood, and that's good. Likewise, I think there's a case to be made that as unenfranchised legal persons, they shouldn't be able to influence elections financially.
- mahyarm 15y ago
  There are already limits. Around ~$2k per person per politician and around ~$30k for a party committee for a single person. Encouraging people you have influence over to donate can help overcome this limit.
  - eftpotrm 15y ago
    And yet we regularly see corporate donations to individual campaigns well above that level; clearly there are ways around the rules as they stand.

portman 15y ago

Larry Lessig (the same guy who single-handedly designed Creative Commons) has spent the last 4 years investigating how to "stop this racket", and summarizes his thoughts in this book: http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress/dp/0446576433 http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress/... If you want to know what to do, a nice first step would be to buy and read Republic, Lost.

greyish_water 15y ago
Why not just pirate it?
bh42222 15y ago
The fact that it's a whole book makes me nervous. A strategy which requires a whole book to be explained sounds like giving up on anything simple and claiming we can go through 1001 non-radical steps to eventually get to a happy place. This to me is a form of denial. You realize simple solutions can not be practically implemented and you convince yourself a marathon of tiny changes is the way to go. (Disclaimer: I have not read that book.)
- a1k0n 15y ago
  > The fact that it's a whole book makes me nervous. At least 3/4ths of the book beats you over the head with countless examples of the corruption, how it came to be, and why it's not technically illegal. The very last part covers potential solutions, none of which have a great chance of success due to the vested interests but should be tried anyway. e.g. a constitutional convention is one way out, if we can convince enough states to call one.
  - bh42222 15y ago
    The very last part covers potential solutions, none of which have a great chance of success due to the vested interests but should be tried anyway What happens if we try them all and they (as expected) do not succeed? If they don't have a great chance of success, why can't we find other solutions?

Game_Ender 15y ago

What is the difference between that behavior, and groups of people deciding they don't want to donate to representatives who don't represent them anymore?

drumdance 15y ago
Magnitude.

Osiris 15y ago

I'd really like to hear ideas of how we can stop this racket I can think of a way to get money out of congress: remove elections. Think of it: serving in Congress could be like Jury Duty. Everyone's in the pool and every election cycle random people are selected from the pool and asked to serve. With no elections, there are no campaigns to donate to. It would be illegal for any Congressperson to accept any gifts or money from anyone other than their paycheck from the government and a ban on working for, directly or indirectly, with any person or corporation that was affected by any bills in which the Congressperson participated or voted. Would there still be corruption and political favors? Absolutely. People would still have a tendency to push for laws that would benefit either themselves, family, or friends or the industry in which they worked. The lack of up-front monetary gain would likely have a significant impact but corruption is a problem of honesty and integrity which human nature tends to lack and tacks personal disciple to evolve. Until mankind becomes entirely focused on building social welfare (what's good for all) instead of personal welfare (what's good for me), these problems will always be here.

TeMPOraL 15y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but without elections, you also don't have democracy, right? I of course do not mean to say that democracy is The Answer to All Problems, but this idea seems to touch the very core of the political system in place.
- philwelch 15y ago
  Random selection (qua jury duty) is still "statistically democratic" and without bribery may very well be more democratic than what we have now.
mjwalshe 15y ago
Well Athens had that system and made some bad kneejerk descisons - for example The Mytilenian Debate. And you would be handing much more power to unelected civil servants. I think both parties going to OMOV and doing away with primary's go back to state delegates deciding who the presidential candidates are - Oh and I would ban mandating of delegations.

Jeng 15y ago

>I'd really like to hear ideas of how we can stop this racket; The law not only has failed, but the lawmaking process has become 100% corrupt, therefor one should consider options that are not lawful.