4 ms·

Political advertising is just the tip of the corruption iceberg. When lobbying and gerrymandering is legal, can you really claim you're living in a democracy?

• JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > When lobbying and gerrymandering is legal Have you ever given money to the EFF? They're lobbyists. Call your represenatative? That's lobbying. Lobbying, i.e. constituents talking to electeds, is fundamental to democracy.
  • rurp 2y ago
    A huge industrial corporation spending millions on lobbyists in order to make it easier to dump pollutants into the environment without consequence, increasing their profits at the expense of local populations, is also a form of lobbying. I would bet that amoral corporate lobbying accounts for far more activity than good mission driven orgs like the EFF.
    • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > huge industrial corporation spending millions on lobbyists in order to make it easier to dump pollutants into the environment without consequence, increasing their profits at the expense of local populations, is also a form of lobbying Yes. You're describing a policy disagreement between a polluter and everyone else. Pick any political system and you'll have the same divide. (Again, lobbying involves hiring someone to present the case to an elected. It's categorically distinct from giving to a PAC or campaign.) > would bet that amoral corporate lobbying accounts for far more activity than good mission driven orgs like the EFF I mean sure, for a given value of "good." Social policy lobbying tends to vastly outstrip commercial lobbying, in part because the latter is more focussed.
• analog31 2y ago
  Gerrymandering isn't legal. The Constitution says that the states shall have a republican form of government. The founders intended this to mean an elective republic. If the government chooses its own electors, then it's not a republic by any wild stretch of the imagination.
• datavirtue 2y ago
  Yeah, we have the whole package right now. Grift on top of grift where trust and accountability wither rapidly.