Raising minimum wage increases unemployment

[_cinepro]

Petitioning is the same thing as legalized bribery?

Explain.

Bribing politicians is illegal. If you have knowledge of it happening, you should report it.

[_mledbetter]

I apologize Matt, I had no idea you'd take offense to it. I know he has been hating on Unions and Soros since forever and he has many followers who spread that message. Most Mormons I know love that guy, especially the Obama-hating Mormons. You'd probably be surprised how much of the current "news" and talking points on the Right originate from people like Beck, or Brietbart, or (pick one).

Relax, man. I was trying to be facetious. I wrote that a little tongue-in-cheek. :-) Yes, I don't like the guy, but I wasn't offended.

[_Kevin Graham]

Petitioning is the same thing as legalized bribery?

Explain.

Bribing politicians is illegal. If you have knowledge of it happening, you should report it.

Cinepro, I'm asking you to tell me the difference between lobbying and bribing.

[_cinepro]

Cinepro, I'm asking you to tell me the difference between lobbying and bribing.

As I understand it, lobbying is the legal expression of "petitioning the government". Bribery is paying someone to do something.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/03/ ... for-office

I'm not a huge Barney Frank fan, but his quote from that story is probably pretty honest:

If you're cynical, you think money buys votes, and Washington is owned. Money drives everything.

Lobbyists and politicians usually tell you the opposite. The money has no effect. After all, they say, donations come from both sides. Exporters vs. importers. Bankers vs. Realtors. Businesses vs. unions. The money cancels itself out.

Rep. Barney Frank says both of those positions were caricatures.

"People say, 'Oh, it doesn't have any effect on me,'" he says. "Well if that were the case, we'd be the only human beings in the history of the world who on a regular basis took significant amounts of money from perfect strangers and made sure that it had no effect on our behavior."

On the other hand, Frank says, money isn't the only thing that influences lawmakers.

"If the voters have a position, the voters will kick money's rear end every time," he says.

But the fact is, a Congressman's district doesn't care about most legislation one way or another. Most of what Congress does affects the minutiae of tax law and business code and replacing the "and" in subsection b of title 1 with an "or."

The only people who do care, or who even understand what the small print means are the lobbyists, and the industries and interests they represent.

Ultimately, the reason we have a problem with so much money in politics (whether its bribery or lobbying) is because the US Government does so much. It reaches so far into all of our lives that it is only natural for people to want to try and control that influence. If the government did less, people would feel less compulsion to try and influence it.

[_Kevin Graham]

As I understand it, lobbying is the legal expression of "petitioning the government". Bribery is paying someone to do something.

But since these "petitions" always come with a nice big check, what's the difference? There is none. You're talking about definitions, but in practice, they're virtually identical.

So why do companies hire lobbyists by the thousands and funnel billions into campaign contributions? Because they are great investments:

A study by the investment-research firm Strategas which was cited in The Economist and the Washington Post compared the 50 firms that spent the most on lobbying relative to their assets, and compared their financial performance against that of the S&P 500 in the stock market; the study concluded that spending on lobbying was a "spectacular investment" yielding "blistering" returns comparable to a high-flying hedge fund, even despite the financial downturn of the past few years. A 2009 study by University of Kansas professor Raquel Meyer Alexander suggested that lobbying brought a substantial return on investment. A 2011 meta-analysis of previous research findings found a positive correlation between corporate political activity and firm performance.

There is widespread agreement that a key ingredient in effective lobbying is money. This view is shared by players in the lobbying industry.

So in practice, the only difference I can see is that there isn't a stated promise to act or vote according to the level of "contributed" money. Instead, it is just implied, and all part of the game. In Brazil our politicians would be arrested for bribery without question. Any indication in Brazil of a politician acting according to the interests of his wealthy donors, would bring down the thunder from the media and the law.

But here in the grand US of A, we celebrate the practice as an act of "free speech." What idiocy!

It is why our representatives won't meet with us personally unless we donate a large sum of cash. Why is it that lobbyists get to have regular meetings with the politicians who are supposed to represent the people? Because of the gifts, money and promised future of lucrative positions in their company once they retire.

[_cinepro]

But since these "petitions" always come with a nice big check, what's the difference? There is none. You're talking about definitions, but in practice, they're virtually identical.

So why do companies hire lobbyists by the thousands and funnel billions into campaign contributions? Because they are great investments:

A study by the investment-research firm Strategas which was cited in The Economist and the Washington Post compared the 50 firms that spent the most on lobbying relative to their assets, and compared their financial performance against that of the S&P 500 in the stock market; the study concluded that spending on lobbying was a "spectacular investment" yielding "blistering" returns comparable to a high-flying hedge fund, even despite the financial downturn of the past few years. A 2009 study by University of Kansas professor Raquel Meyer Alexander suggested that lobbying brought a substantial return on investment. A 2011 meta-analysis of previous research findings found a positive correlation between corporate political activity and firm performance.

There is widespread agreement that a key ingredient in effective lobbying is money. This view is shared by players in the lobbying industry.

So in practice, the only difference I can see is that there isn't a stated promise to act or vote according to the level of "contributed" money. Instead, it is just implied, and all part of the game. In Brazil our politicians would be arrested for bribery without question. Any indication in Brazil of a politician acting according to the interests of his wealthy donors, would bring down the thunder from the media and the law.

But here in the grand US of A, we celebrate the practice as an act of "free speech." What idiocy!

It is why our representatives won't meet with us personally unless we donate a large sum of cash. Why is it that lobbyists get to have regular meetings with the politicians who are supposed to represent the people? Because of the gifts, money and promised future of lucrative positions in their company once they retire.

I agree it's a tough situation. But I don't know that there is a better solution for it. As long as there is immense power in Washington, and the government exerts its influence on every aspect of the business and private lives of its citizens, there will be a huge incentive for those citizens to try and influence this power.

The entire system is pretty rotten, if you read that NPR story. It's not the lobbyists forcing money on the idealistic and innocent senators. Now it's the congressmen men and women spending hours and hours calling people asking for money, and organizing fundraisers. Even if we publicly funded elections in some way, there would still be a tremendous amount of power at stake.

I also suspect that there are two sides to every coin when it comes to lobbying, and that reducing one type of lobbying will shift the influence to another group, and it may not work out for the best for the economy or the majority of US citizens in the end. We would just be trading the known situation today (with some transparency and accountability) to a more hidden system with more unintended consequences.

But I'm not sure I would hold Brazil up as the gold standard for governments when it comes to corruption.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas ... corruption

I suspect in the end, it is the governments that exert the weakest force upon their people that attract the least amount of corruption.