Why Lobbyists Dodge Calls From Congressmen
We imagine the lobbyist stalking the halls of Congress trying to use cash to influence important people. But it doesn’t always work that way. Often, the Congressman is stalking the lobbyist, asking for money.
Lawmakers of both parties need to raise millions of dollars per election cycle. So lobbyists get calls from lawmakers and their staffs all the time, inviting them to fundraisers, according to Jimmy Williams, a former lobbyist for the real estate industry.
“A lot of them would call and say ‘Hey … can you host an event for me?’” Williams says. “You spend most of your time dodging phone calls.”
But when a Congressman calls and you need his vote, you agree to host a fundraiser. That means finding other people to come and give money.
“So I call up my buddies down on K Street,” Williams says. “I’m gonna do this event for this guy, and he sits on the House Financial Services committee. You guys have any money for this person?”
With a lot of these events, there’s space on the invitation to put your credit card number. Some lobbyists send their donation in ahead of time. Others bring the money to the event.
“We have a policy that all checks have to be hand delivered,” says Scott Talbott, a lobbyist for the financial services industry. “So we have to go up and eyeball the candidate… Wouldn’t you remember if someone handed you a check rather than sent it in the mail?”
Corporatism goes both ways
Lobbying and Corporatism: The Best Government Money Can Buy
How would you characterize this situation…a large corporation pays a multiple elected official lots of money, and in return the corporation sees favorable legislation that allows for the reduction of that corporation’s taxes. Those companies spend just over $500 million to lobby plus donations and they go back to their investors with BILLIONS in tax windfalls. That’s CORRUPTION. The next time that a politician says we should be giving “small businesses” a tax break; remember – this is who they’re really talking about cutting taxes for. It’s a bait and switch and the people who buy it are totally ignorant. Every $ cut in corporate taxes is a $ that Americans pay in higher taxes themselves.
There is no better Return on Investment than buying Congress.
Read more about legalized corruption HERE.
According to a report by the Sunlight Foundation:
On average, companies we examined reported paying a slightly lower overall tax rate in 2010 than in 2007 (average tax rate of 29.3 percent in 2010 as compared to 29.9 percent in 2007), with a decline in the median reported tax rate from 31.8 percent to 31.6 percent. Fifty-five percent of the companies paid a lower rate in 2010 than in 2007.
But the eight companies that spent the most on federal lobbying between 2007 and 2009 all decreased their overall tax rate between 2007 and 2010. Six of the Big Eight enjoyed a decrease of at least seven percentage points.
For those who say that “not cutting taxes” for corporations amounts to an increase in the price of goods and services for consumers – they’re only partially right…mostly wrong. Prices are determined by what the market will bear regardless of their costs or tax burden. Companies do not charge less because they have lower taxes…they charge the absolute maximum they can relative to their ability to increase shareholder value. And as Apple shows with the $98 BILLION in cash that they have stockpiled…it’s not going back to consumers via lower prices or even investment in new jobs here in America – it’s going to shareholders…mostly wealthy shareholders – see more HERE.
"There's just no reason to hand the richest industry on Earth a bonus to help them wreck the planet."
[…]
We should be outraged, but there’s a problem: The very word “subsidies” makes American eyes glaze over. It sounds so boring, like something that has everything to do with finance and taxes and accounting, and nothing to do with us. But bring yourself to focus on fossil-fuel subsidies for just a minute, and you will realize just how loony our policy is.
Start this way: You subsidize something you want to encourage, something that might not happen if you didn’t support it financially. Take education. We build schools, pay teachers and give government loans and grants to college kids. Families too have embraced education subsidies, with tuition often being the last big subsidy we give the children we’ve raised. The theory is: Young people don’t know enough yet. We need to give them a hand and a chance when it comes to further learning, so they’ll be a help to society in the future. From that analogy, here are five rules that should be applied to the fossil-fuel industry.
1. Don’t subsidize those who already have plenty of cash on hand.
No one would propose a government program of low-interest loans to send the richest kids in the country to college. We assume that the wealthy will pay full freight. Similarly, we should assume that the fossil-fuel business, the most profitable industry on Earth, should pay its way. What possible reason is there for giving, say, Exxon a tax break? Year after year the company sets records for money-making. Last year it managed to rake in a mere $41 billion in profit, just failing to break its own 2008 all-time mark of $45 billion.
2. Don’t subsidize people forever.
If students need government loans to help them get bachelor’s degrees, that’s sound policy. But if they want loans to get their 11th bachelor of arts, they should pay themselves. We learned how to burn coal 300 years ago. A subsidized fossil-fuel industry is the equivalent of a 19-year-old repeating third grade yet again.
3. Don’t abandon important subsidies just because in one instance they didn’t work out.
The government gave money to a solar power company called Solyndra. The company went belly-up. That stung. But since we’re in the process of figuring out how to perfect solar power and drive down its cost, it still makes sense to subsidize it. Think of it as the equivalent of giving a high-school senior a scholarship to go to college. Most of the time that works out. But a few kids are going to spend four years drinking; consider them human Solyndras. The subsidy wasn’t well spent on those kids, but we don’t shut down the entire college loan program as a result.
4. Don’t subsidize something you want less of.
At this point, the greatest human challenge is to get off fossil fuels. If we don’t do it soon, the climatologists tell us, our prospects as a civilization are grim. So why are we lending a significant helping hand to companies intent on driving us toward disaster? It’s like giving a fellowship to a graduate student who wants to pursue a thesis on “Strategies for Stimulating Doughnut Consumption Among Diabetics.”
5. Don’t give subsidies to people who have given you cash.
Most of the men and women in Congress who vote each year to continue subsidies have taken campaign donations from big energy companies. In essence, they’ve been given small gifts by outfits to whom they then return large presents, using public money, not their own. Oil Change International estimates that fossil-fuel companies get $59 back for every dollar they spend on donations and lobbying. It’s no different from sending a college financial aid officer a $100 bill in the expectation that he’ll give your daughter a scholarship. That’s bribery. And there’s no chance it will yield the best energy policy or the best student body.
These five rules don’t get at the biggest subsidy we give the fossil-fuel business: the right to pour their waste into the atmosphere for free. But they would be a start, a statement that we no longer will be played for suckers and saps. There’s just no reason to hand the richest industry on Earth a bonus to help them wreck the planet.
"Corporatism" in action
This is a long-ass article, so I’ll summarize. Basically, a bunch of rich fucks met with noob GOP members and each rich asshole bought out one of the GOP candidates.
To quote the article: (it is) “that time of the year when billionaires have to pick which one they like more”
MPAA Hires Four Ex-Federal Government Employees, Including One From ICE & Another From The White House
It appears that the famed “revolving door” between government and the big entertainment industry lobbyists continues. The MPAA has announced four new hires — all of whom come from roles within the government, and who raise significant questions about who they were working for when they were in their government positions.
Alex Swartsel, who has worked for several Democratic senators and campaigns, is the new director of global policy. Brian Cohen, who has worked in the Justice Department and for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is the new director for external state government affairs.
Lauren Pastarnack, who has worked on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is the new director of government affairs. And Kate Bedingfield, who joins the MPAA from the White House Communications Office, is the new director of strategic communications.
Dammit.
The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand:
Corporate Capitalism As a State-Guaranteed System of Privilege
Manorialism, commonly, is recognized to have been founded by robbery and usurpation; a ruling class established itself by force, and then compelled the peasantry to work for the profit of their lords. But no system of exploitation,including capitalism, has ever been created by the action of a free market. Capitalism was founded on an act of robbery as massive as feudalism. It has been sustained to the present by continual state intervention to protect its system of privilege, without which its survival is unimaginable.
Auto-reblog everytime.
This is one of my fave articles.
READ IT.
Pictured: free speech
Banking and Our Inflation Problems
It seems that from conversations I’ve recently had with people, they think that it is only the government deficit and its relation to printing money to pay off bonds that creates inflation. This is wrong. While the major cause could be brought back to the Federal Reserve, it’s only one part of the scheme that banks as a whole run on a daily basis.
This scheme is known as Fractional Reserve Banking. This is when a bank will only keep a percentage of deposits in reserves while they loan out the rest. Now this is a commonly-known function of a bank. I think to a certain degree this can be a positive practice, but when they do it excessively, bank runs occur.
Imagine if you brought $1000 to the bank and deposited it. Now the bank keeps 10% in reserves (as required for capital adequacy ratio in the U.S.) and loans out 90%. So some guy in who-knows-where just got loaned $900. He can deposit that in another bank and the process repeats itself. Though you are still entitled to your $1000, another guy just gained $900. And while that guy has his $900, a guy further down the road is entitled to $810. Now when you go back to retrieve your $1000, they don’t have it. It’s somewhere else because they simply made money out of money. The money they created doesn’t exist. This is what’s called the money multiplier effect. Now worse yet is the fact that not only are they inflating it, they’re betting it on people and betting it in markets. Meaning that when everything loses equity from the bubbles that this system creates, a lot of this money simply vanishes.
Note: The equation for the money multiplier effect is the inverse of the reserve requirement. So let m represent the money multiplier. m = 1/.10 = 1000% Meaning the banks have inflated your deposit alone by 1000% of its original amount.
Obviously they didn’t create new actual currency, which is why a bank has runs. They inflated the M1, M2, and M3 money supplies, which are the money supplies aside from tangible money. The money doesn’t exist for people to have even though it’s in the economy. The 10% reserve requirements are designed to be a cushion for banks so the banks don’t have to liquidate assets. To be frank, it’s not good enough. At all.
When a bank experiences bank runs, the bank will fail. But the banks have no fear, because they’re said to be “Too Big To Fail.” Yes, it’s true: when the banks fail the economy is ruined. But when the public sector feels the need to prevent banks from failing, the business becomes corrupt. Industry will always have incentive to offer good products and services to its consumers because if they don’t, they will fail and all be out of jobs.
Well for the industry dealing with the most sensitive good (money), they are deemed too important to go under. No incentive to be careful is offered. The banks became corrupt because all they had to worry about was lining their paychecks short-term. And much of this money is supplied by the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve, our central bank, is a private bank. It has special interests to help make all of this money while devaluating the dollar. They are the oil that fuels the corrupt banking engine. It’s a dishonest trade now, and it makes billionaires richer and the economy poorer.
Notice the green money supply. This is the actual money in circulation. Most economists use M2 money supply to measure the amount of money in circulation of an entire economy. Notice the difference. It’s nearly 7,000,000,000,000.
If we really want to stop harmful amounts of inflation, the current banking system has to stop. The best regulation is to tell banks that they can indeed fail. Which means we will have to remove the Federal Reserve. Plain and simple. They stopped caring, because the government gives them the power to stop caring.
Banks are no longer required to supply the amount of currency as private-sector would demand. They inflate and practically welcome bank runs. Most economists don’t use the M3 money supply anymore, but just to show you how severely damaging the system can be, notice the difference between currency and M3. It’s over 9 trillion. The simple fact is that ever since the Federal Reserve was created, the dollar lost 98% of its purchasing power. And people wonder why the banks failed in the Great Depression. Blame the Fed. They ruin our banks, enable the fractional-reserve system, and they ruin us.
reblogging so I read this later.
Corporate Campaigning: Where Do Politicians Get Their Money?
If you were a Democrat running for office in the 2010 election cycle, you had to have been a fan of lawyers, health professionals and real estate companies. That’s because these groups probably gave you healthy campaign contributions.
On the other side, if you were a Republican seeking office, you, too, must have been fond of lawyers, health professionals and real estate agents: They probably threw some dollars your way, too.
U.S. voters have always been leery of the influence that corporations and entire industries gain when they throw big dollars at their favorite politicians. Does this money impact the way legislators vote if they do get into office? There’s a lot of debate about this, with most politicians claiming that they are not influenced by campaign contributions.
Still, it’s hard not to believe that politicians don’t remember that the National Association of Realtors passed out more than $35 million to politicians in the most recent election cycle. Might all those dollars have some influence?
Regardless, corporate campaign contributions once again played a huge role in financing political campaigns across the country in the 2010 election cycle.
Yochai Benkler, Prof. of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard on Megaupload’s shutdown.
Most laws exist to keep the big corporations in power.
30 of the largest companies of the United States are now spending more on lobbying than they pay in federal taxes
Can someone say corporatism?
Who really pays for that?
the answer is America’s middle class. They’re the ones who are left to pick up all the pieces to pay the taxes to keep the country running. And more to the point, they’re the ones paying for the fact that there’s not enough money left to invest in our kids’ future. - Elizabeth Warren
Chris Dodd and the MPAA are complaining that politicians are not corrupt enough
From Techdirt:
Reinforcing the fact that Chris Dodd really does not get what’s happening, and showing just how disgustingly corrupt the MPAA relationship is with politicians, Chris Dodd went on Fox News to explicitly threaten politicians who accept MPAA campaign donations that they’d better pass Hollywood’s favorite legislation… or else:
“Those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake,”
In response, a petition was filed on whitehouse.gov to investigate Chris Dodd and the MPAA for bribery.
Ron Paul Would Erase Billions in Research Spending
Presidential hopeful Ron Paul’s new proposal to slash federal spending would wipe out large chunks of the government’s research portfolio. …
I would certainly hope so.
Personally, I don’t find it appropriate to put a gun to my neighbor’s head and rob him in the name of “science research” (even assuming it was properly spent, which would be tremendously generous to the lumbering and corrupt bureaucratic apparatus that is government). And I further don’t find it any more appropriate to employ others, namely agents of the state, to rob him on my behalf.
But Ron Paul wouldn’t stop free people from funding research themselves - and that tends to be more efficient and successful, and thus less funding would be required.
He’d cut a lot more spending in many other areas if he had his way, too. But that funding will instead remain in the economy and circulate (through spending, investments, or savings) in a manner more representative of individual preferences, as opposed to being engineered by a cadre of plutocrats, politicians, bureaucrats, and their corporate cronies. Personally, I find it foolish to trust the distribution of research funds to some politician whose only expertise comes from the lobbyists padding his wallet and whichever corporate “researchers” within his district may employ his constituency.
reblogging this so that I remember to respond to this later.
(Source: anticapitalist)
