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When Lobbying was Illegal

priceonomics.com

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Re: When Lobbying was Illegal

#11

Post by thawkins »

matthewbauer wrote: post #6
yuhong wrote: post #2

I am thinking that in the future campaign contributions might eventually matter less than it does today. For example, it is a good thing all 40 states in the US does not do the presidential primary on the same day.

How so? I think the biggest problem with campaign contributions is that ads are so incredibly effective at getting congresspeople reelected. Maybe if everyone agreed to ignore these ads campaign contributions would be worthless. But there's a significant enough number of people who are swayed by it to matter.

Maybe if the advertising worked on the princple, that negative advertising about, or even mention of another candidate or party was banned, so that candidates would be forced to campaign on there own positions and party lines, instead of the incessant muck raking and smearing that the circus has descended to today.

In many countries competitive advertising that mentions other brands etc, is banned.

Re: When Lobbying was Illegal

#13

Post by snowwrestler »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #5

This is very selective reading of history. Politics were probably more corrupt and lobbying was even more dominant (just in different forms) in the 1800s. Obviously, the train has gone off the rails at this point, but we aren't at a fundamentally different place politically than we were in, say 1896, when many of the same issues were at play.

And the article misleads about the state of lobbying today, for example:

> lobbyists who take out lawmakers for expensive lunches

A lobbyist who buys an expensive lunch for a lawmaker (member of Congress) is committing a federal offense under the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007. The rule is so strict that if a member of Congress is attending a public event with food at a lobbying org, the org cannot provide utensils, unless the member of Congress pays for their food.

Executive Order 13490 also prohibits all executive branch political appointees from receiving gifts of any kind from lobbyists, including lunch.

The 1999 Supreme Court decision was the right one, as it struck down an interpretation that was obviously too broad. The article names Scalia since he wrote the opinion, but the vote was 9-0! (Obviously this was back in the good old days when the Supreme Court still had 9 justices.)

Re: When Lobbying was Illegal

#15

Post by entee »

Perhaps the least understood view of lobbying that really informs how perverse the system has become is that as a general rule people believe the lobbyists are calling the congresspeople to offer them money. In reality, it's the congresspeople, desperate for campaign cash, that are calling the lobbyists for money.

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/01/27/145923803/the-f...

The cost of congressional elections has increased so much that it has become essentially required for someone aspiring to political office to raise enormous amounts of money. As a result they're asking lobbyists to contribute. As a result they're more likely to take positions that are friendly to those interests.

Effectively the polarity of the commonly stated narrative is backwards. It's not lobbyists giving money for special favors, it's congresspeople needing money who give special favors in the hopes of maybe getting money. This is even more perverse, and harder to fix than the former. Essentially, I wish my congressperson was more traditionally corrupt, that's an issue we know how to solve.

Re: When Lobbying was Illegal

#16

Post by mapt »

jahnu wrote: post #3

> Wouldn’t it be nice if lobbying were illegal? Honestly, no. It's essential that law makers can be informed by all interested parties. The problem is a lack of transparency. Complex to control but not impossible. Every single meeting between an elected officials and anyone lobbying them should be in some way recorded and made public. As if it were a public debate. The other issue is fund raising. Too broad and compl…

"The problem is a lack of transparency" might have been true in some historical era when there was less money involved; We could target a singular corrupt politician taking bribes if we knew about the bribes. Sure.

But that's not the problem we have. Our problem is fund-raising. Politicians are not meeting once every few years with a lobbyist at 2AM beneath the Lincoln Memorial, they're spending 60% of their time on the phone begging moneyed interests for reelection campaign funds or party goals, the day after they get elected. They're spending 25% of their time negotiating with lobbyists about what laws the lobbyists get to write ("The legislative subsidy model" of RL Hall, wherein they replace Congressional staff increases), and another 10% trying to raise their professional profile through non-legislative activities in the press or with political powerbrokers. Maybe 5% of their time is spent in committee meetings or on the floor.

On top of that, it starts out as a part-time job, with meaningful meetings limited to a few days of the week in order to satisfy the need to fly home to meet with contributors. The Senate has become nearly impossible to get bills through for a similar reason - a filibuster is a time-wasting annoyance legislatively, but its requirement that 51 Senators stay on the floor to break it prevents them from spending days fundraising, an existential threat to their careers, while the filibustering party only has to commit a couple Senators to keep it active.

Of the bills voted on in their legislative career, the proportion actually read by the legislator will be under 1%. The number read in full by their staff, under 10%.

Politicans are not hiding this; They are complaining about it. We have created a system wherein legislating ranks as the lowest priority, and not even the wealthiest in Congress can be free of implicit corruption.

Re: When Lobbying was Illegal

#17

Post by snowwrestler »

entee wrote: post #15

Perhaps the least understood view of lobbying that really informs how perverse the system has become is that as a general rule people believe the lobbyists are calling the congresspeople to offer them money. In reality, it's the congresspeople, desperate for campaign cash, that are calling the lobbyists for money. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/01/27/145923803/the-f... The cost of congressional elections has…

This is true for direct contributions to a candidate's campaign, for contributions to an member of Congress's "personal PAC", and for contributions to political parties.

It's not true for contributions to "super PACs" and other independent expenditures, aka outside money--the stuff the Citizens United decision liberalized. The reason for that is that the law (even post-CU) prohibits coordination between a candidate and any group making independent expenditures. Ted Cruz cannot ask anyone to give money to his super PAC.

And it's important to understand that there are still limits on the contributions in my first paragraph. A given person can only contribute a set amount of money per election cycle to each candidate, each PAC, and each party committee. That said, the aggregate numbers are still huge.

CU did not outlaw limits on those types of contributions. I wish we could lower then farther and (especially) take away the privileged position that political parties have within elections and campaign finance laws.

Re: When Lobbying was Illegal

#18

Post by InclinedPlane »

It's good that people are cognizant of the problems here but lobbying and money in politics are much more symptoms of deeper issues. You can treat the symptoms all you like but without solving the underlying problems you'll likely get something just as bad happening in a way you can't control. Right now the system is so corrupt and broken in every way that the only people who would ever want to be a part of it are either corrupt themselves, power seekers, or incredibly dedicated (which leads to an odd mix for sure).

Things are changing, slightly for the better in some ways though it's overall a complete mess. It helps that it's no longer necessary to spend tens of millions of dollars just to communicate with the electorate, though we're still not quite there yet.

We can't just make a few tweaks to the legal code and magic our way out of these problems. It's going to take a generation or more of concerted effort and, as always, constant vigilance afterward, and a bunch of legal changes along the way as well.

Re: When Lobbying was Illegal

#19

Post by ipsin »

This is a case where footnotes would be tremendously useful.

I could not tell when the author was writing something from Zephyr Teachout and when the author was citing another source.

Re: When Lobbying was Illegal

#20

Post by Spooky23 »

snowwrestler wrote: post #17
entee wrote: post #15

Perhaps the least understood view of lobbying that really informs how perverse the system has become is that as a general rule people believe the lobbyists are calling the congresspeople to offer them money. In reality, it's the congresspeople, desperate for campaign cash, that are calling the lobbyists for money. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/01/27/145923803/the-f... The cost of congressional elections has…

This is true for direct contributions to a candidate's campaign, for contributions to an member of Congress's "personal PAC", and for contributions to political parties. It's not true for contributions to "super PACs" and other independent expenditures, aka outside money--the stuff the Citizens United decision liberalized. The reason for that is that the law (even post-CU) prohibits coordination between a candidate a…

That arms length separation elevates the power of lobbyists and other political operators even more.
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