291–300 of 366 posts
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Lobbying is just a legal form of corruption. Ban it, and it will still continue to exist underground anyway. What we need is to stop voting for idiot politicians.
For that you need to stop produce idiot voters.
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I would argue that the advent of PAC's and Citizens United has more or less obsoleted the positive case--which you're right, I don't object too. What I mean is, if I'm a politician and two lobbyist show up "explaining" if I listen to the one from a PAC with the briefcase full of campaign contributions, in the next election I'm more likely to stay a politician, so there's now a selective pressure toward corruption on…
Yeah I agree that that's a problem (you'd probably like the video I linked in my original comment and his book Republic Lost). I heard an interview on the Stay Tuned podcast (Preet Bharara's podcast) where he interviewed one of the lawyers that argued the winning side of citizen's united. It was an interesting interview and an over simplified summary was that the influence of campaign contributions which come from co…
that’s an interesting perspective on citizen’s united worth mulling over.
but while speech is free from governmental limits, it is not protected from the response of other citizens. it’s still problematic that political contributions can be hidden behind organizations to shield the wealthy from the consequences of their speech.
citizens—nay, people—are equal in the eyes of the constitution (as affirmed in the bill of rights), and moneyed citizens are not entitled to unequal, government-protected veils from such consequences.
this is part of the larger discussion around who gets a public (media) voice and in what proportion. it seems an argument can be made that constitutionally, that proportion should correlate to the population (one person, one vote; not one dollar, one vote). we can defer to representatives to voice our opinions for us, but they should do so with only the aggregate backing of the citizens standing behind them. (then you also have to deal with the tyranny of the majority issues arising therefrom).
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This is so true. We should just ban lobbying because it is only used by rich corporations and individuals.
Lobbying is just a legal form of corruption. Ban it, and it will still continue to exist underground anyway. What we need is to stop voting for idiot politicians.
Certainly it's better to outlaw it rather than to simply allow it to happen. You will never catch 100% of the people breaking the law, but you can create an environment of transparency and accountability to help and you can make it costly enough for those who are caught to make the next person reconsider risking it.
Yeah, makes sense. =P
Pre-1994 all shower heads were like 6 GPM -- those were nice showers. Not sure we've really saved any water by making people take longer, crappier showers.
Sydney is still 25 LPM... roughly 6 GPM. It's bliss.
I'm sure the EPA does some wonderful things, but they've totally ruined showers over the last 30 years.
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Does persistent low-level exposure to chlorine cause health problems?
That's a good question, does it? I know that there was a time when not a single doctor in the world believed there was such a thing as latex allergy. My family is in the chemical business and my father (chemist) won't put chlorine in his pool, he uses a bromide of some kind. But, if something is popular (asbestos was at one point) it must be just fine.
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In what cases would you use it where humans wouldn't be in contact with it eventually?
As far as I know asbestos was often mixed with cement for insulating properties. And in this case was often deemed unharmful. Maybe it'll find uses in locations that use cement that requires thermal insulation but isn't exposed to humans.
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Yeah I agree that that's a problem (you'd probably like the video I linked in my original comment and his book Republic Lost). I heard an interview on the Stay Tuned podcast (Preet Bharara's podcast) where he interviewed one of the lawyers that argued the winning side of citizen's united. It was an interesting interview and an over simplified summary was that the influence of campaign contributions which come from co…
> “...the influence of campaign contributions which come from concentrated groups is a serious problem that needs to be dealt with, but putting government restrictions on speech in order to do it sets a dangerous precedent” that’s an interesting perspective on citizen’s united worth mulling over. but while speech is free from governmental limits, it is not protected from the response of other citizens. it’s still pro…
Ultimately I think that was what the decision was about - that there need to be better controls and fixes for how campaign finance currently works, but that the citizen's united solution (that lost) was not the safe way to do it.
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> Actually, the 50% of people who didn't vote in the presidential election have said we don't care to choose between which of the two pieces of shit we're going to be forced to eat If they had voted in the primaries, they would have different choices, but 71% of those eligible to vote in primaries didn't bother (Turnout was only 29% of those eligible in the 2016 primaries). [0] So, cutting the field back to those “tw…
Stepping back to the primaries is fallacious, as it just obscures the criticism. For 2016 we can easily see that the top-level choices were bullshit. But condemning the process that led to the Democratic primary choices is more amorphous, making it easier to cling to belief. Rather than retreating to lower layers of the recursive structure, it's more productive to discuss models that cover the whole system - my worki…
What I was replying to is the idea that the winner speaks for the people, which you always hear after every election, which you hear a lot from Trump and his supporters, and which is reflected in the comment "we got what we voted for." If everyone voted, then that would be at least arguably true. But since half of the eligible voters didn't bother to vote, we don't know what they wanted, and no elected official can claim to speak for them.
My final comment was about some theoretical person who could get the dis-interested voters to vote for them. Whoever has that magic could get twice as many votes as the Democrat or Republican. I suspect that the non-voters are mostly centrists, who feel that the major parties have gotten too radical. So maybe a solid centrist candidate could have a third-party chance.
I am quite concerned what industry with lobbying can achieve nowadays.
This used to be illegal to lobby and also be called something else corruption
The Forgotten Law of Lobbying https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2383317
https://www.fastcompany.com/90208948/under-trumps-epa-asbest...