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Lobbyists rewrote Washington state’s privacy law

politico.eu

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Re: Lobbyists rewrote Washington state’s privacy law

#31

Post by rayiner »

SaltyBackendGuy wrote: post #20
blub wrote: post #2

"In the final draft circulated among local lawmakers last week, which was obtained by POLITICO, Ryan Harkins, a senior public policy director at Microsoft, also wrote notes in the margins, often chiding lawmakers for their legislative approach and deleting sections of the bill that he viewed as unsatisfactory." Lobbying is pure corruption. No individual citizens or even organizations have such power to strike paragra…

> Lobbying is pure corruption I never understood why more people don't see it this way. You literally pay money to get X bill passed. If that's not corruption I don't know what is.

Because it’s not true. It’s a falsehood perpetuated by people who seek to delegitimize the status quo. You pay people to make PowerPoint presentations about the proposed legislation. (And create talking points and white papers and that sort of thing. A lot of it is just arming legislators with data and arguments to support positions they support anyway.)

Re: Lobbyists rewrote Washington state’s privacy law

#32

Post by rayiner »

skrebbel wrote: post #29
SaltyBackendGuy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lobbying is pure corruption I never understood why more people don't see it this way. You literally pay money to get X bill passed. If that's not corruption I don't know what is.

I think much of Europe is looking at the US that way. It's mind blowing, especially how much it happens in the open. We have lots of corruption too, but it's mostly hidden and if it gets out it's a scandal. In the US it appears to be just normal matter of fact stuff. Company funds politician; politician gets elected; favourable law gets passed; nobody bats an eye.

Much of Europe must be very ignorant about American law then, because it is illegal here for companies to fund the election campaigns of candidates.

Re: Lobbyists rewrote Washington state’s privacy law

#33

Post by mikeash »

rayiner wrote: post #30
mikeash wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legislators give Microsoft more weight just because of jobs? You don’t think campaign contributions play a part? And are you implying that Microsoft represents its employees when you say it represents a large and economically important group of citizens? Because it definitely does not. It pays its employees. It represents its shareholders.

I don’t think campaign contributions play a significant part. In Washington state corporations are limited to donating $1,900 per candidate (and corporate donations are illegal at the federal level). So there just isn’t very much money in play. Bedsides that, I have some exposure to lobbying at the state level. (When I was at Northwestern, our legal clinic lobbies on environmental issues.) it was common knowledge tha…

It’s well known that it’s cheap to buy legislators. The low amounts involved don’t make a convincing argument to me that it doesn’t have an effect. It’s also well known that legislators spend a shitload of their time soliciting donations. Surely all that time spent begging for money influences people’s thinking.

If I gave a legislator a dollar to add a paragraph to a bill, we’d both go to jail. It would be laughable to argue that it doesn’t count as a bribe because the amount was small. Yet if I do the same thing except I donate that dollar to the campaign, it’s totally cool and even a good thing because I’m a job creator?

Re: Lobbyists rewrote Washington state’s privacy law

#34

Post by AsyncAwait »

rayiner wrote: post #21
JohnFen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And making large donations to reelection campaigns.

That’s just not true. To the extent lobbyists make donations, they do so in their individual, rather than representative capacity. Look at open secrets’ list of top lobbyists: https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=lb&showY... . They’re not making “large donations.” Some of the top lobbyists contributed nothing. Most a few hundred to a few thousand, which is not out of line for DC residents in that econo…

I think what you're missing is that yes, Joe John working for Microsoft as a lobbyist is not directly donating, but Microsoft is donating to politicians via PACs etc. The notion that a politician is not going to give more weight to a lobbyist employed by their corporate donors is playing dense on purpose.

It's a semantics game.

Re: Lobbyists rewrote Washington state’s privacy law

#35

Post by samirillian »

rayiner wrote: post #3
blub wrote: post #2

"In the final draft circulated among local lawmakers last week, which was obtained by POLITICO, Ryan Harkins, a senior public policy director at Microsoft, also wrote notes in the margins, often chiding lawmakers for their legislative approach and deleting sections of the bill that he viewed as unsatisfactory." Lobbying is pure corruption. No individual citizens or even organizations have such power to strike paragra…

That’s a perverted view of the “public interest” as being diametrically opposed to corporate interests. Microsoft is a major employer in Washington. Not to mention, it’s one of the nation’s major innovators, making products everyone uses. It’s views on proposed legislation are extremely relevant and helpful and it’s in the “public interest” for legislators to consider them. Note that some of the provisions in questio…

Perverted is strong. You might say that there are no specific guarantors of a democracy, and that "one person, one vote" can be interpreted in many ways. But considering regulatory capture by corporate interests undemocratic is a totally fair point, agreed-upon by leftists and free market evangelists alike. There is nothing inherently perverse about this claim.

Re: Lobbyists rewrote Washington state’s privacy law

#37

Post by geofft »

rayiner wrote: post #31
SaltyBackendGuy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lobbying is pure corruption I never understood why more people don't see it this way. You literally pay money to get X bill passed. If that's not corruption I don't know what is.

Because it’s not true. It’s a falsehood perpetuated by people who seek to delegitimize the status quo. You pay people to make PowerPoint presentations about the proposed legislation. (And create talking points and white papers and that sort of thing. A lot of it is just arming legislators with data and arguments to support positions they support anyway.)

In many cases you're paying people to create the text of the laws themselves.

Also, how is "paying people to make PowerPoint presentations and talking points about proposed legislation so that legislators can be convinced that a certain law should be passed" not just a form of "paying to pass a certain law"? When I set out to write complex software, I generally collect data, make arguments, write design docs / white papers, and occasionally make PowerPoint presentations about how the software should be designed and why; that's part of the process of meaningfully developing software just as much as banging out some code in a text editor is. I'm still a software developer, and when the company is paying me to make presentations and arguments in favor of getting software developed, they are absolutely paying me to develop software.

(Also, what's wrong with seeking to delegitimize the status quo? In other contexts, don't we call that "disruption"? It might be a falsehood, but we can debate the substance of a claim without attacking the motives of the people making a claim.)

Re: Lobbyists rewrote Washington state’s privacy law

#38

Post by geofft »

rayiner wrote: post #32
skrebbel wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think much of Europe is looking at the US that way. It's mind blowing, especially how much it happens in the open. We have lots of corruption too, but it's mostly hidden and if it gets out it's a scandal. In the US it appears to be just normal matter of fact stuff. Company funds politician; politician gets elected; favourable law gets passed; nobody bats an eye.

Much of Europe must be very ignorant about American law then, because it is illegal here for companies to fund the election campaigns of candidates.

Are you arguing that Google NetPAC giving money to candidates' election campaigns is in some meaningful way not Google giving money to candidates? If so, what is that meaningful way?

(I realize that this is very different in a legal way, i.e., it would be illegal for money from Google to go to candidates without first being routed through employees' salaries and then to NetPAC, but because it is, it's quite legal and it's totally fine that donations from NetPAC are still decided by senior Google execs and the PAC represents itself to candidates as supporting Google's interests. I'm asking if this is different in a practical way.)

Re: Lobbyists rewrote Washington state’s privacy law

#39

Post by hammock »

blub wrote: post #2

"In the final draft circulated among local lawmakers last week, which was obtained by POLITICO, Ryan Harkins, a senior public policy director at Microsoft, also wrote notes in the margins, often chiding lawmakers for their legislative approach and deleting sections of the bill that he viewed as unsatisfactory." Lobbying is pure corruption. No individual citizens or even organizations have such power to strike paragra…

>No individual citizens or even organizations

Isn't that exactly what a lobbyist is??

Re: Lobbyists rewrote Washington state’s privacy law

#40

Post by deogeo »

rayiner wrote: post #27
JohnFen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their interests are highly aligned. It sure doesn't seem like it to me. Corporations are about maximizing profits, which in part means soaking people to greatest degree possible. It would be easier to support the notion that their interests are "highly aligned" if corporations had an incentive to make a reasonable profit rather than the most profit they can get away with.

Corporations make a profit by giving people what the people want. Apple makes tons of profits because it innovates and gives people products they love. Same thing for Walmart and Amazon. (It turns out that what people love is cheap crap delivered instantly, but that is what it is.) Same thing for Exxon. (People love cheap gas so they can drive their SUVs to Chipotle and Exxon delivers that.) It’s entities that don’t…

Microsoft makes a profit by charging for secret patents on Android, and by pushing the use of patented FAT and exFAT filesystems, instead of patent-free alternatives. Google makes a profit through pervasive spying. Pharmaceutical companies make huge profits by forbidding the import of medicine from abroad, even when it's the exact same medicine they sell. Or by selling HIV-tainted blood (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_haemophilia_blood...). Tobacco companies made billions by pervasive advertising to convince people smoking is cool. Banks profited by re-ordering payments so they could charge more overdrafts (https://medium.com/@harvestplatform/re-ordering-transactions...).

And all companies make a profit by paying their workers as little as they can, while charging as much as they can for their product.

There are ethical and unethical ways to turn a profit, and large companies tend to ignore the distinction. So it's difficult for me to imagine the degree of willful blindness required to say that the interests of people and corporations are mostly aligned, or that that is "what the people want".

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