What is the etiquette about posting links that are behind paywalls?
Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders
181–190 of 251 posts
Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
This breaks down when politicians get some kind of personal benefit such as campaign contributions or a consulting job. This is a conflict of interest and should exclude them from any vote about the interests of the lobbyist.
Lobbyist help politicians accomplish what they already wanted to do. Whenever politicians enact policy some interests inevitably benefit from it, and other interest's goals are frustrated by it. So of course there are going to be lobbyists (or activists) who want to argue their case on both sides, and good lobbyists are very well prepared and very persuasive. It's soft influence, and no quid pro quo is necessary for…
"Lobbyist help politicians accomplish what they already wanted to do."
Absolutely not. This is expertise.
Lobbying is persuasion. Those are two different things. Purpose of lobbyingis to achieve specific decisions. If those decisions are defined by objective expertise, then they are alined but lobbying usually have different goals.
Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
While lobbyists have sometimes bribed officials through gifts and perks, which is illegal, lobbying is not bribery. Say you're interesting in promoting renewable energy. You and like minded people put together resources to promote renewable energy to politicians, explaining its benefits. This activity is lobbying for renewable energy.
This breaks down when politicians get some kind of personal benefit such as campaign contributions or a consulting job. This is a conflict of interest and should exclude them from any vote about the interests of the lobbyist.
many politicians use lobby and special interest groups as means to funnel money back to family and friends. this is the real swamp in US politics. friends usually involve fellow politicians "benched" by voters.
so while some will come back and say lobbyist are only pushing politicians to do what the politician was going to do it simply ignores this is all just a shell game to avoid the limits on campaign donations and similar by providing a means to funnel money to friends and family of the same.
Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is patently untrue. A lobbyist is just anybody who meets with an elected official on behalf of a group. There are perfectly legitimate lobbyists, and many depending on the group they may even be volunteers. It just so happens that the lobbyists that get the most attention are those that represent the most powerful groups. But equating it with bribery is completely misleading.
>> There are perfectly legitimate lobbyists This is BS. Lobbyists serve the companies they work for and nobody else. There have been many cases of lobbyists getting fired for not sticking to the corporate agenda even on small matters. It's institutionalized corruption. The hypothetical 'legitimate lobbyists' are 'low performers' and they don't stick around very long. Either they will be underpaid and quit or they'll…
> Lobbyists serve the companies they work for and nobody else.
So do lawyers. Defendants pay them to meet with prosecutors and judges. This is not evidence of corruption. It's a process.
Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
Airbus might well be paying them to appear so...
Considering that Boeing is in deep, deep trouble Airbus has stayed very quiet and deliberately so. Their only major competitor collapsing can't be good for the strategically. Just imagine Boeing going bankrupt and being split up with China buying some parts...
US government will never let this happen, as a matter of national security. They'll bleed and may be bought by a US company, but never international interests
Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nobody goes to jail for "lobbying" in the US while it is clearly about the same thing as bribery. Just a legal form of it.
While lobbyists have sometimes bribed officials through gifts and perks, which is illegal, lobbying is not bribery. Say you're interesting in promoting renewable energy. You and like minded people put together resources to promote renewable energy to politicians, explaining its benefits. This activity is lobbying for renewable energy.
The current US campaign finance laws are legalized bribery.
Lobbyists don't give perks. They funnel in money directly because it has been made completely legal.
Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders
#187Anyone here actually believes it is only Airbus???
Anyone here actually believes it is only Airbus???
Does it matter? Airbus is being punished for what Airbus did. If other companies also misbehaved, that doesn't suddenly mean that Airbus didn't break the law and shouldn't be punished.
It's the difference between a justice system and mob rule.
Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
In medical devices when you screw up they can stop you from selling in a country for a while. That usually wakes people up. Stopping them from doing business for a while would wake up a lot of companies. But they can always hold their employees hostage since they would take most of the suffering.
Unless of course the screw up is “normal”, like leaving your device unsecured and open to the internet (which is wide spread in the medical device community, at least in practice).
I guess with “screw up” I meant things the regulatory organization doesn’t like. This could mean just wrong paperwork.
As far as security goes things are improving. Five years ago you got brushed off if you pointed out how easily hackable the devices were. Now people are listening and the FDA also seems to understand issues better.
Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lobbyist help politicians accomplish what they already wanted to do. Whenever politicians enact policy some interests inevitably benefit from it, and other interest's goals are frustrated by it. So of course there are going to be lobbyists (or activists) who want to argue their case on both sides, and good lobbyists are very well prepared and very persuasive. It's soft influence, and no quid pro quo is necessary for…
You haven’t explained why lobbyists are necessary, or even a good thing. Why is a system allowing lobbying better than one that bans it in favor of politicians independently making decisions based on the will expressed by and likely benefits for their constituents? And please don’t say it’s hard for them to understand all the issues. That’s literally their job and the reason they have a staff.
why is it necessary to allow people to talk to their leaders? why is it allowable that people be able to band together and form organizations and speak to their leaders as one with one voice? The right to petition is considered fundamental and pre-dates democracy.
stop calling it "lobbying" like that means something special, it's called free speech and representative democracy. you don't like people speaking in secret? how about we register them, and call that lobbying.
irritated that the people who speak up get heard? that's called life.
you want to be heard, you need to speak up.
Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nobody should be giving any money to politicians, or their campaigns, for any reason what-so-ever. I realize it's fundamental to American politics now, but that doesn't make it fundamentally wrong.
> Nobody should be giving any money to politicians, or their campaigns, for any reason what-so-ever. I don't disagree on the fundamentals, but I think there's a lot of side effects of something like this. How should election campaigns be funded? I've heard suggestions of having the state pay for campaigns, everyone gets a fixed budget (or some variation of this). But this leads to issues then around who should be eli…
These are all good questions, and details would of course have to be worked out, but in Sweden where we do have a system of state funding for political campaigns, I've never heard of these issues arising in practice.
I'm not sure what the details of our rules actually are, except that your party gets funding if you got more than 4% (edit – correction: 2,5%) of the votes in the last election and that people are free to volunteer their time.