Mo’ Money, Mo’ Lobbying
Mo’ Money, Mo’ Lobbying
Jack Abramoff may have been indicted on criminal charges, but big-time lobbyists don’t seem to be losing any influence. A survey released yesterday by the Hill found that lobbyists are on pace to set new records for revenue this year:
Though conventional wisdom holds that election years typically see a decline in lobbying expenditures as party strategists and supporters move beyond the Beltway to the hinterland, lobbying spending actually grew last year. Spending grew to $2.14 billion in 2004, a 7 percent increase over 2003, according to PoliticalMoneyLine.
The growth trend seems like[ly] to continue.
That survey, taken alongside a study by the Center for Public Integrity, paints a startling picture of how powerful lobbyists have become. The CPI found that, at the state level, lobbyists (all 38,000 of them) spent almost 1 billion dollars in 2004. For a sense of comparison, that’s five lobbyists and $130,000 for every state legislator in the country.
It’s a lot of lobbying, in other words. And those numbers don’t even speak to the intense lobbying that takes place every week on Capitol Hill.
No, the ridiculously pork-laden energy bill and highways bill speak to that.
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The money runs the country.
August 18th, 2005 at 4:36 pmI didn’t know that prohibition was on CAP’s legislative radar. Obviously news is slow, but this is ridiculous.
WAL-MART LIQUORS UP
August 18th, 2005 at 4:41 pmThe company’s favorite trick to boost profits: “planting a liquor store just over the border of a state or county with restrictive booze laws.”
Are you suggesting CAP favors prohibition?
August 18th, 2005 at 4:49 pm“Nothing is illegal if 100 businessmen decide to do it.â€
Mayor Andrew Young
August 18th, 2005 at 4:51 pmWhether one favors prohibition or not, using a technicality to get around the law is a scumbag thing to do.
August 18th, 2005 at 4:52 pmThis is 2005. This IS an off year. Elections are next year.
August 18th, 2005 at 4:53 pmOnly MADD and the Prohibition party, supposedly the oldest third party in the US, favors prohibition. Yep, they are still around.
http://www.prohibition.org/
And the DEA and Federal Govt.
August 18th, 2005 at 4:55 pmClick on the link, kindness.
August 18th, 2005 at 4:56 pmThis is 2005. This IS an off year. Elections are next year.
There are no “off years” in politics. It’s 24/7/365 and 366 on leap years. It’s total war.
August 18th, 2005 at 4:56 pm(The Hill link, that is. They are talking about 2005.)
August 18th, 2005 at 4:57 pmGreat Book you can read online, but you should buy it.
http://gangsofamerica.com/
If it’s about money, and it is, it was and still is about oil. (Operation Iragi Liberation).
“… the modern corporation as an institution is entitled to much more respect than it has frequently received. The dangers inherent in its use are also great enough to require serious attention. The possibilities of its continued development are, so far as one can see, unlimited. It is, in fact, an institution at a cross road in history, capable of becoming one of the master tools of society—capable also of surprising abuse; worthy of the attention of the community as well as of scholars.â€
Adolph Berle, Jr. The Twentieth Century Capitalist Revolution
On the morning of August 2, 2002, millions of Americans turned on their TVs to see an unusual spectacle: a high-level corporate executive in handcuffs, being paraded by law enforcement officials in front of the news camera. The executive was Scott Sullivan, chief financial officer of telecommunications firm WorldCom. Along with fellow executive David Myers, Sullivan was charged with hiding $3.85 billion in company expenses, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and filing false information with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The combined maximum penalties from the charges were 65 years. In response to the arrests, attorney general John Ashcroft told reporters, “Corporate executives who cheat investors, steal savings, and squander pensions will meet the judgment they fear and the punishment they deserve.â€
Now consider a different crime, committed by the leadership of General Motors, together with Standard Oil of California, Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, B. F. Phillips Petroleum, and Mac Manufacturing. In 1936, the five companies formed National City Lines, a holding company that proceeded to buy electric trolley lines and tear up the tracks in cities across the nation. Each time it destroyed a local trolley system, National City would license the rights to operate a new system to a local franchisee, under the stipulation that the system convert to diesel-powered General Motors buses.
By 1949, more than 100 electric transit systems in 45 systems had been torn up and converted. In April of that year, a federal jury convicted GM and the other firms of conspiracy to commit anti-trust violations. But the judge set the fine for each company at $5,000. Seven executives were fined one dollar each. After the conviction, the companies went back to purchasing transit systems, removing electric trolley lines, and replacing them with buses. By 1955, 88 percent of the country’s electric streetcar network was gone.
Both the Scott Sullivan case and the National City Lines case fit the traditional definition of crime: laws were broken, the legal system intervened. But the second case suggests that the larger the crime, the more the boundaries between “crime†and “business as usual†begin to blur. As Atlanta mayor and former United Nations ambassador Andrew Young once said, “Nothing is illegal if 100 businessmen decide to do it.â€
Young may have overstated things a bit, but the observation does encapsulate a basic truth about American society. Business does tend to get its way, acting by means of a nebulous force known as
August 18th, 2005 at 5:03 pm“corporate power†that drives much of what happens in both the public and private spheres. But there are a few details to work out. What is the nature of this power? How does it exactly work? Does the law instantly conform to the needs and wants of those 100 businessmen? What happens when corporate America finds its wishes thwarted by constitutional barriers?
Who decides what is “public†and what is “private?†Who defines the nature of “crime†versus “business as usual?†In trying to answer such questions, one challenge is merely to begin seeing a phenomenon that surrounds us so completely and continuously. I’ve spent most of my working life in the corporate world, founding and running a company that publishes how-to books for computer users. In that world the corporation is the air you breathe. There is no questioning whether it is a good thing or a bad thing. It just is. Nor is there any thought about where the corporation,this particular institutional form,comes from. You assume that corporations have always been a natural part of the American system of “democracy and free enterprise.â€
For those of you living in Chicago, have you ever run over the state line to indiana to buy fireworks? Or,(and this is for anyone) have you ever purchased prescription drugs in a foreign country to get lower prices? How about shopping in states that have minimal sales taxes?
It’s one thing if Walmart wants to boost profits by limiting full-time positions and by not extending to employees proper protections and benefits like healthcare. But should we really get in their face about the sale of alcohol? If progressives are going to choose to hate walmart, let’s be sure it’s for a good reason.
August 18th, 2005 at 5:06 pmChomsky wirtes: “States are not moral agents.”
August 18th, 2005 at 5:33 pmChomsky writes: “States are not moral agents.”
August 18th, 2005 at 5:33 pmNeither are corporations , Elvis.
August 18th, 2005 at 5:35 pmIf progressives are going to choose to hate walmart, let’s be sure it’s for a good reason.
Who needs a reason to hate Wal-Mart?
August 18th, 2005 at 5:36 pmExactly right! As liberals, we just hate everything irrationally.
August 18th, 2005 at 5:38 pmJamesT,
If you meant “As liberals, we just hate everything irrational”, then I wholely agree.
August 18th, 2005 at 5:47 pmThere is no reason to not hate a corporation like Wal-Mart. It is grotesque. Even socially responsible corporations are problematic. And if flip remarks is all you have going in to 2006, you’ve already lost. See you at the polls.
August 18th, 2005 at 5:48 pmSkid,
It’s fun watching them fall apart, isn’t it? Who new it would happen this fast?
August 18th, 2005 at 5:49 pm#18 – I was kidding, so I guess I agree now.
#19 – Why are socially responsible corporations problematic? I’m a great fan of Costco, et al.
August 18th, 2005 at 5:52 pmRead Gangs of America
http://gangsofamerica.com/
It’s free to read on line. You will learn something. Like the founders distrusted, even hated them. The revolution was as much against the corporations of the day as against the Crown. British East India Co. et. al. The guys who got the tea? Boston Tea Party ring a bell?
August 18th, 2005 at 6:16 pm>Scouting for trolls
August 18th, 2005 at 6:31 pmLobbyists have been able to bring us the highest cost health, education, transportation and defense systems in the world, and the worst of all. But they filled a need, a need for money by our legislators. That’s the American way — find a need and fill it. Who knew? Our founding fathers didn’t seem too concerned about graft and corruption, which is what we’re talking about. Anything for a buck. “What’s the difference betwen a whore and a congressman? A congressman makes more money.” — Edward Abbey.
August 18th, 2005 at 11:55 pmThew pork in the energy bill is not just for the usual Bush suspects – the oil industry. The US badly needs to know the truth about ethanol
August 19th, 2005 at 4:25 amIt’s all big business, big money, and intoxicating power. Any one who thinks the “liberal” special interest groups are any different than the “conservative” special interest groups, are fooling themselves. They are all big businesses who are robbing us of our liberties and most importantly of our democracy.
August 24th, 2005 at 7:12 pm