Comment on Why civilians don't crowdfund bribe money for politicians?

Steve@communick.news ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• Manjushri@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  OP has a point. You might be surprised how little money it takes to influence legislation. ABSCAM showed just how cheaply political favors can be purchased.

  From there, our investigation led to southern New Jersey and on to Washington, D.C. Our criminal contacts led us to politicians in Camden who were willing to offer bribes to get our “business” a gambling license in Atlantic City. Then, when we expressed interest in their suggestion to get the sheik asylum in the U.S., these corrupt politicians arranged for us to meet some U.S. Congressmen who could make it happen with private legislation. For a price, of course: $50,000 up front and an extra $50,000 later.

  When the dust settled, one senator, six congressman, and more than a dozen other criminals and corrupt officials were arrested and found guilty.

  Admittedly, this was $100,000 in 1980 dollars, but even today, lobbyists don’t give millions to politicians to get things passed.

  Occupy Wall Street rounded up $400,000 to wipe out $15 million in medical debt not that long ago. I would think that a concerted effort by progressive organizations could collect millions to lobby politicians to write and pass progressive laws. I’ve often wondered why this doesn’t happen.

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  • olafurp@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    One potential organisation type to do this would be a labor union. If multiple unions pool their resources they could make a super PAC and lobby hard.

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  • Steve@communick.news ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    We’re not just looking at individual “donations” to single politicians. But hundreds of them, to all the politicians. And even more to create a massive “People’s PAC” that gets continuous reliable funding for donations, adds, fake studies and all the other crap we have to fight.

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  • Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    To my knowledge the problem isn’t getting together the funds for any single “contribution”, it’s having the funds to pay the politician off over and over again. Sure, half a million dollars sounds like a lot more than a hundred thousand, but how many times can that half million be successfully crowdfunded? It’s much more reliable for the politicians to just accept the smaller but more consistent “contributions” from the more wealthy parties.

    On top of that, outright bribery is illegal, attempting something like that is liable to get you arrested.

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• markz@suppo.fi ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  If you look at wealth distribution, it becomes very obvious that the top can always pay more.

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  • Doomsider@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    When you are worth hundreds of millions giving away a million to get a ten million dollar contract or return makes sense. This is not a game anyone but the wealthy can play.

    The government should absolutely be designed to prevent this type of corruption. It is not though and we are stuck with a system that only works for those with lots of money.

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• scholar@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  you’d be surprised how cheap a politician can be

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  • limer@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Very cheap, but the cost is not only money but influence: billionaire politicians can be swayed by a measly million dollar bribe. The money is more a social norms thing in those circles. A token

    Crowd funding cannot exert influence. It is not corrupt, does not own slave factories or stifle tens of thousands with unethical behavior.

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  • BurgerBaron@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    There were bribe stats I read at some point. It’s often four figures. Pathetic, but yeah we could match that.

    The problem is rich people will just start bribing them even more. It’s like bidding at an auction.

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  • Steve@communick.news ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    They go to the highest bidder.
    And the wealthy have enough now to outbid whatever we come up with.

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