Congressional Fundraising: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

What people said

pdkl95 · 2017-03 · Recommendation

> Are most of these representatives just willfully corrupt? Yes, but they prefer the terms "lobbying" and "campaign contributions". While theoretically they are concerned with their constituency so they can keep their job, the big problem with our system is the expense of running campaigns. While serving in congress, our representatives a massive amount of time is spent "dialing for dollars". The parties even require ("encourage") spending time "fundraising". This makes lobbying easy. Constructing a compelling case isn't necessary. Just promise to free up their time by making various donations to their campaign and/or their party. This is legal as long as there isn't specific quid pro quo , thanks to McDonnell v United States. John Oliver's overview of the problem: [VIDEO]

Read the original HN comment ↗

jmyeet · 2022-10 · Reference

Let's follow the money. The "thinktank" pushing criminalizing homelessness (from the article) is the Cicero Institute [1]. Here is their July 2022 update gloating about their anti-homelessness lobbying [2]. The Cicero Institute is the pet project for the predictably awful politics of billionaire Joe Lonsdale (eg [3][4][5]), co-founder of Palantir and General Partner and presumptive owner of 8VC who funds many companies [6]. My point is it's not quite accurate to say private prisons are lobbying for this. Their owners are. For those unfamiliar, lobbying firms often write the legislation they push [7][8][9]. At the Federal level, lobbyists are often former Senators and Congressmen. Why? Part of this racket is that by tradition they retain "floor privileges" to their former body (as well as their relationships with sitting members). Yes, a lobbyist former Senator is allowed on the Senate floor. It's worth noting that only about 6.5% of the US prison population [10] are in private prisons. Private prisons are still awful but they're symptomatic of a larger problem. Politicians love prisons for their districts not only because of jobs but because prisoners count for population for apportionment and redistricting but cannot vote. As an example, Alabama used $400m in Covid relief funds to build prisons [11]. The US loves to incarcerate people for long periods for minor offenses. A big part of this is creating a pool of forced labor (eg [12][13]). This is slavery economics. This is c

Read the original HN comment ↗

clarkevans · 2017-09 · Reference

We certainly need a better way to organize politically. Listing to John Oilver's episode on congressional fundraising ( [VIDEO] ) leads me to believe that our representatives aren't particularly accountable to the people they represent. That said, this [LINK] seems a bit technical, a bit more technical than what's needed? Couldn't we just take standard democratic representation down a level? Replicate and automate a pattern is already known to work, at a more granular level, rather than reinventing a brand new structure? Let's say a house representative agreed to cast their votes reflecting the preferences of a majority of "block champions" in their district. Perhaps these block leaders having some sort of rank based upon the number of people who endorse them? Those same champions could also reflect their preferences for local and state issues as well. In this way, the representative would use the preferences of the champions to justify their vote. The nice thing about this proposal is that it could be implemented and would be compatible with our existing governmental structures.

Read the original HN comment ↗