I’m talking about political bribery. Companies paying organizations to donate to political campaigns to get a favorable person in office who will look out for the interests of those who donated the most to him.
What is the justification for this? Because politicians need money to run campaigns this day and age? Well then why do we allow them to take so much more money than that? If I give a speech for 10 million dollars to someone who donated 50 million dollars to my campaign, isn’t that the same as that person giving me 60 million dollars to keep their interests in mind? There’s no way people honestly thought this wouldn’t create conflicts of interest where politicians are more interested in protecting their donors interests than those of their people.
So why? Why is political corruption legal? IS it as simple of an answer that a lot of people are corrupt so they made it legal for them to be corrupt?
Basically yes. The people who could make laws against the corruption are the same ones who benefit from the corruption and so they are unlikely to do anything about it.
I think it’s more like when the system was created this was not a big enough problem to need legislation, but over time it has become a highly-exploited loophole.
It would create a major and lasting upheaval in politics to change it. Real “swamp-draining” might involve such new legislation as:
Every citizen receives a yearly grant of [whatever amount, but the same amount for every person eligible to vote], and deciding how to divide your grant between political causes is all you can do - no supplementary donations allowed, corporate donations cease to exist, and - most importantly - donations can never pass through the hands or offices of candidates or organizations, but must be sent to a single, all-parties political donations office. To work, this restriction has to include the actual candidates and parties - all that a person could contribute to his own campaign would be to donate his entire yearly grant money to his own party, and a party can’t have any source of funds besides this. Grants and donations would expire after one year - a voter must use up his grant each year, and each year a party must use up what it has received. Grants or donations unused at year end would go into general revenue for the country.
It’s totally workable. No one will go for it.
This is probably an old idea that has a name, and I just did a poor job of reinventing the wheel. Oh well.
I would prefer public funding for elections, or at the very least, far more stringent campaign finance laws. But let me ask you this.
Should I be allowed to run for office while I’m employed? If my boss thinks I’m a good person, should he be allowed to give $50 to my campaign? Wouldn’t that count as a conflict of interest?
Okay, now draw the line where it crosses from civic involvement to outright buying of a politician.
I believe that many if not most elected officials at the US federal level fall into the money trap not because they want to but because they have to, in order to be competitive and retain their office. They are not doing it to enrich themselves, in that, they feel they are not “really” corrupt. It is said that Senators and Congresspeople have to spend 50% of their time fundraising. By “have to” I mean the party apparatus demands it of them, and would try to run someone against them if they didn’t toe the line.
So, put in the impossible position of having to raise goo-gobs of money on a daily basis, they go where the money is. As they are personally generally conventionally successful people in a society of other conventionally successful people, the principles that they are supporting generally align with their big donors. It’s not so much that they vote the way that the donors want, it’s that they were going to vote that way anyway. So, again, they don’t think of what they are doing as “really” corrupt. (Obviously, there are exceptions. Real corrupt politicians.)
So, votes are needed (but only at election time), and votes cost money, so they have to cozy up to the money people (daily). Operating under those incentives creates the situation that we have.
If it’s me you’re asking, then no, I think your boss should only be able to allocate some or all of his yearly grant to your party. And I think you should be prohibited from spending your own money on your own campaign.
To me, in the context really being discussed, “corrupt” is precisely the right word. It’s just that this type of corruption has become normalized in people’s minds by long experience.
There’s a ton to unpack in the original post because it doesn’t seem to use the same ideas and language that the laws do. I suspect anyone who has led you to believe that outright corruption (buying votes) is legal has done you a disservice by oversimplifying and confusing the issue, probably in order to get you worked up and then sell your attention to advertisers. If you want to understand the issue, you’ll have to leave a lot of that hyperbole behind.
Still, to oversimplify, I think what you’re looking for is this: freedom of speech is a right extended to not just people but also organizations of people. See, e.g., Citizens United v FEC. This allows organizations to say that they’ll dump an extreme amount of funding into electing a politician’s challenger in the next election if that politician doesn’t vote for a tax cut, in the same way that someone on this forum could write that they won’t be voting for Doe in the next election. Campaign laws do seem to prevent direct donations (whether contributions of cash or other things of value) beyond a certain amount, as well any direct exchanges of service for donation or any vote buying (whether from a representative or a member of the electorate). Outright corruption is illegal, but, as with any complex issue, there are large and evolving gray areas between illegal, legal, deleterious and beneficial behavior.
Jon in PDX, I think your reasoning is circular; I think you’re saying that the law already prevents outright corruption just because you’re also saying that the absolute definition of corruption is whatever happens to be prohibited by that law.
My (maybe radical but I think defensible) definition of political corruption in a capitalist democracy:
Any situation in which any voter (including a candidate for office and including anyone already in office) has the potential to choose to contribute more money overall to political causes (including elections, and including efforts to get laws passed or changed) than another voter is contributing.
I don’t see that kind of reasoning in my post. Actually, I don’t see any reasoning at all, just assertions.
I say that lots of corrupt behavior is illegal, and I provide examples (excessive direct donations, buying votes). I say that other behavior (tangibly influencing the behavior of politicians) (which I personally consider to be corrupt, at least systemically if not individually) is protected as free speech.
I did this to try to tease apart different kinds of corruption as an indication of how the OP might move away from rhetoric and hyperbole and toward specific examples in order to facilitate an understanding of the law. From your response, I’m not sure if I went too far or not far enough.
My problem with your earlier post was that you conveniently equated “outright corruption” with vote buying. I think your decision to limit the definition of corruption that sharply is a mistake - I think a lot of the things that you imply aren’t “outright corruption”, including things that are currently perfectly legal and common practice, actually are just as corrupt as vote buying, and in many cases are tantamount to vote buying.
This means that if any person eligible to vote does not contribute to a campaign, then nobody can (without there being corruption). This might be intentional, and, thinking about it more, I’m not sure I’m opposed to the idea of subsidizing contributions from the poor, but I certainly don’t see how that’d work in practice.
Your definition also implies that contributions of other than money are unlimited and that contributions from those who cannot vote are unlimited, which I don’t think was your intent.
Ah. I meant for vote buying to be an example of, but not a limit to, outright corruption. I certainly agree that other things are blatantly corrupt.
I can’t think of any example of behavior that is as clearly corrupt as vote buying but also perfectly legal and common practice. I’d be happy to consider any examples you can provide.
Ultimately, though, I’m not defending the current state of law. I’m just trying to respond to the OP, which asks what justifications are used to define the laws such that corrupt behavior is not illegal. My response so far has been that the one example I see of legal corruption – unlimited dollars in political spending – is protected as free speech.
Crony capitalism only exists due to corruption. Weapon manufactures/dealers pay the NRA to bribe politicians and media. Big pharmaceutical companies pay to advertise on news channels. This causes the news to be bias towards their adverts. Essentially the private sector is running amuck and a small minority of people in America have came in possession of more power than most humans in history. The power to both influence the news people get, and the people already in office, means you can essentially exploit the entire country to get richer.
I don’t think it’s really possible to create a quantitative measurement of corruption. However if someone is giving millions of dollars to someone, and they stand to benefit financially from that donation, it’s safe to say that there is intent to create corrupt acts. If someone gave you a million dollars, and they talk about how they wish they had a ride to get to the store. Are you going to say, thanks for the million dollars bye, or are you going to take him to the store? He didn’t ask you to, nor did he pay you for taking him to the store. He paid you to influence your willingness to take him to the store without directly asking you. That’s corruption when applied to politicians and those with power.
If you’re asking why something you cannot define is not outlawed, then I think you’ve answered your question: something needs to be defined before it a law can prohibit it.
If you just mean to rant, then I’ll happily munch popcorn and cheer you on. My first impression is that I completely agree that those things are major problems in the U.S.
If you’re asking why it is legal for an individual to give $10 million to a campaign, then I’ll condense my original answer: literally speaking, I believe that your premise is flawed and that conduct would be illegal; practically speaking, e.g. by setting up a PAC and aligning that PAC with a candidate’s interests, it is protected as free speech, most directly (as far as I’m aware) by the law as enunciated in Citizens United.
In my opinion, lobbying in its currently accepted form is drastically corrupt, as a practice and not just in certain cases.
I think money is not speech; I think that in a capitalist democracy money is a vote, and should be treated as such - i.e. that every eligible voter should be limited to making either exactly the same size of political donation as every other eligible voter, or to make none at all; and that just as a corporation cannot vote, it should not be able to make a political donation at all. And that just as campaign offices and candidates are not allowed to count ballots, they should similarly be prohibited from receiving donations.
Here is my modest proposal. Any media outlet that sells ads to a political campaign must provide equal amount of unpaid ads to the opposition. Spend as much as you want, just know that the other side will get their say as well.
