- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
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I still don’t understand how lobbying is legal. Like, it’s straight up bribery.
Because the people who decide what is legal are the people who benefit from it.
The lobbying is not the problem. The donations that sway opinions are the problem. If it was entirely unrelated to donations and the congress person was just hearing out all sides of an issue, that's a good thing.
If donations did not affect outcome, no company would donate.
Even when a legislator's decisions are unaffected by lobbying, companies still control legislation by ensuring legislators who earnestly believe in legislation that favors the corporations over the people get elected.
This is how Biden sided with banks and the prison-industrial complex for half a century yet didn't have enough money to fund his son's cancer treatment without selling his house until Obama paid off his medical debt.
How often do companies fund biased or outright falsified studies that are then presented as fact by lobbyists?
I could maybe get more behind lobbying without donations if all data points were required to be peer reviewed. The lawmakers hearing these arguments are not experts (see any tech related legislation ever), it’s real easy to lie to them; basically removing the money then means that the most charismatic and/or best liar ends up winning.
"hearing out all sides" somehow invariably turns into siding with whoever controls the most capital - I wonder how that happens.
That's the point. It is meant to be legalised bribery.
Exactly. Its legal so they're not corrupt, but they still get to keep bribes
In theory, it's partially meant to educate politicians who cannot be experts on everything in a world where information exponentially grows, but this system has clearly been intentionally used to abuse power.
Yeah he helped create it. The first US president to begin to embrace neoliberal ideology and fictitious capital. Set the path for Ronald Reagan to bring in neoliberalism proper. And armed the Mujahideen, which lead to the crisis in Afghanistan. This is equivalent to Eisenhower warning everyone about the military industrial complex.
Had to scroll all the way down for this comment. The only response to this article should be : "Thanks for making this happen"
It's frustrating. They say good things when they are removed from power. He sounds like a good person, but he was not a good president. Obama will probably gradually come around to this kind of talk when he gets older too. He recently all but admitted middle class decline due to concentration of wealth was responsible for the rise of MAGA. Don't know if he will ever admit that drone "assassinations" he was in charge of were war crimes (assassinations in quotes because more than half the time the intelligence wasn't even correct).
Man. The guy can grow peanuts, build thousands of houses, kick cancer's ass, and is brilliantly insightful.
No wonder he lost reelection. He's competent. I'm kinda shocked he won in the first place. We didn't deserve him, and we still don't.
The guy facilitated crimes against humanity in Indonesia and Afghanistan. I'd rather an incompetent war criminal than a cold blooded architect of genocide.
He can also fund and arm the Indonesian government while it commits genocide in East Timor
And he wasn't competent. He squandered a Democratic majority in both the House and Senate for two years by sitting to the right of both chambers of Congress, and ended up heralding the deregulation and deunionization that we blame Reagan for.
It’s insane to think this guy, who was a pastor, lost the Christian vote to the cheating twice divorced Reagan
It's very clear what the evangelical vote actually is for. They also largely voted for Trump over Biden, who's a Catholic.
That one like half makes sense because evangelicals are obviously protestant and Trump is nominally protestant, but he is literally the fakes Chsitian to ever live. He is the kind of fake Christian you would only see in Christian media aimed at kids. I hate orange man bad "humor" but his saying "Two Corinithians" to an audience of Christian university students and faculty will live rent free in my head until I die.
it was a concerted strategy on the part of the republicans who made anti-abortion policy a cornerstone of their platform while convincing pastors to preach about how it was a sin.
Oligarchy is baked into the U.S. constitution. Only rich (land-owning) White Males had any say. The Senate (mostly wealthy) has a permanent veto over any real power sharing. Oligarchy is nothing new in the USA, they have just added window dressing to make people THINK it ever was a democracy.
It's sad that they only say the truth after they are far removed from power.
He was the one who ushered in the age of neoliberalism and set the stage for Reagan.
And yet people will still get upset at you, if you express any viewpoint not in line with a party line. Guess the oligarchs are winning.
Guess the oligarchs are winning.
The house always wins.
He, like all US Presidents, is a complete ghoul responsible for horrific crimes around the globe.
well of course but prob the least ghoulish of recent history, especially for individuals born nearly a century ago 🤷♂️
Always has been
