Getting sued for the climate is showing them climate pledges are a liability.
My $0.02: The US needs several constitutional amendments before this and other issues are addressed. Just a minor amendment I had in mind: forbid congress from taking bribes/lobbying or from them or their family from owning commercial interests that can be manipulated with legislation. Criminalizing non-individual campaign contributions is another item. There are many more things like that which are not polarizing to the people.
A constitutional convention of the states needs to be held because congress will not willingly pass such laws.
>Just a minor amendment I had in mind: forbid congress from taking bribes/lobbying or from them or their family from owning commercial interests that can be manipulated with legislation.
You realize that "lobbying" is just another word for "talking with your representative", right? Do you think that constituents shouldn't have the ability to influence their representatives?
Hey, I'm just a billionaire taking a supreme court justice on an all expense paid trip to a private island and hunting trip. I hope your letter begging for scraps from the political elite finds you well.
Even Supreme Court judges appear to be unable to distinguish between lobbying and bribery, so I'm not sure what your two simple Wikipedia links (without further explanation) are supposed to show?
The difference is pretty clear. Lobbying is trying to influence the representative, and bribery is giving money in exchange for some of action. You could argue that the latter is a subset of the former, but that doesn't mean the reverse holds. All the professional lawyers writing amicus curiae briefs are very obviously trying to influence the justices. Do you think that should be banned?
The problem with lobbying is that it's too easy to use it to hide bribery. Portraying it as "just talking with your representative" is disingenuous when there's an entire industry established to influence legislatures on behalf of corporations.
>Portraying it as "just talking with your representative" is disingenuous when there's an entire industry established to influence legislatures on behalf of corporations.
I'm not claiming that an individual voter lobbying his representative by writing a letter or whatever is equivalent to some corporation hiring a lobbyist, but at the fundemental level they're the same: trying to influence the representative. The original proposes that we "forbid [...] lobbying", but it's unclear what that would mean. Taken literally, that would mean banning any attempts at influencing the representative. Is that what we want here?
We could try to forbid corporate lobbying being turned into an industry, but it's unclear how to effectively do that without unintended consequences. Since corporations have managed to weasel their way into the rights afforded to citizens, they would argue that they should also have the right to lobby the government. We need to somehow disenfranchise for-profit corporations without harming citizens' ability to organize civically.
Lobbying as a profession is where things take a turn for the worse. Elected officials are paid to represent everyone, which requires hearing from many voices; not only their friends and those paid for access.
>not only their friends and those paid for access.
How does the professionalization of lobbying imply either of these? The latter is clearly about campaign contributions, and the former is going to happen regardless of whether there are professional lobbyists or not (unless you think that representatives shouldn't have friends).
To me, the point is that the current environment creates a problematic asymmetry between a small subset of interested parties (lobbyists and friends) and the group that is arguably most important: the representative's constituents.
Professional lobbying is almost universally backed by business interests, which often have no alignment whatsoever with the broader interests of constituents, and has no equalizing opposite force representing those constituents.
In other words, if I want to become a "professional lobbyist" fighting for the needs of a community, the playing field is heavily slanted towards businesses/organizations with the money to buy the necessary influence.
Campaign contributions are certainly a major part of this, and contribution rules would go a long way towards addressing this. But contributions aren't the only story, and professional lobbying still contributes to the asymmetry in its current form.
If professional lobbying starts to meaningfully include groups that do so on behalf of "normal people", it becomes easier to argue that lobbying isn't the problem. That's not the current state of affairs, and it's unclear if it can/would be merely because of changes to campaign contribution rules.
>Professional lobbying is almost universally backed by business interests, which often have no alignment whatsoever with the broader interests of constituents, and has no equalizing opposite force representing those constituents.
In other words, well resourced parties (ie. businesses) have more resources to do stuff, like trying to influence politicians. I'm not denying this. But going back to the original question, does that mean we should ban any attempts at influencing politicians?
> I'm not denying this. But going back to the original question, does that mean we should ban any attempts at influencing politicians?
This sets up a binary position that doesn't need to exist. I don't think "ban any attempts at influencing politicians" is what I took away from the GP's comment/suggestion, nor do I think this is the automatic outcome of rules that restrict business interests.
What I took away was something like this: the current environment involves obviously inflated influence from a subset of well-funded groups, and that won't change without changes to laws. GP presented an idea that would restrict that influence, but this is not synonymous with the binary outcome "ban all attempts at influencing politicians", nor do I think such a goal would even make sense, because what is the purpose of a representative if not to be be influenced by their constituents? The real question is whether or not it's acceptable that influence scales primarily based on wealth/friendship, and what changes we can make to level the playing field.
I don't know if GP's $0.02 are the right policy positions, but I also don't think holding those positions equates to the binary position.
> Representatives have to put the collective voices of their constituents above their friends. Otherwise WTF are they paid to do?
Right, but why does the professionalization of lobbying imply politicians would be "hearing [...] only their friends and those paid for access"? I agree that it's certainly a possibility, and you'd be a better lobbyist if you had exclusive access, but that's like saying having employees own stocks imply insider trading (ie. it's certainly a possibility, and you'd be a better trader if you had insider information).
While lobbyists, friends, and campaign contributors aren't to only voices representatives will hear, they're more likely to get their desired outcomes -- even if it contradicts what's best for the whole. Incentives are stacked against the poor and less well connected.
This disdain for lobbyists is ironically giving more corporate lobbyists even more power. Whether you like it or not lobbying is here to stay because that's the only way a handful for generalists in the US can write policy related to the million aspects of modern society. Voters want the government to give out free vaccines and antiviral medication, but do you think the average Senator, who spends 90% of their time politicking and virtue signalling, knows anything about pharmaceutical companies, drug authorization, distribution, etc? They outsource most of that work to lobbyists who are subject-matter experts, who are obviously biased towards their clients.
The only way to counter the effects of corporate lobbying is more grass-roots lobbying and general awareness of policy by voters in general. The blanket contempt people have for lobbying these only serves to discourage the type of lobbying that was instrumental in for the passage of Civil Rights and environmental legislation decades ago.
the activity of trying to persuade someone in authority, usually an elected member of a government, to support laws or rules that give your organization or industry an advantage:
- In her speech she stressed that she is not involved in the firm's lobbying of Congress.
- lobbying against/for sth This week, a coalition of unions, religious groups and liberal advocacy organizations will officially begin its lobbying for a higher minimum wage.
- extensive/fierce/intense lobbying There was intense lobbying against the measures by drug companies.
- lobbying effort/campaign/activity Lobbying efforts by high-powered tech firms turned former supporters of the bill against it.
Not in an organized/commercially funded way. Interests/corps that don't get to vote shouldn't get to lobby. Beyond that, lobbying should only happen ar capitol hill with no paid lunches, fundraisers,etc... involved.
Plenty of billionaires are passionate about stopping climate change. They can afford to buy double priced fuel for their mega-yacht, but they can't buy the safety of the Great Barrier Reef. If lobbying is such a silver bullet, then why do their lobbyists lose out to those of oil companies? It's because the lobbyists are oil companies are correct in the one thing that actually matters when it comes to politics: voting for any policy that substantially decreases greenhouse gases would be career suicide. Voters get upset at their politicians when gas prices rise completely unrelated to policy. Imagine how they would react if gas was taxed as much as it was in Europe.
Their lobbyists shouldn't fight oil and gas lobbyists. This is not an oligarchy. Billionaires should have the exact same amount of influence over congress as does a broke homeless guy on the streets of SF.
The difference is that the lobbyists that the billionaires hire is an expert on policy, and your average broke homeless has never looked at the text of a law. Hell, do you think that any legislator who spends 90% of their time virtue signaling or politicking has read the ~1000 pages of the CARES Act or ACA before voting on it? They outsource much of this work to lobbyists. Voters demand things like free antivirals and lower gas prices, and they shut up when politicians superficially satisfy these demands while doing the minimal due diligence, so corporate lobbyists can take advantage of this. When people genuinely care about things after than virtue signaling about caring, they are able to using lobbying as a force of good, which is how we got Civil Rights and the Clean Air Act.
Congress persons have aides that report to them which are experts on policy. It is utterly corrupt to have an unelected 3rd party that does not work for the government directing and advising on policy. This isn't a company where you hire consultants to do stuff, it's the people's governmemt. The people did not consent to corruption. There are plenty of homeless people that are qualified to have an opinion on policy. Pretending perverse incentives don't exist is facilitating corruption.
> forbid congress [...] their family from owning commercial interests that can be manipulated with legislation
So if I want to become a member of Congress I have to rebalance my entire investment portfolio so that there is no stock of commercial companies in it (directly or as part of mutual funds) and I have to get my family to do the same?
My $0.02: The US needs several constitutional amendments before this and other issues are addressed. Just a minor amendment I had in mind: forbid congress from taking bribes/lobbying or from them or their family from owning commercial interests that can be manipulated with legislation. Criminalizing non-individual campaign contributions is another item. There are many more things like that which are not polarizing to the people.
A constitutional convention of the states needs to be held because congress will not willingly pass such laws.