Election 2020

[IdleRich]

Lobbying is basically a way of making bribery and other related crimes legal while claiming to ban it... isn't it?

 

[luka]

Yes

 

[constant escape]

Lobbying is basically a way of making bribery and other related crimes legal while claiming to ban it... isn't it?

As far as I know thats not wrong, which is why it could be understood within a liberal and especially neoliberal framework. I think.

 

[IdleRich]

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), a gun-toting supporter of the QAnon movement, is facing backlash - including calls for her arrest - after she was accused of live-tweeting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) location during the attack on Capitol Hill last week.

Though to be fair all she said was "the speaker has been removed from the chamber".

 

[Leo]

lobbyists wine and dine politicians and influence how political contributions are doled out, in order to get the support of those politicians.

so yeah, bribery.

 

[constant escape]

@Leo would you consider such an arrangement, wherein lobbyists have more power over policy-makers than vice versa, as characteristically neoliberal? Seems to add up. Maybe @padraig (u.s.) could help us here.

 

[Leo]

I'd imagine that form of quid pro quo has existed for as long as man has lived in any organized society.

 

[IdleRich]

Bellichick is turning down the Freedom Medal thingy that Trump wants to give him, universities are revoking his honorary degrees.. I could almost feel sorry for him if I wasn't laughing so much.

 

[constant escape]

I'd imagine that form of quid pro quo has existed for as long as man has lived in any organized society.

But under the table, no? Is the legalization of it a critical turning point? Again I really don;t know the technical ins and outs here. Just brute gnostic force.

 

[IdleRich]

I think it's kinda like when BP or Exxon or something claims to be pro-environment and basically takes over and perverts movements which are their enemies. Except sort of in reverse maybe in that the BP pretend to join something to fight it, whereas government lobbying pretends to fight something but actually joins with it.

 

[Leo]

lobbyists are like glorified and more influential public relations people, pushing their agendas to politicians. not a recent thing.

 

[Leo]

Bellichick is turning down the Freedom Medal thingy that Trump wants to give him, universities are revoking his honorary degrees.. I could almost feel sorry for him if I wasn't laughing so much.

that was pretty amazing, actually. belichick is a great coach but not one known for expressing personal opinions outside of football. for him to say this is extraordinary.

New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick said in a statement Monday that he had turned down the opportunity to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Trump because of the “tragic events of last week,” a reference to the insurrection at the Capitol. But he said he has great reverence for “our nation’s values,” represents his family and the Patriots, and has worked with players to combat social injustice. "Continuing those efforts while remaining true to the people, team and country that I love outweigh the benefits of any individual award,” he wrote in a statement.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Lobbying proper probably is relatively recent, as a profession, as opposed to just currying favour, bribes etc

So perhaps "lobbying" as a euphemism for "corruption" is s relatively recent coinage. But the underlying phenomenon is as old as the hills.

 

[luka]

It makes a difference once you legalise it and make it into a profession. The Le Monde article I quoted the other day makes this point I think.

 

[luka]

It makes a difference once you legalise it and make it into a profession. The Le Monde article I quoted the other day makes this point I think.

Better still, under the aegis of international financial crimes number one partner, the US, we are seeing a rationalisation, or rather, Americanisation, of corruption techniques, seeking to replace the somewhat archaic practices of palm-greasing and secret (or open) "commission" payments by lobbying, which is more effective and presentable. It is a service industry in which the Americans have a considerable lead over their competitors, not only in know-how, but also in the vast financial and logistical resources they are able to make available to their multinationals; these include the secret services of the worlds most powerful state apparatus, which, with the Cold War over, have moved over into economic warfare.

 

[version]

Every component act of “terrorism” is already a crime under federal law. The US is the world’s largest prison state: the last thing it needs is new felonies. As
@WesYang asked: what do you want to make criminal that isn’t already? Speech? Organizing? What? What new powers?

History moves quickly. The 9/11 attack was 20 years ago. That means nobody under 35, maybe 40, has a real political memory of it. Liberals begging corporations to censor “extremist” speech. Emotions exploited to demand quick new anti-terrorism laws & powers? The same dynamic.

 

[Leo]

what could possibly go wrong?

How CEOs became the 4th branch of government

America needs law and order — but emphatically not the kind that President Trump has in mind when he uses the phrase. That's the message being sent by a broad coalition of CEOs who are silencing Trump and punishing his acolytes in Congress.

Why it matters: Private-sector CEOs managed to act as a faster and more effective check on the power of the president than Congress could. They have money, they have power, and they have more of the public's trust than politicians do. And they're using all of it in an attempt to preserve America's system of governance.

The big picture: The Constitution created an elaborate system of checks and balances that separated powers between the three branches of government. That system weakened as members of all three branches hewed increasingly to the platforms of the two political parties.

A new political force is emerging — one based on centrist principles of predictability, stability, small-c conservatism, and, yes, the rule of law.

 

[version]

I was rereading that Vineland (Pynchon) piece I posted a while back and it rings even more true watching the fallout from January 6th.

Among the piercing things to notice here is that swift drawing together of “atrocity” and “safety.” For Vond, Pynchon’s law enforcement visionary, has seen the future, and knows it to lie not solely with the FBI and its COINTELPRO protocols, nor with the Department of Justice, where the DEA is housed, nor even with CAMP, whose helicopters, at harvest time, “gathered in the sky and North California, like other U.S. pot-growing areas, once again rejoined, operationally speaking, the Third World.” (The shadow of the Iran–Contra affair falls decisively across much of the novel’s police action.) He sees, more largely, that the American future lies in the routing of all available definitions of freedom through the ever-narrowing channel of security. His is a magisterial vision of a republic fashioned, top to bottom, on the model of a never-ending war waged against elements internal to the nation. Given the provenance of so many of these tactics in scenes of imperial conflict—from Southeast Asia to Latin America to the Middle East—you could do worse than to think of this as a dream of perpetual counterinsurgency, brought back to what we have for some time now been calling the Homeland.

 

[sus]

I'd imagine that form of quid pro quo has existed for as long as man has lived in any organized society.

LEo!! My hero!!

 

[Leo]

LEo!! My hero!!

LOL. Was I stating the bleeding obvious?