Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/21/a-new-new-deal.html
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Good one.
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yeah just like Obama banned lobbyists like he promised (never happened)
and like they passed the law to end dark money after citizens united (never happened)
we don’t need more bill stunts
how about starting with something small but significant, end riders on bills
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I rise to speak in opposition to the bill. Where would we be without our corruption? Forced to deal with our constituents?
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LOBBYIST 1: Elizabeth Warren’s introducing an anti-corruption bill that bans foreign lobbying and subjects domestic lobbyists to increased scrutiny!
LOBBYIST 2: Really? Wonderful news!
LOBBYIST 1: But this hits our revenue directly – how can you say that?
LOBBYIST 2: Because now we can charge our corporate and foreign clients 200% more, and put it down to the increased cost of finding loopholes in the new anti-corruption statute.
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I think I would rather have Kamala Harris run on the D ticket. I like Warren and all…I think she would better serve staying in the Senate.
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Why does she hate Free Speech so much?!?/s
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Obligatory:
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This too. Democracy is a type of political organization to run a country, capitalism is a type of economic system. There are overlaps, but they are not one and the same. Any sort of familiarity with Cold War history will make that perfectly clear.
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That’s essentially true but it needs some elaboration. Time is money, one might argue, but in this case it has to be looked at in terms of opportunity cost as well as non-fungiblility. A marketing exective might make $200/hr, a call centre employee $15/hr, but in the end as volunteers they’re both giving up personal time that they wouldn’t be making money for anyhow. If they’re giving up work time to volunteer then it could be considered an in-kind donation of expertise but that’s rare and full-time unpaid volunteers (as Manafort claimed to be for Dolt-45) are rarer still unless they’re looking to serve under their candidate if he wins.
There should be room for paid full-time staff, but as you note the amount they’re paid should be limited ideally by equitable public funding: you want to hire someone who charges $200/hr to do your campaign marketing you’re probably going to have to give up a few $15/hr phone bankers or vice-versa. However the funds are applied to staffing, it will likely mean a lot less spent on TV and Facebook advertising, which is a good thing all around. I’d also imagine shorter campaign seasons would result from the constraints, bringing the U.S. more in line with the happy situations of other industrialised liberal democracies where they max out at 8 weeks.
In the U.S., specifically the board members, shareholders with significant voting power, and c-level executive human people. Workers may get shares (often non-voting ones) but except in rare cases (e.g. Google employees in re: ICE or China) they don’t have much of a say in corporate strategy or political orientation.
If board seats were reserved for workers by law as they are in Germany we might be having a slightly different conversation. However, that’s not the case here, where a small percentage of a corporation’s stakeholders make the decisions as to where the political donations and bribes will be placed.
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If corporations are people, they’ve become the gang leaders in this prison we call society. The ones that own all the guards and don’t merely shout down dissention, but destroy those who aren’t perfectly submissive and obedient. They do need curtailing, full stop.
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