Details of MSFT's Antitrust Lobbying

An anonymous sent in linkage to "A new ZDNet article detailing new evidence presented to the judge presiding over the Microsoft anti-trust case. It shows that Microsoft made political contributions during last year's (well, 2000's) elections on a scale never seen before... over $6 million. As comparison, this is four times the amount spent by Enron. It also reveals that Microsoft has been hiring every political lobbyist, and every law firm, with anti-trust expertise and putting them to work on unrelated projects- anything to make them unavailable to work for critics of Microsoft."

Comments

And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[Bowie J. Poag]

We elected the politicans who made the laws in the first place which allowed campaign contributions to be illegal. Infact, during the last election, we didn't want the guy who was willing to do away with them. We wanted to play Bush vs. Gore instead.

Before you run off pointing fingers at Microsoft for doing what they are within the scope of the law to do, ask yourself where the core of the corruption sits. Its not with them, or the politicians. Its us, and our lack of desire to make our elected officials accountable for their actions.

Lobbying wouldn't exist if we as a people decide not to allow it. Anything beyond it would be bribery.

Cheers,

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[1010011010]

The only truly effective Campaign Finance Reform is to reduce the power of the federal government. As long as the turnip remains large, and growing larger, every goat on the planet will be fighting for a piece of it.

If the Federal government were actually limited in scope (refer to Constitution here), then there would be a lot less to lobby for, to "contribute soft money" for, etc.

I would like to not only limit the power of the government, but prevent lawyers from holding office.

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[JamesOfTheDesert]

The only truly effective Campaign Finance Reform is to reduce the power of the federal government.

This is dead on. I do not underastand those who say that the answer to bad ans stupid laws are is more of the same. People will bribe governments so long as governments have the power do something for them.

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[RazzleFrog]

I think that it is not the Federal government in general but the Legislative branch specifically that has gotten sickingly over powerful. They have totally shifted all power away from the Judicial and the Executive branches.

The Justice system is so bogged down that Congress can pass laws that they know will not be repealed by the Justice Department for years (when they can claim it was their predecessors who passed it in the first place). The President has become more of a figurehead than the Queen of England.

What is even worse is that there is so much childish, partisanship in Congress that nothing ever gets done except when they have a common goal which is usually to benefit the corporate giants that line their pockets.

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[Archie Steel]

I don't agree. The size of the government is not directly related to the corruption level...though it may be related to inneficiency. However, inefficiency has mostly to do with badly conceived and/or implemented management structures, and that can be dealt with after careful analysis.

No, the real - the only - remedy to this crisis of democracy is to curtail the financial power of the lobbies and private donators. Here in Quebec we had campaign financing reform thirty years ago, placing severe limits on how much politicians can receive from companies and individuals, and it has greatly enhanced the integrity of the political class. Sure, nothing's perfect, but it's still a lot better than it was before!

Cutting out the source of evil, i.e. lobbies and companies "buying" influence (when that influence should come from the citizens alone if representative democracy is to be, well, democratic) by putting severe caps on campaign contribution is the simplest yet most efficient way to clean up Washington of its grimy layer of corruption. Well, the first layer, at least. If you don't think that's true, then ponder why most of the political class spends so much effort preventing this from happening...

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[1010011010]

And then what? If the power of the government is limited further, institutions in which the people as a whole do not have a direct policy voice become more powerful.

When the government gets out of the tax-regulate-and-subsidize business, and sticks to preventing and punishing theft, injury, etc., then it will be performing its proper role. As long as a corporation can buy an advantage in the marketplace -- including shielding itself from liability -- then there will be a place for lobbying, bribes, etc.

Would you prefer a corporation, with no obligation to listen to you, make important choices for you

Absolutely not. I'm in favor of stripping corporations of their legal personhood, actually.

I believe that campaign finance reform is in itself at least a start to solving many of these sorts of problems.

Hmmm. Not really. It just stirs the pot a little. Strip corporations of their personhood, so they have no first amendment rights, and prohibit them from engaging in any political activity. I.e., make it the way things used to be.

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[haizi_23]

The President a figurehead? Surely you jest. Surely, watching the events of this fall, you've observed that G.W. has gotten every item on his wish list, just by draping himself in the flag. In fact, when I think about our post-WWII military record, it seems that almost all of our adventures have been spurred on by the executive branch and either rubber-stamped by congress, or snuck past them. (I'm thinking Vietnam, various adventures in Nicaragua, Panama, Haiti, Grenada, the Gulf War, the current conflict in Afghanistan, etc.)

I do agree about the childish partisanship, except that I get the feeling that it's all a ruse to distract us from noticing that common goal you mention. (lining their pockets w/ corporate money)

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[Dikarika]

No, the answer is this damned simple

Being a politician should be a volunteered public service, and no one should ever be allowed to make any money from doing such work. This would remove the "career politicians", cut down on cost (no salaries for them) and would force them to still be a working constituent as well as a politician.

Making a career out of politics is simply sickening

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[Exedore]

So when you reduce the power of the federal government... where does it go?

I seem to recall that the early power struggles in our countries infancy were primarily federal government vs. state governments. If more power were granted to the states, Microsoft and other corporations would merely switch their focus to brib^H^H^H^H contributing to state and local officials (Not that they're overlooking them now, mind).

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[bmongar]

Being a politician should be a volunteered public service, and no one should ever be allowed to make any money from doing such work

That would create a class based government system (as if it isn't already). Because then only rich people could afford to serve the government, because the working class would have to work to eat.

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[ajakk]

All that would do is make it so that the only people who can run for office are those who have enough wealth to not work for a couple of years. This would increase the power of the rich in the government by making them the only ones who can become politicians.

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[Red Rocket]

Man, you Libertarians crack me up.
You act as if the government is some kind of third party in our lives like a referee in a football game. Ostensibly, the government is us . . . "We the People." So by advocating the reduction of the power of government you're advocating a reduction of the power of the people. I take that personally as I am one of those people. The people of the United States of America are already on their knees bowing to the power of the corporation. Why would you advocate reducing our only means of defending ourselves from exploitation?

We the People!

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[smagruder]

As long as we the people find a way to sharply reduce transnational and otherwise big corporate power simultaneously, I will fully agree with you. Major centralized power in all its forms is bad for humanity, and more specificially, the freedom/independence of each and every one of us.

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[kisak]

People will bribe governments so long as governments have the power do something for them.

And when the government does not have any power anymore, we will have to bribe whatever entity governing instead of the government. I prefer to pay tax than "microsoft tax" or mob "protection" tax.

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[Colm@TCD]

When the government gets out of the tax-regulate-and-subsidize business, and sticks to preventing and punishing theft, injury, etc., then it will be performing its proper role.

Excuse me? Have you seen what happens when capitalism is allowed to run unregulated? Enron? Microsoft? Standard Oil? Unregulated capitalism is far worse than regulated government - at least with the latter you know who's in charge.

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[Ouroboro]

• ...People will bribe governments so long as governments have the power do something for them.

True but would you rather the bribes that polititican take be legal, as they are now, in the form of "Soft Money"? Or would you rather the that the dishonest people in government really act like crooks and be forced to solicit and accept illegal bribes? I would much rather see that we call it what it is (a bribe) and treat it that way, then wave our arms and declare that the real problem is elsewhere.

Yes I understand that this is not to the point of the original argument, that government is to big and must be reduced, but change will most likely be incremental and not all at once. Let's take our victories where we can.

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[guinsu]

I really think this whole federal powers vs. states powers is a red herring that distracts people from the real problems. I don't care which level of government is passing laws or being bribed, why make such a big deal out of it. States can pass just as stupid of laws and harm people just as much. If all we do is reduce the power of the federal gov't and give that power to the states, lobbiests will just go after the states. Sure it might be a bit more work to buy laws but I bet it wouldn't be that much more expensive (since each indivitual state would cost less money than congress did)

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[SerpentMage]

It really does not have anything to do with reducing the power of an individual government. What has to do with is empowerment of the people.

I live in Switzerland which is a true democracy. In Switzerland every person has the right to vote yes or no to certain decisions. The government is only there for the details. Sure Swiss vote quite a bit, but the power is with the Swiss people and only the Swiss people. And in that case lobbying has absolutely no effect unless of course the lobbyists decide to give money to each Swiss.

True democracy works and it should be used more often in other countries.

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[partingshot]

"When the government gets out of the tax-regulate-and-subsidize business, and sticks to preventing and punishing theft, injury, etc., "

Where will the gov get the money that it needs
to prevent theft, injury, etc. if not from taxes?

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[Melantha_Bacchae]

RazzleFrog writes:

> The Justice system is so bogged down that Congress can pass laws that
> they know will not be repealed by the Justice Department for years
> (when they can claim it was their predecessors who passed it in the
> first place).

The Department of Justice is part of the Executive branch. The man in charge, Attorney General John Ashcroft, was in the senate race in 2000. His opponent died during the election, but still won (his wife holds his seat -- and yes, there were jokes about other famous dead people who were going to run next term). According to http://www.opensecrets.org/pressreleases/microsoft /microsoft.htm, John Ashcroft got $9,250 in contributions from Microsoft during that election campaign, and $10,000 in soft money. Since he's been a senator before, Ashcroft might feel obligated to represent their interests in his new position as Attorney General. Of course, that would be wrong.

Windows XP: "Go talk to my friend, an 800 pound monopoly-abusing gorilla!"
New iMac: "And here's my good buddy, the 66,000 ton Godzilla!"
Godzilla: Stomp! ;)

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[GregWebb]

OK, but if we have random service then we end up with a worse version of something discussed on K5 a while back. In British terms, the Civil Service then become a semi-benign dictatorship, with the jury duty style parliament becoming a rubber stamp.

Think about it - if there's no qualifications, experience or guarantee of competence heading up the legislature, ministries and so on then you end up with the careerists in those sections running them instead, with near-zero accountability. Far worse.

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[dinotrac]

Seems like a powerful argument against campaign finance reform as currently envisioned.

Even if someone could get drunk enough to pretent that proposed campaign finance reforms didn't violate the First Amendment of the Constitution, one would have to ponder letting Congress control the terms of campaign finance.
Encumbants are virtually unbeatable now. The new laws might remove the virtually.

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[GregWebb]

Why oh why does this sort of thing get continually moderated up?

Regulation is, like it or not, extending punishing of theft and injury laws to companies. Regulating companies stops them from harming their workers, their neigbours, their customers because they can. It also stops them from doing violence to other companies - which, let's be honest, is exactly what MS is currently on trial for, using its strength to force other companies out of the market or their products onto customers at nasty terms.

You actually contradict yourself. To quote, "As long as a company can buy an advantage in the marketplace ... there will be a place for lobbying, bribes, etc". How, exactly, are we stopping companies buying market advantage by removing regulation of them?

Subsidies are a harder argument, but here goes...

Remove subsidies of all kinds (I'm including Social Security benefits here, they seem analagous) and you cause problems. You know all about needing money to make money? Well, how do you get that first step without money from _somewhere_? Anyway, you create people who simply can't earn a living (and where this isn't necessarily a permanent condition), so they either die or live from crime. Think what happens in a recession here - the very poorest either die or cause a crimewave. A crimewave causes clear problems for society as a whole, and ends up with a number of them locked up. So, what do you end up with? A larger prison population (expensive to maintain) and a smaller labour force, which pushes up wages and makes it harder to get ourt of recession. Eventually, you end up with smaller economic capacity this way because you simply don't have the workers you need. Whereas if you give them the money / resources they need to see out the recession, they remain economically active throughout the problems (so help maintain economic capacity) and are available to work afterwards, so keeping costs down due to a large labour force. Oh, you've also likely lost the majority of the crime which is good on its own but also reduces your expensive-to-maintain prison population.

Or maybe health benefits. If the poorest can't get treatment then you have an increased potential for epidemic which can spread into the wider population. They're not likely to be particularly healthy to start with (worse diet & living conditions, can't afford better) so they're more susceptible, plus the poorer sections of society tend to live together, helping it spread quickly among them. Deny them medical treatment and ailments can run through them at ridiculous rates, then spread into the wider population. Also, deny them medical treatment and some will die, some will be disabled in some way and some will have to miss work. In each case you've removed someone from the available cheap labour pool, maybe others who now have to care for them too...

What about subsidising companies? Well, statistically speaking, I understand that the major driver for economic growth is small companies, not large. Except that they can't exist without seed capital from somewhere... Remove government subsidies and some won't survive, so lower economic growth as a whole.

Or another example, farm subsidies. The EU Common Agricultural Policy is a mess, I won't deny it. However... In the UK, we have many areas where sheep are farmed on open hillsides traditionally. These are only viable due to subsidies, because the animal densities are too low. Remove the subsidies and the sheep go. Remove the sheep, though, and the land quickly becomes covered in long grass and bracken. At which point it's considered less beautiful and is certainly less suitable for walking. You then have no farming income - and an area that only has tourism left, but can't any more attract people to look at the views and walk the hills because the environment has changed. You need the sheep as lawnmowers...

The current system is a long way from being perfect. Heck, I'm a LibDem (http://www.libdems.org.uk/) so I'm working to change it in many ways. But, strangely enough, many of the current aspects of government have been set up because they look like a good idea and retained because they prove that they are a good idea! I'd LOVE to see corporations stripped of legal personhood, too, for example, and see no reason for them to make any political donations. Heck, while we're thinking about corporate political influence, it seems daft that sitting legislators can hold directorships in companies, or that individual companies can own large chunks of the news media. Or that foreign-owned companies can own any. Who says that an Australian run media isn't spinning the news to favour Australian interests over local? As you can see here, we have clear examples of corporate political speech needing legal controls to benefit the people...

Posters in general and moderators in particular, _please_ think a little harder about this 'smaller government rules' (whoops, pun unintentional...) argument. It may sound good - and some of it may indeed be good - but look at the details and much of it is utter rubbish. Really.

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[SirSlud]

ROFL! So we have these companies, who have to abide by laws to do business and make profits.

Companies dont like said laws, so they buy the government.

Your proposal. Remove government from the equation.

Result? COMPANIES GET TO DO WHAT THEY WANTED TO DO BY BRIBING YOUR GOVERNMENT, ONLY THEY DONT EVEN NEED TO PAY ADMISSION NOW!

You're an idiot if you think this would help matters. It would only let private interests destroy our society and economy without those annoying 'law' things getting in their way.

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[jejones]

If a corporation wants my business, it had better listen to me. I vote with my dollars as well as at the ballot box--and, for all the evil they have done, MS has yet to send people with guns to make sure I buy Windows.

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[singularity]

As a Libertarian, I have to respond: Libertarians are in favor of *moving* and *reallocating* government power.

Your argument that Libertarians are in favor of reducing power is simply incorrect.

I want my locally elected official to have the power that he/she should have as written in the Constitution. *I*, personally, want to power to decide certain things about my life, leaving the goverment out of those decisions.

As a result, these powers need to be taken away fro the federal government. This is not a *reduction* in power, but a reallocation.

The entire start of this thread was that if you reduce power to the federal government, you reduce power to corporations to bribe those same individuals. Your argument that we need a overly-protective federal government to protect us from those same corporations is exactly opposite to that thinking and the evidence pointed out in the original article.

As for everyone arguing that moving power to the states will only mean that MS will resort to bribing them - remember who it is pushing for a weak settlement (Department of Justice and the White House) and who it is pushing for more extreme measures (the states and the states' Attorney Generals). This is direct evidence against that claim.

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[Ouroboro]

No, I think his point is that the bribes are not legal or illegal, but that offering a bribe in the first place is pointless because the politician simply does not have the power to do what you want him to do.

I think you might be surprised about how much power politicians actually have. This may not be explicit power, but more in the "I scratch your back, you scratch my back" sense. A few dollars spread around here and there can go a long way to greasing the wheels of the beuracracy(sp?). This is espescially so when it comes to making a phone call to Joe over in department x to expedite application y on the behalf of a corporation who happens to contribute money to your election campaign.

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[Anthony Boyd]

In Switzerland every person has the right to vote yes or no to certain decisions.

Who decides what the "certain decisions" are that you vote on?

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[Malcontent]

State politicians are easier to bribe and cost less. You can bribe a typical state legislator with a few thousand dollars and they will hand the state over to you. It costs more to get senators and congressmen.

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[mpe]

I live in Switzerland which is a true democracy. In Switzerland every person has the right to vote yes or no to certain decisions. The government is only there for the details. Sure Swiss vote quite a bit, but the power is with the Swiss people and only the Swiss people.

The difference is that the Swiss people are perfectly prepared to use that power. In other parts of the world, certainly the US, most people have been too used to leaving things to the "experts".
Whilst it may only take a few hundred people to pass a law which violates a written constitution it takes a good portion of the population to actually enforce that law.
If laws which violated the US constitution were simply ignored (as in no lawyer would write a threatening letter, no police officer would arrest anyone, no judge would even hear a case, etc) in the US how long do you think the US congress would keep passing them for? Whatever the level of political lobbying involved....

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[mpe]

Cutting out the source of evil, i.e. lobbies and companies "buying" influence (when that influence should come from the citizens alone if representative democracy is to be, well, democratic) by putting severe caps on campaign contribution is the simplest yet most efficient way to clean up Washington of its grimy layer of corruption.

However it is a non trivial problem to have a representative democracy which allows the government to be petitioned by the public. Without making it very easy for professional lobbying groups to effectivly drown out anything ordinary people might be concerned about.

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[mpe]

Sure it might be a bit more work to buy laws but I bet it wouldn't be that much more expensive (since each indivitual state would cost less money than congress did

It might not cost them more in terms of actual bribe money, but it might well cost a lot more in terms of the cost of the logistics of actually doing the bribary and lobbying.
Maybe some of the current lobbying groups simply wouldn't be able to handle the logistics of lobbying in 50 places at once.

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[Muad'Dave]

I don't think I'm better off if my elected offical wastes money for my sake, although you're probably correct in that the general electorate thinks so.

Wasting money generally drains money from my pocket, so I'd be less likely to vote for someone that spends friviously. My point was that a voter would be much more likely to re-elect someone if their paycheck increased during their term instead of having 4 lane roads that lead nowhere and other pork-barrel projects.

Re:And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[pete-classic]

Two glaring omissions reveal your political bias. What about Somalia and Bosnia?

Oh, those, while more recent and larger in scale than most of the actions you listed, were brought to us by the Beloved Clinton.

Please see http://www.cato.org/dailys/8-11-97.html but to summarize he said that we would be out of Bosnia in one year on Nov 27, 1995. I spent Christmas of '96 there. I undersand that one year was an estimate, but there was no end in sight at that time. The kindest interpretation I can come up with is gross incompetence. An out-and-out line seems more likely. AFAIK he never fully withdrew troops. (See http://www.cnn.com/US/9511/bosnia_speech/speech.ht ml for the full transcript.)

If you are actually trying to achieve any credibility don't act as such a blatant partisan.

-Peter

Re:fp

[rm-r]

Political donations, especially soft money, SUCK.

Parties should be limited as to how much they can spend during a campaign (as they are in Europe) and should maybe even be paid for through taxation- it would cost less thant 1% of the military budget and is a far bettter way of safeguarding democracy.

Enron?

[Em Emalb]

"Microsoft's campaign contributions significantly surpassed those of Enron," said Roeder in his report."

So? What does Microsoft have to do with Enron? Oh, I get it..It's popular to bash Enron right now.

More to the point, what did you expect MS to do? Suddenly start playing fair?

Oh, you got me, here's where I hid the bodies, etc.? Please.

Re:Enron?

[HCase]

I believe Enron was mentioned for a number of reasons.
1. It has recently become a very well known entity.
2. It was also large and had lots of money.
3. It spent quite a bit of money lobbying.
4. It puts people in the mindset the article is looking for.

Re:Enron?

[guttentag]

So? What does Microsoft have to do with Enron? Oh, I get it..It's popular to bash Enron right now.

Let's see:

• Enron was a major contributor to the Bush campaign
• Once "elected" the Bush administration made policy decisions that just happened to match Enron's stated wishlist (bilking the power-starved state of California in the process)
• The Vice President now refuses to disclose his conversations with Enron, and Bush stands behind him, attempting to block inquiries into the propriety of Enron's influence over the White House

• Microsoft was a major contributor to the Bush campiagn
• Once "elected" the Bush administration made policy decisions that just happened to match Microsoft's stated wishlist (the DOJ reversed course in the anti trust case, backing off after the Clinton administration's DOJ had MS backed against the wall)
• One of Bush's first acts as president was to call a closed meeting of certain business leaders (that included Microsoft) to educate him on "what's good for the economy." Clinton did the same thing when he was elected, only his meeting was open and broadcast on TV.

What does Microsoft have to do with Enron? Plenty.

Re:Enron?

[sporktoast]

"Microsoft's campaign contributions significantly surpassed those of Enron," said Roeder in his report."

If anything, this is probably yet another anti-trust violation!

Microsoft is using the war chest it amassed from its monopoly of the desktop OS and applications markets to quickly leverage its way to the top of the political influence market.

Yet another reason...

[thesolo]

Why we need to bring soft money donations to an end! If these types of unregulated donations are allowed to continue, we will just see a further buying & selling of the US government (yes, it IS possible, believe it or not!).

This news probably doesn't surprise too many people in this crowd, I think we all knew that MS was pretty generous with soft monies, but it's very nice to see an article like this. The best part of the entire article? The paragraph about the $25k given to buy off South Carolina's Attorney General.

P.S. Anyone else amazed by the fact that there is a place called Chevy Chase, Maryland?!

Re:Yet another reason...

[leuk_he]

P.S. Anyone else amazed by the fact that there is a place called Chevy Chase, Maryland?

And that someone MS worked/lobbied there? their 2001 site says::
"he Village contains about 200 single-family residences and a few religious and professional
establishments."

Re:Yet another reason...

[medcalf]

I don't understand the call for ending "soft money." OK, a few definitions: "hard money" is money given to a political candidate or party under the rules adopted after Watergate, intending to limit the influence of money on elections; "soft money" is any other money used for political purposes. So, money used to promote a candidate is "hard money" and is regulated, while money given to build a party's membership (for example) is "soft money" and is unregulated.

One way to build the party is to run "issue ads". For the uninitiated, "Bill Clinton blows goats. Al Gore says Clinton is the best President ever." is an issue ad. On the other hand, "Bill Clinton blows goats. Al Gore says Clinton is the best President ever. Vote Gore." is supporting a political candidate, and thus is subject to hard money limits.

Now, on the one hand, the regulation of this spending means that there is no way that I could take out an ad saying "Vote for " on TV, because it's more costly than the rules allow. (This is blatantly unconstitutional.) On the other hand, I could take out an ad saying " is a total wad" and I'd be perfectly legal. Political parties can also take out such ads.

So you want to ban "soft money". Sorry, you can't. The Supreme Court has already held that "money is expression" in that preventing someone from airing their views violates the first amendment.

The Shays-Meehan (sp?) bill would instead ban unregulated contributions to political parties. There would be no prohibition on companies, unions or PACs running all the issue ads they want, or all the get out the vote campaigns they want, on behalf of a party, so long as the party does not direct their activities. Could somebody explain to me how preventing one body of private citizens (a political party) from doing something, while allowing another (say, a PAC) to do that thing, would be constitutional? It smacks of a bill of attainder, and certainly violates the first amendment in the event that what's being prevented is the expression of political views.

It seems to me that the better way to handle election finance issues is to require all money used for political purposes to be disclosed, and to prosecute those guilty of influence peddling or accepting bribes. In most cases, it won't be clear cut, but it would certainly be possible to recall politicians who are abusing their office by acting on behalf of those who spent money for them. And realistically, what would probably happen is that candidates would get more money directly, and outside spending would decrease.

-jeff

Re:Yet another reason...

[Chris Mattern]

> Anyone else amazed by the fact that there is a place called Chevy Chase, Maryland?!

Why? It was there first. In fact, Chevy Chase the comedian probably named himself after it; his birth name was Cornelius Crane Chase, you know.

Chris Mattern

Re:Yet another reason...

[ronc_LAemigre]

The campaign reform bills in the wake of Watergate and subsequently have ensured that there are more rich inexperienced candidates and created the PACs that are seen as such a blight. Banning soft money will ensure that all of these groups instead of giving the money to candidates will instead spend the money themselves to back the candidates they want without the candidate's contribution (or at least fingerprints). It is always the horrible corporations that are corrupting the world with money. Let's talk about Labor Unions, the AARP, the automakers (who are usually lobbying on the same side as the Autoworkers), the NRA, Christian Fundamentalist groups...
Not all of these groups want the government to line their pockets, they have issues that they want addressed and they to influence how they are addressed. That is what democracy is about, and since there is a first ammendment the government is not going to tell us that their views should or should not be listened to

Re:Yet another reason...

[ZaMoose]

Wow. I have to say that you seem to have hit the nail on the head (particularly the First Ammendment reference).

Although, as some have suggested in this thread, it might do just as much good to strip corps of their "single person" status and thus remove any First Ammendment issues.

Dunno though. That would probably have all sorts of wacky implications too. *sigh*

Re:Yet another reason...

[Chris Mattern]

From northern English town of that name, best known for the battle there between Henry Hotspur and Earl Douglas in 1388, commemorated in the ballad of the same name. "Chevy Chase" means "Cheviots Field", the Cheviots being the hills the battlefield was located in. A good discussion of the history of the term can be found here: http://www.chevychasewest.org/history.htm. Try doing a Google search on "Chevy Chase" Otterburn England; you'll find some interesting stuff.

Chris Mattern

I hope the mainstream press picks this up

[DickPhallus]

In South Carolina, one of the states originally participating in the antitrust suit, Microsoft contributed $25,000 to attorney general Charles Condon shortly before his re-election in 1998. According to the chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party this was the largest unsolicited donation ever received. Three weeks after Condon won the election, South Carolina withdrew from the antitrust case.

Hopefully this will get picked up by the AP or something. I mean this alone in most people should arouse serious feelings of mistrust for any company. Microsoft makes software. It shouldn't even be making *any* sorts of political contributions or anything. I seriously doubt that within three weeks the attorney general had suddenly decided MS wasn't violating any laws without persuasion

If, at the very least, this and the enron scandal should be a wake up call for americans to consider political party financial reform.

Re:I hope the mainstream press picks this up

[hburch]

Unfortunately, this data is presented in such isolation that one cannot really draw a conclusion about it.

What was Condon's track record before? If Condon expected (as I imagine) to be softer on monopolies, then of course Microsoft would support him and then he would act his conscience and support the comprimise.

What about other people who received contributions? Did they behave differently than expected once they received the contribution?

Most "buying" of politicians is buying of elections (not all, however). If the public would vote properly, I would argue, this would not be a problem. Unfortunately, advertising works, especially against news outlets.

Re:I hope the mainstream press picks this up

[Happy Monkey]

Cold fusion, perpetual motion, or FTL travel. Note that they must be making the product, not just researching it.

This just in....Microsoft spent MONEY!!!

[TheConfusedOne]

Amazing! Astounding! Unbelievable even!

Yeah, it's underhanded, maybe even a bit immoral, the problem is, *IT'S NOT ILLEGAL*!!

Both sides are throwing money at this, unsurprisingly MS is throwing more. First off, it would be a violation of their fiduciary responsiblities if they didn't defend themselves as vigrorously as possible. Heck, they've already crossed the line of good taste/credibility in their PR and lobying campaigns in the past, why stop now?

If we really want to do something about activities like this we need to correct the current political system. Now, I'll just remain in the legions who complain about it and don't have a good solution (the problem is WAY beyond my meager geek abilities to grok). The one item of interest I have heard is that the current proposed reforms may have allowed people to donate MORE money instead of less.

We vote with our pocketbooks, Microsoft votes with its. They just happen to have a slightly bigger one. Finally, it's ironic that the concept of "free" speech is used to defend monetary contributions...

Re:This just in....Microsoft spent MONEY!!!

[Trekologer]

If I were a shareholder of Microsoft, I would be very mad at this. Microsoft has never paid once cent in dividends and have made it known that they have no intention of doing so in the forseeable future. Instead, they have been retaining all profits. As a shareholder (which I am not, but if I was), I would be up in arms. This company has never paid me anything for investing in it and is now spending millions of dollars to buy off the government to "forget" about its illegal business practices.

Re:This just in....Microsoft spent MONEY!!!

[Kefaa]

A poor example: if I were convicted of embezzling $1 million from a bank, and donated $100,000 to re-elect the prosecutor. It would be fair for the judge to question a surprisingly light sentence offered in a plea bargain.

While it is not illegal, it is the reason for the Turney Act. If it can be shown they were using their money to influence the outcome of the penalty phase of the trial, the judge must consider it before accepting the agreement. In fact, it would be a reason to force the government to go back and renegotiate, or if the judge considered any outcome between the parties tainted, she could enforce her own.

Based on past statements from her, I question if this formality has any influence at all. But, I want to give her the benefit of the doubt. It is not a perfect system, but it is a second check of the process.

[IANAL--YMMV]

Re:This just in....Microsoft spent MONEY!!!

[gfxguy]

If you were a shareholder:

a) no one pointed a gun at your head and made you buy it.

b) no one is pointing a gun at your head and telling you not to sell it.

In other words, dividends or not, people are making money (on paper, anyway), and they must be making enough to be satisfied.

It would be great to see all the stockholders get annoyed and sell all their shares.

Accountability

[joebp]

$1.6 million [...] on efforts to influence the U.S. government. [...] Microsoft has been unable to comment.

Wow, don't you love having a corrupt, completely unaccountable and evil entity altering and influencing your government and law makers?

You think the US government would decline contributions from any and all companies who have had their questionable business behaviour legally challenged.

Kinda makes sense, no? A lot like convicts being unable to cast a vote.

Re:Accountability

[Speare]

In this case, Microsoft had been challenged, but not yet convicted. Ever hear of a little concept known as "Innocent until PROVEN guilty"? Were this not the case, simply waging unfounded allegations against any person or company could (and likely would) impact that entity strongly for the worse.

Um, no, in the antitrust suit, Microsoft has been found guilty and that ruling has been upheld on appeal already. It is just the forms of remedy, the corporate equivalent of sentencing the convicted criminal, that is of question now.

Re:Accountability

[Speare]

I was not suggesting that Microsoft's campaign funding and lobbying to this date has been illegal; in fact, it's quite legal but increasingly repugnant to the citizenry who wants fair elections in the future.

However, if a convict cannot vote, perhaps it is time to say that a convicted monopolist corporation cannot contribute money for some term.

For whatever reason, a corporation is in all senses an individual in our law. The punishments for breaking corporate laws should be such that they restrict the otherwise granted rights. No free speech campaigning, no lobbying, no tax break incentives in new properties, no sealed oem contracts, pick an appropriate level of restrictions for the conviction.

Re:Finally...

[RazzleFrog]

very few other companies do

It's not that few other companies can, it is that few other companies need to. How about somebody looks at what the tobacco industry spends on lobbying efforts? How about the RIAA and MPAA?

Microsoft is NOT doing anything illegal when it spends money on political contributions. It is the politicians that are doing something illegal if they let that money sway their votes.

What did Enron's money get them?

[kubrick]

Nowhere near as much as Microsoft's did, by the way things look...

Some people would consider giving large amounts of money to people with the potential power to ameliorate your legal troubles bribery -- luckily for Microsoft no-one considers this to be the case here. :/

A sad statement on the American political system, as far as I'm concerned.

Re:What did Enron's money get them?

[kubrick]

Enron was in far worse shit than Microsoft ever was.

Yeah, but an anti-trust lawsuit is hardly a walk in the park (or at least it shouldn't be).

Re:What did Enron's money get them?

[kubrick]

its up to the reader to decide which is the lesser of two evils

My point being that it doesn't matter which is lesser, they are both still evil, and both should be prosecuted to the extent of the (alleged) illegality.

Actually, Microsoft have been found guilty in a court of law, while Enron hasn't actually reached that stage yet... although the actions of all the people involved suggest that they are as guilty as sin.

Re:What did Enron's money get them?

[geekoid]

Not really a valid comparison.
Enrons Money problems don't really have anyhting to do with the money spent to gain the exeptions to laws. Enrons problem stems from fixing the books, as it were.

Its a sad staement on politics in general. Somehow I doubt there are any other companies in the world that don't find a way to influence there governments.

Re:What did Enron's money get them?

[kubrick]

Enrons Money problems don't really have anyhting to do with the money spent to gain the exeptions to laws.

Neither do Microsoft's problems, which are related to anti-competitive behaviour towards other companies.

Enron surely would have hoped to get something for their money -- or maybe it was paid to distract attention from the shadiness of their business model until all the fat cats had made their money from it.

Its a sad staement on politics in general. Somehow I doubt there are any other companies in the world that don't find a way to influence there governments.

Yes, but there's a pretty big difference between threatening to chop 3000 jobs because of the "poor economic climate" and bribing government officials to ensure favourable decisions. I'd prefer that the people making these sorts of decisions made them on information that was public knowledge, not on who paid them the most.

Re:Finally...

[JamesOfTheDesert]

... does something illegal like this, ...

Illegal like what? The contributions and lobbying, while of dubious morality, are still legal.

Any numbers available for Sun's lobbying and contributions?

Re:fp

[Znork]

And how would that benefit the politicians? I'm sorry, but they are the ones in power, and for several decades, the western democracies have been slipping more into a situation where it doesnt really matter who gets elected, because there is nobody representing the voters available for election.

Cooperating politicians in a democracy win over the voters every time. And they've realized that.

Re:Why isn't this mentioned on The Today Show?

[rapid prototype]

duhh....

MS-NBC

-rp

An experiment

[The Smith]

Let's try an experiment. I am going to give you $1m. Now, do you think I might, just possibly, want something in return...?

Isn't this just like ...

[Quixotic Raindrop]

... charges that Microsoft buys (bought?) shelf space in stores to prevent competing products from even being visible?

So, in other words, this is really nothing new. This is Microsoft being Microsoft; now, does anyone seriously doubt that this is an organization bent on doing whatever it takes, including things that are not just immoral, or violate common sense, but possibly things that are criminal, in order to ... what, make money?

Has American society fallen so far into the pit of jade and cynicism that we shrug off the Enrons and Microsofts of the world as merely maladjusted money-seeking sycophants, instead of being so violently outraged that we take every chance to make them wish they'd never even started a business? What the hell are we doing?

Every person who reads about Microsoft's behavior should be so sickened that they vomit. This is not normal. This is not acceptable. This is not "business as usual" in the United States. Just because it seems to happen a lot does not make it something we should tolerate, not even for a millisecond, and not for any reason.

Re:Isn't this just like ...

[sheldon]

"So, dumbfuck, you might want to get a clue before insulting people."

Big words from a Coward.

Re:Isn't this just like ...

[sheldon]

Buying shelf space, and preventing competing products from being visible are not mutually exclusive.

The primary tactic in sales is to buy the endcap displays, which are the areas with the highest visibility. Now obviously if Coke has the endcaps, Pepsi isn't going to have the visibility, etc.

So are you suggesting we making buying product positioning illegal? Across the board? I'll bet you get quite a bit of push back on that not from the product producers, but rather from the retailers.

Honestly, I wish more people would take the time to think.

Re:Isn't this just like ...

[Takeel]

Anyone remember the ol' "spot the fed" games at hacking/security conferences? Maybe we should start a "spot the Microsoft messageboard plant" game here on Slashdot.

*Simply Shocked*

[Alien54]

Shocked, simply shocked, I tell you.

right

Of course you realise, this is the Microsoft philosophy applied to the legal field. Microsoft has had a history of buying up tecnologies and expertise, many of which have simply disappeared, never to see the light of day again.

It is perhaps the only real innovation that I know of, to take their billions and buy up anything their legal opponents could use to convict them of their crimes.

I am sure other big companies are taking notes. This convicts them even more in my mind.

Like I have said before, every time I turn around there is something else that comes out and dirties their reputation in my eyes. Heck, if PR LapDogs like ZDNet are taking shots at MS, you know rats are starting to leave the ship.

Re:*Simply Shocked*

[WildBeast]

Where exactly do you live? You should know by now that every big company does that. Why do you think that Intel never got sued?

Re:*Simply Shocked*

[Paul Komarek]

Intel *was* pursued by the FTC, an organization with far more teeth than the DoJ. Intel, however, chose to accept the FTC's findings and settle out of court. Microsoft, on the other hand, has been wasting public money in stupid trials while increasing public corruption. I'm no fan of Intel, as they've done their share to stifle innovation just as Microsoft does. However, Intel at least sees themselves as part of our society -- Microsoft sees themsevles as above our society.

-Paul Komarek

Re:*Simply Shocked*

[Alien54]

Where exactly do you live? You should know by now that every big company does that. Why do you think that Intel never got sued?

[sigh .... kids ...]

the phrase "simply shocked" goes back to the movie Casablanca.

In the 1942 film classic, Casablanca, there is the villainous Nazi-Major Strohser who, shortly after entering Rick's Cafe and then having been mortified by a stirring rendition of "La Marseilles" led by his rival, Victor Lazlo, confronts Captain Renault the prefect of police and demands that he "close his cafe immediately!" To which renault replies, "But everyone is having such a good time, I have no excuse." To which Strohser snarls back, "FIND ONE!"

This, of course, leads Renault to order everyone out of Rick's Cafe and Renault's classic exchange with Humphrey Bogart when Rick demands to know on what grounds he is being shut down. Renault says, "I am shocked, simply shocked to hear of gambling going on in here!" while at the same time he is pocketing his winnings.

This phrase of "simply shocked" has since become more generalized to denote a cynical look at the facts of a situation, falsely claiming shock and surprise when in fact one knows or suspects otherwise, based on the inherent corruption of the scene.

I hear the movie is a decent film. You should see it some time.

Re:*Simply Shocked*

[WildBeast]

I believe that MS chose to settle to but some states aren't accepting the settlement.

I don't see how Intel or Microsoft stifle innovation.

"However, Intel at least sees themselves as part of our society -- Microsoft sees themsevles as above our society"

Can't really comment on that. I believe that there's way too many laws and so much political bs in society. And the fact that so many people talk alike and look alike creeps me out. I traveled to many places lately yet I didn't feel like a stranger.

Re:*Simply Shocked*

[Paul Komarek]

The important difference, to me, between MS's settlement and Intel's, is that Microsoft went through a long trial first, and lost. There are many indications that Microsoft attempted to make this (and subsequent) trials as long as possible (possibly to avoid legal interference with WinXP's ship date). Furthremore, this is the *second* time the US has had to take MS to court for antitrust violations.

-Paul Komarek

Legal DoS?

[jabber01]

Microsoft isn't doing anything expressly 'wrong' here.. No more so than a local Pizza Hut constantly calling a local Domino's to tie up their phone line so no customers could place an order. Classic.. Brilliant.. And thanks to past campaign contributions, perfectly legal..

"You have to watch the violence Lisa.. Else you'll never become desensitized to it" -- Bart

Re:Legal DoS?

[banky]

Back when I was in a struggling band, I saw how record labels would buy up bands to prevent others from being able to get them. It's easy:
1. Sign the band to a long term, exclusive contract.
2. Take away all their rights to publish, record, and tour, without the label's explicit approval.
3. Find a new band to screw over.

This is totally common. The industry refers to it as "building a stable of artists".

I'm sure it happens in lots of other places, too.

Re:Legal DoS?

[geekoid]

they are doing something wrong, maybe not illegal, but certianlly wrong, from a moral stand point.

Balls the size of Washington

[Snowfox]

I just thought this was well worth a repeat:

... Microsoft has been hiring every political lobbyist, and every law firm, with anti-trust expertise and putting them to work on unrelated projects- anything to make them unavailable to work for critics of Microsoft.

Now that's ballsy!

Re:Balls the size of Washington

[einer]

No wonder their software sucks... It's all written by lawyers!

Re:Balls the size of Washington

[Amazing Quantum Man]

How is this different from what they do in the software world?

Wasted money...

[pease1]

Yes, I strive to be MS free, but I would have rather seen MS put this money into bug and security fixing than DC lawyers and lobbyists.

What a waste of resources.

Re:Wasted money...

[Alsee]

but I would have rather seen MS put this money into bug and security fixing than DC lawyers and lobbyists.

While bug and security fixing would be nice,
but I would have rather seen MS put this money into my pocket.

What a waste of resources.

-

Re:Ban contributions?

[RelliK]

When contributions become illegal then bribes become more popular, and those unwilling to accept bribes will not ever come close to getting into office

Uhhm, and how is it different from the current situations? Oh yeah, I get it! They are not technicaly bribes: they are called "contributions".

The United States Government

[gonar]

The Best Government Money Can Buy (tm)

The real problem here is the idea of "corporate personhood" which extends all the civil rights meant for people (including buying congressmen, senators, presidents and supreme court justices) to corporations.

individual people, and and not-for-profit groups can not compete with the cash generated by a large corporation.

there is one easy solution to this (unfortunately, it's not easy:).

make all elections 100% publicly funded (I believe that england does this and each candidate can only spend something like 10,000 pounds), ban any political advertizing by any non candidate which mentions, depicts or hints where a particlar candidate or party stands on an issue.

Re:The United States Government

[BCoates]

individual people, and and not-for-profit groups can not compete with the cash generated by a large corporation.

Behind every rich corporation is a bunch of rich people with a shared income source and each other's cell phone numbers. Making these people do things as coordinated individuals instead of a corporation will change nothing.

make all elections 100% publicly funded (I believe that england does this and each candidate can only spend something like 10,000 pounds), ban any political advertizing by any non candidate which mentions, depicts or hints where a particlar candidate or party stands on an issue.

So, force people to vote by how tall the politician is or how easy to remember his name is? Paid issue advertising is a good thing, it lets people know what a politician's history/position on an issue is, because the conventional media sure isn't any help there...

--
Benjamin Coates

Re:The United States Government

[grammar fascist]

make all elections 100% publicly funded (I believe that england does this and each candidate can only spend something like 10,000 pounds), ban any political advertizing by any non candidate which mentions, depicts or hints where a particlar candidate or party stands on an issue.

And then we'll have relatively unknown people with $10,000 going up against already-elected, well known politicians with $10,000. People who vote without knowing the issues (and there are a lot of them) will vote for the person they've heard of. Tenure is the key, then. These politicians already in office also have the media's ear.

Turnover would be stifled. That's bad.

The real push behind campaign finance reform is the television news media. If it happens, they'll have the most control over public opinion. Liberals here love it, because the television news media usually sides with them.

Someone else said it before - the best way to reform campaigns is to reduce the power of the federal government. Controlling the money just shifts the power from one big entity to another.

Re:The United States Government

[jmauro]

Statisticlly when the challengers have just as much money as the incumbients the challengers are more likely to win. The current low-turnover is due to the 2-6 year fund raising by incumbients which usually results in a 10-1 money advantage. People who have the money to spend at the incumbients level will ususally win or come really close.

Re:The United States Government

[praedor]

I wholeheartedly agree. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights addresses the rights of INDIVIDUAL HUMAN BEINGS, not corporations. A "corporation" cannot have rights of a person. A corporation is a COLLECTION of many individuals, each, by necessity, with differing views and beliefs. It is wrong, disingenuous, and a lie that a "corporate" position is valid or real. It ignores the positions/beliefs of an unknown number of its people while improperly favoring the single view of the CEO or board members, running roughshod (or totally ignoring) the views of the VAST majority of people in the corporation.

Rights for INDIVIDUALS, not corporations.

Re:The United States Government

[praedor]

Whoo-hoo! Vindication! Proof! If you read the article, it ends making my point:

"The analysis of donations by political party shows some surprising results. While Microsoft donations favored Republicans (who got 72 percent of the money from 1995 to 1998), its employees were more inclined to support the Democrats. Democratic PACs received $222,100 from the company's employees, compared to the $42,875 for Republican PACs. "

So the CORPORATION of M$ which is actually Gates, gives its money and holds positions counter to the vast majority of its own employees. A corporation cannot have rights, only INDIVIDUALS have rights. This corporation, like virtually all such monsters, does NOT hold legitimate points of view, it only presents the point of view of the CEO/President, or (some) board members while the majority of what makes up the corporation is ignored.

Mantra: Only individuals have rights, not corporations. Corporations are NOT people.

Re:The United States Government

[Guppy06]

"The real problem here is the idea of "corporate personhood" which extends all the civil rights meant for people (including buying congressmen, senators, presidents and supreme court justices) to corporations."

Supreme court justices? What are you smoking? Or are you yet another of those rabid "Bush stole the election!" folks?

Supreme Court justices aren't for sale for the sole reason that they don't have to fund election campaigns. They're appointed by the president and decided upon by Congress. Instead of having to reach millions of voters, potential justices have to convince 535 people. And instead of campaigning around the country and saying different things to different people, these 535 people are all in the same building, listening very carefully (and asking questions) to what a candidate has to say to all of them. And once their in, they're in for as long as they want to be (or if they get impeached and removed from office), so they don't even need to worry about future campaigns.

"there is one easy solution to this. "

The price of a Congresscritter depends on how many people they represents (and thefore how much money he needs to spend on their campaign) The nice thing about the House is that they're numerous (lower cost per seat, higher cost for a majority vote) and represent about the same number of people each (same price each). Toss in short two-year term lengths (frequent campaign contributions needed, always coming and going) and they're not a very good prospect for bribery. Not much trouble here.

The President may only be one position (well, two now that the VP is on the same ticket), but his price is further upped by the fact that he needs more than a simple majority (more like a majority of the majorities). Toss in the fact that there's only one of him and therefore subject to more scrutiny (compare media attention and voter turn-out this November to 2000) and you can see that the idea of buying a presidency is risky as well as pricey.

IMO, the only real problem is the Senate. Too many for national scrutiny, too few to make buying a majority prohibitively expensive, and differing state populations means Senators from smaller states are cheaper to buy. Toss in a combination of a six-year term and a short public memory and you end up with Ted Kennedys.

The Senate problem is easily solved by repealing the Seventeenth Amendment. Remove campaigns from the equation and you don't have to worry about campaign finance.

"make all elections 100% publicly funded"

OUCH! That means my tax dollars would have to fund campaigns for one fedreal President/Vice President ballot, two federal Senator ballots, one fedral Congresscritter, one Governor/Lt. Governor (and whatever other executive offices are on a separate ballot, such as your state's AG, Comptroller, etc.), one state Senator, one state Congresscritter, three state judges, one county President, three county council members, one county Sheriff, other executive offices at the local level... If you figure each ballot will have five candidates each, that's a LOT of campaigns. Even more if I happen to live in a city with a city government. My tax money is wasted enough as it is, thankyouverymuch.

Re:The United States Government

[dillon_rinker]

Hmmm...the problem is that corporations are people, so we should pay for George Bush's presidential campaign. That's a non sequitur if I ever saw one. Try this on instead: the problem is that corporations are people...so take away their person hood. Continue to permit limited liability, but remove from corporations any rights intended to protect individuals from a tyrannical government. Are you an agent of a corporation? Then you must testify against the corp - no fifth amendment. Does OSHA want to look around your factory? They don't need a warrant. Did your corp break the law? Death penalty - we don't care if it's an unusual punishment. Is there a need to house the National Guard? We're taking your warehouse.

This would kill corporatism. Government corruption would take a different form, of course; the rich have always controlled government. However, it would take a while before they'd get an even keel, and in that time we might get some good done.

Re:The United States Government

[Malcontent]

"Mantra: Only individuals have rights, not corporations. Corporations are NOT people."

A better mantra.

a) corporations are beings as defined by law.
b) corporrations are immortal beings (they have an infinate life span and can only be killed by sacred incantations and scrolls wielded by a small cadre of professionals)
c) Corporations have no soul.

Corporations therefore are soul-less immortal beings. Very much like demons and devils. They are summoned by a priest class with incomprehensible chants and dismissed by the same class. Corporations serve those who summon them. Corporations enslave people to serve them.

Really corporations are exactly like demons of mythology.

Put this as your your signature.

"corporations are soul-less immortal beings, what does your god say about soul-less immortal beings?"

Re:The United States Government

[Alsee]

corporations are soul-less immortal beings

Hehe. pretty cool. I like it.
The "They are summoned by a priest class with incomprehensible chants and dismissed by the same class" part was expecially neat :)

I have to take issue with the "Corporations enslave people to serve them" part though. Corporations employ people. Corporations buy things and sell things. This is not slavery.

I may be making assumptions here - I think you are religious and/or pro-socialist (or some other brand of anti-capitalist). Has it occured to you that your "demon" description also applies equally well (if not better) to any nation/government and to any church/religion? Which demons are YOU serving?

-

Re:The United States Government

[mpe]

individual people, and and not-for-profit groups can not compete with the cash generated by a large corporation.

Some not for profits actually can. If they can "bootstrap" the government into paying them to lobby it. Just about any which can do this are at least as nasty as your average mega-corp.

Re:The United States Government

[Malcontent]

I am none of the things you claim. I don't belive in god nor do I subscribe to any "ism". I think capitalism and communism or socialism all end up the same in the end. 10% of the people control 90% of the money. No matter what ism is being practiced this has not changed throught history.

I do find it very amusing however that of all the "ism"s being practiced today capitalism is the one most similar to satanism wheras communism and socialism are most like the christian value system. The sermon on the mount could be a very powerful communist (or socialist) manifesto don't you think?

Re:The United States Government

[Guppy06]

"Since they are not up for election and have lifetime terms, they are free to accept all the bribes they want, support the people who are paying them at the expense of The People, and never fear for their jobs."

But the fact that they don't have to pay for political campaigns removes the main venue that bribers hide their funds transactions in. And they do have to fear for their jobs. Impeachments aren't just for presidents.

"Elected officials have to be cleaner. Sure, they need reelection money, but if they go directly against the will of all their constituents (assuming everyone else agreed on anything) they are gone regardless of how much they have in their warchests."

That only holds true if the public is able to remember next election year that they don't like their public official and why. The longer the term, the more likely the constituants are to forget.

this is very common

[WildBeast]

Just ask AOL and Intel how much of a contribution they make. Why do you think they didn't get sued? MS on the other hand started giving contributions too late and we all know what happened.

Re:this is very common

[Enry]

AOL and Intel don't have monopolies. There are local and national ISPs that are still thriving (Earthlink for one). Intel has competition in Motorola/Apple/IBM (PPC) and in AMD. Intel has not prevented OEMs from building AMD-based machines, so it's a LOT easier to buy an AMD-based machine than it is to buy a Linux-based. Why is that?

Re:this is very common

[geekoid]

Ever notice that Microsoft seems to get into every industry late?
GUI -- Late.
Games -- Late.
Internet -- Late.
Install wizards -- Late.

Corporations

[Grax]

Personally I believe that the modern legal system is becoming more and more corporate and money controlled.

The problem is that when a politician is elected due to large campaign contributions, he can't help but think that the contributions put him there rather than the votes of the citizens. He is elected, supposedly, to represent the needs of the citizens, but instead he ends up feeling like he is elected to represent the needs of his financiers (even an individual with good moral fiber will have this difficulty).

A politician "should" be concerned first and foremost about how each decision will impact a private citizen. For example, how will DMCA impact the average consumer (loss of their fair use rights), how will extension of copyright laws affect the average individual (they will have access to no new public domain material in their lifetime), etc.

It is getting to the point that the individuals need to hire lobbyists to plead their case with the politicians. Except that the politician was hired in the first place to be our lobbyist.

Campain reform, not Campain finance reform...

[wowbagger]

I assert that it is not campain finance reform, but campain reform that we need.

Consider first why candidates need the huge amounts of money to be elected. They in effect need to run two entirely different campains - once for the primary, and once for the election. As a result, the cost more than doubles. Now, the thought is that once they've won the primary, their party will contribute to the main election. This is true but irrelevant to this discussion: the party must raise the money, and thus the need for money still is doubled.

Now, I assert that anytime there is a demand, there will be a supply. Consider the origins of soft money - in the old days you could directly support your candidate with any amount of cash you wished. This was deemed a bad thing and so limits were placed on direct contributions. Bang - you now have created "soft money" that doesn't get covered under the hard money laws. Do you really expect that as long as candidates need money they won't find a way around soft money? And realize this: if you put up a piece on your personal web page about how you feel candidate X is [good|bad], that can be considered a "soft" contribution. Do you really want to give the government that power?

Now, consider the 2000 elections. They were very close - so close that the actual vote difference between the candidates was lost in the noise floor. Was this really because the people were split 50/50 in liking Bush and Gore? Most people who voted for [Bush|Gore] did so because they disliked [Bush|Gore] marginally less than they disliked [Gore|Bush].

I assert that we need to make the following two changes to the system:
1) Allow anybody registered to vote to vote in any primary.
2) Require a binding "none of the above" entry on all elections.

Let's examine the results these two changes would have had on the 2000 US presidential election:
1) By allowing anybody registered to vote in any primary, we would de-emphasize the importance of the primaries and pull the results of the primaries back from the extremes. I doubt that Bush would have won the Republican primary, and I doubt that Gore would have won the Democrat primary. Additionally, candidates such as McCain would have had a much better chance of getting support.
2) By having a binding "none of the above", even if the election had been Bush/Gore, the bulk of people could have voted None Of the Above. Had None Of the Above won, then NOBODY in that election could hold the office, and there would have to be a new election. Ask yourself this: no matter your political affiliation, if you could have had a chance to block both Bush and Gore in favor of a shot at a better candidate, would you?

I assert that with these two changes, the following things would happen:

1) The third party candidates wouldn't run in the first race. Instead, they would encourage the voters to vote NOTA in the first race and knock the big boys out.
2) The big parties would no longer be able to take this "This is our guy, take it or leave it" attitude. Thus, they would tend to field more moderate candidates.
3) Because of 1 and 2, more people would feel their vote mattered, and we would get more turnout.
4) Because the primaries could no longer be used to limit our choices, they would become unimportant and would fad away. Remember - the primaries are entirely outside the election process as described in the Constitution.

Now, I don't assert that these changes would prevent lobbying by corporations. However, if a party knew that they could no longer annoint a golden child in the primaries and force them down our throats, they might be more aware of how the PEOPLE feel about an issue, rather than MONEY.

Discussion?

Re:Campain reform, not Campain finance reform...

[Lysander Luddite]

Wouldn't NOTA and a second election double the cost again?

Re:Campain reform, not Campain finance reform...

[medcalf]

A primary is the process used by private bodies (the political parties) to determine who will be their candidate for the election. A primary should not in any way be regulated, nor should any public funds or resources be used to support it (for example, public polling places), because it is not a public function. Nor should the governments of the states be allowed, as they are now, to force these private bodies to allow non-members to have a part in the selection process of the private bodies. Thus your argument does not hold water, though the intention behind it is good. I particularly like the idea of a binding none of the above vote, though I'm not sure that would really help third parties at all.

Re:Campain reform, not Campain finance reform...

[Red Rocket]

Require a binding "none of the above" entry on all elections.

How about this . . .

Allow all voters to cast one vote either for or against one candidate.

Then when a candidate wins an election by a count of -80,145 votes to -121,345 votes maybe they'll get the hint.

Re:Campain reform, not Campain finance reform...

[paulbd]

you seem to believe that people want "more moderate" candidates. several times you suggest that a NOTA strategy would encourage this. i would suggest that people want more diverse candidates (i'm not talking skin color here, but political perspectives), more discussion of genuine political alternatives, more personal opinion and less lobbyist-generated newspeak. NOTA might help with that, but its not clear that it would help anymore than a number of other electoral reforms such as one of the various forms of proportional representation.

Re:Campain reform, not Campain finance reform...

[Shotgun]

I assert that the need, the demand if you will, is created by the politicians need to spend a lot of money on misleading and vague TV/Radio advertisements. As long as this demand exist, there will be someone to supply it. That IS America.

But all is not lost. While we can't completely eliminate the demand, we can moderate it. My idea is to open the system up; let anyone contribute as much as they like (with full disclosure). But the demand is caused by the need to publicize the politicians position. Provide a way to publicize those positions without the need for donations. The FCC liscenses out the radio and tv spectrum, and part of the requirement is that they must contribute to the common good. Make it a requirement that anyone holding a liscense must air public debates conducted a month before the elections (this will also limit the competition of the debates with the Simpsons).

Bush/Gore can continue to advertise all the want, but they'll still have to stand up with all the other third party candidates on the all important debate day. Thus, the big money contributions can at least be partially nullified, making them less useful as a 'lobbying' tool.

Re:Campain reform, not Campain finance reform...

[Pfhreakaz0id]

agreed. my vote in the last presidential election would have been "not Bush", for instance. I wanted to vote Nader, but new he had no shot.

As someone else points out, requiring a majority (50%) of votes cast in a multi-way election would do the same thing (with multiple rounds dropping the low person(s) until we get there.

Re:Campain reform, not Campain finance reform...

[Amazing Quantum Man]

However, as currently implemented, "party primaries" are public events. Public funds and resources (e.g. public polling places, registrar of voters, county clerk, etc...) are expended on them.

Therefore, the government of the states should be allowed to force the private bodies that these public resources benefit to allow non-members to have a say.

Re:Campain reform, not Campain finance reform...

[wowbagger]

No, because everybody who ran in the first election is ineligable to run in the second (and any others). That's the "binding" part of binding NOTA.

So, Joe Bloggs runs for office, and gets knocked out by NOTA. Go home Joe. Joe needs no more money, because he can't run.

Meanwhile, Foo Bar runs in the second election. He needed little to no money for the first, since he wasn't running in it. Now he needs money.

Consider it from the point of view of a Big Corporation. Let's say Microsoft spends $1M on Joe Bloggs. Money down the drain, Joe's knocked out. Now, MS can spend another $1M on Foo Bar, but now it starts getting expensive for no guaranteed return. As it stands today, MS can give $1M to Bush, $1M to Gore, and know they've got it covered one way or the other.

Re:Campain reform, not Campain finance reform...

[wowbagger]

Then if they are private bodies, why cannot I join both the Democrats and Republicans and vote in both primaries?

Re:Campain reform, not Campain finance reform...

[Lysander Luddite]

Yeah, so Bloggs can't run and a second stringer does. Where does th emoney for that election come from? And how long does the government wait for a second election? If 20% of the initial elections result in NOTA, do people need to wait for the second election results before the first batch go into office? Right now elections are in November and sessions start in January. Not much time to run a second election.

Why not just make a "Not Candidate X" for every candidate. The "Not candidate X" counts as a negative vote for that candidate. So it counters one vote for candidate X. Add up the votes and the highest number of positive votes wins.

Re:Campain reform, not Campain finance reform...

[medcalf]

Because the states are intervening in these private bodies in ways that are suspect at best. Or are the Democrats and Republicans (and presumably any other party that holds primaries using public polling places) just an arm of government? In which case, we have the choice of two government parties, and are no better than the one-party systems in China, Cuba and the like.

Re:Campain reform, not Campain finance reform...

[NutscrapeSucks]

To clarify -- Corporate campaign contributions are illegal under federal law. In addition, individuals can only contribute $2000 or so (an amount that hasn't changed since the 70s). That's "hard money".

However, party contributions are less regulated. So a corporation could give $1M to the GOP or Dems and tell them "run commercials to elect your guy". That's "soft money" -- it bypasses the intent of the old campaign laws.

Now, if you ban party donations, the corporations will just funnel that $1M into other advocacy groups that are less democratic than the party systems. The McCain bill trys to limit that but it's probably unconstitutional.

As to the political situation, the real GOP advantage is in "soft" money. The hard money limits are so low that either party has no problem maximizing them, and there's lots of limousine libs. The Dems probably have a broader base of support, but the funding is a lot more disparate than the GOP's corporate front group pals. In addition, the unions contribute an enormous amount of labor, not money.

So, yes, the Dems probably get a huge advantage out of campaing finance reform. But isn't that the whole point? -- to shift power from corporations back to the people?

The nature and structure of both political parties would change if this passed, but the GOP's changes would be far more radical. They would need to rely more heavily on their populist base -- primarily Christian Moral Conservatives, and less on big business. That move would drive a certain faction out of the party. Meanwhile the Dems deal with corporations mostly because they have to. They'd love to go back to classic new deal politics.

Re:Campain reform, not Campain finance reform...

[ocie]

First, primaries are an internal function for the parties to determine who that party's candidate will be. It should not be regulated, as it is a private function of a private organization. It's entirely fair for a party to limit participation to its own members

Is it also fair to limit membership in a party to those who are not members of other parties?

Re:Campain reform, not Campain finance reform...

[namespan]

I'd agree: campaing reform is necessary.

I think there are some other ideas that might prove more effective than the ones you mentioned.

Open primaries are a cool idea. The problem is that strategic-minded individuals can actually throw a primary. Don't want the Republicans to win? Do you realize that McCain will steal a lot of moderate democratic votes from Gore (and you're already losing the far left to Nader)? Go to the Republican Primary! Vote for Bush! Not to mention the primaries are run by semi-private entities (the parties).

I think a better option than a NOTA vote would be an "Approval Voting" system. That is, you can cast a vote of approval for as many candidates as you like. The candidate with the highest number of approval votes wins (or, for president, the candidate with the highest number of approval votes within a state takes the electoral college votes).

Finally, I think we need to start seeing more media-savvy grass roots candidates. Slashdot readers need to run for office.

Re:Campain reform, not Campain finance reform...

[Kanasta]

More simply, move to preferential voting. You can vote firstly for your fav candidate, then your 2nd-nth preference can be used to let them know which one of [Bush/Gore] you hate least.

Ban campaign contributions, but instead pay candidates from the public purse for every PRIMARY vote they get.

So in the end you would ensure your fav candidate gets funding, while still keeping out [Bush/Gore], and [Bush/Gore] doesn't get any of your money.

Microsoft... a big disappointment

[MrIcee]

This simply continues to reinforce that Microsoft is a Marketing company and a Political interest group.... but NOT a software company.

Instead of creating quality software that people would use because it is the most secure, efficient and capable software... they choose to write utter crap... and they hire marketers to tell us it's gold... hire political lobbiests to force policies and judicial decisions in their favor.

When I started out in computing 26 years ago I never conceived that we would be as backwards as we are today. I never dreamed we would require a 1 gigahertz machine to run a windowing system poorly.... I never thought that instead of booting faster... that machines would boot slower and slower.

Extremely disappointing that a marketing/political interest group has been allowed to pretty much destroy the computer industry.

I guess we can hope and pray that MicroSoft goes the way of Enron... that it's dirty dealings are opened up to the world and that the world responds by simply refusing to have anything to do with the MicroSluts.

Re:Microsoft... a big disappointment

[WildBeast]

I guess that in your futuristic vision you dreamed of a world with light OS's requiring 386 cpu's. Who exactly would want the 1Ghz machines then?

26 years in computing, you must be pretty old yet you don't seem to know that every big company gives huge contributions in order to avoid lawsuits.

How did MS destroy the computer industry? They created it.

Re:Microsoft... a big disappointment

[WildBeast]

Sure computers did exist, but Bill Gates brought them to the people.

Stealing ideas? Are you still at school? every company does that, from television shows to cars.

Besides, I thought that the GPL philosophy was all about not reinventing the wheel, using other peoples ideas and improving upon them. Look at Mandrake, they took a good Linux distribution and made it even better.

Re:Microsoft... a big disappointment

[Salsaman]

Sorry, couldn't let this one go...

"Sure computers did exist, but Bill Gates brought them to the people."

Really ? You think nobody would be using computers if Microsoft hadn't existed ? How do you figure that one out ?

"Stealing ideas? Are you still at school? every company does that, from television shows to cars."

Some companies *gasp* actually *invent new things*. Yes I know the concept is strange, but believe me, it does happen occasionally...

"Besides, I thought that the GPL philosophy was all about not reinventing the wheel, using other peoples ideas and improving upon them. Look at Mandrake, they took a good Linux distribution and made it even better."

Very true; however there is a difference between stealing something and using something which is given freely.

If you don't believe me, just ask a judge.

Re:Microsoft... a big disappointment

[nagora]

How did MS destroy the computer industry? They created it

This is a common myth. MS has contributed almost nothing to the computing industry, certainly much less that the damage it has done by stiffling innovation and creativity by giving jobs to literally tens of thousands of shit programmers who would be unemployable in an industry where quality control existed. Flood the market with garbage and you end up with a garbage market.

I don't know of a single thing MS has produced that didn't either suck (Windows, Outlook etc) or come from another company that they bought and released before making later versions suck (Flight Sim, Word etc.).

I've been programming for 26 years and MS has done nothing except make life harder for people who want to produce quaility, working software that does its job by showing that such an attitude is unimportant in the face of marketing blitzes for crap products that don't work.

The computing industry of 25 years ago was doing just fine without MS. Sure, IBM had a big grip on the business end of things but that was comming to an end as people like Lotus started up. IBM and Apple then helped MS by various insane business decisions and the rest is history.

TWW

Re:Microsoft... a big disappointment

[WildBeast]

Oh yeah? Before Windows 95 how many people used computers? Really not much. Microsoft drove this industry into mainstream.

Re:Microsoft... a big disappointment

[WildBeast]

"Really ? You think nobody would be using computers if Microsoft hadn't existed ? How do you figure that one out ?"

Actually yes some people would be using computers if Microsoft hasn't existed. But look at the percentage of people using computers before Windows 95 and the percentage of people using computers after Windows 95.

"Some companies *gasp* actually *invent new things*. Yes I know the concept is strange, but believe me, it does happen occasionally..."

Sure, that's how business works. Most of the time you'll be copying other peoples ideas, some of the time will be spent improving upon those ideas and some of it will be spent inventing new things.

"Very true; however there is a difference between stealing something and using something which is given freely.
If you don't believe me, just ask a judge."

History shows that many people can have the same idea at the same time. Look at pyramids, there's no way the word could have traveled across continents so fast yet you see pyramids in different places. I don't see what Microsoft could have stolen, usually they buy ideas.

Re:Microsoft... a big disappointment

[WildBeast]

"My point is that MS can only dream of comming up with an idea as useful and reliable as a cheap mobile phone. Actually, I don't think they can even dream of it as it would require putting a product out that works which gets in the way of the cashflow from mugs like you. "

And of course if they did it you would be the first to say that they're abusing of there monopoly.

Windows doesn't suck for me.

Re:Microsoft... a big disappointment

[WildBeast]

And exactly how many people where using computers before Windows 95?

If Windows booted on an 8088, why exactly would people need 1Ghz machines? Processor makers would've gone bankrupt a long time ago.

Re:Microsoft... a big disappointment

[WildBeast]

What's wrong with monopolies? Look at Air Canada, the canadian government helped the competition and stopped air Canada from lowering there prices. Result, the competition went bankrupt and Air Canada have a $4 billion in debts.

On the other hand, the cable company have a monopoly and my broadband internet access costs me $20/month.

Re:Microsoft... a big disappointment

[mpe]

Sure computers did exist, but Bill Gates brought them to the people.

I think you will find that Clive Sinclair is more worthy of such a claim... Or the people at Acron, Commodore, Atari, Apple, etc.

$6M vs $38,000M

[peter303]

Microsoft is sitting on a $38 billion pile of cash. $6 million is 0.15 cents on the dollar.

Ralph Nader says this cash pile is distortion of capitalism. Traditionally companies pay out dividends once they have grown into profitibility. The stockholders are being screwed.

Re:$6M vs $38,000M

[C. Mattix]

The stockholders would be getting screwed if they were expecting to get a dividend. They have purchased stock knowing full well (or at least they should or else they shouldn't be buying stock) that MS has never paid a divident, nor are they expected or legally obligated to. If the stockholders don't like it, then sell, and buy GE.

Re:$6M vs $38,000M

[Trekologer]

Actually, Microsoft is legally obligated to pay dividends. They are only allowed to retain a reasonable percentage of earnings for expansion, etc. The rest is required to go back to the shareholders.

Re:$6M vs $38,000M

[medcalf]

Ralph Nader says this cash pile is distortion of capitalism. Traditionally companies pay out dividends once they have grown into profitibility. The stockholders are being screwed.

Despite the fact that Ralph Nader is a git, he has a point here. Unfortunately, companies now manage to stock value, rather than dividend payout. As a result, companies make decisions that can result in them losing money, but still returning value to their investors (by increasing stock price) until the bottom falls out, and the stock drops precipitously. Of course, they only do this because it's what the investors want. Investors want their stock to increase in value, so they can make money selling it, rather than for the stocks to return a cash dividend to them. Part of the reason is taxation laws which tax dividends more heavily than capital gains, and part of the reason is sheer shortsightedness on the part of the investors.

Re:$6M vs $38,000M

[schon]

Traditionally companies pay out dividends once they have grown into profitibility.

The reason that MS doesn't pay dividends is because Bill Gates is a major shareholder.

If they payed dividends, then Bill will have to pay a HUGE tax bill.

Re:$6M vs $38,000M

[The Pim]

Microsoft is sitting on a $38 billion pile of cash. $6 million is 0.15 cents on the dollar.

It's actually less by an order of magnitude.

Re:$6M vs $38,000M

[Alsee]

If they payed dividends, then Bill will have to pay a HUGE tax bill.

Heay! Now THERE'S a good term for the settlement! Force M$ to pay out all cash on-hand as dividends!

Not only does it strip M$ of some of their power and benefit shareholders, Bill Gates will have to pay billions in taxes! Instantly balances the federal budget!

-

Re:$6M vs $38,000M

[Alsee]

I said "balances the federal budget", not "cover everything".

As usual, the polititians want to be popular for lowering taxes AND be popular by spending more. This required running a deficit - running up your credit cards. The plan is always to make up the difference with fictional future revenues.

This is why 1/3 of the taxes go for nothing more than paying interest to float the debt.

What would you say if your friend told you his salary was $30,000, and that he was paying $10,000/year interest on his credit cards? Oh yeah, his VISA is maxed out, but it's ok, he just got a new SEARS card so he can buy a 36 inch TV?

-

Re:Could this be real?

[Technician]

It's a lot less expensive than paying dammages to Netscape, being broken up and allowing Netscape to expose API's. Netscape could make an OS that would run web appications that would negate the need for a MS OS. They are fighting to keep the monopoly. They don't dare loose at any cost.

Re:Enron

[Speare]

Currently, Enron is the posterchild for the reason for campaign finance reform. If our politicians are swayed by the campaign contributions of Enron's scale, what corruption is seeded by a larger sum of money? If the advertising power of the campaigns is knocked askew by some soft money, isn't it knocked asunder by larger sums?

For a few stories linking Enron to campaign finance, you can look at this topic list on Salon.com. The topic is campaign finance. The headlines mostly discuss Enron in recent weeks.

Absolutely not

[peter303]

Enron had huge debt and 75% of its claimed assets were phoney.
Microsoft has not debt to speak of and $38 billion in cash.

You'd make a terrible investor or stock broker if you cant tell the difference.

Re:We have no one to blame but our dollars

[1010011010]

Collectivism is not the answer, just as slavery is not freedom.

Putting everything under the control of "one person, one vote" is simply mob rule. Democracy should have limits, as should every form of government.

Having an all-powerful central government, but making it "democratic," does not change the fact that it's still an all-powerful central government. It just means there's more people to bribe.

The real shocker....

[Odinson]

Is that no other news sources seem to be carrying this until now.

Are they afraid or just not that observant? This is definatly newsworthy.

The ability to companies to donate money to politicians but shield which politician it is going to to is what is so evil about soft money. At least in the 20s the press could drag a politician through the mud based on his own specific donations. But what would the headline be now? at worst..."Republican party takes donations from Microsoft."

Campain money IS NOT SPEECH. It's just the opposite.

Re:fp

[Znork]

True, but again, the ones in power are the existing political parties, and they are the ones who have the power to change the legislation... and they dont benefit from changing it.

We can complain all we want about bought politicians, but we cant change those rules, and the existing power structures appear unlikely to want to change it...

And, of course, I do feel that they 'represent' me. I'm included in the demographically researched groups they target for advertising. Well, except, of course, the targetted advertising isnt exactly true, it's just what they say to get elected, so again they arent representing the voters.

That, of course, means there isnt any real point to standing under the current system. You'll have to research the demographics yourself, and end up saying almost exactly the same things to get elected, after which you might as well just take cash, since you wont believe in the things you had to say to get elected anyway.

Re:fp

[Billly Gates]

The problem with that is coporations can still buy things for the politicians themselves and not to the campaign. Eg. Cars houses, yatchs, etc.

The MPAA/RIAA and the tobbaco industry has done this for years. They just fly in judges in first class jets to Hollywood with 5 star dinning experiences every night all in the name of educating the judge. The judge in Newy Ork who ruled agaisn't Jon Johnson did this. This kid went to prison, all paid for in the name of education via $$$. ITs sick but pefectly legal and impossible to make it illegal.

Re:SlashDot Users Paid By Microsoft?

[Knobby]

Oh wait.... we can tell just by counting the pro-microsoft comments in this thread!!

Not necessarily!

If I were a paid Microsoft Troll, why would I blindly spout pro-Microsoft rhetoric when I could be much more effective by quietly offering little tidbits of wisdom that cast doubt among the /. horde?.. This wisdom could be offered in the form of pro-BSD comments (MS likes BSD) or even as psuedo-reverse psychology type comments (i.e. "MS sucks, because they have huge security holes in tehir code like *this*".. Which prompts half a dozen folks to either mention that Linux has the same hole, or that MS fixed that problem 6 months ago)..

The point is that if MS were hiring individuals to sway the /. crowd, you can bet your arse that they wouldn't be hiring script kiddies!

Re:Malformed figures

[underpaidISPtech]

from the article:

"...total donations to political donations from Microsoft and its employees to political parties, candidates and PACs in the 2000 election cycle amounted to more than $6.1 million. During this period, Microsoft and its executives accounted for $2.3 million in soft money contributions..."

I'll agree that they don't fully explain how they arrive at the 6 million figure. None of the numbers provided add up, as the article lacks a thorough breakdown. Articles like this infuriate me because you never get the real story. Even after 300 words, all you have is an inflammatory headline (regardless of which "side" you're on), a bunch of numbers associated with a hot topic like money and politics, and not much else.

As for the actual concept of buying political favours; I think we're all adult enough to realize this is nothing new. All this does is confirm to us that MS does it too, just as we suspected.

and the Mass Misinformation Machine rolls on...

Jaded...nothing new really

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Canadian, reading the reactions of various slashdotters, I find it very interesting.

We as a tech community are so ready to shout that Microsoft is evil. You guys are forgetting that this is the American way (which applies to us up too...). Remember those Railroad Tycoons, the Oil Tycoons? The Rockafellers of the world are still around. Why do you think Texas has so many industries that could have been put elsewhere? (Count how many military bases that there are in Texas?)Prominent Texans ensured that Texas was given the goods, and in our present system of government they did not only what they could, but what was expected and did what benefited Texans and especially those prominant citizens. (Sorry Texans, but its the only example I know of as an ignorant canuck ;)

Using money to influence government policy is how government has functioned for a long time. Remember in Ancient Rome, being in position of political power made you rich as businesses petitioned for your support. This is not going to change anytime soon unless we as a society decide that is unacceptable.

America is the land of the free. Its the land of who has got more $$$. The more dough you have, the more freedom you have to do as you wish for good or ill.

Don't piss on M$ because they are doing what is in their best interests and that they have the freedom to do so. Its disgusting that they did do it, but I am much more revolted that the so called democracy of the world is nothing more than auction and that THIS seems news to people . We have to as a society against this truly undemocratic behaviour.

Hopefully this will serve as a case in point for seriously look at our Politicians and their Political Parties and how they govern us.

Though I suppose it could be worse... at least we pretend to have democracy.

Don't mind me though I am just a jaded youth....

A contrarian viewpoint.

[hey!]

I'm not so sure about eliminating soft money. Let me take a contrarian view.

The candidates take the money and use it to buy ads so they can reach the public. This is not a serious problem, it's what comes after that is a serious problem -- the quid pro quo that the donor expects.

So the problem is not money, it is the influence of people who have money.

Making money harder for candidates to raise doesn't mean the need for money goes away -- quite the contrary. The candidates have to work harder for every dollar. The marginal value of every additional dollar raised is higher to the candidate because of the general scarcity of funds. On the flip side, the cost of buying influence drops. Let me propose this law of political fundraising:

To the degree to which campaign money is dear, the cost of political influence is cheap.

As proof, let us suppose that Enron and Microsoft succeeded in buyin our federal government for a few paltry millions. This is unconscionable! It should cost billions to have this kind of influence; influence buying should require bribery on such a grand scale it either prices people out or requires a brazeness so affronting to the common votor that it becomes self defeating.

We should also repeal the notion that corporations are persons with respect to campaign contributions -- it's a legal invitation to bribery.

Re:A contrarian viewpoint.

[brad.hill]

AMEN AMEN AMEN!

It's especially disgusting when you realize the actual costs to us collectively. For a few millions, corporations buy their way into legal tax and accounting loopholes and exceptions worth TENS OF BILLIONS of dollars. It's estimated that there are at least $50bn in taxes uncollected due to shuttling profits to offshore holding companies. I think the "economic stimulus package" Bush proposed gave almost that much away to a few big companies like IBM. It is also quite common for companies like Pepsi(!) to use "restructuring" to avoid paying any income tax.

It would be cheaper to pay all of our Sentators and Congresspeople a million dollars a year and give a million dollar government sponsored budget to every candidate with more than 25% poll numbers in every race for each seat than to keep the current system of influence peddling.

Hell, if you paid people that much, you could even forbid them from working after they retire and avoid the corporate board/Presidential cabinet recycling loop that is an even bigger bribery scam than campaign contributions.

If this is true, I'm worried.

[dave-fu]

Not because Microsoft's giving so much (I'm more worried about movie/record/media lobbies), but because OpenSecrets.org only has Microsoft down for contributing $1,167,162. If they really contributed $6 million, that's $4.8-ish million that opensecrets.org couldn't keep track of, and if they're losing that much with MS, I can only shudder to think how much more other companies might be contributing.

Campaign Finance Bill Vote Today Call these reps

[asv108]

This is from http://www.mccain2000.com/

CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM: ACTION ALERT!!!

A bandaged Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., takes part in a Washington news conference to discuss campaign finance reform, Monday, Feb. 11, 2002. Last week, McCain had a cancerous lesion removed from the left side of his nose which was diagnosed as the earliest form of melanoma and was removed. (AP
Photo/Stephen J. Boitano)

One Last Push: Call Now!

Thank you to all those who phoned and faxed Members of Congress over the past week and urged them to support the Shays-Meehan bill. We've heard many reports of offices flooded with calls on the issue, but the fight is not over.

Recently, the republican party and its leadership stepped up the effort to fight meaningful reform. If you are a Republican, please make sure and mention that fact when you call or fax the following list of Members. Let them know that this issue is important to you and that the passage of Shays-Meehen is necessary in order to restore integrity to America.

Speaker Hastert has declared the campaign finance reform fight "Armageddon" -- and true reform won't come easy. The vote is Wednesday--and we need to keep the pressure on. Below, we have included a list of Members of Congress that we are asking you to call or fax. Please let these members of Congress know that they must vote for Shays-Meehan. In addition, let them know to vote against the poison pill amendments and the sham Ney Bill.

Please call or fax the following list of Representatives:

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL-6) (202) 225-4921 - (202) 225-2082 fax
Rep. Elton Gallegy (R-CA-23) (202) 225-5811 - (202) 225-1100 fax
Rep. Doug Ose (R- CA-3) (202) 225-5716 - (202) 226-1298 fax
Rep. Michael Collins (R -GA-3) (202) 225-5901 - (202) 225-2515 fax
Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA-9) (202) 225-5211 - (202) 225-8272 fax
Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL-20) (202) 225-5271 - (202) 225-5880 fax
Rep. Kenny Hulshof (R -MO-9) (202) 225-2956 - (202) 226-0326 fax
Rep. Nick Smith (R-MI-7) (202) 225-6276 - (202) 225-6281 fax
Rep. Mark Kennedy (R-MN-2) (202) 225-2331 - (202) 225-6475 fax
Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ-2) 202) 225-6572 - (202)225-3318 fax
Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ-11) (202) 225-5034 - (202) 225-3186 fax
Rep. Jim Saxton (R-NJ-3) (202) 225-4765 - (202) 225-0778 fax
Rep. Mike Ferguson (R-NJ-7) (202) 225-5361 - (202) 225-9460 fax
Rep. John McHugh (R-NY-24) (202)225-4611 - (202)226-0621 fax
Rep. Sue Kelly (R-NY-19) (202) 225-5441 - (202) 225-3289 fax
Rep. Paul Gillmor (R-OH-5) (202) 225-6405 - (202)225-1985 fax
Rep. Ralph Regula (R-OH-16) (202) 225-3876 - (202)225-3059 fax
Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-OH-19) (202) 225-5731 - (202) 225-3307 fax
Rep. Melissa Hart (R-PA-4) (202) 225-2565 - (202) 226-2274 fax
Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA-7) (202) 225-2011 - (202) 225-8137 fax
Rep. John Duncan (R-TN-2) (202) 225-5435 - (202)225-6440 fax
Rep. Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV-2) (202) 225-2711 - (202) 225-7856 fax

Please also call your Representative at 1-800-660-8244, even if you did so last week. Urge them to support Shays-Meehan and oppose the sham Ney bill and poison pill amendments.

The House of Representatives uses an e-mail system called "Write Your Rep". You can send e-mails only to your Representative by entering your zip code into the e-mail form - http://www.house.gov/writerep

Will you also send this alert to a friend - or two or five - and ask them to do the same? Let's win true reform THIS WEEK.

Thank you for your continued support.

Re:The United States Government, now with XP

[twitter]

In related news, the library of congress has announced that all volumes and public records would be moved to XP platforms. "Even if they are crashed half the time, it's still much more accesible to people than their local library is.", said the newly appointed librarian. "We just love the auto update feature, " he continued ...

And you thought the posters at the post office were just advertisement.

Re:Enron

[LetterJ]

Michael Moore is a filmmaker and positive irritant of corporate corruption. He became famous for his documentary called "Roger and Me" about the closing of the auto plant in Flint, MI. If you've not seen it, it's definitely worth the rental. He also did a short-lived US TV series called "TV Nation" that was cancelled shortly after. Recently he did another movie called "The Big One" and a series on A&E that I'm blanking on the title of. He's generally a very funny guy who's humor comes in flying in the face of the status quo. Or, if you don't agree with him, he's a hack filmmaker who stirs up conspiracy theories. Whatever you want, I don't care, I like the guy and he still sometimes goes farther than I'd like.

Comment 3 million!

[wiredog]

And it's even on-topic...

1st amendment considerations

[mjh]

I can't believe that /. as such a huge promoter of 1st amendment rights, doesn't see the relationship that limiting or banning soft money has to limiting the freedom of speech.

Here's the deal. If I pay for an advert in support of electing Jimmy Schlessenbaum, that money is counted as a soft money donation to Mr Schlessenbaum. If I give him the money for the ad, and his campaign pays for it, that's a hard contribution and it gets handled under the existing rules and limitations.

This is the problem. I have a right to express my opinion of who to vote for. If we start saying that there are limits on soft money contributions, then we're volunteering for legalized limits of individuals to express their opinions.

For a better description of this, see This article.

I don't like the fact that corporations can buy elections. But I'd rather have an undamaged 1st amendment, than limits on soft contributions.

Re:1st amendment considerations

[mjh]

So what are you saying, that I can't spend any money in the exercise of speech? If that's true, then *anything* that you say on the Internet can't be considered speech if you pay for an ISP! That seems ridiculous to me. Heck, I pay someone to provide me with a paper and pen. Is the thing that I write on that paper with that pen not also protected under the 1st amendment?

I'm not saying that spending money is equal to free speech. I'm saying that I have a right to spend money to help facilitate my freedom to express myself. And if you limit my ability to spend money, you are also limiting my facilities to exercise free speech. Which to me, at least, is a prior constraint on speech and ought to be unconstitutional.

I'd love to see effective campaign finance reform. But I'd also like to introduce to the disucssion the issue that doing so might imply violation of 1st amendment rights. I don't know for sure if this is the case, but it sure seems like a possibility. I'm hoping that people with more knowledge than me will be able to provide better insight.

Re:1st amendment considerations

[mjh]

If I gave you the impression that I claimed to know all things and that I could teach them to you cheaply and quickly, that was a mistake. I did not intend to leave that impression.

I simply hoped by mentioning this information that someone with more knowledge of the subject than I would be able to comment more authoritatively than I had.

Re:1st amendment considerations

[mjh]

It's not that you cannot contribute, it's that someone richer that you can contribute more. Is that fair to you or your candidate?

I don't know if its fair or not. But if that guy wants to spend a lot of money expressing his opinion, it's his prerogative. If he only wants to spend enough money on a pen and paper, that's his prerogative too. If he wants to spend enough money to buy a slot on network TV, who am I to stop him from expressing his opinion?

The biggest problem with campaign finance reform is not controlling the spending that gets done for a particular candidate, but doing so in such a way that doesn't prevent anyone from expressing their opinion.

Answer this question. If we eliminate so called "soft money" will my writing "Vote Jeremy Blumenthal" on my web site be illegal? Remember, I paid for that web site, and I'm using it in support of a candidate. So that's a "soft money" contribution.

Re:1st amendment considerations

[mjh]

Leting someone buy more TV time would be unfair.

Why? Why is this significantly different than me buying a space on a web site? Are you saying that there is a limit to which a person is allowed to express him/herself, and that limit is determined by how much a person ought to be able to spend? This just strikes me as the government *way* over extending into things that the constitution doesn't allow it to govern. Namely my ability to express my opinion. Why exactly should the government impose some limit on how much I can spend to express my opinion?

What if the opinion is not on who I think should be elected. What if I have the opinion that abortion should be illegal? What if I have the opinion that a woman's right to choose is overly restricted? Should the government come in and impose limits on how much I can spend to express either of those opinions?

If the answer is that the government can't impose prior constraints on the expression of opinions (i.e. the 1st amendment), then it can't also do it in terms of expressing an opinion about who to elect.

And this is still the question that I have: how do we do effective campaign finance reform without imposing prior resraints on 1st amendment rights.

No one is saying you cannot contribute, no one is saying you can't use any public forum to express your opinion or political views. But an election must be fair!

How exactly does restricting a person's ability to express their opinion make an election fair?

Re:Finally...

[stinky wizzleteats]

Any numbers available for Sun's lobbying and contributions?

Was Sun contributing money while they were involved in legal action regarding their business practices?

The Microsoft situation is less a matter of corporate political contributions than it is a matter of historic antitrust precedent. That M$'s behavior was not technically illegal brings to mind the Nuremburg legal defense that a war of genocidal agression was not illegal.

Indeed, at the moment, it is not illegal to employ monopolistic activities on a scale without comparison in human history to turn the entire information industry into an oligarchy. As for myself, I find very little comfort in witholding my outrage based on this technicality.

Legal context

[jabber01]

So hiring a law firm, and keeping them on 'retainer' is a valid business practice?

Say I have a legal issue with someone.. I 'retain' the best lawyer in town.. Now, my legal adversary can't use that lawyer because it would be a conflict of interest for the lawyer to take up that commission.. But I'm not actually using the lawyer.. I'm paying a lower fee, to 'retain' him, to have him available if I want..

It's really rather brilliant.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Finally...

[Lonath]

It is illegal.

As a publicly traded company, they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders.

If they spend money away like this and don't expect a return, they are not living up to that responsibility.

On the other hand, if they're spending the money and they DO expect something back, then these are bribes.

Either way, I don't see how a publicly held corporation can spend any of its money on political activities.

new monopoly

[csbruce]

Perhaps Microsoft should be investigated for monopolizing the influence-peddling business.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Finally...

[WinPimp2K]

It is obvious in hindsight, but where are the numbers showing how much MSFT spent in Washington before someone sicced the DOJ on them like a pack of rabid dogs? Yah, I think MSFT needs to be spanked really hard, but the point I'm tyring to make is who looked at all the cash MSFT is sitting on and asked:

"Gee, Microsoft has lots of money, what do you suppose would happen if they became politicized?"

Did the folks at Sun or AOL consider that MSFT might decide to try and get government help before making their complaints?

In short, the way Bill G and Micosoft sees it, they were just minding their own business and figuring the government would pretty much leave them alone. Now that Uncle Guido has delivered the wake up call, they are paying their protection money (lobbyists, campaign contributions)like everyone else who has come to the attention of the US political machine.

The only problem is that Sun (for example) doesn't have the cash reserves to compete on an equal footing in this arena. They should have thought of that before they escalated by bringing a knife to a fistfight.

(These thoughts are not mine, I borrowed 'em from Jerry Pournelle's website, filed off the serial numbers, and put my own spin on them - He did bring up the "politicization of Bill Gates" some time ago.)

whats that?

[geekoid]

Microsoft is trying to buy out a market! say it ain't so!!!

Re:Bastards.

[SerpentMage]

That is exactly it. Globalism is not bad, but corporatism is. And large corporations are bad for our system.

My favourite example is the car industry. "Business Experts" say, car makers need to be big to be competitive. Well lets see, GM (biggest and financially sickest), Ford (Really big as well, and very financially sick) BMW and Porsche (relatively small and incredibly profitable). Yeah I agree with these boneheads who think bigger is better (NOT!).

Look at Japan where large corporations have ruled for eons. Japan is REALLY financially sick and has problems. Look at some of the European countries with large coroporations (Germany, France). They are becoming sick as well. Countries with real venturists, US, UK, Canada, Australia, Spain, USA (partially) there are not major problems.

Corporations are bad for the long term financial health of an economy!!!

Incumbent Protection Act of 2002

[invenustus]

AMEN, brother! I was waiting for someone in this thread to summarize all the arguments against this horrible piece of legislation. As many commentators have pointed out, Shays-Meehan should be called the Incumbent Protection Act. For more on that, here's a letter I got printed in the Star-Ledger (a New Jersey newspaper) last week, with my favorite line in bold:

There is a fundamental conflict of interest when mainstream news outlets such as the Star-Ledger editorialize in favor of campaign finance restrictions. If citizens are prohibited by force from helping candidates of their choice gain media exposure, the news media have almost total control over what the public sees. Incumbent candidates, in addition to the huge advantage of having recognizable names, inevitably receive more media coverage than their opponents. When incumbents are not seriously challenged at election time, they lose an incentive to serve their constituents. The real consequences of increased campaign spending are more competitive elections and a better-informed electorate, both vital ingredients to a free society.

Re:Can new evidence be added?

[J. J. Ramsey]

"Can this still be admitted as evidence? I thought the discoveries of fact were over after the initial trial."

IANAL, but AFAIK, you are correct. However, Microsoft's record of influence peddling might affect the settlement because it would indicate to the judge how much MS can or cannot be trusted, and make her even more suspicious of any "weasel room" in the settlement.

To paraphrase Seaman of Dreamcast fame...

[Decimal]

If the public elects someone that they actually want, the other two branches will step in and block that official from doing anything useful. The "checks and balances" are actually designed to prevent the public from having a say in the law.

Wisdom from a video game!

Re:To paraphrase Seaman of Dreamcast fame...

[revscat]

The "checks and balances" are actually designed to prevent the public from having a say in the law.

Partially. The Founders did set up a representative form of government because they did not believe pure democracy to be the best solution. But they also wanted to prevent sudden, drastic changes in policy. The tripartate system we have is an effort to achieve this.

In any case, the public has as much a say in the process as they choose to have. I can assure you that every decision made by the Bush administration is weighed against the political realities. In other words, they check to see what the public thinks.

I love this country. It's fucked up, but I love it.

- Rev.

Re:Finally...

[Jonathunder]

As Molly Ivins often says about influence buying in politics, it's what's legal that's shocking. I don't doubt that one of the things all those expensive lawyers Microsoft has hired can do for them is advise them how to stay (just) within the letter of the law. No lawyer worth his salt advises his client to break laws.

We will see later today whether the US House of Representatives has the ability to close off one of the shocking things that are legal: unlimited "soft" money that makes limits on donations directly to candidates meaningless. We will see.

Legally obligated to pay dividends

[dpilot]

I've heard this, too.
So either it's true, or an urban legend.

If true, are they getting away with it because the stockholders aren't complaining to the SEC? So how about if a bunch of Slashdotters buy a share of MS each, and then complain to the SEC, as stockholders.

I'll have to agree with Nader, the wad of cash they're sitting on distorts capitalism. There's an equivalent in the real world of physics, too. It's called a black hole.

...hiring every...

[dpilot]

This reminds me of the old OS/2 days.

OS/2 was sorely lacking in midi/music software. Some (forgot who) company had finished developing a program called "Easy Keys for OS/2" and was on the verge of release.

Microsoft bought the company. "Easy Keys" never was released, and as far as I can tell, the company was never heard from, again.

History repeats itself because nobody listens the first time.

Re:...hiring every...

[Snowfox]

This reminds me of the old OS/2 days.

OS/2 was sorely lacking in midi/music software. Some (forgot who) company had finished developing a program called "Easy Keys for OS/2" and was on the verge of release.

Microsoft bought the company. "Easy Keys" never was released, and as far as I can tell, the company was never heard from, again.

I believe you're referring to Blue Ribbon Software. They also produced wonderful Amiga MIDI software, such as Bars and Pipes. This was quietly axed as well as a side-effect of the OS/2 blocking move.

Repeal the 16th amendment and their power to tax.

[emil]

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

We can say at this point, with absolutely no reservation, that this was a really bad idea. The magnitude of this power is matched only by its abuse.

From what I understand, this was enacted under the Wilson administration, and the rules for the passage of the amendment were not strictly observed (leading to some constitutional challenges for the IRS).

Supposedly, the federal goverment existed largely off tariff income prior to this time.

What would it really take to get the damned thing repealed?

Re: evidence

[maddogsparky]

What I am referring to is monopolistic behaviours. The individual acts might not be illegal, but denying resources to you oponents (retainers on most of the law offices with anti-trust experience) in multiple states appears to have a pretty clear link with monopolistic actions.

Giving money to politicians (directly or indirectly) is not always legal--there have been cases where bribery was charged, even though legal chanels were used as the basis. As an example, it is legal to give as much money as you want by some methods, but to threaten withholding those funds unless a politician votes your way has been found to be bribery. I'm not accusing MS specifically of this, but it sure seems that they are trying to influence legislation (outspending Enron's whole year spending in the seven days before the verdict in the orginal trial).

Employee PACs versus Company donations

[peter303]

Both MicroSoft and Enron plus many large companies have employee politcal action groups. As an employee you are encouraged to contribute a modest amount much like the United Way. The PAC funds are then disbursed to political candidates according to what the employees suggest. The concept of the employees PAC is that pooling money together will have a bigger voice. Many employees will follow their company leaders in what they think is best for the company, but you'll see dissenting contributions other candidates.

Re:figurehead? incorrect.

[elefantstn]

Congress did approve the current war, but, if any of them tried to vote no, they would be impeached, or "mysteriously" resign.

I really really doubt that. I mean, Jeanette Rankin voted against both World Wars, but she didn't get kicked out of office by hordes of pro-war hawks.

commas and periods

[Alien54]

In some countries, the decimal refers to the period (or point) between dollars and cents, while the comma is used between hundreds, thousands and millions.

Some countries reverse this and use the comma as a decimal and the period between hundreds, thousands and millions. (ie. In Brazil, $3.409,75 would be Three Thousand Four Hundred Nine REAL and 75 CENTAVOS.)

Re:Enron

[donutello]

Enron is the posterchild for campaign reform only because most people lack any ability for logical reasoning.

1. Enron donated a lot of money to politicians.
2. Enron also lied about their financial position.
3. Enron forced employees to have most of their 401(k) assets in company stock.
4. Enron went bust because of #2.
5. Employees lost their retirement savings because of 3 and 4.

There is no connection between anything that ailed Enron and their campaign contributions. NO ONE has alleged any connection and in all the reading I have done of the case, they seem to be completely independent: The politicians did not lie about Enrons finances. The politicians did not cover up the lies (Arthur Anderson did). The politicians did not encourage Enron employees to invest most of their 401(k) funds in company stock. The politicians did not cause the company stock to tank - in fact afaik some politicians actually lost the money they had invested in the companys stock.

I have heard no evidence to give me any reason to suspect that the politicians had any knowledge of the fudging of numbers and fraud that was committed. Regardless, it's not the politicians job to stop that - it's the SECs.

Sheesh. A bunch of clueless articles about under the title Campaign Reform do not make a valid argument.

An Example of Sophistic Reasoning

[llywrch]

> Microsoft is NOT doing anything illegal when it spends money on political contributions. It is the politicians that are doing
> something illegal if they let that money sway their votes.

Hmm. And do you also argue that it's not rape if a woman wears a tight sweater & a short skirt? (After all, if she was dressed that way, she *must* have been asking for it.)

Only someone truly arrogant & so monomoniacally focussed on success at any cost would accept this argument in defense of an unethical action.

Geoff

Re:An Example of Sophistic Reasoning

[wadetemp]

He didn't say what Microsoft was doing wasn't immoral.. he said it wasn't illegal. And it's not. Your arugement is perfectly valid as to the morality of the situation, but not to the legality.

Re:An Example of Sophistic Reasoning

[llywrch]

> You can hate Microsoft all you want but this analogy is just plain silly.

I don't know. For an analogy that I came up with on the spur of the moment, & accidentally submitted (I coulda sworn I clicked on the ``preview" button), it has a certain appeal. Your assertion -- that politicians can refuse to listen to corporations that give them money -- puts the burden of responsibility upon the other party -- like the rape victim in my example. It puts all of the blame on the other party, & leaving blameless the party who is spending monetary influence.

But if you'd like a better analogy, what about the crime of prostituion? If you were driving down a known stroll, & offered a person standing on a street corner $60 to ``be nice to you", I doubt either of you would assume you were talking about your recieivng directions to the nearest church. Unless your idea of worship involves an orgasm.

In other words, your argument would mean that the john is not breaking the law. And not contributing to moral delinquincy.

It doesn't matter if the person on the street corner is a prostitute or not. By offering the cash, YOU knew what you wanted. So did the other party. The only proper repsonse is to say no.

(And to take the money, say thanks & run only invites trouble. In either this example -- or for the politician you think can still be objective after accepting money.)

Besides, the people at Microsoft allegedly aren't the dullest knives in the box. They'd figure out real quick that if they gave money to a certain congresscriter, & said congresscriter was ``too busy" to either listen or vote in a friendly way, they'd stop their contributions very quickly.

Geoff

Isn't there a "client confidentiality" problem?

[gosand]

What if M$ hired all the big law firms that dealt with anti-trust? Wouldn't that mean that those firms legally couldn't disclose certain information about M$, because of client confidentiality? Or is that just a practice and not a law?

IANAL, I try and look at things logically.

Re:We have no one to blame but our dollars

[lightfoot jim]

It's not in the power of our government, or any other agency to mandate and enforce a viewpoint, even one as sensible as "Stop worshipping money."

Regardless, it's not money worship that has reduced our democracy to the mess it is now. It's laziness and disinterest. People generally don't want to take the time to understand political issues. Most don't care, and the ones that do are concerned only with the issues they hear in the news. Do you recall any discussion of relations with China, our military objectives in Saudi Arabia, or the "war" on drugs in the last presidential debates? No, because these topics are complex and emotionally difficult for most voters . Perhaps if Seventeen magazine changed its title to "One year shy of voting age," this problem would become more apparrent to the general public. The issues which do get mention in every political campaign all can be distilled to "What do you propose to give me?" Whether it be giving out medicare, social security, school vouchers, a tax refund, etc, it's all about the government giving .

If the intended audience of political campaigning truly worshipped money they would be at least slightly familiar with scarcity theory and realize that giving cannot exist without givers. Unfortunately, most people seem to deify, if not worship, government and believe it can create something from nothing. Perhaps they believe that it's the Bureau of Engraving and Printing rather than taxation that backs up social security checks.

This lack of knowledge and concern is the core of the problem w/ democracy, the need (and lack) of a competent voting body. The framers of the US figured on a stable aristocracy made up of the electoral college and congress. Whether this worked as planned could be the subject of many debates. Today however, we're seeing the outgrowth of what Americans truly worship, and it isn't money. It's equality. All men are presumably created equal but it's now practically against the law to allow this the be simply a starting point. As emotionally repugnant as it is to most of us, myself included at times, a society as a whole cannot succeed without an underclass which has no political power. Nearly every great accomplishment in the written history of the world has come form such a society, and the stricter this stratification, the more impressive its accomplishments. Compare Rome before AD200 with what is now Germany of the same time period or the difference between Egypt in the time of the pharaohs with what is Algeria today in that period. Look at the Incans and the peoples living in North America contemporarily. Even in the present day, we can see a difference between nations where nearly everyone receives post-secondary education and those where only a select few do so. Equality is a sweet poison. Unfortunately our equality addiction has left us in a position where our most successful politicians are those who have learned to appeal to our least educated and this is best accomplished through expensive advertising which requires hefty monetary support.

It makes me sick in my gut to come to terms with it, but the promises of universal suffrage are lies.

Re:Flamebait, but it's my genuine opinion.

[jedidiah]

This is any worse than Republicans doing the same? At least I can sympathize with someone down on their luck or some bum. Republicans will pick your pockets, leave your grandchildren with the bill and end up giving it to those that have likely never needed for anything.

Don't even try and pretend that Republicans aren't the masters of corporate welfare.

Re:Finally...

[spectecjr]

Yes, but I can't post them because of the Junk filter (frickkin' lameness)

Open Secrets has all the info you'll ever need.

For example, in 1999, Oracle, Sun, Netscape and AOL pitched in for $6.8mm of lobbying. THat's not including soft-money donations, which pushes the total way higher.

Given that all of these companies work together (Steve's a friend of Scott's, who is a friend of Larry... and all of them get money from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and all of them get legal help from Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati), it is suprising that they would lobby together too?

Silicon Valley doesn't need to donate 6mm all from one company. They can share the load.

Re:Repeal the 16th amendment and their power to ta

[MindStalker]

Yes, but immediently changing this would lead to million of fed workers out of a job. Sure there jobs are pointless most of the time, but they are jobs. The only practical solution is to cut the budget until we can afford to get rid of income tax.

Politcal Gaming

[virg_mattes]

Politics is generally much more complex than this, and much more "old boy network" than you assume. This experiment hits closer when it's laid out like this:

Your friend, who works with you, introduces someone as one of his friends. Your friend asks you to do a favor for his friend, and his friend offers some form of compensation for your effort, be it money or something you want done or whatever. Normally it's not a problem, and over time this person needs occasional favors, always for return consideration. Soon you've got a big history for helping this person. Now, he approaches you and asks for a favor that's not exactly legal, but he can set it up so that you get your return, he gets his favor and nobody is the wiser. It's easy to say no, you'd think. Here's the catch. First off, if you say no, your original friend will be upset with you. Second, people in your industry start shying away from you since you're "not a team player" in their eyes. Third, if you sell out your friend's friend, your history for helping that person will come out, and most likely those who learn of it will take that out of context. Fourth, all of the considerations you've taken from this person will immediately fall under suspicion, even if at the time they were perfectly innocent. Fifth, and most important of all, you're suddenly not able to do your job very well, because nobody in your field will help you out or work with you. Soon, when your boss reviews your work, (s)he'll find that your performance is declining, and won't want to hear you say that it's because your coworkers are submarining you.

Not looking so simple any more, is it?

Virg

Wait...

[Sj0]

No, that's just American democracy in action. Don't worry.

After all, nobody was angry about criminals being let go, why should it anger anybody that they bought their way out?

It's a lot easier than you think.

[Stoutlimb]

Suppose Microsoft hires a legal firm to do some small yet non-trivial task... In searching for lawyers, the prosecution against Microsoft would then not choose that law firm, for conflict of interest reasons... (They worked for Microsoft in the past, why should you trust them to be hard on MS.)

As long as all the law firms (not necessarily each individual lawyer) are are on the payroll for something small, that's considered a conflict of interest, so they won't be considered. $40,000,000 suddenly will go a long way if you want every law firm in New York to give you a review on an EULA and suggest grammatical changes, or other such trivia.

Scary.

Re:Repeal the 16th amendment and their power to ta

[emil]

It would lead to a lot more than that -- no more social security, medicare, welfare, or any other entitlements.

However, it would also (hopefully) bring an end to the worst of our government's foreign policy. I think that takes priority - I'll take a smashed economy to any more people that hate us.

Approval voting...

[wowbagger]

The only problem I see with approval voting is, sad to say, the average person wouldn't understand it.

I think BNOTA has a better chance of being understood.

As for the primaries - Just don't let them ask what party you are registered for. Only let them ask "are you a registered voter in this district". Remove the party affiliation from the voter registration card. IMNSHO, the political parties have NO DAMN RIGHT to ask me my affiliation.

Re:Approval voting...

[namespan]

The only problem I see with approval voting is, sad to say, the average person wouldn't understand it.

Confusion is a concern which I'm not altogether sure how to address, but I think it'd be minimal. Which we already apparently have.

Balot wording could make it easy: "Please place a punch beside EACH candidate you endorse for office". Worse case scenario is that a confused individual would vote only for the candidate they wanted most.

I think you missed my point with the primaries, tho' -- not letting them ask your party affiliation wouldn't solve the problem of letting people intentionally screwing up primaries of parties they oppose by voting for candidates farthest from center. Opening primaries opens them for that risk.

One possible solution would be runoff style elections, like some people do for city councils...

Re:Approval voting...

[namespan]

You're assuming that the most likely choice for a party's nomination (by actual members of the party) is the worst case scenario for the country. This isn't necessarily the case. Strategic voting in open primaries would give us nominations farther away from center. We'd have Pat Buchanans running against Ralph Naders, rather than Bushs against Gores.

Take, for example, a hypothetical Republican Primary in which we have John McCain, George W. Bush, Alan Keyes, and Pat Buchanan (listed in order from center to right). The most viable candidate is McCain, with Bush as a close second. Because Bush is a bit more to the right, he wins in the primary.

Now, if the primary was open and everyone voted their conscience, McCain would be more likely to win. But if the primary was open, and people voted _strategically_ (that is, with their special interests), people supporting other parties would want to vote for the LEAST viable candidate, the one farthest away from center. Pat Buchanan, the farthest right of the right.

Re:Could this be real?

[LoseNotLooseGuy]

They don't dare loose at any cost.

While I agree that Microsoft is seldom interested in "letting loose or releasing" anything, I think MS is more concerned with the possibility of failing to win. The word you were looking for is lose.

Congratulations! You have been participant #33 in my campaign to rid Slashdot of this error.

Bravo

[budgenator]

That was on of the best posts I've read in ./ in a while. I really like the way you've caught them either way; If I were a M$ stockholder I might consider filing a law-suit.

Personaly I don't think that any contribution is wrong, but crearly the amonts spent by MS is unreasonalbly large, and clearly irresponsible fiduciarily.

Re:what I would add

[wowbagger]

I wasn't trying to discredit your views, rather I was giving them more weight by showing that others had come to the same conclusion.

Also, I have read Heinlein's book, and in it you could serve in the military OR in civil service. In fact, a long passage in the book covered that very fact (in which the discussion was that if a very disabled individual were to desire citizenship, the government would go to great lengths to provide a chance to serve.)

I suggest YOU go re-read the book.

Re:Finally...

[JamesOfTheDesert]

Either way, I don't see how a publicly held corporation can spend any of its money on political activities.

No. There are other reasons for a corporation to contribute to political parties. The corporate officers may want a candidate to win becasue the alternative would be harmful to the company.

For example, if Joe Lefty is running on a platform of nationalizing all corporations, a company would want to support the oppostition without any desire but to see Mr. Lefty lose. There needn't be quid pro quo.

So, while they spend money with the expectation of a return *of some kind*, the return does not have to be in the form of specifc behavior from a politician in response to the contribution. They may simply want the candidate to do what he or she was going to do anyway.

Re:Monopoly?

[Chris Johnson]

The impressive parts are that (A) Microsoft keeps finding new offensive behaviors that people hadn't even thought to make illegal because it would take absurd amounts of malice and resources (yeah, let's buy out ALL THE LAWYERS so our opponents can't have any good ones), and (B) that they're choosing to do this despite the amount of financial waste involved. If they will do this, how much other money are they wasting on pointless things?

Cynics

[Chris Johnson]

Please pre-emptively moderate this down as a flame, because it is a flame of the flamiest flamishness... thank you... now:

Could all the young cynic types, who don't have to deal with the consequences of their cynicism just yet and enjoy trying to look with-it and cool by remarking how 'everybody does this so what's the problem', please-

• attain equal cynicism on the odds of your having any sort of decent life
• attain equal cynicism on environmental affairs
• attain equal cynicism on public safety
• attain equal cynicism on the safety of the very food you eat
• attain equal cynicism on the medical industry being too busy inventing penis-hardening drugs to save you when you're discouraged, choked with smog, run over and poisoned, and
• die?

(since you're gonna die anyway, why mess things up for the rest of us with your cynicism and opinions on what WE should tolerate in our environment, our government, and the corporations we allow to operate?)

:D

Then, we can feed you to the poor and you'll be good for something at last! :D

Re:Campain reform MAJOR PROBLEM

[Alsee]

Require a binding "none of the above" entry on all elections.
there would have to be a new election.

Major problem! What the heck happens if this happens 10 times in a row? Or 100? The process can be endless.

How does eliminating the major candidates magically gaurentee that the minor candidates aren't fruitcakes?

-

Re:Campain reform MAJOR PROBLEM

[wowbagger]

Worst case scenario - the voters get tired, and vote for the lesser of two evils. In other words, it degenerates to what we have now.

However, remember that when that happens, the major parties will have had their big boys cut, and so the odds are much better that a minor party player would win. Do you really think the Republicats would allow that? They would get their act together within two elections.

Re:Switzerland doesn't scale.

[mpe]

That's roughly 40 times the amount of people. 7 million people voting on a lot of issues may make some sense (this is why many states have similar setups).

Remember that the power of the US federal government is rather restricted anyway, compared with other national governments. Since the US constitution specifically restricts what it can do.

Representative governments (republics) can work, and when they do work, they work more efficiently.

It is however non trivial how you make them work and what mechanisms need to be in place to miminise corruption.

Re:We have no one to blame but our dollars

[mpe]

Regardless, it's not money worship that has reduced our democracy to the mess it is now. It's laziness and disinterest. People generally don't want to take the time to understand political issues.

Which means little competition for professional lobbiests. Representing both corporate self interests and political extremists.

Re:Campain reform MAJOR PROBLEM

[Alsee]

Worst case scenario - the voters get tired, and vote for the lesser of two evils.

Most likely scenario - no matter who the candidates are, and no matter how many repeat elections there are, nobody ever gets more than 40% of the vote. I'd actually supect that the percentages would tend to go down after the first election or two, once you've eliminated the "major" candidates, and no one has ever heard of the new ones.

-