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Microsoft's Political Lobbying Record
pierreduFwench writes "With the U.S. national elections just around the corner, you may find this interesting: Opensecrets.org, a website focusing on 'Responsive Politics' recently published lobbying and donations info for the 2002 elections (to date). You can see the breakdown of
Microsoft's individual dossier here. Also, looking at the 'Top Donations by Industry', you may notice that Microsoft is, conspicuously, the only entry under 'Computers/Internet.'" Very interesting graphs.
As everyone knows by now, Gray Davis got money from Oracle. Shouldn't that be a Computers/Internet entry?
I like how all this lobbying started right about when the anti-trust suits started rolling in. Hell, they even set up a "Washington lobbying office". It seems that it might have worked, considering no one really knows what their 'punishment', if any, is.
'When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.' -HST
IF microsoft is spending 3 million in 2002 on contributions, how much are they spending on unreported little perks (a notebook to "try out" for a couple of years, fully functional "demo" copy of software, etc)?
Technology is most abused by the very people it was created to help
What is more interesting is that Washington Democrat Senator Maria Cantwell was elected -- "winning" by a red cunt hair against Slade Gordon -- after spending all the fake only-exists-on-paper money she "earned" from being CEO of Real Media.
3 2801.asp
She had to be bailed out after her company and their lousy spyware bloatware crashed and burned, and is now ironically bringing in lots of money from the infamous creators of Windows Media: Microsoft.
More info:
http://www.cantwellscash.com/
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/michelle/malkin0
I'm surprised that MS was the focus of this story. According to the website, other computer companies donated more than MS did. Yeah, MS was the only one under "Computers/Internet," but AOL Time Warner is on there under "TV/Movies/Music." AT&T, Bellsouth, Verizon...they're also internet providers, and all four of those companies gave more than MS did.
MS clocked in with $9.5M, where AOL spent $12M, and AT&T clocked in with a whopping $17.5M!! Man, I wish they'd lobby me for something...
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
A decade ago, Chairman Bill was minor league, but decidedly democratic, by a 3:1 margin. This was back when Big Blue was the great enemy, and Microsoft wrote cool Mac software (oh, yeah, and DOS.)
As his power base has grown, and as he has become more entrenched and established, he has increasingly favored the Republicans. Of course, the decision of the Clinton white house to trustbust him can't have helped.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
"i call bullshit. this fact alone means the site has a hidden agenda and the info should be taken with a huge grain of salt."
Oh come on the stats are good, it's just that lots of firms have organized contributions in such a way to avoid such listings. MS being the new comer still has not fully got in the swing. Give em time and they will likely subvert such sites in the number of ways that remain. Chief amoung them getting the employees to donate to a "favourable choice" representative. Just think of all the voting blocks unions try to create then change that to dollars and you have the idea.
See the problem with covering these practices is the amount of computation necessary and the amount of data required is brutal compared to nice numbers like they cited.
The reason for this was that the broadcasters and the TV manufacturers and pretty much everyone else remotely interested in HDTV standards had tons of lobbyists working full time to push their interests, except for companies in the computer industry. A couple computer companies had a couple of part-time lobbyists working on this, or something pathetic like that.
Microsoft is not doing something bad here. The ones doing something bad are all the other companies that should be on that list but aren't.
According the site Jay Inslee has got most from MSFT, total of $237,400 - nice money already. He is one of the persons behind the "Internet Radio Fairness Act" - "designed to make the copyright royalty arbitration process more fair for smaller entities." What else has he been involved with?
You fucking retard. Money doesn't grow on trees. Corporations make money by providing useful services. People pay for these services. Even if they don't pay directly, they are the root of corporate profit and the buck stops with them. You vote with your dollars. Your single vote may not mean squat, but that's democracy. If a corporation does anything sufficiently egregious, it's the responsibility of every citizen to VOTE WITH THEIR DOLLARS.
maybe I'm just being paranoid, but look at it :
prior to the swinging of the executive pendulum towards the republicans, more of their money went to democrats. but ( and it would be interesting to see what they gave in 97 and 99 ) when things took a turn for the worse publicly ( interns, cigars, cum-stained clothing ), more money goes to the republicans. i'd like to see what they did in 99, when everyone sort of just said fuck it, so what if he banged an intern? look at hillary... and got over it.
looking at the numbers, i'd say they were hedging their bets in 98-00, and then went w/ the winner when dubya got in. judging from the results of the case, i'd say it paid off.
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
...to the grotesque and lopsided amount of influence big labor has. But wait, they're for the "little guy" just like the Democrats. Hah. Vote Libertarian.
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/
Blue Chip Investors
Top Donor Dossiers
Here you'll find total contributions for the 100 biggest givers in American politics since 1989--information that exists nowhere else. Read the full report. Read about our methodology.
* View top organizational givers by rank
* View top organizational givers by alphabetical order
* View top individual contributors from these organizations
Search for an organization by name:
Top 10 donors:
American Fedn of State, County & Municipal Employees $30,671,426
National Education Assn $21,116,383
National Assn of Realtors $20,414,385
Assn of Trial Lawyers of America $19,931,717
Philip Morris $18,951,671
Teamsters Union $18,858,733
Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers $18,394,547
American Medical Assn $18,377,814
Service Employees International Union $17,647,346
Communications Workers of America $17,597,372
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
The corporations have no police or armies of their own to speak of (thankfully), and any power they have is given to them by a government which is available to the highest bidder(s). If that government didn't have the kind of power it does, the corporations would have to create their own force, which would alienate their customers.
It's a myth that the US government holds back the corporations and forces them to play fair. For at least a hundred years it has done the opposite. The only times it every does anything right is when some wealthy person or group pays it to.
Unfortunately, there is no graceful way to change this situation. Try to change the government and the corporations work against us. Try to change the corporations and the government works against us. It will come to a head this century.
Not to mention teachers who flat out suck and should be fired for that.
I had a Spanish teacher in High School who didn't teach jack. He would spend most of the class period asking the students "trivia" questions for extra points. Maybe once or twice a week we would crack open the Spanish book and attempt to learn something. There were hardly any homework assignments or tests at all in the class.
Yet, very few students complained because he gave almost everyone in the class a free grade of "A." The only students who complained were the one or two people who actually wanted to learn something.
When I privately asked an administrator if they knew what was happening in the class, they said they did. When I asked why they didn't fire the bum for not teaching what he was being paid to teach (or at least get on his case), they replied they couldn't because of some nonsense with the teacher's union and "tenure."
Seriously, it seems like something really warped is going on in schools, and I wouldn't put it past all the teacher's union "contributions" that are often made against the will of many teachers themselves to state and federal legislatures.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Both soft-money and hard-money contributions to either political party should be flat-out illegal.
So you support repeal of the First Amendment?
Michael
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality;..."
They did lobby and won most battles, just not all.. The side effect was for our economy to gear up for a very deep cleansing cycle. We call it the great depression.
Capitalism in a democracy (or republic) can operate with only so much overhead (corruption) and then it cleanses itself. This happens every sixty years or so. The greater the corruption, the deeper the recession/depression. Every single MSFT or AOL or PMs lobbying successes equals a larger failure country wide. Eventually (any remotely) economic law will be total spegetti code and we will need an FDR to fix it.
Lets hope the voting public realises this before they vote/relect any candidate without strict views on campain finance. Soft money may be gone after this election, but the election process is far from fair.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Microsoft isn't the only major corporation that has been funneling money to political organizations. Looking at the top 100 list, you'll see a lot of companies with "questionable" ethics that "donate" even larger sums of money than Microsoft:
5 Philip Morris $18,951,671
12 AT&T $17,464,374
18 Citigroup Inc $14,762,646
19 United Parcel Service $14,621,284
21 Goldman Sachs $13,665,527
26 AOL Time Warner $12,195,822
28 FedEx Corp $11,555,286
29 BellSouth Corp $10,838,209
30 SBC Communications $10,695,349
31 Verizon Communications $10,255,052
33 RJR Nabisco/RJ Reynolds Tobacco $10,079,162
34 Ernst & Young $9,967,638
35 Lockheed Martin $9,862,899
36 JP Morgan Chase & Co $9,861,326
40 Microsoft Corp $9,468,287
In fact, the Green Party is the only one that thinks corporate power is a problem. And we are the only party whose values line up with the open-source commuity. See for yourself at http://www.greenpartyus.org/
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
- The Microsoft anti-trust mess still appears to be continuing. Inability to make a suit goes away is not a sign of power.
/huge/ lawsuit, and had to surrender an extremely large settlement. And, they're /still/ being nailed with lawsuits from longtime smokers (which will only increase if a certain curious model of asbestos lawsuit succeeds -- some plaintiffs are suing an asbestos firm not for suffering actual ailments, but merely because exposure imposed risk of developing such ailments). Having to pay out billions and billions, and then further being raped by politicians raising cigarette taxes (discouraging your customers) and bans of smoking in bars (ditto) is not a sign of power.
- The tobacco companies got hit with a
- Ken Lay should probably not be planning any trips out of the country soon, because the heat isn't off. Neither, for that matter, should Bernie Ebbers, who has gotten to see executive after executive cooperate with authorities to save their own skins.
When was the last time a government department went bankrupt and had to fold due to chronic inefficiency? When was the last time a high-ranking civil servant was sacked due to incompetence or malfeasance -- keeping in mind that both Reagan and Clinton served a full eight years despite their questionable records? How many companies could basically ignore the need to have a budget, or survive that long with bozos who care more about popularity than efficacy?
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Personal safety is certainly a 'rights' issue -- you have no rights if you're trivially open to violation.
Take a look around you. Are they identical to each other in capabilities, when it comes to handling themselves with regards to violence? Probably not -- both physically (some people are larger, faster, stronger than others) and mentally (ability to take in a tactical situation, ruthlessness to follow through if need be). Even if you assume a "fair" situation, the playing field of crime is biased towards an attacker...
An attacker can bring partners and choose his victims, within reason -- there's not much point in trying to carjack pedestrians, for instance, so if he really wants a car, that slightly limits things. But say that a man wants sex, and is a sufficient asshole that he'd rather take it than earn it or pay for it. In that case, he can pick where he operates (e.g. areas with cover where he can hide), when (probably when there are minimal witnesses), and on whom (pref. a woman alone, one smaller and likely much weaker physically). Would you say it's a coin-toss, or would you say that the attacker has an edge? I'd say the latter -- while he may not be bright enough to avoid leaving evidence, that's of little consolation to the victim.
Even for a mugging, weapons aren't needed -- say, three-on-one. Two approach from behind, the third punches in the kidneys or chops at the back of the neck, follow up with groin kneestrike from the front. Even if the victim fights back -- without a weapon, as you would seem to prefer -- the attackers might expect at most a bruise or two, given the ratio, plus the victim's money and other valuables. A lethal firearm equalizes things a bit given that many thugs won't be amenable to taking a bullet (instead of a punch that can be recovered from MUCH more readily) just so his partners can split $40.
Incidentally, in Pittsburgh a serial sex offender was recently caught -- after eight or so victims. He wasn't caught by police footwork -- he was only stopped after he attacked the wrong civillian, twice in one day (the first time, she got away... and went home and retrieved her pistol). Tell the final "victim" that she shouldn't have had a gun.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
No, she wasn't just snorting coke. In fact, she was caught hiding a rock of crack cocaine, by staff at a drug treatment center, at which she was a patient. For this she received a ten day jail sentence. It should be noted that the evidence of her possessing crack was thrown out of court on a technicality, on the presumption that staff members of a medical treatment center should not be compelled to testify given confidentiality rules. However, some staff members had already publicly admitted finding the crack to journalists, so the facts had already become public knowledge.
Given that Ms. Bush has a long history of drug abuse, it's astonishing that the matter wasn't pursued further. Except for her family connections. Further proof that if you're rich or powerful criminal law simply doesn't apply.
--M
Have you heard of primaries and write-in votes, yet? People are permitted to choose their candidates; it's just that a large number feel that it's easier to choose a party affiliation, and many probably vote on the basis of party instead of the competencies and positions of individual candidates.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Capitalism isn't the right way to run a government though. People that make the most money get to determine the laws and rights of others? I don't thinks so.
easy, the system has been successfully tried before.
Each candidate is alloted equal amount of time on the television and they use it to promote their cause. Similar things with other media etc.
The basic idea is, the government ensures that all candidates are given equal exposure.
In USA, if someone's program appeals to more people but the candidate doesn't have enough money to tell everyone about it, then the jerk with a big purse wins because people will think there is no alternative.
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
H.G. Wells, "The Outline of History"
So why even bother with the pretense of a Democracy? Just let the mercantile class run things. Hey, it worked for 16th century Italy, right?
:-(
Here is a free clue for you: what "capitalist" society (as you put it) is a multi-national corporation a member of?
I honestly think the founding fathers would roll in their graves if they could hear their decendants
the amsuing part is how the main article points out that "Microsoft is, conspicuously, the only entry under 'Computers/Internet". They don't point out the other 15 companies that got their own catagory. A single company would need to spend well over $5 million to get on that list of top 100.
"Nobody writes jokes in base 13." - Douglas Adams