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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.
what more evidence do people need?
huge organizations designed to aggregate money with all the rights and abilities as citizens. how can the interests of individuals even come close to being recognized in an arena like that?
they can't.
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
I don't think it comes as any great shock that Microsoft is doing all they can to get their hads in politicians pockets.
Microsoft walks and talks like a big tobacco company. All that's missing is Bill Gates in cowboy boots.
It's interesting how the tobacco companies (also huge lobbyists) ancestors owned slaves, whereas Microsoft has enslaved the human race with their craptacular software.
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
So where's the report on KPCB?
The venture capital firm behind Netscape, Oracle, Sun, Apple, etc etc etc etc...?
Until halfway through the antitrust trial, Microsoft's donations were nearly negligible. Compare and contrast that with the above. Don't forget to include the members of the boards of directors of these companies as individuals, as well as their spouses and immediate family when looking up their donations.
You may be surprised. Microsoft is very new at this game; Silicon Valley has been doing it for YEARS.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
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.
It is a sad thing that all the real power in this country lies in the big companies, ie, Microsoft, Tobacco companies, Enron, and so on. They are the ones that decide what passes and what doesn't. That's why us, the average joe, has to put up with stupid laws like the DMCA. This is a sad, but true development.
The American Federation of Teachers ($15,512,224
) is throwing in much more than Microsoft is on lobbying efforts ($9,468,287).
And look at how lopsided their contributions are toward democrats. They obviously have special interests- this needs a lot of attention from the media!
"Microsoft is, conspicuously, the only entry under 'Computers/Internet.'"" Microsoft also conspicuously has tens of billions of dollars in cash to sit on. Heaven forbid that they have any interests in politics.
And this is interesting how?
A company is bound to invest where it thinks its future revenues will lie.
In this case the future revenues will come from legislation protecting Intellectual Property monopolies. Sad but true. Every million dollars spent protecting interests in DC will return manyfold millions of dollars in terms of higher prices for product.
Maybe there is a ray of hope though. The so-called robber barons of the railroads, steel, shipping and oil back at the end of the 19th Century were eventually reined in. I wonder why they didn't lobby the hell out of government at the time, and if they did, why did they lose the battle against anti-trust legislation?
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.
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?
Perhaps we already have one (correct me if you know), but it seems that a lot of important tech issues are being decided in Washington by the highest bidder. Two things get action in the U.S. political system...money and votes. They pay attention to groups of people - like the steel workers of america - because they vote uniformly in mass and all contribute financially to their PAC. There are way more of us (the open source community) than many of these unions...we just need organization. I'd be more than willing to give the amount I owe in taxes each year to the Free Software Foundation to balance off as a tax credit if they acted as a PAC for our cause.
It completely reaffirms why I can't stand the Republican party.
Look at the charts that are overwhelmingly Republican. Tobacco, Oil, Big Business.
Now look at the charts that are overwhelmingly Democrat. Individual Rights, Workforce Rights.
Realistically both parties completely suck, but I still don't know how anyone with any common sense or sense of social Justice can be a Republican.
...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
Both soft-money and hard-money contributions to either political party should be flat-out illegal.
With this kind of money flying around, there's no way in hell that the Senate and Congress will represent the people, and be for and held accountable to the people. They're for the corporations and accountable to them, as well as other money-laden organizations.
Money being given to politicians for political objectives is disturbing, no matter who does it. Its obviously disturbing when its MS and the Tobacco companies giving money to politicians, especially when the government's supposed to be trialing MS for being an illegal monopoly.
Its also disturbing when teachers unions donate 15M dollars. Sure, some of that goes to make sure that the teaching of evolution isn't outlawed in schools. But most of it goes towards protecting bad teachers who should be fired. Thanks to fanatical tenure terms enforced by teachers unions, teachers who should be fired aren't. Point in case, Rita Wilson. That child-molesting bitch sexually harassed, sexually assaulted, and violated the privacy of at least twenty teenaged girls entering a school dance. Another great one is the case around Brandy Blackbeard, where some retarded teacher accused her of "casting a hex on him" and she was suspended.
Contributions to politicians from organizations are just thinly veiled bribes. In a democracy, everyone is supposed to be equal, but such contributions make that impossible. Ideas and laws are propogated not based upon how many voting citizens like them or how good they are, but on who has the most money to give to politicians. Point of case, the DMCA, and the 1998 Mickey Mouse Copyright Extention Act.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
People choose to use MS. No one chose to be a slave.
Notice how the site posts the following disclosure at the bottom of many of the Congressional query pages:
Quality of Disclosure:
Quality of disclosure data has been removed from the site because of errors in the Federal Election Commission's database. The FEC has informed us that it will not supply updated disclosure data until mid-October. We will post new figures on disclosure quality as soon as possible.
Convenient timing, eh? Elections are November 5th, and the FEC won't supply the updated information until "mid-October". That's probably not enough time for opensecrets to input the data before the elctions.
If the FEC supplied that information on a timely basis, I might be able to make a more educated decision on November 5th.
Suspicious timing, if you ask me.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
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.
Microsoft is, conspicuously, the only entry under 'Computers/Internet
Hold on to those conclusions cowboy, just because they are the only entry does NOT mean that they are the only technology contributor.
Opensecrets is a GREAT site, and I really appreciate their efforts[1], but their database is far from complete. I've been browsing the site over the last few days, and I notice that Opensecrets has information for many of the Democratic congressional candidates, but not for many Republican candidates.
Check out the race in my District. We have information for Barbara Lee, for the other two candidates, it says "No reports on record for this candidate. ". Not a good measure, yet.
Does this mean that Democrat$ receive more money then Republican$? NO!
It simply means that, for whatever reason, Opensecrets has the data for the Democrats, but has less information for the Republicans.
[1]: So valuable that I donated money to them, even through I just got laid off. YOU SHOULD DONATE TOO).
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Corporations are neither human beings nor are they citizens. The notion that they are entitled to donate money to a politician is ridicules. If corporations are allowed to donate money to politicians or political parties (which they are) then so should other none citizens and inanimate objects like, rocks, dirt, houses, house pets, books, computers, etc. Corporations are inanimate objects that have been granted (unfairly) anthropomorphic powers because they are the possessions of the 'super rich'. As long as this situation is allowed to endure the US should not be considered a democracy.
Conservatives keep claiming this. It's been debunked before. Here's the best example, from p. 5 of Paul Krugman's excellent piece "For Richer":
You can (and should) go read the whole thing right now: For Richer
You don't know jack about inner-city schools. The problem isn't vouchers, the problems are
1. No one wants to teach there.
2. No one wants to go to school there.
3. No one wants to live there.
In Detroit, substitute teachers get FULL health coverage (and of course Kevlar vests). The current daily substitute count is about 2,000.
As for vouchers, schools of choice, charter schools. How does this help the inner-city? Are parents going to drive their kids to the good schools in the subburbs every morning? Maybe you'd be kind enough to start a bus service.
What about reinventing education with charter schools? Charter schools have proven to be a total failure and that fact is proven out with test scores?
What about "schools of choice"? This is a fancy way of saying, we want to take our tax dollars and fund exclusive private schools that our kids go to. Also, the exclusive private schools don't have to take problem kids or handicapped kids and reserve the right to boot anyone they want back to public schools. So we get the money and the best kids, and you can turn your public school into a home for all the people we reject. Nice!
If you have an answer I'd like to hear it. The only solutions I can see are:
1. We need a lot more giving caring teacher in the innercity.
2. The innercity needs to stop having more children than they can properly parent.
3. The republicans need to stop trying to rape all the money out of public education so they can go fund "star wars" or "bombing Iraq".
Lastly, packing in bodies has nothing to do with Federal FUNDS. The reason bodies are packed in is because THERE AREN'T ENOUGH TEACHERS IN THE INNER-CITY, so class sizes grow HUGE! I am sure Deroit would love to have 15 kids per class in the lower elementary, but guess what.. there aren't enough teachers! Additionally, the Feds and State are going to pay out no matter where that kid ends up.
My apologies to the NON-Americans out there, but this offtopic post was neccessary.
Microsoft, like many other industries, is under attack by government. Microsoft, like many other industries, is trying to buy off the US government by lobbying Congress. It's a slimy, immoral thing to do, and I'd expect just that of Microsoft. But it's not illegal.
Ya know, everyone thinks corporations have too much power over the government. Thing is, everyone blames the corporations. Me, I blame the GOVERNMENT. What, they make bribery legal, and you blame people and organizations for taking advantage of the fact?
Everyone pisses and moans about the US being ravaged by capitalism and the free market. But the United States doesn't run under a capitalist system. It runs under a MERCANTILIST system, which is a very different animal. A truly free market can't exist when the government meddles with it, with taxes and tax credits, and regulations and licenses... A large corporation is very happy to have regulations placed on it; those rules may decrease its profits a little, but a smaller business will wither and die under that chilly wind. Do you wonder why small companies are disappearing?
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?
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.
Gates absolutely hated Clinton. A good friend of ours (went to the dark side for many $$'s at M$) was at a party at Gates house where Gates went on an absolute tirade against Clinton almost to the point of breaking down in tears before leaving the room. Our friend tells us it was really spooky and kinda sad, but it was most certain where Bill Gates political bent was focused. Shortly after hearing about this, I was watching CSPAN where dubya was coming out against the M$ anti-trust trial. And we all know the history since...Dubya gets in courtesy of the supreme court, appoints Ashcroft and gets rid of the entire Microsoft anti-trust legal team.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
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.
If that individual is Jane Fonda by outspending them by a massive amount. To quote Counterpunch.org
Anyways a couple of points: First off much of what OpenSecrets.org is tracking here IS contributions by individuals. The methodology of OpenSecrets.org is somewhat flawed, or at least debatable. They are not just taking the contributions of Corporate PACs but also take the contributions of individuals and count them as the contributions of their employers. SO Peter Amstein giving 100% of his money to Democrats and George Spix giving all of his money to Republicans is assumed not to be because they are committed (and wealthy) partisans but because Microsoft Corp is directing their giving for the corporations purposes. This probably has *some* merit when you are talking about the very top tier of management giving hundred of thousands. But Open Secrets also includes every $200 or more contribution by every cubicle dweller at Microsoft. If you gave $200 to a candidate because you agreed with their position on Abortion, Open Secrets doesn 't see it as a healthy participation in democracy but as a nefarious plot by Micro$oft to influence Washington. Even for the big donors I think at least *some* of that money is probably donated not by corporate dictates for corporate purposes but because the individual is a partisan for one or the other party or for some cause. Jane Fonda's $12 million dollar expenditure probably has more to do with her stance on abortion than with trying to get special breaks for Universal Studios. She probably even giving money to candidates that support abortion at the *expense* of her personal financial interests - The Pro-choice Democrats she supports are likely to raise her taxes quite a bit more than the pro-life Republicans she is seeking to defeat.
Also the huge organizations designed to aggregate money (corporations) don't hold a candle next to the huge organizations whose purpose is to aggregate political power - out of the top ten groups donating money to politics only one is a corporations (Phillip Morris) three are proffessional Associations (Realtors, Trial Lawyers & Doctors) the rest are unions.
And very few people in Sweden experience the deep poverty that is all too common in the United States.
Here's interesting food for thought: Swedes who have immigrated to the US also don't experience deep poverty.
It's only a few deadbeats that give America a bad name.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.