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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
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.
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.
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
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."
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 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
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
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.
I have to call bullsh*t on this particular myth. In the 22 years since Reagan was elected in 1980 the only time the budget was balanced was when a Dem was president.
The Republicans, despite vociferous claims to the contrary, are much more for big, intrusive, authoritarian government.
I think we can all agree that Republicans are morre likely to spend money on defense. Well, the military represents over 40% of the federal budget alone! (source: FCNL)
The Republicans have had things far too easy for far too long on the tax-n-spend issue. This is the party of corporate welfare, bloated military spending, and intrusive, unnecessary policing of its own citizens (e.g. the 'war' on drugs, which has inflated the prison populations to unprecedented levels in the industrialized world - yes, prisons do cost money).
Of those four, I disagree (to some degree or another) with all four, or at least with the specifics of the pillars.
"Grassroots Democracy." As spelled out by the manifesto on the Green Party website (yes, I actually read it, in its entirety), the Party wants to make everything a direct democracy. I am wholly opposed to the idea; the Founding Fathers were careful to avoid it because direct democracy is functionally equivalent to mob rule. Consider this: the abolition of slavery, and, later, the civil rights legislation of the 1960's, was highly unpopular; it was pushed through, despite heavy opposition, because the elected leadership was able to do its job, instead of having the people directly vote on the bills. Indeed, if everything is a direct democracy (an absurd idea, given the volume of legislation considered each year), what would even be the point of having representation? All we'd need is ballot counters.
"Social Justice." Generally an emotionally-loaded term for Communism (that's with a big 'C,' the way Marx described it, not like the Soviets implemented it), the Greens' definition of "social justice" lives up to the reputation. Here's my definition of social justice: unequal rewards for unequal efforts; that's derived from the basic concept of justice, letting the consequences (positive or negative) of an action be proportional to the action itself.
"Non-violence." Again, loaded words--who in his right mind is in favor of violence? And again, the devil is in the details. I am opposed to wanton use of the military, but I do recognize the need for one, and I think that if we're going to have one, it needs to be the most capable, most effective, most overwhelming force possible. Indeed, such a force would have a deterrent effect; "the best defense is a strong offense." I also believe that we owe it to the persons who make up that force to make them as powerful as possible: the greater their effectiveness, the less the risk to which they are exposed when called upon to do their duties. Additionally (this seems like a logical place to put it), I don't agree with their position on gun control. The Brady Law was a terrible idea which has been wholly ineffective in preventing crime (details available upon request, but would be offtopic here), has led to major violations of civil rights (i.e. the gov't illegally maintaining records of background checks, creating a de facto database of gun owners), and, while not explicitly defined, the "reasonable gun control" they propose would probably be distasteful, particularly in light of their stance on the Brady Law.
"Ecological Wisdom." Wisdom is good, right? Nobody wants to be a fool. Well, yet again, the name of the pillar is good, but the stones comprising the pillar need examination. First of all, I am all in favor of preserving the environment; I'm a backpacker, hunter, fisherman, sailor, camper, and probably spend more time outside than 95% of the Slashdot population. Nonetheless, I disagree with some of the Greens' proposals for maintaining the environment. For example, I disagree with their position on nuclear power (they're wholeheartedly against it, and call for the complete shutdown of all plants in five years, if possible); I feel that, while renewable sources are the best long-term option, they're not ready yet, and, until they are, nuclear power is one of the best interim options available. Yes, I know of the hazards, and of the accidents; I also know the why and how on many of the accidents, and recognize that most of them were results of nuclear power being pushed ahead before its time; now, with a more relaxed political climate (no more Cold War), and another thirty to forty years' experience, I think we're in a better position to handle nuclear power.
So, there's the short version: I disagree with all four, to some degree or another. Documentation is happily provided on the Greens' own web site; if you really need me to, I'll be happy to reply with chapter and section, but please don't ask unless you really can't find it. And, just for the record, I didn't make any accusations about what their positions are, I just said I didn't agree with them. If you're going to put words in my mouth and accuse me of making accusations, well, documentation would be nice.
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!