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Tech Companies and Politicians: Who Pays Who?
fiorenza writes "An investigation into political contributions by technology companies shows that Republicans are the top beneficiaries of such donations, but the Dems aren't too far behind. Perhaps most interesting, it appears that tech companies know that to really get what they want, they need to lobby directly. From the article: 'It's not just Microsoft that is spending these massive amounts. The computer/Internet industry as a whole dropped $84 million on lobbying in 2005 — more even than the TV/movies/music groups. Although the firms at the end of the Internet 'pipes' are spending money, it's dwarfed by the expenditures of those firms that own the 'pipes' themselves.'"
perhaps they spend more money convincing Republican's because they have more trouble understanding the issues, tubes and all.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Ah, the net neutrality battle all over again. It's no surprise that the infrastructure and telecom firms are spending the most money. These are the firms that have the most to lose if Congress begins to support net neutrality and increased competition. Luckily the rise of the internet, message boards (like slashdot), and social networking has allowed Americans to increase their knowledge of the issues addressed by Congress on a daily basis, which allows us to raise our voices and dissent much earlier ... often before poor decisions are made.
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
"Who pays whom"?
Democrats were favored to win the House in that cycle, and most likely to take the Senate, too - reversal of complete control of the government, which in fact did happen. Even so, Republicans still pulled in much more, two to one. That ration is most certainly "far behind".
Democrats need to spend more of their bribes on better PR, even if just so Slashdot doesn't repeat the same "Democrats are just as bad" BS as does the corporate mass media whenever Republicans are much worse.
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make install -not war
Good timing for this.. I actually just saw this on The Hour (last night's full show), but boingboing also covered it: Dell gets presidential product placement?. There's a youtube link there.
Speak before you think
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This post was started by Choad Won Fiat (Koala Humpur, Malaria).
The computer/Internet industry as a whole dropped $84 million on lobbying in 2005 -- more even than the TV/movies/music groups.
So, what you're telling me is that politicians collect money from the most wildly successful companies out there? Allow me to propose an alternate subject line: Water is wet, Microsoft is evil, politicians collect bribes via lobbyists.
Come on slashdot, where's the news in this?
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
Pipes? I thought they were tubes.
In Soviet Union KGB agent lobbies blackmailed US representative for more imports of potassium.
In capitalist West, MS lobbies to protect Linux code written by you!
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
that tech was supporting republicans because they were in power. But the dems are the ones that have been their friends.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
All that political BS they spent huge money trying to shove down my throat in about a zillion crappy political mailings backfired.
I may be a registered Republican (I have to get around to changing that someday), but I voted a straight Democratic ticket this election--there were no 3rd parties anywhere on the ballot in my state save possibly Libertarians, and they're even more ready to sell me out to various corporations than the Republicans.
This entire article can be thrown out the window. It ignores the Apple and Google political spending, which would be more than enough to tip the total toward the Democrats. It would be great if they could cite their sources properly - I've never felt like anything on Ars was reliable, much less balanced.
Back in the 90's, this site was most definitely intellectual, liberal and very oriented towards Dems. As the average joe has shown up here, the site has a large Republican bent. As it is, almost all of my enemies are major W. supporters who would like to us turned into a theocracy, but wants to nuke Iran for being a theocracy. Go figure.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
putting the corporation before the citizen?
And - gasp - paying to make sure it happens? cripes!
I may be wrong and please correct me if I am, but heck - that's one f'ed up situation you got there.
Although the firms at the end of the Internet 'pipes' are spending money, it's dwarfed by the expenditures of those firms that own the 'pipes' themselves.
Duh.
This has been another episode of Short Answers to Slashdot Articles.
Pretty much all industries contribute heavily to both sides nowdays. If you look back, large industry used to be heavily a Republican donor, but after our great "finance reform", they've tended to be pretty even handend (or, at least 60/40 or so). Hedging the bet is the smart move in an environment where the balance of power swings wildly.
Unfortunately, until we realize that Corporations aren't people, and they shouldn't have political rights, we're going to be stuck with the current system.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
The tech-inc lobbyists have an on-going and sophisticated effort to convince legistlators and citizens that there is an ongoing tech skills shortage; including during the great IT job meltdown of the early 2000's. This is so that they can bring in more H-1B's and offshore up the wazoo. We are in the cross-hairs.
Table-ized A.I.
Why do we see so many laws that seem to favor the media companies over the tech companies?
1: Every politician's number 1 goal is getting reelected
2: The US political system will remain corrupt as long as the politicians are permitted to take these bribes.
3: The people in power do not want the system fixed because it would reduce their chances at reelection.
4: The system can only be fixed by the people who are in power, since they make the laws.
Campaign contributions should be limited to the 12 months before a primary and only from registered voters from a candidate's district.
Sometimes magic mushrooms are kind of fun. It's happened before that I forgot who I was and thought someone had hypnotised me. But usually you just go a little crazy and enjoy having your two minds argue against each other.
donors are labor unions, and unlike corporations, donate in an almost purely partisan manner (greater than 90% to Democrats)?
www.opensecrets.org
Fortunately, money has much less of an effect on politics than most people think. First, studies have shown that spending has little impact on who wins (double your spending, capture about one more percent of the vote). Second, it is human nature to over-estimate everyone else's bias, usually by a wide margin, while underestimating one's own. This has been confirmed by numerous psychological tests. Please take heart in the fact that your political opponent's are a lot less biased than you think they are.
that MS is mentioned in the summary. It was MS's lack of "protection" money payments relative to their competitors payments that lead to their anti-trust problems. Having been taught "how the game is played" the hard way, they naturally are paying tribute with the best of them now.
An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought. -- U.S. Senator Simon Cameron (1862)
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Does anybody know or willing to tell? Without a Grand Jury investegation we may never know the answer. I personally cannot think of a legit or legal reason why they would.
I'm glad to see that elitism is alive and well, however.
First of all, I'm not convinced he actually said "Dell," at least not intentionally.
Let's face it, the man can hardly string words together in a sentence, at least when he's delivering pre-written speeches. (He's a lot better when he's speaking off-the-cuff in casual settings, but every time he has to give a major speech, I can't help but imagine some poor staffer who wrote the thing, sitting somewhere in a corner and crying as their work is butchered.) I don't think it's inconceivable at all that he basically stuttered and started to say "Dell-o-visions," stopped after the first syllable, and repeated the word with the right initial consonant sound. Heck, for all we know, he might call it a "Dellovision." It wouldn't surprise me.
Second, let's just say that he did somehow drop in a subtle, half-stuttered reference to Dell (although I think that's seriously taxing his speaking abilities). While I don't like the idea of him receiving bribes at all, if he plugged a major American electronics producer, so what? That's not any different from Bill C. talking about liking McDonalds food (and McDonalds actually has several American competitors who could rightfully be a bit miffed).
What other major American television manufacturer would you like him to mention, if he was for some reason going to name-drop? Oh, wait, there aren't any. All the other major brands are Japanese, or Chinese, or Korean, or Dutch. Dell is pretty much it. If he had a big 'ol Dell sitting on his desk in the oval office, would that really be any different from past presidents being photographed sitting in front of a big RCA microphone?
I'm not defending any name-dropping that might have occurred as a result of campaign contributions. (If I was making the law, any corporation would be barred from making political contributions or lobbying in any way to affect the political process. Contributions, advertising, and lobbying would be limited solely to real U.S. Citizens, and not-for-profit organizations who represent and take contributions only from real persons.) But I think you're wrong in inferring that he mentioned Dell in the first place, and even if he did plug Dell (and I say this as someone who dislikes Dell intensely, and hasn't ever bought one of their products) I'm still not sure that the plugging per se is totally out of line; only if it was paid for would be wrong, and then it would be the payment that's wrong in my mind.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Because 5 media corporations control 95% of the American media, and therefore 95% of how a candidate will be seen on TV, radio, and print. Money is useless if you can't spend it to get your message out, therefore candidates are wary of offending their media masters.
By 2008 or 2010, the Internet will be taking that over completely; We're even seeing signs of it now, a la the "Macaca" remark that went to Youtube. Internet radio is already widely available. News websites with throughputs > 10^7 visitors per month. Internet video / streaming video a la Youtube.
Anything that is unproductive ulimately ends up here: http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
Engineering is the art of compromise.
that some Republicans know of is of the "tubesteak" variety.
That's probably why Mark Foley avoided contributions from companies like Verizon in favor of legal firms, healthcare concerns, oh and friends of the RIAA.
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I make my red-state a pink one!
"more even than the TV/movies/music groups"
Why is Hollywood still considered a high-mark standard when it comes to money when everyone knows that everything is financially bigger than Hollywood? Electronic gaming, the NFL and porn come to mind as common examples.
Speaking of tired models of comparison, if $84 million were in $1 bills, how many football fields would that cover?
RTFM; please, I beg you.
Republicans are the top beneficiaries of such donations, but the Dems aren't too far behind
Actually, the article says Republicans get 67%. If you get 2/3 of the pie and I only get a 1/3, I'd say momma loves you best.
Now that the Democrats are in control of the House and Senate, they will be getting the lion's share of the bribes...oops, PAC money. For those of you too young to remember, the Democrats ran the show for 40 years and were at least as decadent as the Republicans have become, and back in those days, they used to get all of the bribe money.
You can try explaining this to the Republican House and Senate losers in Tuesday's election, but they're likely to respond by cramming a tinfoil hat on your head, the political effort that got rid of them was largely organized online. Don't try explaining this to Karl Rove, he's likely to try to rip your head off.
As for Bev Harris, I'll just say that there were tens of thousands of lawyers organized to take legal action when attempts at cheating were discovered, connected both online and via toll-free number. If there weren't a great deal of nervousness about Diebold and general GOP voter suppression practices, there would have been no such effort. And, of course, the fact that we ever heard of Bev Harris's discovery of serious voting machine problems is 100% Internet based, many of the original stories that broke the news about Diebold came from the New Zealand site scoop.co.nz when the MSM wouldn't run them. How often did Americans read stories from the NZ press before the Web made them easily available?
While what you say about what happened to Howard Dean is correct, the MSM basically unknowing set up the conditions for the regime change we just got by screwing Dean, the "50 state strategy" where we tried to get Democrats to run in every single partisan election was Dean's idea as DNC Chairman, and is why there were Democrats on tickets where no Democrat had won in a decade or more. As a reward, I hope the Democrats write legislation to restore the old limits on broadcast network ownership and the Fairness Doctrine.
Tech Public Policy stuff
This ISNT about net neutrality. It is about tech compagnies and lobying. (yes, bribrary) I can definitely see how net neutrality is definitely something that can lead from discussion of this, but "net neutrality again" attitude will distract for some other important topic to be noticed about this.
I more open mind about the topic may shed new light on something else. sound much more productive then net neut again, move along please.
Assuming "American football" and United States Dollars:
l lar_bill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_football
American football field (AFF) measurements: 120(110 meters) yards by 53 1/3 yards(49 meters)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_one-do
US currency note (USCN) measurements 6.14 in × 2.61 in (156 × 66 mm)
Area of AFF (A_AFF) = 49m * 110m = 5.390e+3(m^2)
Area of USCN (A_USCN)= 0.156m * 0.066m = 1.03e-2 (m^2)
assuming one dollar notes
Area of Currency (Total) (A_CT) = 84000000 * A_USCN = 84e+6 * 1.03e-2 (m^2) = 8.652e+5 (m^2)
AC_T / A_AFF = 1.60e+2; to a first approximation.
Strangely, my CAPTCHA was "filled"....