Congress Members Who Took RIAA Cash

palewook writes "The Consumerist posted a story containing the contact information of 50 United States Representatives & Senators who accepted RIAA money during their last election campaign. Seems like a good time to let a few people know how you feel about RIAA shills."

Comments

Dem-Repub Breakdown

[natedubbya]

By my count in the article, that's 28 Republicans and 21 Democrats. Of the presidential candidates, the two Democrats Barack and Hillary are on there.

Re:Really hard to make a good case for lobbying.

[Original Replica]

It's more that it's just very difficult to stop, without severely interfereing with the ability of common people to support their prefered candidate. ie: "If I can say good things about this candidate I like, why can't I put a favorable ad in the paper or on TV for him?"

Re:You're joking, right?

[palewook]

article is from ppl that accepted the money, anyone that canceled the check didnt make the list.

Re:Really hard to make a good case for lobbying.

[Jarjarthejedi]

Yes, because there are ways to cheat. If you let any individual sponsor something, then any company can as well as they can simply use one or more of their workers as an individual for the purposes of sponsoring. Ban any corporate sponsorship and they'll just find a way around it (Okay Bill, we're going to give you a 2,000,000 bonus and you're going to donate 1,900,000 to X fund to sponsor X thing or Y bad thing will happen to you etc.)

I hate lobbying as much as the next guy (who is on /. and hates lobbying :P) but don't try to make it seem like a small problem, so long as you allow ANY sponsorship (which isn't always a bad thing, especially individual sponsorship) there will be corporate lobbying, no matter how many laws you put up to try and stop it. Every law has a loop-hole and these companies have armies of lawyers experienced at finding loopholes. Say you make the max contribution for a company 10,000 or something, they'll just create a whole bunch of sub-corps and have each donate 10,000 to get back to their original contribution. That's just a single example, everything you do to stop it will have a loophole by nature of needing to allow unaffiliated individuals the chance to help.

Re:Why these fifty?

[palewook]

Lot of information to digest here, but you appear to want more info: additional info here 2006 pt1 2006 pt2 2006 cycle individual members of the pac FEC disclosure

Re:Really hard to make a good case for lobbying.

[sYkSh0n3]

wow, in the 37 seconds it took me to type that, 15 /.'ers managed to say the same thing better AND answer my question

Re:HILLARY "OFFSHORE" CLINTOON TOOK RIAA MONEY

[Sunburnt]

Hillary "we're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good,"

The "things" to which she was referring were the Bush tax cuts as applied to the top-bracket earners in the audience she was addressing.

Clinton is more than the champion of nanny government, she's a Marxist.

Really? I had no idea she called for a revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat, because if not, charges of "Marxism" are just more of the ignorant slurring with loaded words that defines American politics.

Her actions now are just posturing to hide her agenda.

And this is based on what, exactly?

Hillary sucks, but calling her a "Marxist" is no more true than if I were to call her a "Fascist" based on her support of the PATRIOT Act.

Re:Really hard to make a good case for lobbying.

[beyondkaoru]

Set a monetary limit (including the value of any indirect bribes given to them) per person. Make it a felony to try to bribe politicians above this limit or for colluding with others to influence them. aside from the 'colluding with others', that's how it is. large organizations/companies/whatever get their members and/or employees to donate, and give their people bonuses for cooperating. so, 4k each from a thousand employees can make a big difference. the corporation itself donates too, but it's relatively insignificant as demonstrated here. i don't know personally if the riaa member companies (sony etc, you know, the real evil folk, riaa is just a front for us to get angry at) use this tactic, but i wouldn't be surprised if they did.