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Did Internet Sales Tax Backers Bribe Congress? (Video)
This may be a coincidence, but according to MapLight, Senators who voted last week for the bill allowing states to directly collect taxes on sales via the Internet, AKA The Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013, received 40 times as much campaign donation money (yes, that's four-oh, not just four) from businesses in favor of the bill as those who voted against it received from businesses that were against Internet sales taxes. Was this bribery? Of course not! We're not some piddly fifth-world country. But it's a prime example of how money influences politics here in the good old USA, and it's far from the only one we've seen lately. In this video, MapLight Program Director Jay Costa shares a bunch more with us, along with tips on how to spot this sort of thing and some steps we voters can take to fight against both direct and indirect influence-buying. Note that all this is totally non-partisan; the politicians with the most influence -- whether local, state or federal -- get most of the available special interest money no matter what other agenda(s) they may have. And for those who want to learn more about who is spending their dollars to influence your representatives, Jay also suggests a look at these two money-in-politics resources: FollowTheMoney.org and OpenSecrets.org.
Is it bribery or do companies donate more money to politicians that agree with their policies?
A horse of a different color is still a horse, of course of course.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
OF COURSE THEY DID! DUH.
This is exactly what's wrong with the size of these corporations and the corruption of our government system in the USA - the amount of influence they can buy over our "Representatives"
You need to fix the problems with elections themselves. Safe districts make easily manipulated legislators not just in bed with lobbyists but married to them for decades.
Any of the following would work:
Increasing the number of representatives in the house by a factor of ~100
Defining a countrywide party agnostic algorithm for automatically creating districts
Moving to proportional representation(this one would also fix the 2 party problem).
There are lots of other approaches, I'd support yours, if it dealt with this problem. Just support some kind of fix.
I'm not sure this is the best example, because congresspeople would have another incentive to support the measure: all of their home town local shops will have also been calling them up (and directing their customers to do so as well) in support of it, at least I'd guess so. I've been to enough town meeting type things where there was a lot of talk about "buy local!" and such because the local businesses were being so undercut by the big internet giants (who also weren't paying sales tax). It's the kind of thing that riles up city councils everywhere.
Proof: The bill got passed with bipartisan support.
I am officially gone from
OpenSecret.org has been around for what, nearly two decades now, and the American people have shown that they are not interested. Apparently the system works, as angry as it may make a few slacktivists. Give it up already with trying to manufacture outrage.
It's LOBBYING. They're just expressing the free speech rights of the megacorporations they represent to influence the outcome of elections to select people who will do their bidding.
There's a difference.
It's not like anyone can save on sales tax by buying real estate over the internet....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The 40 times number is meaningless without further context. The majority of buisnesses collect sales tax. Of course those people would support removing the loop hole that prevents sales tax from being collected on internet purchases.
At least for someone that not followed the news the last, don't know, 20 years? You mean that you never doubted all the other major laws in last years hadn't any major bribe or similar behind?
I'm having a hard time sorting out their methodology, but it looks as if the problem is that there just weren't any "anti-" groups opposing the measure, at least by their calculation. They totted up only $1.4 million spent by all the "anti-" groups, which is practically nothing compared to the billions spent on all of the Senate campaigns put together.
Neither, in fact, is that $55M spent by "pro-" groups all that large. This is the problem with the "campaign fund bribery" theory. These groups are heavily constrained in how much money they can give, just $10,000 to each candidate. These candidates need millions.
http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/contriblimits.shtml
Their contributions just aren't big enough to make a bribe. It's not even enough to get them to take a meeting with you. Rather, it's the other way around: they contribute to the candidates that they want to see win the election.
EVERYBODY on this list got more money from the "pro-" groups than from the "anti-" groups. Kelly Ayotte voted no; she got $326,335, compared to $31,751. Mike Crapo, $181,414 vs $15,020. Ted Cruz, $529,897 vs $19,050.
What this data indicates, if anything, is that there just weren't many groups who opposed this. The direct marketers, the catalog sales, and computer manufacturers. That's it. Weren't there any consumer groups? Consumers are the ones who pay the tax. None of the consumer groups took a stand? Or did their crappy methodology just miss them?
Yes, the Internet sales tax backers bribed Congress.
So did the Internet sales tax opponents. They were just less successful.
Our system is pretty fucked up. But criticize the system; don't try to justify one side in a dispute by arguing that the other side bribed Congress, because in essentially every dispute, both sides do it.
Senators who voted last week for the bill allowing states to directly collect taxes on sales via the Internet, AKA The Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013, received 40 times as much campaign donation money (yes, that's four-oh, not just four) from businesses in favor of the bill as those who voted against it received from businesses that were against Internet sales taxes. Was this bribery? Of course not!
How many businesses in your state have significant out of state sales?
How many people do online retailers employ in your state, how much revenues do these retailers generate for state and local government?
The direction of causality could easily be the opposite way around. If a candidate is known to be pro-internet-tax, then a pro-internet-tax business has reason to contribute to their campaign.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
It should be to serve the country, passing laws for the positive benefit of the people as a whole.
What it ends up being is trying to get re-elected because then those nice people keep dropping off envelopes stuffed with cash.
Is the sky blue?
Is the Easter Bunny real?
Do babies come from a stork?
Is this politician lying?
sudo make me a sandwich
Technically the US is more of a plutocracy now. The great part about using that term is that it's already tied to Nazi propaganda about jews in America, so you provide a direct path to Godwin the discussion by mentioning it.
50 years ago this would have been a major scandal. Now it's "ho hum business as usual." This country is fucked.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
This statistic, as presented, proves pretty much nothing.
Look, I'll cheerfully agree that our congresspeople are largely nicely-dressed whores who apparently will vote whichever way they're funded, but the statistics presented here are so confused as to be nearly meaningless.
The total given by those in favor may have been 40x that given against.
Then again, this could be (viewed objectively) simply a groundswell of opinion in favor.
I look at my senators (both D-MN):
Amy Klobuchar took $532,457 from those in favor, $16,298 from those opposed. ~30x as much.
Al Franken took $858,186:$11,400 almost 90x.
Two SOLID yes votes, as they vote mindless lockstep with their party.
Yet Jeff Flake (R-AZ), he received $588,966 $2,800 - a staggering 200x in favor, and voted "NO".
Mark Kirk (R-IL) $1,076,621to $28,200 or some 35x in favor, another "NO" vote.
So it doesn't seem that the wierdly-presented statistic of how much more one guy got from one side vs the other controls which way they voted.
I'd argue from opensecrets.org that the link between money and legislation is so obvious that it's hard to imagine that anyone could present it in a way that's NOT conclusive...like maplight managed to....
-Styopa
" Was this bribery? Of course not! "
Of course? How is it obvious that it is not bribery? I dont see anything obvious as to why it is not.
Giving a politician money for the purpose of influencing said politicians support of legislation is corruption, fair and square.
There are no ifs or buts, it is corruption.
And this corruption is so widespread, and so accepted ( and even expected ), that the American people think nothing of it, and accept it as simply a part of doing politics.
Leader of the Free World my ass.
I live in a first world western democracy, and here, this sort of corruption is illegal. Why is this allowed in the USA?
It isn't tough to implement. Its just software. I'm sure it'll be built into all existing eCommerce platform shortly. If a business can't collect taxes properly, they shouldn't be in business.
I don't respond to AC's.
The really big disparities in contributions, interestingly enough, came from the various Unions, especially public worker unions - they tended to come down on the "we want this new tax" by very large percentages (90% for, 10% against, as an example - most weren't quite that extreme, some were rather more extreme).
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Bribery is something that's done clandestinely; this obviously wasn't.
If you don't like it, make an issue out of it next time these people run for Congress.
You won't have to. A third party will write their own software that will integrate with those 50 state APIs. You'll then be able to call their one API and get the tax rate, for a fee. If nobody else writes this I will and rake in the money.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Everything is for sale, including the laws.
Unless your state doesn't have any sales taxes, you are breaking the law (almost always) by buying out of state and not paying "use tax", unless you self identify and pay the use tax. (Exceptions for purchases of goods for resale and some other exceptions exist.) I'm generally against any tax.. but if people are dumb enough to enact incredible high sales tax rates (like the 8.5% we have in CA) we should at least make sure people aren't given an easy way to avoid it.
You Americans are the only country in the world that pretends outrageous "campaign contributions" aren't bribery.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I'd bet any amount of money that Intuit already has a service ready to go to take care of this. They already have a service that takes care of tracking the myriad of payroll taxes.
I don't respond to AC's.
Then there's the system Howard Hughes used: he'd donate to any politician that looked like they had a chance to win. That way, no matter who won, Howard could say, "I gave." In fact, that's why nobody tried to find out where that slush fund Bebe Rebozo was holding onto came from during the Watergate Scandal; they all knew it was from Hughes, but they were all afraid of what might come out if his name was mentioned.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Is grass green? Is the sky blue? Does shit stink?
From the crumbling infrastructure, to massive invasion campaigns, to the billions in funding to Israel, to a growing security apparatus, to the war on drugs, America needs the money. Maybe Ebay and Paypal can shave a couple percentage points off their unjustified fees and percentages to let the government have more funds. Though I much rather taxes go to rebuild, educate, and maintain the country as opposed to oppression, but that's just my quirk.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
"Taxes are good. The government needs taxes to provide revenue so that it can spend on entitlement programs."
Sales taxes are bad, they hit the lower and middle class who spend all their money.
This particular measure hits the internet economy. People will stop guying stuff online.
It seems that the only way to get round this is to set up offshore, which will cost american jobs.
Does anything in congress happen without bribes changing hands?
Requiem for the American Dream
In order to become law this will have to pass in the House of Representatives. Did they bribe them as well.
Note that the House has a Republican majority.
Anybody know when it is scheduled for a vote in the House?
I know that if it does pass, I won't be voting for the senators and representatives that voted for this - ever again, regardless of their views on other issues.
Once this comes into effect, I won't be buying stuff online, I will stock up on stuff before it comes into effect though, and after that date I will be using my disposable income to pay off my credit card.
I won't be buying more stuff locally than I now am.
Yet Jeff Flake (R-AZ), he received $588,966 $2,800 - a staggering 200x in favor, and voted "NO".
Mark Kirk (R-IL) $1,076,621to $28,200 or some 35x in favor, another "NO" vote.
Dear Donor,
Thank you for your generous checks! As promised, I will not blow my nose (we call it filibustering) during the public performance of our Circus, even though I have an impressively long nose longer than that of Pinocchio's, so that the Donkeys can pass your bill. But I will immediately blame the Donkeys for passing the bill. Don't worry. That won't hurt your bill a bit. I just do it to entice other of my donors to continue to write checks to me.
Thanks again for your generous checks! Keep in touch.
Sincerely,
The Elephants
only allow individual human beings to donate to campaigns, and then only in campaigns they can vote in. Bam, money out of politics instantly.
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"Was this bribery? Of course not! We're not some piddly fifth-world country. "
Yes it IS bribery, and until you people stop pussyfooting around and start calling it what it really is, we will become more and more of a 5th or 6th world country as each day goes by.
Our politicians are bought and paid for, Every single one of them. Only fools believe otherwise.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You either do the work yourself or you pay someone else to do it for you. Like anything else in the world.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
They probably do. Its too obvious an idea for one of the big players not to be ready for it.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Somehow corporations are citizens these days.
I realize that is the meme popularized in the media. However if you actually read the Citizens United decision it says something different:
(1) Groups of people have the same rights as individuals.
(2) It does not matter if that group of people is a corporation, trade union, advocacy group, etc.
The CEO, or who ever was involved in committing a crime should go to prison just like any other citizen.
They do. Here's a top ten list, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/18/top-10-ceos-sent-to-prison_n_1527361.html.
Probably.
And yes, I'm shocked.
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
I wish I had mods points. And I wish I could understand why people who would scream bloody murder if their rights to free speech were curtailed are so fervently interested in taking those rights away from others. Maybe just a hint as to why they don't think that people who join together to spend their money more efficiently should have free speech rights after all. And why anyone would support a "legal fiction" that is calling for the stripping of free speech rights from every other legal fiction but itself. ("Move To Amend", spending money lobbying against their own right to spend money lobbying against spending their own money...)
In 1998, Microsoft was pursued by the DOJ in an antitrust case. In 2001, the case was dropped.
1) Amount of money Microsoft contributed, from 1990 to present.
Scroll down to the graph titled "Party Split" to see the totals by year.
2) The DOJ announced on September 6, 2001 that it was no longer seeking to break up Microsoft and would instead seek a lesser antitrust penalty.
It's a voluntary prostitute-john business. Politicians can threaten to shake down businesses. Businesses give money, politicians do what they want.
Every remedy has its own set of costs and benefits. But, I don't think the Founders foresaw this type or level of corruption. They instituted a system of checks and balances, because they understood human nature, and the system was designed to keep the leaders in check. I don't think they foresaw the power of various business-political complexes.
And other rethorical questons :)
AccountKiller
Unethical and illegal are two different things. Donating millions to influence litigation into putting your little competitors out of business illegal? No. Unethical. Bet your ass it is.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
but without the huge barrier to entry into politics that the donations system creates we get an opportunity to work on those other things you mentioned. I guess what I'm saying is, it's a complex problem. Solving even 70% of it gets us well on the road.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
By golly, this is terrible! You know, I think I'm going to get elected and fix it! Hmm, that means I'm going to need a campaign and... how much money... eew... yeah... Some donors. A LOT of donors. Of course, I look out for my friends! Any of my donors want to be "Minister of Calenders"? I can totally do that if I get elected! Oh... my god... what have I become! Ok, effective immediately, I feel I must step down from my campaign, having been corrupted by campaign donations!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Saying they were bribed is one way to look at it. Of course, the fact that these politicians could already have had pro-sales tax stances, and as such attracted more funds so they could get elected, is another way.
.. here is a novel idea ... try to convince your representatives that they don't need to be spending as much money so they don't need to tax as much. Cut back on social services, police, fire, or education so that the tax isn't even needed.
Otherwise, it's just free speech. NRA, Green Peace, Sierra Club, and every other lobby gives more to politicians who help their causes, they would be stupid to give money to people who oppose it. Why try to change someone's idea when you can just help someone who agrees to get elected. Why is it the 'other side' only points out the spending of people they disagree with, and not their own???
Correlation != Causation.
That is not bribery. Find an email where a senator said he will change his vote *IF* he gets more funds, and you have bribery.
There are many opposing lobbies that also spent money on getting their politicians elected. They only people complaining about how things turned out are those who disagree with the outcome. I support 100% coming up with a method to tax internet sales, it's fair and replaces an existing source of revenue. If it's not replaced, then income or property taxes will be going up. You are going to pay it one way or the other.
If you don't support the method (i.e. having 'small' companies have to collect and pay it out), then come up with a better solution and contact your political representatives instead of pouting.
Or
It's not a 'big money in politics' issue, it's a spending/revenue issue that no one has found a good solution for yet. Put your energies towards that end instead of whining.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Canada only allows political contributions from individuals, and only up to a maximum of 5000$.
There are some sketchy real estate deals, but many of these get publicized, so I don't think it is that rampant.
The revolving door however is in effect. I am not sure how one might tackle it. I believe there are rules around immediately working for a industry you regulate, so you might have to wait a year or something before the big payoff. Many times it is hard to argue either way, when they actually have a lot of experience in the field in question.
Ugh. In reading up a bit I just found a disgusting fact. The president of the Bank of Canada for the last decade (and though the financial crisis) was also a former Goldman Sacks executive just like down in the US. Wonderful.
Why am I reminded of Pyrrhus: "If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined."
So if the board of directors decides to fund Politician Bob (tax cuts for corporations) from the corporate treasury while the majority of their employees, who also happen to be on minimum wage, would rather fund Politician Joe (minimum wage increases), whose speech is it?
If the company is majority foreign-owned, whose speech is it?
(I am also reminded that the guillotine was once considered a marvel of humane efficiency).
So if the board of directors decides to fund Politician Bob (tax cuts for corporations) from the corporate treasury while the majority of their employees, who also happen to be on minimum wage, would rather fund Politician Joe (minimum wage increases), whose speech is it?
To be fair that happens in trade unions as well. The union leadership may spend huge sums of money on candidates that union members will vote against. Money that was forcibly extracted from the union member's paycheck. Hence the popularity among the members of *some* unions of initiatives that would require union member's consent for that portion of union dues that go to political contributions.
It would seem that only the advocacy groups make contributions that are generally in line with the membership. It surely helps that their funding is generally from voluntary membership and donations. This provides a check and balance missing in corporations and trade unions. On second thought, corporations do have a minor check and balance. Consumers can boycott their products in they find the corporation's political contributions distasteful. Regrettably consumers seem to care about nothing beyond the lowest price.
I'm not in favor of any such abuse by CEOs or union leaders. I'm just pointing out that rights and abuses are not as one sided as often portrayed.
if ( you agree with speech ) {
it's protected
} else {
it's bribery
}
There is no reasonable concept of reasonableness.
Thats why I support the Tea Party. They represent me, not Philips Morris, Facebook, Rockwell Collins, GE.
So if the board of directors decides to fund Politician Bob (tax cuts for corporations) from the corporate treasury while the majority of their employees, who also happen to be on minimum wage, would rather fund Politician Joe (minimum wage increases), whose speech is it?
The people who own the company who hired the directors. You certainly don't think the money belongs to the employees just because they work there, do you?
If the company is majority foreign-owned, whose speech is it?
The foreigners, who are then falling afoul of existing campaign finance laws.
(I am also reminded that the guillotine was once considered a marvel of humane efficiency).
I'm sure you could come up with 100 more irrelevancies to comment on.
I wish I had mods points. And I wish I could understand why people who would scream bloody murder if their rights to free speech were curtailed are so fervently interested in taking those rights away from others. Maybe just a hint as to why they don't think that people who join together to spend their money more efficiently should have free speech rights after all. And why anyone would support a "legal fiction" that is calling for the stripping of free speech rights from every other legal fiction but itself. ("Move To Amend", spending money lobbying against their own right to spend money lobbying against spending their own money...)
The right to "free speech" is a meaningless term when my free speech, and those of most ordinary Americans are trumped by the "free speech rights" of corporate backed PACS with the budget of millions or more.