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Oracle, Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook Blow Even More Cash on Lobbying (theregister.co.uk)
An anonymous reader shares a report: American tech giants have ramped up the amount of cash they spend on lobbying US lawmakers to get their own way, yet again. As congressmen consider regulating organizations from Facebook to Google, and mull antitrust crackdowns against Amazon, said corporations have responded by flinging more dosh at the problem. The money is spent on, ahem, holding meetings between company execs and politicians so that businesses can push their agenda and swing decisions in their favor, which may not be in the interests of the people who elected said politicians. Facebook's $2.85m for the third quarter of the year -- disclosed this week as required by law -- is beaten only by the amount it spent in the first quarter: $3.21m. In its second quarter, it blew $2.38m. Overall, Facebook's lobbying bills for 2017 looks set to smash the $9.85m it spent in 2015 and the $8.7m in 2016. The social network is being investigated by both halves of Congress for its role in the Russian propaganda campaign during the US presidential election, and this month has been on a huge PR campaign in the capital. Likewise Amazon spent its highest ever amount on professional lobbyists -- both individuals and companies that book face time with lawmakers and their staff where they press the company's viewpoints. Amazon spent $3.41m in the third quarter, up from $3.21m for the second quarter -- which was also a record spend for the company. Apple has already blown past the $4.67m in spent in 2016 -- which was then its highest-ever spending. So far in 2017, the iPhone maker has spent $5.46m bending lawmakers' ears. Google spent less in the third quarter of the year to the wallet-busting Q2 spend of $5.93m, but it still spent $4.17m -- higher than its average spend of $4.0m per quarter over the past five years. But perhaps the most notable increase in spending has come from Oracle, which spent a whopping $3.82m on lobbying in the third quarter: double what it normally spends.
After all, we have the best government money can buy.
This is a real nice company you've got here. Sure would be a shame if something happened to it!
They are all smart enough to learn from Microsoft's mistake. Bribe the bastards, even if you don't want anything from them. Otherwise their eyes will fall on you.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Money is power, and there's no other way to regulate that kind of power besides taking some of it away.
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Between these guys and Disney I'm not sure who's doing the most damage.
... the sky is blue.
.. one meeting at a time.
This is hardly the first story I've seen on Slashdot about tech companies spending money on lobbying. It's constantly denounced as a bad thing, despite the clear precedent that monetary donations to political campaigns constitute speech. Despite the manufactured outrage, there's nary any discussion about the potentially far more scandalous flow of money through the Clinton Foundation. Let's see where that trail leads, unless you're worried it leads to Hillary in prison. Nobody here would bat an eye about the EFF engaging in lobbying, so it shouldn't be a big deal that tech companies are doing similar things. Let's focus on the bigger issues, like the Clinton Foundation and whether the trail of money leads Hillary to prison.
"Blowing" cash implies that the companies spent the money without gaining anything. More appropriate would be the headline, "Oracle, Apple, Google, Facebook invest even more cash in lobbying."
So were' supposed to be outraged because it's now tech companies? If anything, content operators like facebook could lend some weight to promote net neutrality as they would suffer if it were repealed.
I don't read AC
because it sure as hell isn't theirs, the money they save on avoiding tax is re-invested in US government corruption.
sorry about your towns infrastructure, Our Cayman Island banks say no.
This is good since it provides more money for us.
When my current iPhone is paid for and dies, I will be going to a dumb phone.
I use Linux on a cheap laptop.
I use Fastmail, IMHO, the best email provider on the planet. I have nothing to do with the other companies.
I've been in IT for 20 years and the longer I'm in it, the more I want to go the other way. Society could progress no further technologically and we'd be fine.
I'm tired of the ever-growing control these companies have. These large companies are consolidating power year after year. I'm tired of being tracked, sold, marketed, whatever.
The real question here is how much is $9.85m in pound feet. Should be about £6.73ft.
You must be kidding. Those are numbers in the low millions. You aren't getting very far with that in DC. They are dropping hundreds of millions.
After all, we have the best government money can buy.
Sure - just ask Hillary!
Oh wait.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
... Russians! rofl.
Except for Apple afaik, those 4 companies were founded by the CIA black money.
"Other functions of government" indeed...
unless I'm a member of the ruling elite I have no say in what mega-corps do. Yes, government can devolve into oligarchy, but if your problem is oligarchy then why would you support the oligarchy in order to prevent the oligarchy?
Put another way, I don't care if the jack boot on my neck is a privately owned jack boot or a public jack boot. I would prefer not to have a jack boot on my neck.
And no, the Shareholders won't clamor for that. They make their money off 'investing', e.g. skimming 50-70% off the top of our economy (does it count as skimming off the top when it's those percentages). If that's all it took to solve our problems we wouldn't have had them in the first place.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
but nobody seems to want to ask how many people the capitalistic oligarchy has killed. We've been blowing civilians away left and right since Sept 11th in the name of terrorism. And that's before you start counting folks starved, poisoned and otherwise maimed and killed.
Oh, and you assume if Hitler and Stalin went away that everything would be honky dory. It wouldn't. Do you not know what a power vacuum is? Hint, it's not a new kind of Dyson.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
the ruling elites are fighting it and the working class is losing it. Forget small scales. Bring back 90% marginal rates and the tax structures from the 50s that made pump and dump stocks unprofitable.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
This is not really surprising. The U.S. political system is one of the most corruptable systems in the world where a large amount of the money in political campaigns necessary to impress the uneducated populace is "contributed" by corporations interested in tampering with legislation, and a lot of law is written up by company lawyers instead of government employees.
It is much cheaper to bribe representatives into making favorable legislation than bribing your actual customers (which amounts to actually winning them over rather than leaving them little choice).
"investigated by both halves of Congress for its role in the Russian propaganda campaign during the US presidential election"
Considering there still exists not a shred of proof of Russian propaganda or influence over the US election, I find this line to be very misleading.
Those amounts are pocket change for those companies, hardly blowing excessive amounts. Its like you or I dropping £1 in the local candidate collection tin at the station.
Get those Bribes in, we are about to start counting. We have some fat guys with round caps in the corner tabulating the score!!
This kind of thing is a cash cow for politicians even if they have no intention of going after the firms. All they have to do is mention the possibility, and the companies will scramble their lobbyists. We need term limits, and we need to get SCOTUS to stop claiming that corporations are people, or this shit will never cease.
Just another day in Paradise
in DC? Run for political office. But...but...but...their salary is less than $200k per year? How can they get rich if they have to maintain a residence in DC, plus one in their home state? LOL, their "salary" is CHUMP CHANGE compared to the money thrown at them via the lobbyist on K street. One you climb the political ladder and make it to "the big show" is where the REAL money comes into play. Disgusting! All lobbying should be banned, and, anyone caught lobbying, or paying someone, should be publicly executed.
Bribery is what gets them ahead & keeps them there (nothing more). You'd think they wouldn't even NEED to do that - just be judicious businesses giving people what THEY want!
* Not the other way around 'tail wagging the dog' (essentially saying "Want to know what's GOOD for you? We WILL tell YOU what that is" & we'll PAYOFF those that make that possible in order for it to go thru...)
APK
P.S.=> Pretty pitiful when you think about it - it SHOULD be pure technical merit & benefits it provides in a TRULY open competition FREE MARKET instead (ala simply building that "better mousetrap" alone)... apk
They only have to spend so much, because the others spent so much too. But the others only did, because they themselves did. And so on.
It’s a bubble. I remember two guys getting the Nobel price in economics, for proving mathematically, that any speculative stock market *must* collapse every 30 or so years. Because that’s the threshold when the speculative worth has distanced itself so much from the real worth, that it stops being believable. Unless, of course, the government puts a cork on the volcano, and calls it “solved”. Then we get some more decades, and then a *massive* explosion, just like the economical crisis of 2007, and the coming even bigger one. But I digress
My point is, that this is bound to fail or cause crazy inflation, and wouldn’t be necessary if this wasn’t a psychopathic dog-eat-dog society.
____
Oh, and don’t call it “lobbying”. I’m from a time, where it still was called by what it actually is: *Treason*. A capital crime like murder. Usually resulting in 20 years in prison.
Professionals have their employees/lobbyists BE the politicians. Bonus points for using "revolving doors".
Microsoft did that, ages ago. The one responsible for them in the government, and the one responsible for the government in them, just swapped seats.
Monsanto did the same.
But basically, any reputable bunch of psychopaths aka corporation, did that too.
And not just the USA.
Goldman Sachs, at one time, had its employees work at the head of at least the World Bank, Federal Reserve, European central bank, and overseeing the bailouts, *at the same time*.
E.g. Merkel's predecessor can also be called “Gerhard 'Gazprom lobbyist and chancellor-as-a-side-job' Schröder". And I have zero doubts whatsoever, that Merkel is the US equivalent of that.
Corruption aside, spending more on lobbying seems to be an indication of the maturation of a business in the US. If you look at top spenders, the ones mentioned in the article are the youngest of the bunch.
At some point in its life, a company recognizes that it can get better returns from lobbying than it can from any other investment.
Pointing fingers at The Government, or The State, is a popular argument, especially in the US, but I'm not at all convinced.
Where you talk about "concentration of power" in government's hands that goes wrong I see the sum-total of pervasive actions by individuals as the root cause, with a Government merely being set up to codify and channel the momentum caused and made inevitable by the free will and decisions of millions.
Take the issue of introducing African slaves into the West Indies now. Started, carries out, abd brought to fruition by thousands of individual traders and plantation owners.
The eradication of Indians in North America: the effect of the collective choices of millions of white US citizens over the years. Ofttimes supported by he government simply serving those it represented.
The Industrial Revolution that unfortunately led to the improverishment and marginalisation of hundreds of millions, stripping them of all perspectives and hopes of betterment, was driven by the collective choices of millions of private enterprises. Leading to what ideologues call "the proletariat", which in turn caused a century or so of bloody revolution (you mentioned the USSR, China, Pol Pot).
Those phenomena (in which "The Government" really did engineer the death of millions) were merely (as I see it) the political echoes of societal developments caused a century or so earlier by the collective actions of millions.
Therefore I think you absolutely miss the point when you finger-point at "The Government" as the perpetrator of atrocities. Sure, it forced compliance and spilled the blood, but it was never the root cause.
I think that we can dimly see today that the game-theoretic setting in which decision making takes place (the current US political situation w.r.t. the place of campaign donations, corporations being accorded rights of "individuals", lobbying and the influence of big enterprise on politics (above and beyond that of voters) is an excellent illustration.
As such I see the phenomenon of one-dollar-one-vote politics as much more of a root cause than any "government" involvement.
Indeed I think that enterprise would have made its weight felt even in an anarchy (of the type Libertarians are so fond of and keep telling us we should have). For example by throwing its weight behind some sort of warlord or crime lord capable of providing, you guessed it, Government.