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.

Comments

This is why you keep corp taxes high

[rsilvergun]

Money is power, and there's no other way to regulate that kind of power besides taking some of it away.

Re:This is why you keep corp taxes high

[swillden]

As horrific as corporate actions have been throughout history, none have even come close to the heinous shit that governments have been able to do when given too much power.

You might want to read up a bit. Start by searching for something called "East India Company." From there you might try "United Fruit Company." There are other examples.

And then you can look up Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, Chiang Kai Shek's China, Leopold II's Congo Free State, the Empire of Japan, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Young Turk's Ottomon Empire... I'll stop now, but I could go on. The total butcher's bill of the list I gave is somewhere north of 100 million people murdered.

I'm not particularly anti-government, but nothing in human history remotely compares to the death toll of government gone bad -- even when you only look at how many of their own people they killed, ignoring war! Religion can't hold a candle to political ideology for murderousness, and corporations aren't even in the same zip code.

Any concentration of power should be watched, and most definitely includes corporations, but government needs the most scrutiny of all because governments are both far larger and wealthier than any corporation and especially because governments are specifically empowered and authorized to use deadly force. Some corporations have gotten away with nasty shit, including pre-meditated murder, but nothing at all like what governments have done.

Re:They all learned the MS lesson.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google now spends more on lobbying than any other company including those in the energy or banking sectors.

Re:They all learned the MS lesson.

[youngone]

Google now spends more on lobbying than any other company including those in the energy or banking sectors.

That's because they're smart, and they know how the US government works. (As others have pointed out here).
It's nice to know how much it is costing, but there is nothing ordinary US voters can do about it, because the system is set up to work this way.

Almost free of these companies

[Anonymous Coward]

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.