Lamar Smith: Campaign Finance/Money

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=2012&type=I&cid=N00001811&newMem=N&recs=20

by llambda • 15 years ago

27 29 15 years ago

bane3• 15 years ago

So it's clear to me that congress is essentially corrupt. What's not clear is what this kind of data is supposed to do outside of waiting patiently for the next election cycle and voting the incumbent out -- ending up with somebody who is probably just as corrupt.

- Who do we report this to who can prosecute this?

- What laws make this illegal? (or similarly, how do we make this kind of behavior illegal if the gatekeepers to the law are the people who are taking part in this?)

- If we can't make it it illegal, how do we make it unethical?

- How do we, as the citizenry, punish this?

I'm convinced at this point that the kind of people who make it into Congress, incumbent or not, are just going to be more of the same kind of quasi-criminal we have there now, so fighting with the vote is simply not enough.

Is there a way to use the courts? The DoJ?

Or are we simply going to have to wait for critical mass to develop behind some political movement that will stamp this out?

In other words, with Congress in single digit approval ratings, what seems to be the road block that we as the citizenry can grind into dust to affect the change we want to see but haven't yet done so?

dantheman• 15 years ago

We need to have the states start to challenge the power congress has, and reduce the power that congress has by electing people who will start to reduce the size of the government. As long as the government is handing out trillions of dollars it is in anyone's best interest to see as much of that comes to you as possible.

ajays• 15 years ago

Come on, man. Enough with this parroting of Ron Paul's talking points. (I do support most of RP's ideas, BTW).

I'm not attacking you personally, but the post you made.

It is the Federal Government's responsibility to regulate interstate commerce. The Internet is not limited to 1 state; it falls right in the purview of interstate commerce.

I get the "small government", "low taxes", etc. arguments. But there's a place to make them; discussing how the Congress is trying to kneecap the Internet is not one of those places.

nextparadigms2• 15 years ago

Those are some good questions about what people can do right now to stop them. But ultimately you want to remove all the bad incentives that keeps pushing them to choose money over principles, otherwise this will keep happening, even if you replace all of them at next elections.

Larry Lessig has some interesting ideas about how campaign funding should work:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111214/17245817090/lessig...

nhaehnle• 15 years ago

You have an important point here: transparency is not enough. Here's Lawrence Lessig's proposal, in case you haven't seen it yet: http://lessig.tumblr.com/post//the-grant-and-franklin-projec...

cynicalkane• 15 years ago

Campaign finance isn't illegal, nor is it a sign of evil. It's a sign of a broken system, but we have to distinguish between an evil system, and a good system filled with evil people.

American activists would be better served if they had a good notion of a theory of government. The dominant attitude in activism, on any side, these last three or four years, has been one of making the government do X, where X is some extraordinary ill-defined goal.

So people are offended when X doesn't happen, and begin to suspect Congressmen are evil. The truth is probably more like this--Congressmen are good people in general, but selected by their appeal to moneyed interests and influential political causes. Then they are thrust into an environment where everyone wants them to do their bidding, and so condition themselves to ignore most sources of information, particularly sources outside their own interest, or sources they don't understand. This appears to an outsider to be like cronyism and willful ignorance. The reality is they haven't a clue about certain things, and in fact that's part of the reason why they got elected...

TL;DR: don't fix the people. You won't get anywhere making unrealistic demands on anyone forced to conform to a bad process. Instead, fix the process.

bane3• 15 years ago

Campaign finance isn't illegal, nor is it a sign of evil.

I agree with the first part, but not the second. Otherwise there simply wouldn't be a reason to push these numbers out as if they were a sign of some kind of badness.

In a representational democracy such as ours, Congress is hired to represent the interests of their constituents not the interests of who pays the most money. That the voice of the constituents appears to not be heard or represented at all is the thing that's wrong.

Simply buying your a vote for your interests is not how this is supposed to be working. And the people who can actually change it are the ones who are being bought -- virtually guaranteeing no opportunity for change to occur, despite immense desire from the electorate for exactly that change to occur.

ChuckMcM2• 15 years ago

" ... ending up with somebody who is probably just as corrupt."

Are you corrupt? Are there people in your circle of friends who aren't corruptible? Do you know anyone with integrity? Why not vote that person in instead?

Yes its an emotional response to the defeatism. Congress people are people not some select pool of corrupt toadies. There is no requirement that you be a person of low character to be a member of congress, rather its that folks who have adopted this defeatist attitude that there is nothing they can do to change it gives people of moral turpitude an advantage, they are willing to run for office.

How about a kickstarter for public service? People sign up and say what office they are running for and changes they want to make and we crowd source them? How about creating a youtube channel for people who want to change the world can speak easily to the folks who might elect them without having to pay extortionate television fees? How about we kick out the corrupt congress people by applying technology to the problem of surfacing the better candidates?

bane3• 15 years ago

"Why not vote that person in instead?"

Who? Nobody I know personally who isn't corrupt is running. I'd vote for them.

But sadly the way things are setup to work guarantees I pretty much get two equally bad choices.

Even when some group gets lots of support and gets themselves stealth elected -- the recent tea party elections are a fantastic example (despite my personal disagreements with their political philosophy), they find their ability to change the broken system reduced to almost nothing.

newman314• 15 years ago

For a start, make it so that Congress and Senate are not able to profit off of insider trading.

cyrus_• 15 years ago

Is it just me or are those amounts really low? Surely the tech industry can pony up another $50,000 and get this guy on their side?

nextparadigms2• 15 years ago

They seem low to me, too. Perhaps OpenSecrets doesn't have all the data.

semisight• 15 years ago

Try checking our biggest ally Zoe Lofgren (of reddit fame http://www.reddit.com/r/SOPA/comments/nfhhy/member_of_house_...).

She's taking money from tech and VCs. She's really no better than he is, she just happens to be right this time.

CamperBob• 15 years ago

She has to take money from somebody, or she doesn't get elected.

Hence the problem.

md15152• 15 years ago

I'm not so sure we even need a congress anymore. Honestly...hear me out.

The purpose of congress is to provide representation for American citizens who could not travel to Washington D.C. to vote on the bills and amendments that congressmen take part in.

These days reporters in D.C. can blog about all bills or report them in news stories instantly. So U.S. citizens are always in the know. More importantly, American citizens can easily vote with the current technology we have. Youth can use the internet, elders the telephone etc.

What do you guys think? I doubt it would happen...congress is too ingrained in our constitution and 'murica in general...

JimmyL2• 15 years ago

I think your core assumption - that "US citizens are always in the know - is optimistic (here's a survey to whet your thinking - http://pewresearch.org/politicalquiz/). I think most Americans reading this site are, but we're not exactly a majority. There's a whole lot of people who don't live in the top-thirty cities in the country and don't have the time to spend a few hours a day reading up on politics. And even those who do, certainly don't have the background to have an informed opinion on everything that Government deals with. To pick an example at random, could you deliver informed comments and votes on issues relating to the work of the Bureau of Land Management in southern Utah, and how their grazing policies affect farmers? I know I couldn't.

The bottom line is that governing is hard, and doing is adequately requires a lot of knowledge about a lot of different things. Pick the Senate committee with the least-interesting sounding name - for me, that'd be the Subcommittee on Jobs, Rural Economic Growth and Energy Innovation or the Joint Committee on Printing - and try and watch a video feed of it in session for a few hours...the amount of things they have to deal with is amazingly broad, and way beyond the ability of any one person to capture (hence the importance of having a class of professional political staffers).

It's a similar reason why I'm in favor - generally - of lobbying. Is the way it's done now right? Not at all. But is there room in a well-run government for external subject matter experts with agendas? Certainly.

Lastly, I just don't think direct democracy works especially well. Check out California for the canonical example of what happens when you let people vote on complex issues in isolation of one another, with the information dumbed-down to target people who are willing to only budget an hour of their time per week on thinking about politics. Complex issues with national and international repercussions should be debated and decided by people who can study them in-depth and who represent a cross-section of the population, as opposed to those with the economic freedom to pick one or two to become involved with - I'm not saying that we have this now, but it's more what we need than a platform where OWS/Tea Party crowds can overwhelm a web vote on something.

FD3SA2• 15 years ago

Directy democracy fails for exactly the reasons you have stated, yet those reasons all have one source: complexity.

The system of law was designed not by engineers, but by law makers who had no concept of system architecture and runaway complexity. They employed an imprecise language to construct an unstable structure which requires continuous patching and propping, resulting in a quagmire of legislation, open to manipulation due to its inherently contradictory and subjective foundation.

This problem can only be solved by proper system design, but it requires a hard reset of extant legislation. Once the law is written such that every literate citizen can understand it, we will have arrived at direct democracy.

md15152• 15 years ago

Jimmy, let me clarify.

When I say making sure that US citizens are always in the know, I mean that the resources are almost always available for those who would like to be in the know.

With regard to your comment about having informed opinions on everything the Government deals with: I don't necessarily mean local matters. At first, perhaps we could start with the U.S. Congress while leaving the state.

I definitely agree that there are some issues to deal with. This is one radical proposal and I'll be the first to admit it might not even work. I do think that a more direct democracy in the model of the Swiss could be of great use in these times of questionable ethics (lobbying in particular).

tzs2• 15 years ago

All you need to do is go look at the discussion on Reddit in /r/politics, a place full of people who make some effort to be more informed than the average citizen, on the NDAA bill to see how colossally bad your idea is.

There have been several revisions of the bill, in particular of the 3 controversial sections. The majority of people in any given discussion are not discussing the current version. If there concerns are addressed in the current version, and you try to tell them that, you run a good chance of getting voted way down, because they saw some article by someone famous that said the bill was bad and they can't seem to grasp the concept that the article was written about an older version of the bill.

Congress deals with many deep and complicated issues. It is simply not possible for most citizens to competently decide how to vote on most bills. They have neither the background nor the time.

Under your system it would basically come down to a popularity contest among the proponents and opponents of a particular bill. People would simply look at who is for and against it, and go with which group fits in better with them. E.g., if Rush Limbaugh says it is bad, you'd have a large group of Limbaugh fans voting against it with no further analysis. If Glen Greenwald says it is good, a bunch of his fans will vote for it with no further analysis.

Advertising would also play a large amount in determining the outcome. You can already see this in states that allow initiatives to create legislation directly, bypassing the legislature. The outcome of initiatives if often heavily influenced by whether or not one side can significantly outspend the other on advertising.

nitrogen2• 15 years ago

Congress deals with many deep and complicated issues. It is simply not possible for most citizens to competently decide how to vote on most bills. They have neither the background nor the time.

It sounds like you're describing exactly what we have now, only without abstracted accountability through representatives. Sure, most citizens cannot competently decide how to vote on most bills, but clearly many congresspeople can't either. That's not only a problem of competence, but also of the unnecessary complexity of legislation. Using something like unified diffs alone would reduce the length of many bills significantly.

Citizens and their representatives already do that now. People look to their party to decide how to vote, and representatives look to the lobbyists with the most persuasive voice. It's easy to appear persuasive when your entire industry is built around convincing people to watch your advertisements.

Advertising would also play a large amount in determining the outcome.

It already does, and not just in initiatives. Direct democracy is not a panacea, but it would remove one of the significant roadblocks to addressing the problem of corruption and undue influence in politics.

davekinkead2• 15 years ago

Direct democracy will never work in a complex system. Having a 300 million person committee is about as close to decision making disaster as you can get.

But direct democracy is still the answer IMO. What needs to change first however, is for decision making to become more decentralised - as low as a given problem will allow it.

You can't expect everyone to be informed about all issues (govt has consistently demonstrated that even they can't stay on top of the laws they create). But you can expect people to be informed about the immediate issues that affect them. Most issues are local or regional ones & very few need to be national or international.

Even without direct democracy, decentralising political power whenever possible is a very good thing.

tzs2• 15 years ago

I think the point the submitter is trying to make is that Smith has high contributions ($87k) form the tv/movies/music industry (followed by $64k from computers/internet).

At first that looks bad. For comparison, look at Senator Wyden, who has been prominent as a SOPA opponent. He doesn't have any tv/movies/music industry donations in his top 20!

However, if you look deeper, the reason he doesn't have any in his top 20 is that he has such big contributions from others that it pushes the tv/movies/music industry out of the top 20. If you expand the list to show his top 50, you find tv/movies/music at $75k, not far behind the amount they gave to Smith.

gyardley• 15 years ago

We might disagree with his policies, but this isn't evidence of corruption in the slightest.

These not-particularly-large donations could very well be a consequence of his political opinions, not (as everyone seems so eager to assume) their cause.

That's how most political donations work, after all - you give to people you already agree with.

sehugg• 15 years ago

That's nothing. Senator Leahy, the other major supporter of SOPA, and who equates the internet to a "warehouse" besieged by criminals, has had quite the payday over his career: http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=...

Lamar Smith: Campaign Finance/Money

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