Corruption in the USA - Primer

[Used with permission.]

Lobbying is a sore topic with me.

I have a seminar on "Corruption" which has dealt with it. In short- the US has legalized corruption through our lobbying "regulations."

There are 535 members of congress and many times that number of lobbyists. They in the aggregate spend several million per member each year.

In theory they represent legitimate interest groups. In practice there are very few of my interests represented!

Here is a quick example: a quote from a lobbyist explaining how the laws regulating lobbyists are worth less than the paper we wasted celebrating their passage.*

There is plenty of additional dirt on Google.

"Put it this way, legally, I could donate an unlimited amount of money to anyone I want.

I will give you a generic example, a law is in the process of taxing computers. Some environmental group is stating that the additional costs of recycling a computer is costly and that the people buying them should pay a 10% additional tax to cover the costs. They hired a lobbyist firm to make their cause and now there is a percentage of congress that is on board with this. Now we got tech firms calling us right and left (in this example). The problem is the law states that I can only donate a $5,000 or so per company. IE: The company can only donate $5,000 to a politician. But the system is so freaking backwards that when something like a tax on computers show up in congress that I could spend huge amounts of money for my lobby effort. In this example, I want to stress that this isn't happening.. it's just an example of how much money I could gather in about 8 hours if I needed it for this or that effort.

In this case, I would just inform a counterpart of this problem, and they would address their client within a day I start the ball rolling to have millions of dollars in Washington.

The key is not to have the checks come from my office, the key is to have it come from other like minded areas. So in reality, I generally call another Lobbyist that represents the firm in question.

I would get $5,000 from AOL because they want to continue to throw that 'buy AOL now icon on your desktop.

I would get another $5,000 from Intel because they want to continue to sell processors.

I would get another $5,000 from AMD because they want to continue to sell processors

I would get another $5,000 from Microsoft because they want to sell Vista.I

would get another $5,000 from Norton, because they want to sell their anti-virus stuff

I would get another $5,000 from Valve, because they want to sell video games

I would get another $5,000 from CDW, because they want to sell more products

I would get another $5,000 from Google, because they want more people to visit their site

I would get another $5,000 from Ebay, because they want more people to buy stuff from their site

I would get another $5,000 from Yahoo, because they want more people to visit their site.

I would get another $5,000 from Redhat, because they want to sell more servers

The funny thing is I didn't even get to the computer manufacturers yet

I would get another $5,000 from Dell so their product isn't taxed

I would get another $5,000 from HP so their product isn't taxed

I would get another $5,000 from Apple so their product isn't taxed

I would get another $5,000 from local firm ABZ so their product isn't taxed

I would get another $5,000 from regional firm ACB so their product isn't taxed

When all is said and done, my 8 hours of effort (1 business day) I could have anywhere between 5-10 million - all in $5,000 dollar donations from all the industries and firms that touch the PC."


--
Professor Bruce W. Bean
Lecturer in Global Corporate Law
September 2008