[DubiousPusher]

When I say it's not a bribe I mean in the classic "quid pro quo" sense. I certainly think it's not a great way to run a republic. My point is exactly that it's cheap because the representatives aren't looking to get rich off that money. It's cheap because they're just buying 20 minutes of time.

[mindcandy]

Politicians don’t put the bribes in their pockets. They put them in their re-election campaigns because without those bribes they will get voted out of office by The People in favor of an opponent with a larger, bribe-based ad budget. They don’t want the bribes, they need them just to stay in power. In return, the real goal of “access” is to hear what the bribing company wants written into law or else the bribes will cease and the politician will be booted out.

Competition for this ad budget is so fierce that Congresspeople spend more than half of their working hours reaching out to groups they need bribes from. This skews the laws not always in favor of the groups, but really in favor of whatever motivates the groups to bribe harder. Ex: if simplifying the laws would make everything easier for everyone, we can’t have it. We need the existing complexity to fight and have bidding wars over.

No matter what you want Congress to do, they can’t do it until we fix campaign finance. Doesn’t matter what issues you care about. They’ll only be worked on incidentally if they don’t get in the way of the bribes.

You don’t like it. Congress doesn’t like it. They’re trapped and can’t move against it without getting cut off and booted out. We’re all fucked until we find a catch-22-escape for them.

[dragonwriter]

> Politicians don’t put the bribes in their pockets.

Yes, they do. All the time.

> They put them in their re-election campaigns because without those bribes they will get voted out of office by The People in favor of an opponent with a larger, bribe-based ad budget.

You kind of fail at corruption if you are getting bribes many times the annual salary of a job per year and are feeding them into nothing more than keeping that job.

Most corrupt politicians do not fail at corruption that badly.

[learc83]

>Yes, they do. All the time.

Most of them don't need to do something as explicitly criminal as taking money from a lobbyist and using it for personal expenses.

There are far better ways for members of congress to make money--passing laws that benefit companies they or their family members are invested in and taking lucracitive industry jobs after they leave office for example.

[mac01021]

> Yes, they do. All the time.

Can you point us to some documented examples?

[DubiousPusher]

> Politicians don’t put the bribes in their pockets.

That is also my understating. That is where the revolving door comes in. Many a career Senator or House member has capped off a career with a lobbying job. It's also good to note that most people who ever sit in the House or Senate were quite wealthy before running. You kind of have to be.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/09/how-did...