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Legalized bribery
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2025
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A million dollars is all it takes to buy whatever laws you want? That's a really good deal for Intuit.
Remember all those (exactly) 1 million dollar "donations" all those CEOs were giving to Trump's inaugural campaign? Those weren't donations, they were bribes and kissing of the ring. Pledge loyalty (and pay a small fee) and the government will work for you.
Except if you're Google or Facebook. Trump will accept your money and still fuck you over. Why anyone trusts him is beyond me.
They don't trust him, but they don't want to get on his bad side. They're basically hoping that he'll ignore them or forget about them, and focus his attention on his other enemies.
Politicians are cheap, I remember once seeing a list of how much a lobbyist buys support from politicians for and the list was like $5k $2k $3k $6k. It’s ridiculous
That's affordable. Maybe I'll buy one
Now you need to save it for your tax filing fees
It's much more complicated than that though. The lobbying firms hire people who are former politicians or former senior staffers who have all kinds of contacts all over Washington. Getting those guys on the payroll is extremely expensive.
Then, those lobbyists generally don't just go off and bribe someone. They build and strengthen relationships. They know all the pain points that the politicians have, and they just make things easier. If a politician's staffer is having trouble finding a good place to live in DC, the lobbyist knows a guy who knows a guy who can get them a great apartment.
Eventually, the lobbyist isn't this guy who tries to get the politician to change some laws. He's basically part of the team. So, when new legislation comes up, the whole team works on it together, including the lobbyist.
The end result is that the $5k or whatever is only the direct contribution to the politician's re-election campaign or something. Most of the spending is hiring the lobbyist and paying all his/her various expenses that make them indispensable for the politician, so that they can step in at the right time.
They're cheap because they fully believe in ideologies that screw everybody else. They're not doing it for the cash but for their god.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_religion