Can we the people beat lobbyists at their own game by creating our own public funded lobbyists group? How much would you pay per month to avoid the rich from screwing us over? $5/moth?
Can we the people beat lobbyists at their own game by creating our own public funded lobbyists group? How much would you pay per month to avoid the rich from screwing us over? $5/moth?
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And what does this group lobby for?
Sure, there are already special interest lobbying groups that aren’t funded by corporations!
How would your public funded lobby be different than other public funded lobbies like the NRA or the AARP?
Any cause you are interested in supporting, odds are there are already organizations out there working to lobby for the position you like that would gladly accept your support.
Those exist.
How are rich people screwing you over?
So you mean like labor unions, AARP, NRDC, NAACP, Young People’s Alliance, or Public Citizen? Those exist.
We will need a lobbyist. From what I understand, you need to develop relationships with the politicians and that takes time.
You’re better off crowdfunding mercenaries and setting examples.
Is the issue the lobbying, or the cash and other goodies the lobbyists can “promise”?
No, you seem to be seriously underestimating the wealth that the top 1% holds. Mathematically there’s no chance
Hundreds of such organizations already exist.
I will absolutely give you 5$ I’m an heir to 300 million dollars but need 100$ to unlock it
What if we outlawed lobbyist and no one has to bribe our elected representatives?
This is a good idea
Roughly 330 million people, in the US. Assume every single adult joins up. 330 million X $5 = $1.65 billion / month. Add the available cash of Musk, Bezos, Koch, and other equally wealthy folks who are not as well known and they can out match you month to month. AND politicians know that the wealthy and their interest groups are ever green, assuming the politician plays along. This group would not be see as such and thus, breaking from the edicts of your billionaire overlords would be very risky for any politician
no. lobbying groups are the facade that allow meetings and policy papers to be delivered without a hint of impropriety. however the paltry $ amounts they report giving are just for show. the real amounts – which are significantly more – are either disguised (book sales, donations to their charity, etc) or hidden (panama papers style bank accounts).
we will never be able to give as much as the rich can for such targeted issues. but we have the numbers, so we should instead vote to change the rules of how giving works to even the playing field.
Good idea. It would need to be lead and managed. Businesslike. Non-profit?
Easier to just stop them. Vote for people who prioritize getting money out of politics. Nobody is? Run yourself. Stop accepting anything less than your absolute must haves.
Here, in the UK, your average right wing lobbytank is receiving upwards of £10 million a year. They’re moneygorounds of dodgy cash laundering. Can we the people fund our opposition with dirty cash? That kind of defeats the point so we will always be on the back foot when $ are involved. ‘We’ have to reach out to ten thousand people to raise $100 000. ‘They’ have to reach out to one person at a ‘charity’ auction to raise the same amount. This is not a level playing field.
I don’t know, sometimes in the fall the moths get pretty thick around here.
At $5 each that could get expensive.
This is literally the definition of lobbying
Honestly… I pay about $11k a year already. As do most of us… isn’t it enough?
No need to create a lobby. Just get engaged with whatever existing advocacy group you’re aligned with and help them with their work. It’s easy to get on their email list. Then all you have to is actually follow up on their calls to action.
I wouldn’t pay a nickel. We have billionaires. Make those people pony the fuck up.
Honestly, I have been shocked at how small some of the donations to politicians are that seem to get them to support a position.
Or… Hear me out … We can just beat lobbists. Preferably with souvenir sized Pittsburgh pirates baseball bats.
The more a group grows, the less it becomes about its members.
I think one part of the equation you’re missing is the comfy jobs that companies give politicians after their political career is done. Gonna need those in your offers as well
Having been a professional advocate for public interest issues, aka a lobbyist for the people, theoretically yes you could make that group, but realistically you can’t.
Here’s how the entire lobbying industry works from a former insider:
Decision makers have limited time, their own interests and pet projects, and thousands of people asking them for help and assistance all the time.
Lobbyists, both large and small, at all levels from local to state to federal, also have these restrictions, and their own goals.
Many of these goals contradict, or methods and ideology contradict. People will change their minds, lose the energy to fight, or get deprioritized as new issues and incidents take up all the attention and time and money.
Meanwhile, many things special interests want will get shoehorned into the flavor of the week issue to try and move their agenda forward, but because it’s not heavily favored, they will compromise, because policy is generally about compromise.
The end result is the mashed together group project of group projects informed by thousands of peoples’ opinions, from experts to idiots and everyone in between, where generally the loudest voices win, put together by an overworked policy wonk trying to make it all work.
The resulting policy is probably going to suck and be inefficient, and then in a year or five people are going to come back around and try to fix it to make it work better while people who didn’t want it are fighting to just end the policy for whatever their own interests are.
Ergo, the reason I said it’s not realistically possible is because you’d be lucky to get 50% of people to agree on one general concept, let alone the specifics of a policy. Having been part of a team that had a clear policy goal and mission, it was often hard trying to get other people on the team to see eye to eye on an issue where we all generally believed the same thing, but just had different visions on how to get their mechanically. And that was internally without having to also fight off thousands of competing interests trying to snip apart our proposals or steal them to take credit while ripping out the heart of it to seem original, thereby rendering it useless.
You mean like our taxes that already pay their damn salaries?
Let’s pay for Democracy! This is the world we live in.