How Much To Buy a Politician?

[Lord MJ]

Thought about posting this in the election thread, but thought this is specific enough to warrant it's own thread.

This topic originated from a comment that Hillary received over $400k in contributions from Time Warner over all of her campaigns. The comment being that it's absurd that that can influence an election (or be an incentive for CNN to have a conflict of interest in the debates) because $400k is such a little amount, a small percentage of TWs net worth and the salaries of their executives.

So that got me to thinking, exactly how much does a corporate entity have to donate to a politician to "buy" them. I believe it's a lot less than $400k. As evidenced by this:

http://www.theguardian.com/business/201 ... -track-tpp

Here’s how much corporations paid US senators to fast-track the TPP bill
Critics of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership are unlikely to be silenced by an analysis of the flood of money it took to push the pact over its latest hurdle
TPP protest
Demonstrators protest against the legislation to give Obama fast-track authority to advance trade deals, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
C Robert Gibson and Taylor Channing
Wednesday 27 May 2015 08.30 EDT Last modified on Thursday 25 June 2015 07.18 EDT
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A decade in the making, the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is reaching its climax and as Congress hotly debates the biggest trade deal in a generation, its backers have turned on the cash spigot in the hopes of getting it passed.


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“We’re very much in the endgame,” US trade representative Michael Froman told reporters over the weekend at a meeting of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum on the resort island of Boracay. His comments came days after TPP passed another crucial vote in the Senate.

That vote, to give Barack Obama the authority to speed the bill through Congress, comes as the president’s own supporters, senior economists and a host of activists have lobbied against a pact they argue will favor big business but harm US jobs, fail to secure better conditions for workers overseas and undermine free speech online.

Those critics are unlikely to be silenced by an analysis of the sudden flood of money it took to push the pact over its latest hurdle.

Fast-tracking the TPP, meaning its passage through Congress without having its contents available for debate or amendments, was only possible after lots of corporate money exchanged hands with senators. The US Senate passed Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) – the fast-tracking bill – by a 65-33 margin on 14 May. Last Thursday, the Senate voted 62-38 to bring the debate on TPA to a close.

Those impressive majorities follow months of behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing by the world’s most well-heeled multinational corporations with just a handful of holdouts.

Using data from the Federal Election Commission, this chart shows all donations that corporate members of the US Business Coalition for TPP made to US Senate campaigns between January and March 2015, when fast-tracking the TPP was being debated in the Senate:

Out of the total $1,148,971 given, an average of $17,676.48 was donated to each of the 65 “yea” votes.
The average Republican member received $19,673.28 from corporate TPP supporters.
The average Democrat received $9,689.23 from those same donors.
The amounts given rise dramatically when looking at how much each senator running for re-election received.

Two days before the fast-track vote, Obama was a few votes shy of having the filibuster-proof majority he needed. Ron Wyden and seven other Senate Democrats announced they were on the fence on 12 May, distinguishing themselves from the Senate’s 54 Republicans and handful of Democrats as the votes to sway.

In just 24 hours, Wyden and five of those Democratic holdouts – Michael Bennet of Colorado, Dianne Feinstein of California, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Patty Murray of Washington, and Bill Nelson of Florida – caved and voted for fast-track.
Bennet, Murray, and Wyden – all running for re-election in 2016 – received $105,900 between the three of them. Bennet, who comes from the more purple state of Colorado, got $53,700 in corporate campaign donations between January and March 2015, according to Channing’s research.
Almost 100% of the Republicans in the US Senate voted for fast-track – the only two non-votes on TPA were a Republican from Louisiana and a Republican from Alaska.
Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, who is the former US trade representative, has been one of the loudest proponents of the TPP. (In a comment to the Guardian Portman’s office said: “Senator Portman is not a vocal proponent of TPP - he has said it’s still being negotiated and if and when an agreement is reached he will review it carefully.”) He received $119,700 from 14 different corporations between January and March, most of which comes from donations from Goldman Sachs ($70,600), Pfizer ($15,700), and Procter & Gamble ($12,900). Portman is expected to run against former Ohio governor Ted Strickland in 2016 in one of the most politically competitive states in the country.
Seven Republicans who voted “yea” to fast-track and are also running for re-election next year cleaned up between January and March. Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia received $102,500 in corporate contributions. Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, best known for proposing a Monsanto-written bill in 2013 that became known as the Monsanto Protection Act, received $77,900 – $13,500 of which came from Monsanto.
Arizona senator and former presidential candidate John McCain received $51,700 in the first quarter of 2015. Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina received $60,000 in corporate donations. Eighty-one-year-old senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who is running for his seventh Senate term, received $35,000. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who will be running for his first full six-year term in 2016, received $67,500 from pro-TPP corporations.
“It’s a rare thing for members of Congress to go against the money these days,” said Mansur Gidfar, spokesman for the anti-corruption group Represent.Us. “They know exactly which special interests they need to keep happy if they want to fund their reelection campaigns or secure a future job as a lobbyist.

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“How can we expect politicians who routinely receive campaign money, lucrative job offers, and lavish gifts from special interests to make impartial decisions that directly affect those same special interests?” Gidfar said. “As long as this kind of transparently corrupt behavior remains legal, we won’t have a government that truly represents the people.”

This article was amended on 28/5/15 to include a comment from senator Rob Portman.

I posit that a politician can be bought for as little as 4 figures. $400k is overkill.

Of course some donors (like our Koch friends) give far bigger amounts.

I don't want this to be specific to Hillary's $400k contribution (otherwise this is more appropriate in the US Election Thread). But a discussion about just how easy or hard it is to buy influence over a politician in US politics today.

I would like to see some stats on the average corporate contribution per candidate (not total contributions to all candidates per corporation). Trying to google that info now.

[Civil War Man]

I would like to see some stats on the average corporate contribution per candidate (not total contributions to all candidates per corporation). Trying to google that info now.

OpenSecrets.org is pretty comprehensive as far as I can tell in seeing who is contributing to which campaign.

And I would not be at all surprised if $400k is enough to buy most politicians. It's bad enough that they can be bought, but the really insulting part is that so many of them can be bought for relative pittances.

EDIT: fixing tags

[Channel72]

A more interesting question, to me, at least, is how can any capitalistic society realistically be engineered in order to prevent this from occurring? You can slap upper limits on corporate campaign donations, of course, but that doesn't really prevent corporations from finding ways around that, by funneling money through other channels, and it of course does nothing to stop other forms of "soft" bribery in the form of undocumented promises or agreements.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I think it's important to define what we mean by "bought." Are we asking how much it takes to "buy" a politicians vote on a single issue? Their influence on getting a bill written a certain way? Their general support on a set of issues or being completely in that individual's/corporations pocket? Those different levels of "being bought" would, I would think, require increasingly higher amounts of money.

There's also the way it's done. Is one single payment enough? Or are smaller, regular payments more effective?

[Simon_Jester]

A more interesting question, to me, at least, is how can any capitalistic society realistically be engineered in order to prevent this from occurring? You can slap upper limits on corporate campaign donations, of course, but that doesn't really prevent corporations from finding ways around that, by funneling money through other channels, and it of course does nothing to stop other forms of "soft" bribery in the form of undocumented promises or agreements.

Well, you could provide ample campaign finance funding out of the public moneybox, give the FCC or some similar organization regulatory authority with teeth about what private entities can do to run their own campaign ads (say, fine the campaign 1.5 times the cost of any ad run by a private entity on their behalf).

But that would violate freedom of speech, as currently construed by the Supreme Court, because "money talks" has been interpreted as "money is speech."

You could do it, just not without some pretty fundamental changes to the way the US operates.

[TimothyC]

I posit that a politician can be bought for as little as 4 figures. $400k is overkill.

McCain was bought by SpaceX for just $80k to trash ULA.

[K. A. Pital]

A more interesting question, to me, at least, is how can any capitalistic society realistically be engineered in order to prevent this from occurring? You can slap upper limits on corporate campaign donations, of course, but that doesn't really prevent corporations from finding ways around that, by funneling money through other channels, and it of course does nothing to stop other forms of "soft" bribery in the form of undocumented promises or agreements.

Market is market. If you let companies grow to the size of nations, there is no way to prevent them from gaining a fair share of control over the nations, except stripping them of corporate rights.

But I would start with public and equal funding only as a good measure. Screen time could be then equalized, as could many other things.

[MKSheppard]

McCain was bought by SpaceX for just $80k to trash ULA.

Actually, he's hated ULA's parent company (well at least 1/2 of them) since the late 1990s -- BOEING.

And the RD-180 issue is a serious one -- ULA was paid serious money each year -- $1B extra for launch assurance and did jack with that money.

[aerius]

If that's all it takes the nuclear industry needs to get its shit together and start buying off some public officials.

[Adam Reynolds]

If that's all it takes the nuclear industry needs to get its shit together and start buying off some public officials.

It wouldn't work in that case. Which company builds rockets is something that few care about. Where a nuclear reactors gets built is something that people would notice and protest.

[Patroklos]

I am not sure what the relevance is regarding the the scale of the money relative to the doner. Whether the amount is a rounding error or all their money all that matters is how it is perceived by the recipient.

Anyway, we are in a situation regarding many of our institutions and public functions where the scale of our societies gets larger and larger but individuals are still just Mk I humans. The scope of our personal lives, wants, and needs hasn't similarly scaled. I am not at all surprised that the amount of money it takes to buy one person of any profession or position is small relative to the war chest or organizations of people operating on a societal scale.

[FireNexus]

If that's all it takes the nuclear industry needs to get its shit together and start buying off some public officials.

They lobby like motherfuckers. A lot of their lobbying is indirect, too. They try to get strong carbon taxes that would make nuclear cost-competitive. Besides all the NIMBY stuff, the key is this: Things that would be needed to make nuclear competitive are unpopular with consumers and deeper-pocketed energy companies.

Frankly, I strongly approve of the strict guidelines for nuclear energy. I just think they should be applied to all energy providers. more nukes would get built and the price would come back down to about where it is within two decades, just with way less carbon.

[Lord MJ]

I think it's important to define what we mean by "bought." Are we asking how much it takes to "buy" a politicians vote on a single issue? Their influence on getting a bill written a certain way? Their general support on a set of issues or being completely in that individual's/corporations pocket? Those different levels of "being bought" would, I would think, require increasingly higher amounts of money.

There's also the way it's done. Is one single payment enough? Or are smaller, regular payments more effective?

I think in this case "bought" means enough that they are influenced to either write, or vote for/against legislation in a way that serves the donors interests. At least in the legislature. The president has other means of giving favors to donors but is also more accountable to the people given his/her high profile.