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Comment by astrange | Hacker News Reader

> In reality there's a TON of special interests driving who gets in front of the population to even be elected to Congress and then what the agenda is for them after being elected.

There aren't really. In other countries yes, the party can kick you out if they don't like you. In the US the parties don't really exist, there are just people.

There have been tons of primary upsets just this week and none of them are because of "special interests". No elite wants Jamaal Bowman or Lauren Boebert elected, but they'll be on the ballot.

Afterwards the control is mostly because we don't fund elections properly, so everyone except AOC has to spend all day calling donors.

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Needing to spend all day calling donors in order to stay in office sounds a lot like “special interests driving ... what the agenda is” to me.

Precisely. Big donors provide money to get a return. In fact, its one of the best investments you can make.

"Corporations Lobbying Government Reap 76,000% Return On Investment. Between 2007 and 2012, 200 of America’s most politically active corporations spent a combined $5.8 billion on federal lobbying and campaign contributions." [1]

"How The Fortune 100 Turned $2 Billion in Lobbying Spend Into $400 Billion of Taxpayer Cash" [2]

[1] https://www.mintpressnews.com/corporations-lobbying-governme...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2019/05/14/how...

I'll just disagree because I think your statement is highly inaccurate.

Regarding who gets on the ballot - yes there are a special interests that fund their candidate. We generally get whomever has a larger budget, not who the best candidate might be. Special interests also drive the ballot measures too.

> In the US the parties don't really exist, there are just people.

This makes no sense. Just recently (2016) the Dems showed clear bias against Bernie in the leaks. The Chair resigned. The party always has a platform, a brand, an agenda and big budgets. Also third parties have almost zero shot because the 2 major parties conspire to keep them out. It's not just "people". The Ds have their consistent supporters and the Rs have theirs. That includes corporations, special interest groups and more.

You have non-citizens driving these politicians. Big donors, some unions (like police), special interest groups. Health care, gun lobbyists, etc.

"Analyst James A. Thurber estimated that the actual number of working lobbyists was close to 100,000 and that the industry brings in $9 billion annually.[6] Wall Street spent a record $2 billion trying to influence the 2016 United States presidential election." [1]

"Who got special deals in the stimulus and why they got them. In the $2 trillion package, senators took care of their home state industries and pet projects." [2]

Casinos and airlines, among others, flexed their clout in that stimulus.

From the homepage today: "AP: Catholic Church lobbied for taxpayer funds, got $1.4B" [4]

Even more damning:

"We looked for legislation that was written by special interests. We found it in all 50 states. When legislators propose new laws, they don’t always write the bills themselves. Corporations, interest groups or their lobbyists often write fill-in-the-blank documents then shop them to state lawmakers."

"These copy-and-paste bills are commonly known as model legislation. More than 2,100 of these bills have been signed into law in the last eight years." [3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States

[2] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/26/stimulus-coronaviru...

[3] https://www.usatoday.com/pages/interactives/asbestos-sharia-...

[4] https://apnews.com/dab8261c68c93f24c0bfc1876518b3f6

> Regarding who gets on the ballot - yes there are a special interests that fund their candidate. We generally get whomever has a larger budget, not who the best candidate might be. Special interests also drive the ballot measures too.

I mean, evidence suggests this is not true because of the small-donor revolution. Like I said above, there were left and right primary upsets this week, and now senior House members will probably be replaced by a socialist high school teacher and a Qanon conspiracy theorist.

Meanwhile in the presidential race, Bernie raised the most with only small donors, two billionaires outspent everyone and failed, and Biden is winning despite hardly fundraising or advertising the whole primary.

Another new case is in Seattle, where Amazon tried to spend their way into controlling the city council to get rid of a tax, but only proved they had no power and everyone hated them: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2020/07/jumpstart-seatt...

The less popular congresspeople who don't have as many small donors do spend too much time calling for donations, so reform is still needed, but AOC and co really do seem to not have this problem.

> This makes no sense. Just recently (2016) the Dems showed clear bias against Bernie in the leaks. The Chair resigned. The party always has a platform, a brand, an agenda and big budgets.

And in 2020 because Bernie had such a strong youth vote (even though he ran a kind of bad campaign this time), Biden moved to the left after winning and put his people on the policy team. Probably the reason he didn't win is that old people who own homes are the most reliable voters - they're the real interest behind everything in the US.

> "Who got special deals in the stimulus and why they got them. In the $2 trillion package, senators took care of their home state industries and pet projects." [2]

I read this article and idk, seems fine to me. It would be quite bad if the airlines went out of business; they have some of the largest union contracts in the US and those would not survive bankruptcy.

> I mean, evidence suggests this is not true because of the small-donor revolution

You're trying to make a case based on just a handful of candidates.

You missed the whole point on Bernie - which was that the party showed clear bias.

What about the model legislation I linked to? Special interests and corporations creating thousands of bills.

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