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Comment by tomkarlo | Hacker News Reader

"If you made a list of the top ten groups that give money to Congressmen these guys would definitely be in it."

Not sure that's true, esp. in reference to organized labor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States#L... http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=s

The dollar values may show this, and these numbers show you're right. However, influence wise, unions have massive sway because of the breath / consistency of their voter block - which provides a higher ROI on their lobbying money.

You mean, because they have a bunch of people who vote for politicians? I'm pretty sure that's how things are _supposed_ to work.

No. Because they are the biggest buyers of influence on the hill. It has absolutely nothing to do with having a bunch of people, just a bunch of money.

13 out of the biggest 20 donors are unions. http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?order=A

Sorry, but that's like looking at Hawaii and saying the US is a tropical country. You're ignoring 90% of the money spent by organizations to influence Congress.

Donations are only one small way that money influences the hill. If they were as effective as lobbying, you wouldn't see 10X the money being spent on that.

To me, any concentration of power, whether unions, corporations, etc. is dangerous to democracy. These people each voting their own mind is one thing, but these orgs encourage zombie voters that always vote the same way - while having central leaders to play / pay hard. This is very different from politicians just looking out for their voters.

Concentration of power via voting groups is a fundamental part of the democratic process, be it via representatives creating factions within legislatures or voters banding together to create political groups. (In the end, the Democratic and Republican party are essentially that.) Doing so allows smaller factions that have a single driving issue to have some political impact by focusing their voting behavior on that one axis.

What's the difference between that list and this one? http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?order=A

This list makes it look like unions dominate elections.

The former is a list of the total spent on lobbying, while the latter is political donations (campaign donations, essentially).

Campaign donations are much smaller, and much more regulated, than money spent on lobbying. Maybe the poster meant only donations, but it seems an artificial distinction to me to say that regulated campaign donations are the only way that special interest groups "give" money to congress.

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