30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11B.

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

In America? Big Business.

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

If they don't want to be regarded as envious, entitled children who require very little provocation before they throw a tantrum and start wrecking other peoples' shit, they need to stop acting that way.

Fucking with people who do have jobs is not the way to win support.

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

Businesses commonly and repeatedly play outside those rules, and entire industries have sprung up to allow them to cheat the rules as much as possible even when they comply.

And they pay top dollar for a chance to get to change the rules to their advantage.

Which is how we get energy companies writing their own regulatory policies.

If you aren't aware of this by now, you are specifically choosing to be ignorant.

No, what the other guy does doesn't justify your own violations of legality and morality.

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

Tell that to your Occupy buddies.

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

Ummm, no they don't. They have a big influence, but they don't actually 'make' the rules.

To put it in clear English, they don't write the laws, nor do they sign off on it. Congress and the President do that.

So obviously the solution is to have a government that doesn't always listen to the influence of 'big business', since it obviously won't work to just remove that influence.

Not everything that lobbyists do is bad. The recent SOPA bill is probably not going to be passed because of work done by lobbyists hired by companies like Google and Facebook.

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

An interesting take on that in relations to the West Coast Port Shutdown:

http://www.salon.com/2011/12/09/occupy_vs_big_labor/singleton/

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

So I guess you missed the whole Energy Task Force thing huh?

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

I'm picturing a gang of malnurished vegan hippie douchenozzles trying to stop a bunch of dock workers from getting to their jobs. The mental image warms my black little heart.

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

How do they play outside the rules exactly? Exploiting loopholes is a common practice for any 'big business' in the US because they specifically lobbied the government into creating those loopholes so they could use them. It isn't playing outside the rules at all.

Energy companies are writing their own regulatory policies because the EPA can't do their job, and is more concerned about farm dust than they are about having fair and balanced regulations in place that all energy companies must abide by. Of course they probably don't because the government wrote the rules that allowed the energy companies to get away with whatever you're accusing them of.

I'm beginning to wonder if you even understand how business works.

Government creates tax code. Business follows tax code. Government creates loopholes. Business exploits loopholes. Government creates regulation. Business follows that regulation(or pays a fine). Government doesn't create regulation. Business doesn't have to follow regulation. Government gives subsidy. Business takes subsidy. Government doesn't enforce regulation. Business realizes this and doesn't attempt to meet regulation. Etc, etc.

Everything business does is dependent on what the government requires of them. If the government has a strict enforcement of regulations, like stiff fines, businesses won't attempt to get around the regulations. If the government has a progressive corporate flat tax with no loopholes across the board, and on top of that they don't give in to the lobbyists GE hires everytime they come knocking, businesses will pay their taxes, and quit hiring lobbyists because at some point its not worth it anymore.

The government, because of their acceptance of listening whenever the lobbyists ask them for something have created an environment where businesses are willing to spend billions making the people on K Street even richer, because they make even more money as a business due to the loopholes the lobbyists get the government to create. If the government doesn't listen, the lobbyists are not hired and K Street doesn't pay out annual million dollar bonuses.

I think you're the one who is ignorant here.

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

Who created the Energy Task Force? The government.

Big business does not have the power to write their own regulations unless the government gives it to them.

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

You are missing the 'Businesses bribe government through lobbying and campaign donations to create loopholes they can exploit' part of it.

Which is a tad bit important to the equation.

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

An all-or-nothing proposition. I hope everyone who laments those political mechanisms realize they don't get to pick and choose who gets to lobby or make obscene campaign donations.

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

Fuck sakes man.

Our main competitor could bride me with a million dollar salary, a seat on the board of directors, a big corner office on the 50th floor with the rest of the big players, unlimited use of the company plane, along with a dozen other perks in return for secrets to our latest horizontal drilling bit design, and I can either refuse or accept. Either way, it depends on what I do.

Just like it depends on what the GOVERNMENT does. If they don't listen to the lobbyists, the businesses won't send the lobbyists. If they don't promise x in return for x amount of campaign dollars, businesses will quit donating in exchange for favors.

The government controls the board.

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

For fuck's sakes man.

The people offering the bribes are just as morally culpable as the ones that accept the bribes. Look at any philosophy book, ever.

Why is it so hard for you people to understand a basic fact like that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bribery

Yes, if you seek to corrupt someone else you bear at least as much burden of guilt as the person you corrupt.

I understand how the system works. You citing the basic principles of it as if that's all there actually is to it is juvenile, ridiculously so. Yes, I understand that was I was 12. I'm 41 now, I understand that the guys offering the first hit free to get you hooked on the drug they are pushing are moral pond scum.

BOTH SIDES are doing something wrong when a bribe is passed.

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

Taking the fiction that a corporation is a person out of the equation would go a long way to resolving that particular dilemma.

And of course there's nothing in the Constituion that says giving money is free speech. That was a little bonus the Supreme Court threw in long after the fact.

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

Big Business owns the government. As shown by the Energy Task Force, they get to write their own regulations. Hell half the damn time they are the regulators.

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

Alright, so from this point forward, campaign donations may only be made my individual people, and they must be able to prove that the entire sum came from their own income. Everybody happy with that? I doubt it. You just want the option in place for those organizations you approve of.

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

So now our governmental documents aren't living, breathing documents? Hmmmm... .

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

HA! Want to bet? I'll give you the "they don't sign off on it" part but lobbyists most certainly do literally write laws start to finish and just hand them to legislators. The Congressmen are then told to pass it or the money gravy train for them comes to a stop. It's literally that blatant; lobbyists write the whole thing start to finish.

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

Are we talking about the Standard Oil run by Rockefeller? The guy that put his support behind the Women's Temperance Movement and Prohibition? Prohibition, which outlawed alcohol stills, thus the ability for anyone to make their own fuel, destroying the infrastructure for a sustainable ethanol economy, right in it's infancy as the automobile conquered America? You know the Model T, which could easily run on ethyl alcohol?

So you use the regulatory power of government, coupled with some good Christian progressive morality, to crush ethanol, effectively gift wrapping a monopoly on a now essential product, oil.

Couple that with the thousands of deaths and lives destroyed by Prohibition, and you've got yourself a triumph of good intentions.

If we just make something illegal, all our problems will be solved! So earnest in their righteous indignation, like some around here...

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

Uh huh.

The fact that Standard Oil was broken up eight years before prohibition was besides the point, right?

And Prohibition was repealed in 1933. Why do we still use oil and not ethanol?

25% more energy per gallon, and oil can be transported by pipeline, and is better on engines because ethanol absorbs water from the atmosphere.

Because the energy is more efficient, oil is actually cheaper for effect, even though ethanol can be created for less cost per unit.

And finally, even if it were true (and it's not), it would STILL prove the point - the businessmen are willing to engage in corrupt practices in order to get advantage in business by attempting to manipulate the government.

Take out the government, and then there are NO reasons for them not to create monopolies and OWN YOUR ASS.

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

Actually, I was thinking of the Standard Oil which would open gas stations in a new area selling gas at a loss, thus driving all the other stations in the area out of business, followed by the Standard stations promptly raising their prices to exorbitant levels as they now had no competition, but your example works as well.

Power corrupts, and it doesn't matter if that power is wielded by an elected official or a CEO, it still corrupts.

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

And again you missed the point.

Nobody said that big business doesn't share part of the responsibility. All we're saying is that the government has created the environment where they CAN be bribed. Businesses will then try to exploit them that way.

If the government takes that away, businesses don't use it.

At the end of the day, the government isn't accountable to the people, plus they are in bed with big business. Big business loves it because they make more money. Both are at fault. But only one side created the problem. The other side just helps make it worse.

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

I already know all that and hate it as much as you.

But who created all that? Who allowed all that to happen? The government. Big business just exploited it in the name of making more profit.

Big business is only allowed to write their own regulations because the government allows them.

Guess what? Big business isn't writing their own regulations here in Canada. Why? Because our government knows what the hell it is doing.

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

Yes, using caps means your THUPER THERIOUS, I get it. Wanna take a breath? We see things differently, it's okay. Pardon me for working aside, studying and watching how well intentioned government has roayally fucked up my own economic sector. Sorry, it's true, I could bore you with countless examples.

You're reminding me of my brother in law, ever since he's found Jesus he's become a bit sanctimonious and unbearable. People are corrupt, giving them more power ain't gonna make em less corrupt, and history is rife with examples of the reformers actually being worse than the ones they replaced.

I'm betting if Al Gore had invented the internet back in the day, Robespierre would have used ALL CAPS as well. Beyond that, not much else would have been different.

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

Keep on sticking your head in the sand and ignore the fact that nobody here said big business isn't at fault as well.

If you want to solve the problem you have to tackle the reason it exists, and it exists primarily because of what the government has done. What big business does is completely in reaction to what the government allows.

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

Ah yes, got nothing, so you go after the posting style.

And at the end of it?

Still got nothing.

I'm not a born again. Most folks of the 'Forge had this particular religion long before I ever got here.

When instead of defense, energy, and international politics the topic here became the ass raping the average American has gotten as of late between the government/corporate coalition that's decided that looting the country is better than taking care of it I was revealed as 'not conservative enough.' LOL.

And I don't think of a country as a government or ethos or historical fantasy - at its core it's the people of the nation that make the nation what it is.

But fuck them. They should have planned better. It doesn't matter they were sold a bill of goods while their jobs were outsourced, their houses plummeted in value, their banks were looted by the people running them, and their 401K were pissed away.

Yes, I know, saying that the people who actually DID most of that (there's those caps again!) are to blame, that's just more proof I am not 'of the body.'

It would be much better if we just ignored that, because its extremely inconvenient to the worldview that the rhetoric we chose to believe crafted.

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

The Joker represents Government now?

How idiotic.

Re: 30 Multinationals who paid more for Lobbyists than they did Taxes. Made $164B got $11

Oh, bullshit.

Big business has been shucking and jiving since before Christ. The same ethos there is present today - remember the cautionary tales about the usurers and the wealthy men who turned their back? Been around a long time, same shit, different day.

If you can separate one incident that divorces a cause from the cycle of business corruption leading to demands for government, and government influence peddling to gain wealth from business, you would be the foremost historian in the world.

In reality these two things always feed off each other, and ultimately you need a strong but limited government to protect people from the predators who use influence to destroy commerce and the success of good ideas, and you need to police the hell out of said government to make sure they stay honest.

But getting rid of government oversite just lets the wolf in among the flock, and it always has. Unethical people routinely collect power in the business world simply for doing things that others wouldn't do.

Look at how prevalent theft is in the giants of the technology world - Gates, Zuckerberg, Ellison, they flat out started that way. They were just successful enough to play the great men afterwards.