
Google, once disdainful of lobbying, now a master of Washington influence - selmnoo
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-google-is-transforming-power-and-politicsgoogle-once-disdainful-of-lobbying-now-a-master-of-washington-influence/2014/04/12/51648b92-b4d3-11e3-8cb6-284052554d74_story.html?tid=ts_carousel
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rayiner
There is a lot of misinformation about lobbying. My wife used to be a
lobbyist, so let me dispel some myths:

1) Lobbyists costs a lot of money. The amount Facebook spent on WhatsApp is
equivalent to fifty times the annual lobbying revenues of the top 10 DC
lobbying firms combined.

2) Lobbying money goes to politicians pockets. American politicians are some
of the most thoroughly scrutinized on the planet. Lobbying money doesn't go
under the table to some politician. It usually doesn't even go to campaign
contributions. The major source of campaign contributions is rich peolple
making personal donations, not lobbyists. Lobbying money goes towards
advocacy. For example, a lobbyist might commission a survey to show a
politician that a particular position, advantageous to a client, is
politically popular. They may also propose draft legislation, connect
politicians with experts, etc. What Google is doing is a good example of the
bread and butter of lobbying: simply helping politicians understand the
prevailing point of view of an industry.

3) Lobbying is the same as corruption. The vast majority of lobbying is about
helping politicians find votes. Its about showing how what's good for an
industry is good for constituents. The message is overwhelmingly not "if you
vote for this, there is money in it for you" but "voting for this will save
100 jobs in your district."

Do lobbyists help corporations exercise substantial political power? Yes. But
most of the american labor force works for large corporations. Their
livelihoods and that of their kids depend on these corporations. Their
healthcare and retirement depend on them. Corporations don't need to corrupt
the political system to wield power.

~~~
thomholwerda
Do lobbyists spend money to influence politicians? Yes? Then it's corruption.

Private money - whether it be from rich people or large corporations - should
have no place in politics. The vote of a poor single mother working two jobs
to only barely feed her children should carry just as much weight as that of a
rich tycoon. If you believe that money should institutionally equate to
influence, then you do not believe in equality.

~~~
rayiner
Without money, advocacy is merely the expression of sentiment, and sentiment
is a valueless currency in the modern world.

One the issues near to my heart is environmental protection. The advancements
made in environmental protection over the last 50 years have all been
accomplished through the expenditure of money. It costs very little money to
convince people to adhere to the old ways. It costs no money to convince West
Virginians that coal and coal mining is good. It costs no money to convince
Oregonians that logging is good. Commissioning studies to show that the health
damage from coal mining would double the price of coal if accounted for?
Making movies to help people visualize the catastrophe of strip mining? That
costs money.

What irks me the most about liberals' opposition to Citizens United is their
failure to realize that money being speech helps them more than it helps
conservatives. It costs very little money to promote conservatism. People are
predisposed to wanting to preserve the status quo. Its those that oppose the
status quo that benefit the most from high profile advocacy. The opposition of
the tech industry to surveillance Is the paradigmatic example of this
phenomenon. The tech industry will have to spend a lot more money on advocacy
to move forward from cold war era views then defense contractors will spend to
defend the status quo.

~~~
hackuser
> It costs very little money to promote conservatism.

Perhaps in theory, but in practice a lot of money is spent on it.

------
magicalist
This thread so far has been pretty disappointing, reacting to the headline
only, slashdot-style. The article is actually a pretty interesting look at
what it takes to get people in Washington to start considering a different
point of view, for good or ill.

The interesting part of that is that it's completely reasonable that you have
to get people thinking about things like how a search engine should function
in a free market (beholden to the users, not the businesses it finds for
them), but when it comes down to it, doing that is also fundamentally paying
money to buy influence (even if that influence is just "that position now
seems reasonable to me"). My initial reaction is to find lobbying distasteful
in the same way I find marketing distasteful. An idea or product should stand
on its own merits. Of course, it never works out that way: you might want to
be noble and not introduce a new bias into the public, but people already have
a host of biases, and to get them to even consider something new, you often
have to help them get there.

The emails they got under a FOIA request are also interesting in that
light[1]. The Post tries a bit to make them sound somewhat scandalous, and I
know we're trained by the media to only be interested in smoking guns, but
it's interesting in precisely how mundane and completely reasonable lobbying
can be, while still being about shaping the entire dialog to be more
favorable.

That said, there are some really bad parts here too, like describing SOPA as

> _" And, in what Google saw as a direct threat to the open Internet, major
> lobbies such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Motion Picture
> Association of America were mounting a legislative campaign to place
> restrictions on the sale of pirated music and movies."_

ugh. Kind of weird, too, as in the past the Washington Post has given good
coverage of SOPA protests and why anyone would be protesting it...

[1]
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/2014/04/12/how-g...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/2014/04/12/how-
google-worked-behind-the-scenes-to-invite-federal-regulators-to-conferences/)

~~~
ChrisNorstrom
1) Good lobbying: Google lobbies congress to allow self driving cars in all 50
states. _result: good because its asking for permission not taxpayer handouts,
consumers pay the entity through supply and demand not taxes_

2) Grey area lobbying: Light rail manufacturers lobbied congress to increase
federal spending to help with light rail projects across America. _result:
uses taxpayer dollars, might increase light rail projects in areas where it
isn 't needed, takes tax payer dollars and transfers them to the entity doing
the lobbying_

3) Bad lobbying: Chrysler, GM, & Ford lobbied congress to lower the fuel
efficiency standard (MPG) and prevent increases. _result: screwed themselves
over because in the long run they could no longer compete fuel consumption
wise with foreign auto makers and had to be bailed out_

Most people don't understand that lobbying is a tool. It can be used to enact
laws that benefit or hurt different groups of people. It's more talked about
when it does bad so people assume all lobbying is bad. Same with "bacteria",
"fat" and "cholesterol".

~~~
rayiner
One point about "good lobbying" though. Often, "bad lobbying" takes the guise
of "good lobbying." Imagine a coal company lobbying to loosen air pollution
controls, to leave to the market the decision of whether cheaper electricity
or cleaner air is more valuable. It is easy to disguise permission to
externalize negative effects as simply permission to let the market decide.

------
fchollet
As a non-american, can anybody explain to me how "lobbying", defined as
"spending money to 'influence' public representatives in the favor of a
private entity", differs from the old-school concept of "corruption"?

I'm genuinely interested.

~~~
dragonwriter
Corruption: You give money, etc., _to_ the public representative to influence
their action.

Petition: You expend resources to advocate your views to a public
representative.

Lobbying: You expend resources to have a third party advocate your views to a
public representative.

Lobbying is a form of _petition_. It sometimes draws attention because
corruption becomes a technique -- just as is the case sometimes with _direct_
petition -- but it is as different from corruption as direct petition is.

~~~
kevingadd
Well, many lobbyists advocate your views by giving money, goods or services to
public representatives... but I suppose it is distinct in that you are not the
one directly offering the bribes and 'favors'.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Well, many lobbyists advocate your views by giving money, goods or services
> to public representatives...

Sure, that's a tactic that happens in lobbying, just as its a tactic that
happens in people _directly_ advocating their own views.

I am not saying that lobbying is free of corruption. But the reason the two
often go together isn't that lobbying is fundamentally corruption, its that
lobbying is an expensive form of petition, which makes its community of users
overlap considerably with the set of people/groups with the resources to
_effectively_ engage in corruption independently of whether or not they were
using an intermediary to do advocacy to public representatives.

~~~
curiouscats
It seems to me the truth of corruption versus petition is if the politician
sells their vote for cash or actually listens to the merits and makes a
decision.

Now that is hard to judge from the outside, but that is the real difference.

I suspect many people believe those in power now are mostly selling their vote
for cash not making decisions based on the merit and just happening to side
with those giving piles of cash because they heard those people give
explanations of why favoring them was a good move for the country.

~~~
igl
A few years later it is often not. But politicians can lie legally even if
uncovered and documented in lengths afterwards. Funny fact: German president
Horst Köhler had to resign from office for saying the truth.

------
redwood
I've thoroughly enjoyed watching House of Cards. Sure it's not accurate,
exactly. But what it does emphasize so well is the difference in pursuing
money versus power. The latter can be bought by wooing lobbyists. Money itself
is harder to gain and generally more associated with the developing world's
modes of corruption. Are they so different? Not exactly. However one
difference is power is less easily extractive than wealth. As an example: A
wealthy corrupt official will likely pull money out of the system and into
their own private offshore account. A politician using lobbying money to
ascertain power in exchange for political direction is not banking money
outside the system. Of course the lobby-backing commercial interests are,
indirectly. But at least these companies are focused on more than sheer
family-enrichment. Still, I wish we had a better system.

------
higherpurpose
What upsets me most is that now they're using lobbying for stuff that are
clearly against our interest, such as diluting privacy restrictions and
fighting against restrictions on Internet surveillance, even though in their
press releases they make it sounds like they would do the opposite, and would
fight against Internet surveillance:

[http://www.vice.com/read/are-google-and-facebook-just-
preten...](http://www.vice.com/read/are-google-and-facebook-just-pretending-
they-want-limits-on-nsa-surveillance)

~~~
camus2
is public / general interest the sum of all private / personal interests?
that's a fundamental question.

------
jejones3141
If the government were confined to its proper function, companies would not
have to attempt to influence it.

~~~
snowwrestler
If you look at nations around the world, there is no consistent correlation
between the powers of a central government and its state of corruption. For
example the Afghan government is very weak, yet is still very corrupt.

~~~
hackuser
>If you look at nations around the world, there is no consistent correlation
between the powers of a central government and its state of corruption. For
example the Afghan government is very weak, yet is still very corrupt.

I would expect, without looking at data, that the relationship is the reverse:
More corrupt governments are weaker. This data seems to bear it out:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index)

~~~
snowwrestler
That was my thinking as well but Russia breaks the correlation-- very strong
government, high perception of corruption.

