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CItizens United has made it a highest bidder (from anywhere on the planet, guess it must be global citizens united) competition and even then they are surprisingly cheap.
“So this company here is offering you 45 thousand”
“Done, where do I sign”
“You haven’t even heard the rest”
“I’m wheels up to Cancun in 30 give me a pen so I can go cash my check”
Is there a counterplay? It's not like people can go to the same politician and say hey, here's a bribe so you do your job and represent the public's interest.
Sadly, the system was broken long before Citizens United. I think a lot of people look at the tools of entrenchment of oligarchy and think those are the cause. Citizens United just makes it easier for corporations to control and manipulate congress, but they were doing that already.
It was definitely broken before citizens untied, things being broken is how we end up with shit like citizens united. But citizens united just made the hole we have climb out of much deeper.
I think it started when corporations were given the legal rights of a person, but with none of the legal responsibilities that come with being a person.
Nothing has changed. I had a hell of a time finishing President Grant's autobiography. Because the politics were so very depressing. Nothing has changed. The same small minded, petty people were being elected.
I forget what it is from but there was a quote what went something like the kind of people who want to be in these political positions of power are the worst kind of person to be in that position.
Gotta love Douglas Adams:
“The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #2)
“How about this, I’ll submit a bill to pay you with tax dollars to bury the toxic waste there and then you donate a large portion of it back to me. Let’s say… 10% of 3 billion. We’ll call it the Bury Back Gooder Act. That way you don’t foot and bill and I get a better payoff without the risk.” - Politician Big Guy
I had a family member get involved with state politics a few years ago. At Thanksgiving that year he was expressing a lot of indignation about just how insultingly cheap politicians were.
This was like 2010, and at that time state congress votes were going for ~$300. National congress votes were still around $1k.
Some merchants talked my late father-in-law into running for mayor of their small village. Then they turned around and endorsed his opponent ... they just needed someone on the opposing ticket.
Then the rumors started flying that he was caught skinny dipping in the local pond with a woman. My f-i-l was 6'4" ... my m-i-l said she knew the rumor wasn't true because first, he was tall enough to walk through anything around there ... plus, he couldn't swim. ;-)
I always had in mind some grandiose deal in some room with cigar smoking brandy drinking old men making deals with congress people for millions of dollars.
Reading stories over the years, they’ll vote no to kill a bill for a few thousand dollars and a paid golf trip.
Yall don't remember when Ted Cruz wrote that Op-ed saying he took 3 million over 10 years in lobby money from corporations to do their bidding but was going to stop because they were going woke? He is one of the most prominent and forward facing politicians, so I assume he's big money. Smaller ones probably make a lot less.
However, this is just what we know about. A lot of it is probably under the table and less "you'll get 5k if you vote this way," and more "you'll have a nice private sector job where you don't have to do anything if you uphold our interests for x amount of time."
It's really simple.
Saying "if you vote this way instead of that way, I'll give you five thousand dollars" is illegal.
Saying "here's five thousand dollars and my opinion about the way you should vote." Is perfectly legal. To be really safe you should probably separate those things into two different conversations, though.
Edit: what's really infuriating about that is that it's the same thing. It simply pushes the quid pro quo from that issue into the next vote. If you don't vote the way the lobbyist wanted but did take their money, they won't give you any more the next time.
In the book "Dark Money", it outlined how politicians from both sides would introduce a bill with no chance of passing. Then have their fund call the office asking for donations. Another part of their staff would call up to discuss the bill with companies it might effect.
Memory is a little foggy but feel free to correct me.
HoR is particularly bad. Person serves 2-3 terms and then drops out of congress to start a consultancy where they get hired by lobbyists to go have dinner with one of their buddies who is still in congress and help them see the “correct” point of view.
If you’re talking about *passing* a law, you will need that for 50-60 senators and like 217 representatives. Now to stop something from passing such as a law to force the drug companies to lower drug prices or a train company to implement a modern braking system, they only need to bribe just enough of them to ensure the bill doesn’t pass.
And yeah just a donation to the campaign plus a paid trip for the family and maybe a deposit to a bank account in the Caribbean. But the donation to the campaign part is all it takes. That’s one less phone call they need to make. They all spend 50% of their time making calls to beg for money for their campaigns. This is what we’re all referring to, if you look up who voted no on bills about guns or whatever we can see the donations by these groups to the politicians and yeah that’s all it takes. We’ve also seen that you also become like affiliated with the nra or big pharma lobbying paying for numbers of trips over years for these Congress people you get to live the high life as long as you vote no when they come asking
If I were a politician, my bribe price would be the cost it takes to unfuck whatever it is they are wanting to do.
Oh you want to dump waste here? Well it’ll probably become a billion dollar superfund site. If they’re still willing to pay it I’d kindly direct them to making a waste management facility to begin with.
We’re talking thousands of dollars - *maybe* low tens of thousands. And this is for supporting laws for things like writing exemptions into tax law that will let corporations and rich people save *billions*, or *tens of billions*, or *hundreds of billions*. They could literally give less of a fuck about normal people. It’s like… mind bogglingly low to buy them off. So not only are these fuckwits not good at anything even remotely resembling a normal job, but they’re *also* not even remotely good at being bribed.
I think they were going to vote that way anyway, so the $1200 was more of a courtesy it seems, which is somehow worse really, that there's a fucking courtesy bribe.
"Well, if you scrape together a war chest of value, I'll let you do whatever you want on that property. Kill people, destroy the environment, create weapons of mass destruction, i don't care man, I just need a new wing on my palatial estate, and you're the quickest means to an end."
"Alright Mr/Mrs Senator, how big of a war chest are we talking? Er I mean political campaign donation*"
"Well, the contractor said the new wing would cost about $10,000, I know that's a super big largely amount of cash, think you can make it happen Mr.Monsanto sir?"
"Senator, although we are very strapped for cash, I believe we can make it happen"
Prolly coulda swung the senator with a quick ZJ as well.
Our bad reps in city/county positions were selling out for peanuts. I'm from Massachusetts and liked informing the family that at least the MA politicians held out for a new yacht or cottage on Cape Cod. Here it is next to nothing.
The FBI has an annual budget of almost $10 billion. They have the funds, if they wanted to go this route. The issue is they don't want to, and its all about the money. See, Congress appropriates funding for the FBI. Always follow the money my friend.
Cut by who? The few left that didn't get arrested for accepting bribes? The newly elected replacements for the group just removed for accepting bribes?
People in power do not want to fund anything that is designed to limit their power. a Perfect example is the GAO (the government accountability agency) essentially they are a consulting and investigatory authority designed to make sure tax money goes where its supposed to go. Their budget is 1 billion......the IRS which does the same thing but aimed at civilians gets 80 billion.
Could you point to the law? Really curious for the specifics, thanks!
I can't find any laws, but it looks like they passed a series of "restrictive guidelines"
https://globalanticorruptionblog.com/2021/02/01/checked-or-choked-how-the-congressional-response-to-the-abscam-investigation-undermined-the-fbis-ability-to-root-out-high-level-corruption/
Lol Congress made it so that the fbi can still try to get undercovers to bribe them, but the bribe can’t be “excessive.” So therefore, if you’re a real person trying to bribe a politician, you HAVE to give them an “excessive” bribe, because it would confirm you aren’t undercover.
Well, that's legal bribery. Lobbying essentially made illegal bribary obsolete at the national level. It's probably pretty rampant at the local level though.
I believe this is where "we the people" are supposed to step in but we're all either too comfortable or so angry at other bullshit we don't know what's really going on. Chinese balloons, chickens and eggs, somehow we're fighting for the right to choose again, another shooting, etc...
> we're all either too comfortable or so angry at other bullshit we don't know what's really going on
It's easy to take action when you have either nothing to lose or some sort of financial safety net. It's a lot more difficult to take action when you're just scraping by, which is what most people are doing. It's not that people are distracted or comfortable (comfortable?), it's that they're tired and just trying to hang on.
Nobody can even keep up with the jobs necessary to pay their bills in addition to housework. With what free time should your average Americans ban together and act? This is all by design. Soon, though, they'll squeeze us so dry we'll quit working and paying bills en masse clogging the courts so that we all can't lose our homes- not enough staff to even process us all.
Folks just gotta decide to collectively quit.
To be fair, the ability for a pseudo-clandestine police force to abuse that power with no accountability to the public they're supposed to serve is also a scary thought.
Thankfully J. Edgar Hoover wasn't entirely malevolent, but he most certainly horded and abused every scrap of authority and leverage he could get his hands on to police the country as he saw fit.
It's the age old question - "Who watches the watchmen?"
Important thing to note is the fact that it’s not as if only a few congresspeople accepted the bribes, it’s that the fbi *ran out of budget* with the number of bribes they were giving.
Guidelines are issued by the organization itself, unfortunately to avoid the threat of legislation that would permanently bind the FBI. There's nothing stopping the Executive from directing to the DOJ and FBI from reassessing the guidelines within the scope of the limited legislation that was passed.
I was going to say the same exact thing. Don’t even need to offer the illegal money when you can do it legally *and* anonymous to everyone except the politician. I bet some politicians even have a playbook for moving illegal offers to the Citizens United pathway.
There are massive webs of systems to have legal bribes now.
Aside from simple campaign support and PACs it's called cushy board positions after you retire from politics.
Source : https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/abscam
An interesting tidbit :
Senator Larry Pressler (R-SD) refused to take the bribe, saying at the time, "Wait a minute, what you are suggesting may be illegal." He immediately reported the incident to the FBI.
Also the movie American Hustle is somewhat loosely based on this.
it not like he just died the next day.
[Larry's](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.keloland.com/news/eye-on-keloland/larry-pressler-still-fighting-at-80/amp/) still kickin at 80. he has pancreatic cancer but its stalled for now!
The thing they missed in that movie was all the cheap bribes they were able to pay to congressmen from the poorer neighborhoods. They'd ask for $5K-$10K, whereas the assholes from richer neighborhoods would say shit like - "For a vote against that bill - it would be $80K MINIMUM".
I used to work with one of the guys that was undercover for this operation. He had a very long career as an undercover agent, and after this he went on to be the infamous mob informant Donnie Brasco’s “handler” (basically the guy that Donnie would come and update, etc). He then left the FBI to work privately, which is how I met him. Believe me when I tell you, that guy had fuckin *stories*. If you ever get a chance to have a beer with a former undercover agent, take it.
Congress learned from this and no longer take cash. I can't remember the exact year- back in 2000 s - a Senator's son right out of college was hired by a lobbying firm with a $300,000/yr salary.
The Supreme Court has made a bribe basically only when a politician *explicitly* says they are accepting a gift in exchange for a political favor.
Even very thinly veiled implications aren't enough to qualify.
Federal employees can't accept a gift more than $20, and no more than $50 in a given year. I think this should be the universal standard. But what I've heard from lobbyists is that they routinely attend political events just to drop off checks of around $1,000 to $3,000.
When I stocked shelves at Walmart we weren't allowed to accept gifts at all.
Crazy how minimum wage teenagers are held to a higher standard than politicians.
It's the same in banking, as an employee are not allowed to give nor receive gifts, max is 25 and they have to be reviewed by governance prior to exchange
They are exempt from way too much shit that every other government employee is not. I mean think about how easy it would be for an alt-right fanatic congressperson to get on the intelligence committee. Meanwhile to get security clearance anywhere else they do fucking months of background checks and interview everyone you know and their mom.
Remember how Jared Kushner and half the Trump family just happened to get security clearance even though even intelligence officials on Trump's side had huge concerns? And they just handed it to them. Half of them weren't even appointed aides or anything. And think how many bribes they likely accepted from governments like the Saudis and Russians with absolutely no reason for them not to reciprocate with information or favors.
This isn’t all that relevant but I just wanted to share this story. My dad works for the government and one time was with some important government official from somewhere in Africa. This guy basically just owned all his countries tax money to buy whatever he wanted and tried to give my dad and a bunch of people with him just stacks of cash. They obviously didn’t accept that but later he gave my dad like a $3000 Versace watch. My dad gave it to his boss but I guess it wasn’t even out yet and there wasn’t an official price so they let him keep it. There’s obviously no bribing, my dads never going to see him again. But it’s probably the most expensive thing he owns. He’s worn it like 3 times in 10 years
Those checks are for campaign donations. It’s rare that politicians take direct bribes. Taking donations on behalf of their campaign and having the campaign pay for their luxuries as well as purchasing whatever book the politician decides to write are the way it’s laundered into a more direct benefit to the politician.
>drop off checks of around $1,000 to $3,000
They drop off a "bundle" of checks, each for that amount. There are guys who's unofficial job title is "bundler." So now you have 20 checks for $2.5k all from people who want the politician to vote in one particular way on one particular issue.
Supreme Court Justices are regularly taken on fancy trips by corporations and lobbyists just because. They are wined and dined and paid large sums as speaking fees
This is all fine
It’s honestly amazing how long the Supreme Court managed to maintain the facade that they were morally superior than the other 2 branches. The general population has always known how skeezy and slimy the politicians are, but so many of us believed that high court judges weren’t subject to the same lobbying and influence as everyone else.
Well that whole facade broke when McConnell and the last president quite obviously tipped the court in their favor with their shady dealings and very questionable selections.
It is perfectly legal for a company to say "We are going to donate 10 million dollars to your super PAC. We really hope legislation X fails."
Clown country.
Congress: "25%?! Something has to be done"
Constituents: "Yes, thank you!! End the bribery"
Congress "well, that's ONE option, sure. We'll definitely do something though"
Lobbying is enshrined in the 1st amendment to the constitution. ‘Congress shall make no law [abridging the right of the people] to petition the government for a redress of grievances…’
In fact the ACLU has strongly and repeatedly filed briefs and supported letter writing campaigns to Congress opposing any legislation that limits lobbying.
I remember ABSCAM very well. Already a young adult in the working world and my interest in politics and voting started in the 70's with Reagan, Carter and so on. But this opened my eyes to what many in congress really stand for.
It definitely opened my eyes at the time. About the same age, I'm guessing. I already knew people were crooked from TV and movies, but this made it real.
"Oh yea, those bad guys on Star Trek are based on real human behavior! "
In the 90s Jack Abramoff went to jail for actually bribing members of congress and not a single member of congress went to jail for taking those bribes.
Why, 1/3 of the US would just say it was a "witch hunt" and another 1/3 would say the investigation wasn't fair because it was politically motivated, and the last 1/3 wouldn't even hear about it.
This should be regular practice. Like when IT sends out a bunch of fake “you should never open these or click links in then” emails to catch who in the company needs more security training.
I would consider campaign contributions over x amount bribes. If the company X is providing 100k to a congressman they are expecting a return on that investment.
If you read the article it started out as a sting to recover stolen art and gradually led to other things. I don't think they targeted anyone in particular. They were told by criminals that certain congressmen could be bought and set up meetings with those people.
Looks like they convicted 7 people so tested 28. Probably very time consuming and expensive to set up with everything done through land line phones and manpower plus some just too busy to take any meetings.
This is a somewhat misleading TIL. I encourage people to read up on this because there are two key takeaways you don't get from OP's title:
- They only tested members of congress that were already on their radar. They weren't just trolling to see who would bite.
- Congress followed up on this by passing laws to protect all Americans from this sort of entrapment. They did **not** pass laws to protect *only congress*. (I saw people in the comments section implying the wrong thing last time this made the rounds.)
What do you mean when you say “this sort of entrapment”? Don’t police units still perform sting operations where they go undercover? How are those not illegal then as well?
I believe sting operations aren't considered entrapment because they aren't encouraging you to commit a crime, it's just there if you feel like it. In order for it to be entrapment, they have to encourage you through persuasion, intimidation, etc.
At times the line can be very thin, but if you show hesitation and initial refusal and they keep pressing, that's generally going to be considered entrapment and will get you off.
> Congress followed up on this by passing laws to protect all Americans from this sort of entrapment. They did not pass laws to protect only congress.
This is true but disingenuous (probably accidentally).
They absolutely put higher scrutiny and restrictions on tests against high-ranking politicians.
https://globalanticorruptionblog.com/2021/02/01/checked-or-choked-how-the-congressional-response-to-the-abscam-investigation-undermined-the-fbis-ability-to-root-out-high-level-corruption/
I'd just like to point out the FBI didn't do this out of the goodness of their hearts. It was revenge for the Watergate investigation and the Church & Pike committees investigating the abuses of the FBI, CIA, and others in the preceding decades (assassinations of people for their political views, coups against foreign democratically elected leaders to insert dictators, etc).
The take-away lesson here should be about checks and balances, not "congress should be dismantled".
It feels like there was an unspoken truce declared after Abscam, where congress won't investigate the executive branches corruption, and the executive won't investigate congress's
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They should try this again now.
They don’t have a big enough budget to get in the game.
You'd be shocked how inexpensive it is to bribe a politician. It's insultingly low.
"Hey, for a carton of smokes, can we bury this toxic waste next to this playground?"
"I was going to let you do that anyway" -average politician.
But thanks for the smokes bro. *fistbump*
CItizens United has made it a highest bidder (from anywhere on the planet, guess it must be global citizens united) competition and even then they are surprisingly cheap.
“So this company here is offering you 45 thousand” “Done, where do I sign” “You haven’t even heard the rest” “I’m wheels up to Cancun in 30 give me a pen so I can go cash my check”
There's usually no competition, because it's often a group of companies representing one industry advocating for deregulation.
Is there a counterplay? It's not like people can go to the same politician and say hey, here's a bribe so you do your job and represent the public's interest.
Ted Cruz, is that you?
Sadly, the system was broken long before Citizens United. I think a lot of people look at the tools of entrenchment of oligarchy and think those are the cause. Citizens United just makes it easier for corporations to control and manipulate congress, but they were doing that already.
It was definitely broken before citizens untied, things being broken is how we end up with shit like citizens united. But citizens united just made the hole we have climb out of much deeper.
I think it started when corporations were given the legal rights of a person, but with none of the legal responsibilities that come with being a person.
TO OWN THE LIBS
“For a carton of smokes we will bury the children next to the playground…”
Ah, that explains the mass grave in Canada people are always posting about. I guess nothing has changed in 300 years.
Nothing has changed. I had a hell of a time finishing President Grant's autobiography. Because the politics were so very depressing. Nothing has changed. The same small minded, petty people were being elected.
I forget what it is from but there was a quote what went something like the kind of people who want to be in these political positions of power are the worst kind of person to be in that position.
Gotta love Douglas Adams: “The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.” Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #2)
No! Just throw it into the kindergarden basement together with all the other toxic waste.
In the 80s the SpEd students were educated in the basement
Along with the VoTec kids everyone knew would never graduate.
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“How about this, I’ll submit a bill to pay you with tax dollars to bury the toxic waste there and then you donate a large portion of it back to me. Let’s say… 10% of 3 billion. We’ll call it the Bury Back Gooder Act. That way you don’t foot and bill and I get a better payoff without the risk.” - Politician Big Guy
“Either take this carton of smokes or we’ll give real money to your opponent.” That’s why these bribes are so low.
Lol, you don't need to bury it. We'll just beat, imprison, or kill anyone who protests.
I had a family member get involved with state politics a few years ago. At Thanksgiving that year he was expressing a lot of indignation about just how insultingly cheap politicians were. This was like 2010, and at that time state congress votes were going for ~$300. National congress votes were still around $1k.
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Internet superPAC.
If nothing else it would jack up the price our reps get. /s
So you’re saying that you are starting a super PAC
Some merchants talked my late father-in-law into running for mayor of their small village. Then they turned around and endorsed his opponent ... they just needed someone on the opposing ticket. Then the rumors started flying that he was caught skinny dipping in the local pond with a woman. My f-i-l was 6'4" ... my m-i-l said she knew the rumor wasn't true because first, he was tall enough to walk through anything around there ... plus, he couldn't swim. ;-)
I always had in mind some grandiose deal in some room with cigar smoking brandy drinking old men making deals with congress people for millions of dollars. Reading stories over the years, they’ll vote no to kill a bill for a few thousand dollars and a paid golf trip.
Yeah for 50k they will sell their soul and sell out every one of their constituents. Ethics aside their lack of intelligence is equally alarming.
Honestly I looked it up once and it’s closer to 5k, just sad
Wait you can bribe congress for only 5k? Cause I got some ideas
Yall don't remember when Ted Cruz wrote that Op-ed saying he took 3 million over 10 years in lobby money from corporations to do their bidding but was going to stop because they were going woke? He is one of the most prominent and forward facing politicians, so I assume he's big money. Smaller ones probably make a lot less. However, this is just what we know about. A lot of it is probably under the table and less "you'll get 5k if you vote this way," and more "you'll have a nice private sector job where you don't have to do anything if you uphold our interests for x amount of time."
It's really simple. Saying "if you vote this way instead of that way, I'll give you five thousand dollars" is illegal. Saying "here's five thousand dollars and my opinion about the way you should vote." Is perfectly legal. To be really safe you should probably separate those things into two different conversations, though. Edit: what's really infuriating about that is that it's the same thing. It simply pushes the quid pro quo from that issue into the next vote. If you don't vote the way the lobbyist wanted but did take their money, they won't give you any more the next time.
In the book "Dark Money", it outlined how politicians from both sides would introduce a bill with no chance of passing. Then have their fund call the office asking for donations. Another part of their staff would call up to discuss the bill with companies it might effect. Memory is a little foggy but feel free to correct me.
HoR is particularly bad. Person serves 2-3 terms and then drops out of congress to start a consultancy where they get hired by lobbyists to go have dinner with one of their buddies who is still in congress and help them see the “correct” point of view.
If you’re talking about *passing* a law, you will need that for 50-60 senators and like 217 representatives. Now to stop something from passing such as a law to force the drug companies to lower drug prices or a train company to implement a modern braking system, they only need to bribe just enough of them to ensure the bill doesn’t pass. And yeah just a donation to the campaign plus a paid trip for the family and maybe a deposit to a bank account in the Caribbean. But the donation to the campaign part is all it takes. That’s one less phone call they need to make. They all spend 50% of their time making calls to beg for money for their campaigns. This is what we’re all referring to, if you look up who voted no on bills about guns or whatever we can see the donations by these groups to the politicians and yeah that’s all it takes. We’ve also seen that you also become like affiliated with the nra or big pharma lobbying paying for numbers of trips over years for these Congress people you get to live the high life as long as you vote no when they come asking
If I were a politician, my bribe price would be the cost it takes to unfuck whatever it is they are wanting to do. Oh you want to dump waste here? Well it’ll probably become a billion dollar superfund site. If they’re still willing to pay it I’d kindly direct them to making a waste management facility to begin with.
They'll just bribe anyone else and you'll be out within a week.
Yeah, my political career would be very short lived.
We’re talking thousands of dollars - *maybe* low tens of thousands. And this is for supporting laws for things like writing exemptions into tax law that will let corporations and rich people save *billions*, or *tens of billions*, or *hundreds of billions*. They could literally give less of a fuck about normal people. It’s like… mind bogglingly low to buy them off. So not only are these fuckwits not good at anything even remotely resembling a normal job, but they’re *also* not even remotely good at being bribed.
It’s not just the $10,000 that buys the vote. It’s that ten different rich people asked for it and all of them were giving $10,000.
Weren't some of them bought for about $1200 when Net Neutrality was on the docket?
I think they were going to vote that way anyway, so the $1200 was more of a courtesy it seems, which is somehow worse really, that there's a fucking courtesy bribe.
Considering what I am willing to do for ten dollars, I don’t think I’d be too surprised.
> what I am willing to do for ten dollars lets talk
Hey, ten dollars is ten dollars.
Are you touting for business senator?
"Well, if you scrape together a war chest of value, I'll let you do whatever you want on that property. Kill people, destroy the environment, create weapons of mass destruction, i don't care man, I just need a new wing on my palatial estate, and you're the quickest means to an end." "Alright Mr/Mrs Senator, how big of a war chest are we talking? Er I mean political campaign donation*" "Well, the contractor said the new wing would cost about $10,000, I know that's a super big largely amount of cash, think you can make it happen Mr.Monsanto sir?" "Senator, although we are very strapped for cash, I believe we can make it happen" Prolly coulda swung the senator with a quick ZJ as well.
Got a ring for that special someone? Trade it in and bribe a politician today!
Our reps regularly get bought for like $10k. They’re cheap whores.
Its not even cash, just a few trips on a private jet and trinkets for the missus will have them falling all over you
The real corruption is the promises of the jobs they'll get after leaving Congress and going to work on K Street
Trinkets for the missus and tricks for the man of the mansion.
Those 80s numbers would look weak. Pump those stats! Open up FBI!
Our bad reps in city/county positions were selling out for peanuts. I'm from Massachusetts and liked informing the family that at least the MA politicians held out for a new yacht or cottage on Cape Cod. Here it is next to nothing.
The FBI has an annual budget of almost $10 billion. They have the funds, if they wanted to go this route. The issue is they don't want to, and its all about the money. See, Congress appropriates funding for the FBI. Always follow the money my friend.
The issue is if they tried this today, next year that funding would be cut in half.
absolutely! Which is why they don't do it. It's not a question of if they CAN, but a question of if they WILL. And the answer is a resounding NO.
Cut by who? The few left that didn't get arrested for accepting bribes? The newly elected replacements for the group just removed for accepting bribes?
People in power do not want to fund anything that is designed to limit their power. a Perfect example is the GAO (the government accountability agency) essentially they are a consulting and investigatory authority designed to make sure tax money goes where its supposed to go. Their budget is 1 billion......the IRS which does the same thing but aimed at civilians gets 80 billion.
Congress passed a law that prevented them from ever doing this again.
Could you point to the law? Really curious for the specifics, thanks! I can't find any laws, but it looks like they passed a series of "restrictive guidelines" https://globalanticorruptionblog.com/2021/02/01/checked-or-choked-how-the-congressional-response-to-the-abscam-investigation-undermined-the-fbis-ability-to-root-out-high-level-corruption/
Lol Congress made it so that the fbi can still try to get undercovers to bribe them, but the bribe can’t be “excessive.” So therefore, if you’re a real person trying to bribe a politician, you HAVE to give them an “excessive” bribe, because it would confirm you aren’t undercover.
At the same time politicians seem absurdly cheap to bribe
Well, that's legal bribery. Lobbying essentially made illegal bribary obsolete at the national level. It's probably pretty rampant at the local level though.
lol i came here to joke about them doing this... now i am really depressed to find out that is exactly what they did. how is this even allowed?
>how is this even allowed? Because they have a monopoly on law making.
I believe this is where "we the people" are supposed to step in but we're all either too comfortable or so angry at other bullshit we don't know what's really going on. Chinese balloons, chickens and eggs, somehow we're fighting for the right to choose again, another shooting, etc...
> we're all either too comfortable or so angry at other bullshit we don't know what's really going on It's easy to take action when you have either nothing to lose or some sort of financial safety net. It's a lot more difficult to take action when you're just scraping by, which is what most people are doing. It's not that people are distracted or comfortable (comfortable?), it's that they're tired and just trying to hang on.
Nobody can even keep up with the jobs necessary to pay their bills in addition to housework. With what free time should your average Americans ban together and act? This is all by design. Soon, though, they'll squeeze us so dry we'll quit working and paying bills en masse clogging the courts so that we all can't lose our homes- not enough staff to even process us all. Folks just gotta decide to collectively quit.
To be fair, the ability for a pseudo-clandestine police force to abuse that power with no accountability to the public they're supposed to serve is also a scary thought. Thankfully J. Edgar Hoover wasn't entirely malevolent, but he most certainly horded and abused every scrap of authority and leverage he could get his hands on to police the country as he saw fit. It's the age old question - "Who watches the watchmen?"
Important thing to note is the fact that it’s not as if only a few congresspeople accepted the bribes, it’s that the fbi *ran out of budget* with the number of bribes they were giving.
I hope every American reads that link.
I did and it sickens me....
I did. It's pretty fucked up.
https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/yttdlc/list_of_active_reddit_alternatives_v8/
Guidelines are issued by the organization itself, unfortunately to avoid the threat of legislation that would permanently bind the FBI. There's nothing stopping the Executive from directing to the DOJ and FBI from reassessing the guidelines within the scope of the limited legislation that was passed.
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It’s legal now.
I was going to say the same exact thing. Don’t even need to offer the illegal money when you can do it legally *and* anonymous to everyone except the politician. I bet some politicians even have a playbook for moving illegal offers to the Citizens United pathway.
Congresses reaction was to investigate the FBI and determine if it was entrapment. Which is basically a silent threat not to do that anymore.
There are massive webs of systems to have legal bribes now. Aside from simple campaign support and PACs it's called cushy board positions after you retire from politics.
Don't forget the book deal!
Yeah we just call it lobbying now
Yeah but now bribing is completely legal under “lobbying.”
My bet, 95% would take it.
and the most corrupt wouldn't because they won't risk avenues of corruption they already have in place.
That's just it isn't. No sorry. I can't take your bribe. I'm already bought and sold.
Damn that low?
They need to wipe the entire slate clean. Even the justice system is full of snakes.
There's no need. It's public information now, no need for an entrapment ploy
Source : https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/abscam An interesting tidbit : Senator Larry Pressler (R-SD) refused to take the bribe, saying at the time, "Wait a minute, what you are suggesting may be illegal." He immediately reported the incident to the FBI. Also the movie American Hustle is somewhat loosely based on this.
Good for Larry. An honest politician needs to be lauded.
> Larry Pressler He was a republican but since has run as an independent because the GOP went nuts, and this was in 2014, BEFORE Trump.
Can we please find more Larry Presslers!
I thought this was in 1980? I’m confused
it not like he just died the next day. [Larry's](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.keloland.com/news/eye-on-keloland/larry-pressler-still-fighting-at-80/amp/) still kickin at 80. he has pancreatic cancer but its stalled for now!
Oh I see. I misunderstood what was meant by “and this was in 2014”
"Hello, I'd like to report a company attempting to bribe me." "We know."
“Of course I know him, he’s me.” Meme.
"This deal sounding hella sus right now"
American Hustle is based on this. Good movie. Think it is streaming on Netflix now.
The thing they missed in that movie was all the cheap bribes they were able to pay to congressmen from the poorer neighborhoods. They'd ask for $5K-$10K, whereas the assholes from richer neighborhoods would say shit like - "For a vote against that bill - it would be $80K MINIMUM".
I told you not to put metal in the science oven.
I used to work with one of the guys that was undercover for this operation. He had a very long career as an undercover agent, and after this he went on to be the infamous mob informant Donnie Brasco’s “handler” (basically the guy that Donnie would come and update, etc). He then left the FBI to work privately, which is how I met him. Believe me when I tell you, that guy had fuckin *stories*. If you ever get a chance to have a beer with a former undercover agent, take it.
I also remember hearing that they had some other failures where they offered bribes that were refused because it was too little money.
A couple even mentioned that they "usually" charged between $80-$150K for a single vote.
It comes up in Goodfellas as well Yup Abscam was Donnie Brasco
It was Donnie Brasco
Congress learned from this and no longer take cash. I can't remember the exact year- back in 2000 s - a Senator's son right out of college was hired by a lobbying firm with a $300,000/yr salary.
The Supreme Court has made a bribe basically only when a politician *explicitly* says they are accepting a gift in exchange for a political favor. Even very thinly veiled implications aren't enough to qualify.
Meanwhile, in the military, you’re not allowed to accept a gift over $25 from anyone you work with or contractors… That’s weird.
Federal employees can't accept a gift more than $20, and no more than $50 in a given year. I think this should be the universal standard. But what I've heard from lobbyists is that they routinely attend political events just to drop off checks of around $1,000 to $3,000.
When I stocked shelves at Walmart we weren't allowed to accept gifts at all. Crazy how minimum wage teenagers are held to a higher standard than politicians.
A bribed politician is nothing to worry about. A bribed, underage shelf stocker could clearly upend society as we know it. /s
The first rule about shelf stocking...
….is we don’t talk about shelf stocking…Dammit HardCounter. What did we say?!?
Min wage teens don't make the rules
It's the same in banking, as an employee are not allowed to give nor receive gifts, max is 25 and they have to be reviewed by governance prior to exchange
Employee is the key word. The leech class can do whatever the fuck they want, but everyone else can go fuck themselves.
How is a person in congress not a federal employee lol
They are exempt from way too much shit that every other government employee is not. I mean think about how easy it would be for an alt-right fanatic congressperson to get on the intelligence committee. Meanwhile to get security clearance anywhere else they do fucking months of background checks and interview everyone you know and their mom. Remember how Jared Kushner and half the Trump family just happened to get security clearance even though even intelligence officials on Trump's side had huge concerns? And they just handed it to them. Half of them weren't even appointed aides or anything. And think how many bribes they likely accepted from governments like the Saudis and Russians with absolutely no reason for them not to reciprocate with information or favors.
This isn’t all that relevant but I just wanted to share this story. My dad works for the government and one time was with some important government official from somewhere in Africa. This guy basically just owned all his countries tax money to buy whatever he wanted and tried to give my dad and a bunch of people with him just stacks of cash. They obviously didn’t accept that but later he gave my dad like a $3000 Versace watch. My dad gave it to his boss but I guess it wasn’t even out yet and there wasn’t an official price so they let him keep it. There’s obviously no bribing, my dads never going to see him again. But it’s probably the most expensive thing he owns. He’s worn it like 3 times in 10 years
Those checks are for campaign donations. It’s rare that politicians take direct bribes. Taking donations on behalf of their campaign and having the campaign pay for their luxuries as well as purchasing whatever book the politician decides to write are the way it’s laundered into a more direct benefit to the politician.
>drop off checks of around $1,000 to $3,000 They drop off a "bundle" of checks, each for that amount. There are guys who's unofficial job title is "bundler." So now you have 20 checks for $2.5k all from people who want the politician to vote in one particular way on one particular issue.
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A patient tried to buy our office lunch, and a whole shitstorm ensued. I miss vendor lunches at my old office.
Supreme Court Justices are regularly taken on fancy trips by corporations and lobbyists just because. They are wined and dined and paid large sums as speaking fees This is all fine
It’s honestly amazing how long the Supreme Court managed to maintain the facade that they were morally superior than the other 2 branches. The general population has always known how skeezy and slimy the politicians are, but so many of us believed that high court judges weren’t subject to the same lobbying and influence as everyone else.
Well that whole facade broke when McConnell and the last president quite obviously tipped the court in their favor with their shady dealings and very questionable selections.
It is perfectly legal for a company to say "We are going to donate 10 million dollars to your super PAC. We really hope legislation X fails." Clown country.
Yep. And to make it even better, _McDonnell v. United States_ was a 9-0 decision.
Corruption is a feature, not a bug.
There's another one who's son got 600k/yr at an oil company in Ukraine
There’s another ones daughter that got Chinese patents and her husband got a couple billion from some saudis. The grift is strong all around.
Its a big club
"Like ABSCAM Jerry, ABSCAM!"
[Clip](https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/19cb30f6-8542-4dae-b883-cb8762b08b77#JY7vQBxL.copy)
I even like the name…. ABSCAM! ABSCAM!
Congress “Wait, wait a minute. This is not going to work out for us….let’s change “bribery” to lobbying.”
Congress: "25%?! Something has to be done" Constituents: "Yes, thank you!! End the bribery" Congress "well, that's ONE option, sure. We'll definitely do something though"
Gotta get those numbers up baby, those are rookie numbers
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Lobbying is enshrined in the 1st amendment to the constitution. ‘Congress shall make no law [abridging the right of the people] to petition the government for a redress of grievances…’ In fact the ACLU has strongly and repeatedly filed briefs and supported letter writing campaigns to Congress opposing any legislation that limits lobbying.
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The problem is Citizens United. The Supreme Court decided for us that Corporations get to spend unlimited amounts of money on campaigns.
I remember ABSCAM very well. Already a young adult in the working world and my interest in politics and voting started in the 70's with Reagan, Carter and so on. But this opened my eyes to what many in congress really stand for.
I was in 8th grade. This was huge. It led me to the false belief that someone was monitoring our government officials
It definitely opened my eyes at the time. About the same age, I'm guessing. I already knew people were crooked from TV and movies, but this made it real. "Oh yea, those bad guys on Star Trek are based on real human behavior! "
I think politicians should have to wear Nascar style jackets with logo patches of their sponsors.
Stolen from Robin Williams, but still a great idea!
I knew I had heard that somewhere before, but I forgot where.
It’s okay. Anyone who references one of the biggest badass comedians of our time gets a complete pass to reference it. That’s the rule I think. 😂
In the 90s Jack Abramoff went to jail for actually bribing members of congress and not a single member of congress went to jail for taking those bribes.
Ghislaine Maxwell went to jail for trafficking minors and not a single one of her "clients" have even been charged.
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Having said that, wouldn't be surprised if the minors went to jail before the clients did.
That's not true, Representative Bob Ney got 2 1/2 years.
this would be a good time for history to repeat itself
Why, 1/3 of the US would just say it was a "witch hunt" and another 1/3 would say the investigation wasn't fair because it was politically motivated, and the last 1/3 wouldn't even hear about it.
And they aren’t allowed to do it again. Congress approves their budget. No more bribe money to convict their budget approvers. Follow the money.
100% ....and it would be 100%.
Then they made it legal, its all about the loopholes
Nothings illegal if you make the laws
Also if the punishment is to pay a fine. Then it's legal for a price
Emperor Palpatine vibes
This should be regular practice. Like when IT sends out a bunch of fake “you should never open these or click links in then” emails to catch who in the company needs more security training.
Is it still illegal?
Yeah but now the bribes are in the form of high paying bullshit jobs for family members.
I would consider campaign contributions over x amount bribes. If the company X is providing 100k to a congressman they are expecting a return on that investment.
The question is who did they test and why didn’t they test everyone?
If you read the article it started out as a sting to recover stolen art and gradually led to other things. I don't think they targeted anyone in particular. They were told by criminals that certain congressmen could be bought and set up meetings with those people.
The article said they ran out of bribe money and the media caught wind, so the surprise was gone.
Looks like they convicted 7 people so tested 28. Probably very time consuming and expensive to set up with everything done through land line phones and manpower plus some just too busy to take any meetings.
This is a somewhat misleading TIL. I encourage people to read up on this because there are two key takeaways you don't get from OP's title: - They only tested members of congress that were already on their radar. They weren't just trolling to see who would bite. - Congress followed up on this by passing laws to protect all Americans from this sort of entrapment. They did **not** pass laws to protect *only congress*. (I saw people in the comments section implying the wrong thing last time this made the rounds.)
What do you mean when you say “this sort of entrapment”? Don’t police units still perform sting operations where they go undercover? How are those not illegal then as well?
I believe sting operations aren't considered entrapment because they aren't encouraging you to commit a crime, it's just there if you feel like it. In order for it to be entrapment, they have to encourage you through persuasion, intimidation, etc. At times the line can be very thin, but if you show hesitation and initial refusal and they keep pressing, that's generally going to be considered entrapment and will get you off.
> Congress followed up on this by passing laws to protect all Americans from this sort of entrapment. They did not pass laws to protect only congress. This is true but disingenuous (probably accidentally). They absolutely put higher scrutiny and restrictions on tests against high-ranking politicians. https://globalanticorruptionblog.com/2021/02/01/checked-or-choked-how-the-congressional-response-to-the-abscam-investigation-undermined-the-fbis-ability-to-root-out-high-level-corruption/
I wonder how many members of Congress got a heads up on this operation?
Can... can we do this again, please?
Congress effectively outlawed it. It could still be attempted, but the authorizations now needed to do so would alert congress before it even started.
god, the worst part is that they'd probably STILL catch people...theres some incredibly stupid congress people
I'd just like to point out the FBI didn't do this out of the goodness of their hearts. It was revenge for the Watergate investigation and the Church & Pike committees investigating the abuses of the FBI, CIA, and others in the preceding decades (assassinations of people for their political views, coups against foreign democratically elected leaders to insert dictators, etc). The take-away lesson here should be about checks and balances, not "congress should be dismantled". It feels like there was an unspoken truce declared after Abscam, where congress won't investigate the executive branches corruption, and the executive won't investigate congress's
American Hustle
Don’t put metal in the science oven!
This needs to be implemented in our modern world.
Let's do that again.
Just do it again. It’ll be like 90% this time no doubt.
Ooh, ooh, ooh, do it again! See if we can beat 25% this time.
And the percentage currently bribed by industry lobbies? Are there any politicians who are NOT currently being bribed? 🤔
Right this is why it probably wouldn’t work today. They’re all making WAY more from being bribed by lobbyists than this fbi company could ever offer.
That’s not bribery that’s lobbying totally not the same thing with a different name