The NRA is one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the country yet they hardly spend ANY money in elections. Why do you think that is?

They frequently use the threat of spending instead of actually spending for one.

not only is that factually WRONG ( https://www.statista.com/chart/13082/expenditure-of-the-us-gun-lobby-reaches-record-high/ ), it also wouldn't refute my argument IF you found one example of a lobbying group that actually didn't (directly) spend any money but still was successful in introducing or opposing specific legislation. the data is overwhelming: https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf

listen, i can understand if you say that you simply don't CARE that establishment politicians from both sides work for their donors, and not their constituents (and thus will definitely NOT introduce universal healthcare, affordable college education, oppose the military industrial complex, sufficiently regulate wall street and fossil fuel, make corporations pay their fair share of taxes, protect consumers and workers...) - but for the love of god, don't insult your own intelligence by pretending that it simply isn't true. you can't possibly be that ignorant of american politics of the last couple of decades. i mean, biden's political record alone makes a pretty fucking convincing case for the influence of special interest - and he is not even the most egregious case...

This post was edited by fender on Mar 12 2020 09:22pm

You think $5 million is a lot of money for lobbying? LOL! https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/
Like I said, it's nothing. The NRA is feared because of their ability to CONSISTENTLY turnout VOTERS. The NRA can torpedo someone in a primary or general election at will because they have an army of single-issue voters. Money helps, but it's not the end all be all. Just ask Bloomberg and Jeb!



That's part of it but quite small compared to the threat of mobilization. That's where the real power is.

that guy fender aka heinrich doesn’t understand anything not explicitly laid out in the book “my struggle”

there's a lot of ground between 'hardly anything' and 'a lot', you know? and just one of us actually quantified it with a personal opinion. that said, this is just the disclosed direct financial lobbying, and considering how little money the NRA itself actually has, it's a rather significant portion, but much more importantly:

the whole nra argument you're trying to make here is nothing but a transparent deflection from the FACT that special interest has enormous influence on policy, whereas voter support does not. i've provided you a source to prove that (already blatantly obvious) point, that you simply can not refute. establishment politicians will always side with their donors over their voters (just look at biden's record), and it'd take a pretty ignorant person to deny that.

neither biden, nor trump, nor any other corporate funded establishment politician will oppose their donors by addressing ANY of the previously mentioned issues (universal healthcare, affordable college education, opposing the military industrial complex, sufficiently regulate wall street and fossil fuel, making corporations pay their fair share of taxes, protect consumers and workers) in a meaningful way, and you know that's true - otherwise you wouldn't keep dodging this point.

It's not a deflection really. Ultimately, Americans are pretty disorganized when it comes to advocacy outside of "simple" issues. I was making the point that the NRA gets its power by convincing voters to, you know, vote. It's extremely difficult to coalesce around policy because it's complicated. It's much much easier to advocate around an idea. Unfortunately, ideas don't get made into law, policy does. That's why it's easy to rally around abortion rights, gun rights, etc.

Look how vague your talking points are:
"sufficiently regulate"
"fair share"
"affordable"
"meaningful way"

How on earth do you plan on getting voters to rally around that? Everyone has their own opinion on "fair," "sufficiently," "affordable," etc. Also, it's much harder to craft policy than to tear it down. Look at Hillarycare, Obamacare, No Child Left Behind, etc. Those took MONTHS to craft and they can be torn apart in a matter of minutes.

You're not wrong that corporations have a lot more power than people but it all comes down to organization. A voter isn't going to care about the minutia in the same way that a corporation will. How many voters care about tax exemptions for class B medical devices? How many voters care about the maximum number of chickens that can be inspected per minute by the FDA? Those are some of the policies that keep this country running. It really shouldn't surprise you that there are certain corporations who care A LOT about those two examples.

I think Bernie had the right idea when it came to Medicare for all. It was really easy to understand and it was easy to organize VOTERS around it. Unfortunately, the policy itself is asinine which is why it was so easy to come up with talking points against it. The best thing voters can do is form advocacy groups for specific issues and flex their power that way. It's not perfect, but it's a way to get your voice heard. Thankfully, there are thousands of them...it's just that people don't care enough.

yes, it's a massive deflection, and you're doing it again. my point (and the demonstrable truth, refer to the study i linked earlier, that you keep ignoring) is not that corporations have a lot of influence about the 'minutia' of policy, it's that they determine the general direction of what will be done and what won't. you're trying to weaken that argument by suggesting it's simply the nature of politics, but that is fundamentally WRONG.

just because i used broader terms to describe a general direction does NOT mean that doing the exact opposite, or nothing at all to address the underlying problems, is somehow justified.
i mean, i'm familiar with that kind of 'argument', but it has no substance:

- you don't need everyone to agree on one specific system to realise that a majority of americans want some kind of universal health care.
- it's not required for a majority of americans commit to one specific tax rate in order to acknowledge that people want effective corporate taxes to be higher.
- you don't have to have every voter agree to a detailed set of regulations for the fossil fuel industry to tell they want to see it regulated more strictly.

the list goes on. tax payers don't have to be legislation experts, or come up with detailed proposals which they are all perfectly aligned on, in order to be heard, and have their will turned into policy. that's a really shitty, dishonest, and bad faith 'argument' to dismiss reasonable grievances, which are perpetuated by fundamental flaws written into the system to rig it in favour of corporations.

the legislation crafting, the details, the working out which compromise serves most people best... that's the job of politicians. corporate lobbyists presenting them with readily drafted legislation is what you might be used to (especially after republicans successfully crippled and defunded the legislative's ability to do that legwork), but it's neither the intended nor the healthy way - and voting for establishment puppets won't change anything about that practice.
if you're seriously expecting a corporate funded candidate to go against the will of their donors, you haven't been paying attention... at all. the records couldn't be clearer...

stupid people cant look at a number like 5m and accept that it's "not a lot". you could type 10 more paragraphs and that idiot still wouldnt get your point, which is a really good one tbh.

1/300,000th of the amount of money just pumped into loans (via the other thread)

literal pennies.