I said it before, I'll say it again.
Lobbying is just bribery with extra steps.
this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2026
516 points (99.6% liked)
Progressive Politics
4165 readers
933 users here now
Welcome to Progressive Politics! A place for news updates and political discussion from a left perspective. Conservatives and centrists are welcome just try and keep it civil :)
(Sidebar still a work in progress post recommendations if you have them such as reading lists)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Those extra steps?
- Rubber-stamp the bribe
- Call it lobbying instead of bribery
It is literally just bribery. Bribery with extra steps is just bribery.
Pay for play is what made Trump the President possible, see Super PACs and Citizens United for more details.
PACs financed by, well, any country or organization or person, really, can funnel millions directly to their chosen candidate (or their favorite shell company, and so on).
They call it "donations", because fuck you.
Remember, we're only told about the up-front "donations" that they openly claim for publicity. It's a lot more than that.
Pay for play isn't just a Trump thing, and it's been around at least the last 40 years. The presidents from Reagan to Obama paved the way for this grift. For example, when body scanners became a thing at airports, it was reported that one of the major contractors in the effort was a personal friend of Barack Obama.
But there are plenty of examples: Halliburton and the Clinton Foundation, the Trump Organization, taking $500,000 for a "speaking fee". (When really, it's a payment for a future favor.)
Presidents making money for themselves and their friends has been a tradition since Reagan. As much as I despise Jimmy Carter, I'll give him a modicum of credit for not monetizing the presidency.
For example, when body scanners became a thing at airports, it was reported that one of the major contractors in the effort was a personal friend of Barack Obama.
I can't find anything on this. Can you point me towards a source?
Will probably have to look at newspaper archives. It was reported on at the time in the wake of the underwear bombing attempt. There was a lot of controversy around it, not just because of the grift, but because of health and privacy risks associated with the tech. And the alternative to walking through the scanner was to get systematically groped by the TSA.
I remember the privacy concerns for sure. I can't find anything about any grift though, nor do I remember ever hearing about it. If true, that's pretty significant.
This doesn’t shame Bezos. He’s happy with you thinking of him as a shrewd businessman who has the gumption to risk being openly corrupt when he can get away with it.
The target audience is not Bezos. He's probably not happy with that. But I don't really care how he feels either way tbh.
He's not wrong.
But fuck I despise Robert Reich. He was part of the Clinton Administration, which cut the social safety net, incentivized moving US manufacturing offshore, and helped pave the way for the Amazons of the world to exploit us all.
Funny how so many books, movies, games, warned us about a dystopic scenario where the ultra-richs would control the world.
FYI, we haven't seen the kickbacks from the Melania movie yet. The savings from the BB Bill were already baked in before the movie got made.
What are you going to do, not shop at Amazon? Avoid AWS?
Pretty easy to not shop at Amazon in my experience
Yeah, but my point is that even if you stop buying from Amazon, it's a drop in the ocean of profits.
Not if a large number of people do it. As far as I know, a large number of people are dissatisfied with Amazon, Bezos, Trump and so on. Apathy is compliance and keeps the tills rolling.
Even if one succumbs to the hopelessness in thinking that resistance is futile, there is still some pleasure to be had from hitting them were it hurts, ie. the only thing they seem to care about - money. How ever small a hit they take from it.
What's a large number of people? 10,000? 10,000,000? Amazon Prime has 180 million subscribers in the US alone, with a revenue of $44 billion dollars annually.
That represents less than 7% of Amazon's annual revenue.
You cannot fathom how massive Amazon is, and how small consumers are in comparison. By all means, stop shopping on Amazon. We all should, because we can. Just don't expect Bezos to give a shit.
Amazon is big because of consumers*, has revenue because of consumers. There are a lot of consumers, yes. That is part of the point.
*people
Avoiding amazon is a fair bit easier than AWS. I barely know what websites use AWS
To be fair, bezos and amazon paid more than that that we just don't know about. I suspect direct payments through layers of shell companies, disguised as a failed investment or something.