Extortion
"Conventional wisdom holds that Washington is broken because outside special interests bribe politicians. The reverse is true: politicians have developed a new set of brass-knuckle legislative tactics designed to extort wealthy industries and donors into forking over big donations... Until now, Washington's extortion racket has gone unreported. Yet thanks to an extraordinary effort by Peter Schweizer and the investigative research staff of the Government Accountability Institute, we now know the racketeering methods and the players who profit from them." -- Dust jacket. Argues that politicians in Congress are extorting money from corporations and the people and then use it to buy each other's votes.
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What Hacker News says
- A very good book length treatment of this can be found in Peter Schweizer's Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0544103343/
And it just so happens that his latest book covers the family angle: Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062569368/
Big companies don't have any choice if they want to stay in existence without shakedowns that might end up crushing them. Microsoft's biggest crime in the 1990s as Washington viewed it? Not spending enough money there.
- In the US, a CEO level employee would commit an estimated 3 Federal felonies a day (perhaps more, since I think the book is aimed a bit below that level): http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/...
Improvements are just not going to happen prior to the downfall of our current ruling class; a window into how this currently works is the excellent Extortion, How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0544103343, or as Ayn Rand put it in Atlas Shrugged:
Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against - then you'll know that this is not the age of beautiful gestures. We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one 'makes' them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted-and you create a nation of law-breakers and then you cash in on the guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with.
- Or shaking corporations down. A whole lot of "gridlock" is merely milking proposals that'll help or hurt various companies and sectors, and collecting contributions to continue preventing the bad or pushing for the good. Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets is (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0544103343) a really good book on the subject, taught me things I didn't know despite watching this sort of thing closely starting around the time of Watergate, like how there's a type of PAC a Congresscritter can establish that can be legally converted to subsidize their lifestyle.
This is one of the reasons for the constant changes in the tax code, despite the great uncertainty this creates for businesses and people. The obsession with short term results makes more sense when you realize long term financial planning is literally impossible (yeah, technically you might get that widget into production in a few years, but you really don't know how much money you'll be allowed to make from selling it).
- This book goes into quite some detail about how our tax code and it's frequent changes, or threats to do so, are a finely tuned instrument of Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets http://www.amazon.com/Extortion-Politicians-Extract-Money-Po...
Quite a bit more, as well. Did you know that a Congresscritter can set up a "leadership PAC", and spend the money on anything he wants? I've been following this sort of thing since the early '70s (sic, late grade school and junior high, then again that was the Watergate period), but I didn't know that....
- It's worth asking, "who's corruption"? I highly recommend the book "Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets" ( http://www.amazon.com/Extortion-Politicians-Extract-Money-Po...), which along with many things I've observed for a long time (e.g. the path and timing of Microsoft's travails, not to mention many of the details of a trial so bad the appeals court removed the trial judge while ratifying too much of his work), makes a compelling case a lot of this is a protection racket.
"Nice company you have here, would be a shame if anything happened to it...."
- Unfortunately that also makes them sort of "too small to extort"; there are some very good reasons Dodd-Frank enshrined the "too big to fail" institution concept. I've only read some of the material on that bill in http://www.amazon.com/Extortion-Politicians-Extract-Money-Po... but I bet when I get to the details that's part of the reasons.
Jailing is only something ambitious DAs and Attorney Generals want to do; milking firms is where the money is for those already politically established.
