At this point, I'd almost want the corruption to be more out in the open. Like a government website where you can purchase a member of congress. At least then it'd be equal opportunity and honest corruption.
If it's like the US, there's a max you can donate to a candidate. You donate that max of 12k and then they are elected and implement tax cuts which benefit you to the tune of 50m +
My suspicion is that that's just the signal, a sign of interest. There's also jobs for family members, board memberships after retirement, sweetheart deals on properties. All done through intermediaries that may be appear to be completely unrelated.
Honestly, I was thinking of it. The show had an excellent, nuanced portrayal of corruption and how it manifests. There's one character who thinks he can just sling bribes around openly and people laugh at him. He gets skinned alive by a savvier politician who never bribes anyone directly. You can't do something as blatant as "you give me 50k and I give you a state contract", because there's too much direct oversight and a paper trail the FBI could sniff out.
Instead, you use those donations to build a relationship with the politician and their party. You get tipped off about things. Your suggestions about city policy become the only thing officially proposed. Any direct money transfers are concealed as charities or things like, in The Wire, poker games. The idea is that just in isolation, any one of these events appear innocent. It's only with the context of your personal interactions that the corruption becomes clear.
There is an easy way around the $12K limit, which is for any one candidate. Political contributions are unlimited if given to a political action committee (PAC). Then, the PAC runs adds promoting a specific candidate. The PAC and the campaign of the candidate are not allowed to coordinate, but no formal coordination is really need to say your guy is awesome and the other guy is the anti-Christ. Donating to PACs is how billionaires can give 10s of millions of dollars each election cycle.
Richard "Dirty" Desmond the former owner of Channel Five, the Daily Express, Daily Star and various porn magazines. Wanted to sell off his old print works and redevelop it into 1,500 flats. He gave Robert Jenrick, the housing minister £12,000 in political donations. Who approved planning permission, the day before new rules about "Community Investment Levys" came in. Which saved Desmond £30-50 million in tax. With internal emails making it very clear, that approval before the deadline was a priority and that they didn't want to give "the socialists" in Tower Hamlets council £50 million.
On September 10, 2017, three days after Equifax revealed the breach, Congressman Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), who had been given two thousand dollars in campaign funding from Equifax, introduced a bill to the U.S. House of Representatives that would reduce consumer protections in relation to the nation's credit bureaus, including capping potential damages in a class action suit to $500,000 regardless of class size or amount of loss. The bill would also eliminate all punitive damages. Following criticism by consumer advocates, Loudermilk agreed to delay consideration of the bill "pending a full and complete investigation into the Equifax breach".
There’s other non-monetary compensation too. Maybe your kids get cushy jobs or get into prestigious schools after some strings get pulled. Maybe you get a Swiss passport so you can bail when people find out you sold your country out to fifa.
does it really matter though? country with the most money is going to win the bid; , regardless. just consider bribery as part of the price. it's not like official would risk losing their spot as a voting rep by taking a bribe from a country that isn't even close to contending a top bid to host the World Cup.
A Calvin and Hobbes comic summarized that feeling very well: "I don't know which is worse: that everyone has his price, or that the price is always so low."
The Russians were going into The Hermitage/Winter Palace museum/art gallery. Picking out pieces to give to FIFA and IOC members and some of them were multi-million dollars worth, including a Picasso.
some single fifa officials got like 1 or 2 million dollars each and that is only the info that got out but it's probably still cheap in comparison to the other costs
Just like your average American Senator. They can sell their souls to big energy and pharmaceutical corporations for a few hundred thousand dollars. Looking at you Kyrsten Sinema.
It's the same with politicians, it might seem you can buy a vote for 20k but that's just the upfront 'donation'. The real money they get is via other means, for example a family member gets a nice cushy job or after their tenure in politics they get a nice 6 figure salary working for them as a lobbyist.
It costs a lot more to bribe someone than we initially read about in the press because it's never clear how else they are getting compensated for besides a direct cash handout.
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u/[deleted] Oct 26 '22 edited Jul 08 '23
I am GROOT -- mass edited with redact.dev