Microsoft's Political Lobbying Record

pierreduFwench writes "With the U.S. national elections just around the corner, you may find this interesting: Opensecrets.org, a website focusing on 'Responsive Politics' recently published lobbying and donations info for the 2002 elections (to date). You can see the breakdown of Microsoft's individual dossier here. Also, looking at the 'Top Donations by Industry', you may notice that Microsoft is, conspicuously, the only entry under 'Computers/Internet.'" Very interesting graphs.

Re:uh yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

what are you talking about " exposing just one shady ass organization." The goal of the site is exposing all large public donors. Microsoft is just one of them... did you look at the site?

Re:online voting history

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a good site with lots of links to various political stuff. Halfway down there's a link to the voting records of members in congress.

http://www.vote-smart.org/ce/ [vote-smart.org]

Re:Other interesting things on opensecrets.org

[GigsVT]

Anyone shocked by the fact that Philip Morris, a tobacco company, is in the top 5 all time donors [opensecrets.org]?

No.

Philip Morris is far from "a tobacco company". Tobacco is just part of what they do. They have hundreds of food brands, in fact, a large majority of the "name brand" stuff in the grocery is Philip Morris. Check their site sometime, I'd bet your refrigerator is full of their products.

But that's not the point of my reply. The point is, the overt contributions of Philip Morris are nothing. You also have to look at the billions and billions of tobacco tax money that the tobacco industry generates for the government(s). The settlement with the states was also a big source of free money for governments to spend on whatever they wanted.

The government is addicted to tobacco in a big way. Even if PM gave zero in direct donations to candidates, indirectly, they still give billions in tax revenue each year. The government likes it this way. They can act all big and bad an anti-tobacco, when in reality, they love the tobacco industry, and can't live without it.

The democrats might whine for tobacco tax increases "for the children", when in reality they are just propping up the covert system of graft, that somehow slips past the public eye unnoticed.

Re:Slashdotted already :=/

[Anonymous Coward]

MIRROR LINK [171.65.34.243]

but it looks like the orig site is working now. will take down mirror in 24-36 hrs.

Re:Note the change in party loyalty

[Anonymous Coward]

"Chairman Bill" (as you put it) is still solidly Democratic. It is Microsoft that has changed. Search for individual donations made by "Gates, William" if you don't believe me. Among the beneficieries of his largess:

Carolyn McCarthy (D - NY)
Jim McDermott (D - WA)
Paul Wellstone (D - MN) (& a great guy)
Jean Carnahan (D - MO)

(Donations from William Gates, Sr. are of course from Bill Gates' dad.)

The FEC Database has errors: Quality of Disclosure

[stefanlasiewski]

Notice how the site posts the following disclosure at the bottom of many of the Congressional query pages:

Quality of Disclosure:

Quality of disclosure data has been removed from the site because of errors in the Federal Election Commission's database. The FEC has informed us that it will not supply updated disclosure data until mid-October. We will post new figures on disclosure quality as soon as possible.

Convenient timing, eh? Elections are November 5th, and the FEC won't supply the updated information until "mid-October". That's probably not enough time for opensecrets to input the data before the elctions.

If the FEC supplied that information on a timely basis, I might be able to make a more educated decision on November 5th.

Suspicious timing, if you ask me.

Re:The Open Source community needs a PAC

[Fnkmaster]

This is a fabulous idea. We are pretty good at organizing, very politically opinionated on certain issues that may not be of interest to the general population but affect all of our lives, and we have a rather high mean income, so we could all afford to give a bit of money.

Wait a second, isn't the EFF supposed to do this already? I guess the EFF spreads their efforts out a bit, and perhaps fails to focus strongly enough on the legislative branch, and lobbying Congress to pass bills more friendly to the technology community. The EFF seems to get stuck in the judicial process, relying on the admittedly somewhat more rights-friendly judiciary to save our asses. Frankly, I don't think the Free Software Foundation, which you mention, is the kind of organization I would want representing my point of view in the political arena, though I think they have done a lot of great work to promote Free Software. I think we could accomplish a lot with an organization that existed to promote legislation friendly to the cause of freedom online, that had a pro-Free Software stance without being radically dogmatic.

In the meantime, why not donate to EFF [eff.org]?

Re:The Open Source community needs a PAC

[pben]

Geekpac [geekpac.org] is the only one that I know of right now. It is still forming up so it will not be much of a force in this election. The people behind The Linux Show [thelinuxshow.com] are behind this PAC,

Re:Where the power lies.

[toddhisattva]

Actually, the power does lie with the people. We can vote.

The real problem is, people vote the way TV commercials tell them to. That's why the person who spends the most usually wins. Which makes money important.

The reason we have stupid legislation is us: Pogo's Law at work again.