Defining bribery
There seems to be some pushback against using the word /bribe/ to describe what is happening in US politics today. I'd like to address that.
Jimmy Carter: US campaign funding 'legal bribery'
3 February 2016 Last updated at 08:52 GMT
Former US president Jimmy Carter has told the Today programme that the way politics is now funded in the US opens the door to "legal bribery".
Speaking to John Humphrys, who first interviewed Carter when he was running for the Democratic nomination in 1976, he said almost all candidates now relied on "massive infusions of money".
President Carter suggested he would not have become US president if he were competing under the current conditions.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-35481303
bribe
synonyms:
inducement
incentive
payola
payoff
kickback
buy off
pay off
suborn
grease someone's palm
fix
VERB
persuade (someone) to act in one's favor, typically illegally or dishonestly, by a gift of money or other inducement:
Example sentence of my own making:
Rich fucks are bribing our politicians to (1) pass laws protecting the interests of the 1%, and (2) ignore any requests from the 99% for legislation that protects the 99% from the 1%.
This has been made legal in the US by providing clear avenues for the lawful transfer of funds to effect said favored treatment.
Reference:
Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens
Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page
ABSTRACT
Each of four theoretical traditions in the study of American politics—which can be characterized as theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy, Economic-Elite Domination, and two types of interest-group pluralism, Majoritarian Pluralism and Biased Pluralism—offers different predictions about which sets of actors have how much influence over public policy: average citizens; economic elites; and organized interest groups, mass-based or business-oriented.
A great deal of empirical research speaks to the policy influence of one or another set of actors, but until recently it has not been possible to test these contrasting theoretical predictions against each other within a single statistical model. We report on an effort to do so, using a unique data set that includes measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues.
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.
The last paragraph of their findings:
"...America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened."
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