137
'So Corrupt': DOJ Drops Antitrust Case Against Company Represented by Bondi's Former Lobbying Firm
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2025
137 points (99.3% liked)
Politics
848 readers
11 users here now
For civil discussion of US politics. Be excellent to each other.
Rule 1: Posts have the following requirements:
▪️ Post articles about the US only
▪️ Title must match the article headline
▪️ Recent (Past 30 Days)
▪️ No Screenshots/links to other social media sites or link shorteners
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. One or two small paragraphs are okay.
Rule 3: Articles based on opinion (unless clearly marked and from a serious publication-No Fox News or equal), misinformation or propaganda will be removed.
Rule 4: Keep it civil. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a jerk. It’s not acceptable to say another user is a jerk. Cussing is fine.
Rule 5: Be excellent to each other. Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, will be removed.
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7. No conjecture type posts (this could, might, may, etc.). Only factual. If the headline is wrong, clarify within the body. More info
Info Video about techniques used in cults (and politics)
Bookmark Vault of Trump's First Term
The Epstein Files: Trump, Trafficking, and the Unraveling Cover-Up
Media owners, CEOs and/or board members
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The framers considered this such a basic right that it's right there in the 1st Amendment. And not all lobbying is bad! We only hear about the corrupt shit like this.
That’s great and all, but I don’t see anything in that sentence that says ‘corporation (who is apparently a legal person) has the right to pay another entity vast sums of money to petition the govt to not enforce laws mandated by congress.
Devil's advocate here!
So Greenpeace shouldn't pay a firm for effective lobbying? (pulled from my ass, you get the idea) Think you or I could petition the government as well as the people who are close to it, know how it works, know what strings to pull?
Devil's advocate 2:
Most literally, the first paragraph of our legal code:
§1. Words denoting number, gender, and so forth
...the words "person" and "whoever" include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals;...
Yeah, hate that SCOTUS took that literally in Citizens United v. FEC. It's a necessary legal fiction, but hell. I know it. You know it. History may well mark that ruling as the end of the American empire.
And yeah, the case in question is blatant corruption, fuck you in your face we're doing it anyway kinda corruption.
I'm only arguing that lobbying is a protected right and not necessarily evil. What if our legislators try to rule against it, LOL, fuck it up with vague rules and we get an even more damning ruling than Citizens? The mind boggles.
No, I don’t think Greenpeace should pay a firm to lobby effectively for them. My dad was big in his state’s trout unlimited and over time I realized that I disagree with our entire system of special interest groups. Almost all of them end up straying from their mission in the search for money to effectively lobby congress. It still favors the money over the individual and many orgs get such tunnel vision that they discredit other good solutions. It’s a crap system that leads to crap results.