Madigan is the Darth Vader of Illinois politics. He was speaker of the Illinois House from 97' until 21', when another scandal involving ComEd, if I recall correctly, finally forced him to resign. His other hustle is lowering the property tax rate of insiders - http://www.madigetz.com. Illinois politics is filled with the most ludicrously corrupt characters you can find. One interesting case from my neck of the woods is the Stephens family of Rosemont, who are, nominally, Republicans, but work with downstate Democrats to pass red light camera legislation, after receiving bribes from the companies that stand to gain - https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2020/10/18/21516422/re....
Rosemont is one of the weirdest places I've ever encountered. It's essentially family-run for-profit operation that caters to the corporate clientele of O'Hare airport.
don't forget that as far as I know, Illinois must hold the record for governors who have gone to jail for corruption. 4 out of the last 10 went to prison.
That number could increase soon too. The current governor is under federal tax fraud investigation. He bought the mansion next door to his, purposely removed the toilets, and then declared it uninhabitable to avoid paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes.
AFAICT that was settled in 2020 when Pritzker paid the extra taxes. I think if there were any charges they would have been announced by now. But it does seem Pritzker has some connections to Madigan (https://patch.com/illinois/chicago/pritzkers-7m-connection-m...), which might sink his re-election campaign. But so far he's doing well in the polls.
As best I can tell the investigation is still ongoing, but for some reason no one in the media really reports on it anymore. I think if the investigation had been concluded there'd be some reporting on that but I haven't found any.
That's dated 2020. But I guess you're right, https://madisonrecord.com/stories/614637059-why-pritzker-for... is Dec 2021 and says it's still open. I guess they could be delaying the charges while they investigate related members like Madigan. But the evasion was in 2015, statutory filing date is March 1 2016, and the statute of limitations is 6 years after, March 1 2022, so their window is already closing (I guess they could still do tax year 2016/2017).
The longest-serving leader of any level of government in the country. He was old-school. No emails. Ran a foot soldier get-out-the-vote ground game. Massive conflicts of interest. Possibly torpedoed his own daughter’s run for governor. Never gave interviews.
It’s funny how I think of criminals who refuse to use modern technologies like emails as masters of technology. He would have been stopped years earlier had he not stuck to his old school ways and started using evidence-mail most likely.
Reading about this man is fascinating. He’s a sort of a composed, calculated, competent evil.
If by “cynically” you mean “inaccurately.” Lobbying involves making Power Points for staffers and doing their homework for them by drafting proposed legislation.
Lobbyists probably also tend to hire ex-politicians as a form of (perfectly legal) delayed bribery; and hire family members of politicians (https://youtu.be/jXf04bhcjbg?t=1493).
The article says the bribe was for $22,500. Some how I am both insulted and encouraged by how low that amount is. I didn’t realize that my local PTA could abolish No Child Left Behind standardized testing for a few $100 bribes and a coupon to the local salad bar!
Are these fines close to the business value gained from getting this legislation passed over the last 5 years? Seems unlikely. Nobody is going to jail. So where is the disincentive?
Agreed. When a company does something illegal, the "company" is liable. But it was actually a person within the company who made the decision to do this; companies are not sentient. Why are the decision makers not held liable instead?
Cost of doing business. Seems like this had positive ROI.
I’d like for companies that do illegal things to have repercussions in line with what an individual would face for doing the same thing. Whoever signs off on it at the highest level should pay the price.
$20k is such a small amount (to bribe a politician at least). I'm constantly shocked at how small these bribes always seem to turn out. Unless the big ones are just better hidden, haha.
> $20k is such a small amount (to bribe a politician at least). I'm constantly shocked at how small these bribes always seem to turn out.
I used to be shocked by this, but at some point I realized how expensive it must be to get a dollar to a politician. Getting $20K to Madigan involves meetings, planning, lawyers, accountants, and bagmen. I'm sure the total expense was closer to $100-$200K. Spent badly in this case because they still got caught, but spent well in the hundreds of cases we don't talk about.
It's also capitalism; if Madigan weren't cheap and effective, he wouldn't have lasted as long as he did. He might have gotten a dozen AT&T-sized bribes that month from different sources.
Wow why is it possible to negotiate a criminal charge down to a fine? I can understand if it's a civil charge, but it should not be possible to do that for a criminal charge. One more example of "a corporation can do anything" rule we have in this country.
Especially one where a public servant is advancing its own interest at the expense of their constituents. IMHO, the penalties for such behavior should be harsh for both parties and prevent either from holding office again (and lobbying as well). Of the things that have had “zero tolerance” enforcement in the past, it’s egregious that crimes by politicians, law enforcement, and revenue agencies haven’t been included.
Of course the laws and prosecutors are managed by the individuals involved in the crimes, so what will change?
How is the line between lobbying and bribery argued in court? There seems to be a large grey area between the two. This seems like lobbying to me. A corporation gives money to a politician (or party) in return for favourable legislation yet this particular incident is deemed illegal. Does the flow of money have to be more transparent to the public for it to be legal?
IANAL, this is probably way off, but at a basic level...
Lobbying = "Hi, I'm a representative for [large donor]. I'd like to speak with you about how they feel about an upcoming piece of legislation, carefully using my words so that I'm just pushing our position on the issue and hoping you'll 'see our side' and vote in our favor, even though you and I both know what I really mean here."
Bribery: "I will give you $[amount] if you vote [this way]."
4 years pass ... "<Name>! long time no see? oh you're out of office? Great! we have a cushy consulting position you should apply for, you're a shoe in!"
Also..."Hey we are holding a conference and we would love to have you come speak for a half hour at <Big Event>. How does a $100K speaking fee sound to you?"
The powers that be have established complicated rules that ensure the line between legal and illegal behavior is nonsensical. It's a competitive moat, but for corrupt politicians.
No, but they can and do organize employee-funded PACs, with their company names on them, directed by management at the companies, and those PACs do donate directly to parties, individual candidates, candidate leadership PACs, and party-aligned PACs. So this is a distinction without much of a difference.
You basically have never have looked at a campaign general fund receipts report to believe that companies don't donate to candidates. I don't even care about this issue and think it's totally overblown, but I mean, what you said is deeply misleading and we can't just let it stand as a comment.
By donate to individual candidates I assume you mean to their campaigns (and subject to limits). Because as the parent poster correctly pointed out, giving money to them personally is illegal. The laws are pretty strict about bribery and candidates can't touch campaign funding for personal use.
He's technically right: corporations can't donate to candidate general funds or leadership PACs. But he's substantively wrong: corporations obviously do donate to candidate general funds and leadership PACs. They do so by forming employee-funded, management-directed PACs, which can contribute directly. Again: you'll see these in the receipts list of any major candidate, as Rayiner well knows.
Being technically right is important when being wrong can land you in prison. This is a story about such a criminal law being enforced, after all. Odd place to be arguing that such laws are meaningless. Here's the law ATT (through their contractor or whatever) violated:
"A person commits bribery when: (a) With intent to influence the performance of any act related to the employment or function of any public officer, public employee, juror or witness, he or she promises or tenders to that person any property or personal advantage which he or she is not authorized by law to accept;"
"Under the agreement with AT&T, "the government will defer prosecution on the charge for two years and then seek to dismiss it if AT&T Illinois abides by certain conditions..."
Slap on the wrist and no real punishment for the largest American telecom/ISP.
ATT and Verizon are two of the shittiest corporations in existence. Both carriers raised their prices between $6 and $12 a month back in June. This was an obvious "inflation" corporate pile on. The two biggest carriers raised their rates by the same amount at the same time? Perhaps the Justice Department should be looking at that. It's like Ma Bell never went away.
>"BELLEVUE, Wash. — May 31, 2022 — The Carriers called. They want their greedy reputations back. AGAIN. AT&T is raising its rates, increasing customers’ bills by $6 to $12 per month."[1]
>"Wireless postpaid consumer customers on all metered shared data plans will see a plan rate adjustment charge of $6 per month for a single-line phone account and $12 per month for multi-line phone accounts, effective with their next bill cycle, according to Verizon."[2]
I didn't realize Tmobile exceeded Verizon in market cap. wow. VZ has taken major beating in share price lately because of its high debt load.
Looking at Tmobile's plan, https://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone-plans I'm shocked at how low their price is for 3 phonelines. $90 essential plan is all I need. Similar plan on ATT would cost me at least 30%+ more.
Note that for now and up until now, it is widely considered that coverage wise, Verizon > ATT > T-Mobile, and so mobile network pricing still reflects that.
I doubt T-Mobile would be selling its services for less if it had the same coverage Verizon and ATT did, so effectively T-Mobile is selling an inferior product.
Both Verizon and ATT tried to pull off a Comcast and tried to go vertical by acquiring content makers to avoid being just a dumb pipe, but they both failed miserably and ended up with a ton of debt.
ATT failed much worse though. They paid $50B for a satellite TV broadcaster in 2015. It was already obvious that streaming was the future. Either extreme corruption or astounding incompetence.
Verizon has made a number of stupid decisions. Like buying and mismanaging Yahoo to buying and mismanaging Tumblr. Meanwhile TMobile bought Sprint and benefited significantly since it increased their coverage from just GSM to CDMA as well making them the only dual radio technology company in the country.
I interpret this to mean the executives are taking both the customers and the shareholders for a ride. Consequences for them would be good for everyone else.
Executives would be getting paid in stock, which has been falling for 10+ years at a time when everyone else’s skyrocketed. Being a structural monopoly, they should at least be able to keep up with inflation given their customers have little choice.
Is their executive leadership that bad if they're gonna wriggle out of a multimillion dollar fine? Seems like another case of "too hard to unravel" and "not even gonna matter after it exits the headlines"
Anyone else remember in 2019 when AT&T got fined $60 million by the FTC for their claims about "unlimited data"[1] which was followed by an immediate $10/month rate hike for select customers[2]?
Margaret Cho has a great comedy bit about how being in a relationship turned her into a "low-priced hooker" (her words): "If you do the dishes, we can have sex."
It's pretty stunning to me how low-priced these political hookers are. $22.5k to end a requirement for AT&T that is surely worth many, many millions? I have a difficult time believing the $23M is more than the annual savings they get from this bill. Companies will just rack this up as the cost of doing business.
The problem with your assumption is that corrupt politicians are rare and thus valuable, but the low prices indicate a oversupply of corrupt politicians all competing on price.
Even if what you say were true, in any particular government there are only a few politicians that can move the needle. Some low ranking representative wouldn't be able to do squat in most cases. There is a reason AT&T specifically tried to court favor with the man who was Illinois Speaker of the House for nearly 2 decades.
I'm not an American, but the situation is very much the same in Europe. I always imagined big fat bribes that would buy a corrupt politicians or some official big house on an exotic island, etc. The reality is most are cheaper than an average prostitute on a street. It's shocking what <100K can buy in most cases. The ROI is insane.
They are - they added additional charges to the former lawmaker (Madigan) who took the bribes[0]. He was already criminally charged for similar bribery by the local power company (ComEd). Makes me wonder if Comcast or Nicor will be next.
I almost feel sorry for AT&T here. It's hard to overstate just how powerful Mike Madigan was in Illinois politics (and he's still very influential). He was undoubtedly more powerful than the governor. His corruption was legendary and well known by everyone, yet hardly anyone seemed to care and people voted for him anyway. He acted like a mob boss in the legislature, ensuring that all his colleagues would continue to vote him into the Speaker position year after year. Any Democrats who voted against him as speaker were very publicly punished, since he controlled most of the Democratic party money in the state. In a state that almost always has a Democratic supermajority, there were basically zero checks to his power. Companies like AT&T may have been in a bad situation of having no choice but to play ball with him just to be able to function in the state. Everyone in Illinois knew that you didn't say no to Mike Madigan.
I think the solution is not to ban lobbying, etc., but rather to reduce the power of politicians so that there is no motivation to lobby or bribe them. For example, in my country the taxi drivers got politicians to ban Uber through protesting by blocking roads and probably pressuring their connections. I don't think politicians should have the power to be able to tell people that they are not allowed to pick up paying passengers if they want to, so there would have been no reason for the taxi drivers to gridlock the country as there would have been no potential benefit for them in doing so.
And billions more in taxes gained from a vast legal marijuana industry. And our many prisons. And abortion tourism. And incredibly expensive rest homes for the elderly. All that tax money disappears like magic. Where'd it go??
We are famous for our corrupt politicians and soft-minded citizens.
The story allegedly is that it goes down the government pensions sink hole. That pension thing is crazy in and of itself. They put a commitment to fund pensions in the constitution. It’s nuts.
The government pensions sink hole was investing the cash with insiders who lost and stole it all, so it became a constant drain to pay out. They put a commitment to fund pensions in the constitution because the retirees who worked for bad salaries in exchange for these pensions deserve not to have to continue to fight for them.
I would ask you to research John Filan for more details, but you'll find very little because this kind of history gets erased and substituted for angry rants about some appointee retiring at 45 on 3x his salary, to his own consulting company whose only client is the state, or a lobbying firm. As a reaction to those rants, it's retired teachers, DMV clerks, and garbagemen that get shit on.
Oh what a tasty bit of propagandistic argumentation that is.
The reaction : everybody with a pension, or expecting a pension, fearful of losing their nestegg, rallys to defend the high taxes. And wailing fills the air, obscuring further discussion.
Previously unaccounted for labor costs. Bought x amount of labor yesterday by paying y > x tomorrow, but not acknowledging y > x in any official reports. And, of course, there was most likely some loss due to corrupt investments.
Note that federal laws exempted taxpayer funded deferred compensation schemes from laws such as ERISA 1974 and PPA 2006 specifically because taxes can be increased in the future, so why bother preventing future taxpayers from having to pay for previous generations of taxpayers?
> The Department of Justice (DOJ) statistics on public corruption show, that since the department began collecting the data in 1976, the Northern District of Illinois, which includes Chicago, is the most corrupt federal judicial district in the nation, and that Illinois, on a per capita basis, is the third most corrupt state.
The metric you're citing is followed by a table that shows they reached the ranking only by taking all public corruption cases from 1976-2020; if you look only at recent cases, we're behind Florida and California. The real issue is that this is an analysis that mostly just tracks population (it's not weighted by population).
Look, for what it's worth, I'm not trying to argue that public corruption isn't a problem in Chicagoland. It obviously is. Hopefully the fall of Madigan does something about it; really, until we get a viable Illinois Republic Party, we're going to be stuck with a political machine, just like very non-competitive state has. But people are glib about this stuff.
It isn't clear, but I think only the indictment against the company itself is being put on hold. The CEO, the lawmaker and the intermediary are still being prosecuted?
> Madigan and McClain were previously indicted on racketeering and bribery
Jail time and bans from operating.
This is the only thing that will fix broken America.
Jail time for those involved. and Lifetime bans from operating in the respective spaces. The person doing the bribing should be banned from a mgmt position, the the law maker should be banned from any political office at all levels, the lobby firm should be banned from operating in the US.
You can't get that for an indictment unless you're indicting a poor person. In the US we ostensibly punish people when they're convicted.
What we need to do is to punish the appearance of impropriety when it comes to politics, and be very specific about what appears to be impropriety. As it is, we can only stop dumb or lazy corruption, the kind that people talk about over the phone and write in emails.
If the bribe is paid as a "campaign contribution" to a politician or to a group that runs ads to get a politician elected, it is "free speech" according to SCOTUS in Citizens United v. FEC. If it is paid directly to a politician or to a politician's friend, it is illegal bribery.
It would also be perfectly legal to hire a politician or regulator who advanced your interests once he's no longer in office. There is, in fact, a revolving door between many industries and the agencies that regulate them. But you can't explicitly promise these individuals a job while they're still in office or you committed illegal bribery. A politician also can't sell a Senate appointment (as the governor of Illinois infamously tried to do after Obama was elected president) but he can give it to one of his political allies as a favor and reasonably expect that the favor will be repaid in the future.
Of course, these differences aren't particularly meaningful in reality but they're very important under the law and anybody who is stupid enough to execute their bribes the wrong way will probably be punished for bribery even though it would have been perfectly legal if they'd done it the right way.
This is an incredibly reductive take. Campaign contributions are carefully monitored. So you can't, like, buy yourself a house in Martha's Vineyard with campaign contributions. In fact, it's illegal for a politician to even be in contact with a super PAC (even though they may be campaigning for them). There have been many lawsuits that have settled this.
Citizens United is problematic not because "money is free speech" (which, frankly, it is, as we live in a capitalist society) but rather because corporations (specifically when donating to Super PACs) have no caps on donation sizes. Fun fact: that money is not taxable income, by the way. So they can (in a roundabout way) essentially fill a friendly politician's coffers "for free."
This is an incredibly naive take. There's countless ways and examples of how to get campaign funds into your own pocket. Speaking fees, books, your campaign hiring family members or friends, buying goods and services for your campaign from your own companies, etc. It happens all the time.
Plus winning an election means you're more likely to get those opportunities to make money. Most members of Congress are millionaires [0] and it has nothing to do with their salaries (which barely cover the cost of maintaining 2 residences given how high cost of living is in DC) or their pre-existing wealth before they run for office.
> There's countless ways and examples of how to get campaign funds into your own pocket.
I mean, while this is technically true, it's also a bit silly to think it's untraceable--many people that attempt to do this get in trouble for it[1]. As someone that owns a Super PAC, while I don't consider myself some kind of absolute authority, I do know some of the regulatory hurdles one must go through. I get it, you watched John Oliver do his little song and dance, but reality is a bit more complicated.
[1] Just to cite a famous-ish case: read about Conservative Strikeforce Super PAC.
If you could point to exactly where I said it was untraceable or that people don't get caught doing it....? Yeah. Please don't put words in my mouth.
I'm fully aware it's by no means a risk free or foolproof venture, but you're the one being silly if you think the amount of cases where people are caught committing crimes is anything but a small percentage of people actually committing said crimes, especially white collar crimes like this. They're just the ones that were unlucky and/or not smart enough to get away with it.
And honestly you're being more than a bit condescending and not really arguing in good faith, so not interested in continuing this conversation. You have a nice day though :)
And that's why Citizens united should have focused on citizens, not corporations.
Corporations have not votes. Citizens do. A step forward could be to bar corporations from any action in the voting process (their constituent citizens like employees, owners, board etc can do what they wish as citizens, if they're citizens) .
Are you trying to say that bribery is common in US politics? I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but no, bribery is not common nor is it legal. People like to meme about lobbyists and PACs and all that. And, while it may be true that the system might need tweaks, all of that money is required to be reported through the FEC in the case of campaign contributions, or via D-2 forms in the case of lobbying.
The problem with under-the-table bribes is that you can't "follow the money" so to speak.
Lobbying is legalized bribery, and it's not just companies doing the lobbying/bribing, it's foreign countries doing it as well[1]. Also, lobbyists don't just influence policy, they also influence who gets elected in the first place[2]. The most common issue that lobbyist money is spent on has to do with the appropriating money from the federal budget[3], so in many cases it's likely that the money spent lobbying is used to redirect taxpayer funds to pay for more lobbying. In other words lobbying is so corrupt that it's easy for any citizen to see the corruption--yet people say, "Nah, it's fine because it's legal."
This is blatantly anti-democratic. It's a huge mess of conflicts of interest. It should not be legal.
That's an unhelpful take. Bribery as defined by law is inherently illegal, and lobbying is defined by law as legal, so legalized bribery is nonsensical. It can't exist.
On the other hand, there are certainly arguments to be made for why lobbying can feel anti-democratic. But they come smack up against rights to freedom of speech, association, etc.
It's incredibly difficult to draw the lines here for what is "democratic" and "anti-democratic", where "legitimate democratic politics" turns into "corruption". All of democracy is about individuals and groups trying to influence candidates and politicians, and providing or withholding support to do so, and candidates and politicians actively seeking support of individuals and groups via policy.
Fortunately, we've decided that some lines are relatively easy to draw: politicians can solicit/receive contributions for campaigns, but not personally. But what you're arguing against doesn't have any kind of clear line. Federal money and tax breaks go to lots of different groups, and lots of different groups lobby. It's hard to see how that either of those should be illegal, or how tying them together could be made illegal, without the end result being even more anti-democratic.
I don't think the concept of legalized bribery is difficult to understand. Yes, it's legal. I'm saying that it shouldn't be.
Democracy, or more specifically representative democracy, is a form of government where elected persons represent the people. The problem with lobbying is that to the degree that lobbying happens, the people are represented less and those paying the lobbyists are represented more. This causes an obvious conflict of interests.
You might think that the degree of lobbying happening in Washington is fairly small. In 2021, $3.77B was spent on lobbyists[1], and the combined salaries of all representatives and senators was around $93m. That means that on average, each representative makes $174,000 pre-tax, and has over $7m spent to buy their vote on various issues. Every. Single. Year.
That's how stark the problem is. Solving the problem is hard of course--I think that might be your point?--and definitely something that requires a lot of thought and discussion. Even if you made lobbying illegal, a huge percentage of that money is going to go underground and find other ways of influencing Congress.
bribery - transfer of value in exchange for official action.
lobbying - communicating with an official for purposes of influencing official action, not including providing public testimony or legally required communications
Legalizing bribery would allow transfer of value. Generally information is considered free, so has no value, so lobbying is not a transfer of value and hence is not bribery (legalized or otherwise). If you want to argue that lobbyists are giving officials hot stock tips that make the officials millions, hence information has value, I suppose it's possible, but it doesn't seem like the issue you're addressing.
What you seem to dislike is that many people are paid to push laws. But this isn't much different from other forms of sales - every company has a marketing department that tries to lobby potential customers. There is no obligation to buy and similarly the politician has no obligation to enact the suggested changes. But without direct communication it seems like it would be hard to enact sound policy. I don't see any obvious alternatives to lobbying to get the required information besides a massive "big brother" government surveillance program that tries to identify potential problems with big data and solve them before they happen.
> The problem with lobbying is that to the degree that lobbying happens, the people are represented less and those paying the lobbyists are represented more... You might think that the degree of lobbying happening in Washington is fairly small.
Believe me, I know how much lobbying there is, I've studied it a bit academically. Which is why I'm taking issue with how you're characterizing it.
Corporations have legitimate democratic/governance concerns. E.g. there can be outdated regulations unfairly hampering their ability to do business or innovate. They need to be able to bring their concerns to politicians, the same way pro-choicers donate to Planned Parenthood to lobby, or environmentalists donate to Greenpeace to lobby on behalf of the environment, or gun rights advocates with the NRA.
Your claim that lobbying is in conflict with "the people" is categorically false, as "the people" lobby as well via lots of organizations, such as the ones I've just listed. "The people" also have interests in corporations not being unfairly burdened.
The notion of making lobbying illegal is utterly anti-democratic. The idea that you could outlaw voluntary domestic organizations from trying to support democratic candidates flies in the face of what makes democracy work, whether those organizations are non-profit or for-profit.
The more relevant issue seems to be more with the notion that corporations have more money to lobby with than the general population does. However even with that, some academic research suggests that the issue isn't so much to do with money, but rather the fact that corporations often lobby on behalf of niche/arcane issues such as specific corporate regulations that voters are often virtually entirely unaware of. So it's not so much corporations vs. "the people", but corporations vs. "the people don't even care", or corporations vs. other corporations.
> That's an unhelpful take. Bribery as defined by law is inherently illegal, and lobbying is defined by law as legal, so legalized bribery is nonsensical. It can't exist.
That depends on if you think getting rid of bribery laws gets rid of bribery. If you do feel that way, you're very compatible with Illinois state bribery law, which allows anything outside of a written or recorded quid pro quo. But you're out of step with people who think laws should be made for a purpose, rather than our purpose being to follow laws.
And what good does "following the money" do anyone? In a world with no consequences for politicians' conflict of interest, how is that different than flat out bribery?
Rosemont is one of the weirdest places I've ever encountered. It's essentially family-run for-profit operation that caters to the corporate clientele of O'Hare airport.