Any time a meme says “basically” there’s a good chance they’re just making stuff up. The term lobbying wasn’t created by Americans, it originated in the UK, referring to the lobbies of the House of Commons. It dates back to the 1600s.
▪️The modern growth of lobbying is a direct result of the rise of the administrative state regulating virtually every aspect of business. Microsoft famously had almost no lobbying presence in Washington in the early ‘90s. Then the govt went after them hard on antitrust charges, and they instituted a massive lobbying arm in DC.
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/week/122197microsoft.html
▪️The reality is that it’s nearly impossible for large businesses to succeed without lobbying. If they try to mind their own business and ignore govt, like Microsoft did, they won’t be left alone in return. So lobbying exists, not only to gain special favors from govt, but to keep them from coming after you.
▪️The leftist perspective is that lobbying arises from corporate money influencing politics, but the reality is it originates due to the favors and punishments that the administrative state (and those who control it) can dole out. Without that power being lorded over, there would be no one to lobby.
It’s bizarre to see them seesaw back and forth that Trump is totally clueless and aloof, just golfing all day, then all of a sudden he’s a dangerous king/dictator who’s diligently plotting to seize absolute power.
▪️This one is frustrating because, while it’s nice to see the vigor and speed that DOGE is acting with, they’re also sloppy with some of their findings. This is not some bombshell, millions of dead people’s SS numbers aren’t being paid out to fraudsters.
▪️This problem has been known for some time, you can read an inspector general’s report from 2015 about millions of names on the SS “numident” not being correctly annotated for deaths, even though they were older than 112 (the oldest known American at the time).
https://oig-files.ssa.gov/audits/full/A-06-14-34030_0.pdf
▪️There are innocent explanations for some of these. Expatriates that died outside the country, for example. Or immigrants given temporary work permit who returned to their country, people issued new numbers for various reasons, etc. However, most are simply due to the govt not diligently keeping track of deaths.
▪️It’s embarrassing that the govt has millions of numbers on the numident that are ...
