Poll of the Day > Could someone set up a GoFundMe as an effort to lobby to the government?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I was watching the new Adam Ruins Everything bit about taxes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGVK4ibMI-Y

Obviously it's a god awful idea to pay our government extra in an effort to govern for us... but companies do it all the time... Could we look into how much is paid in the name of the companies that push laws that benefit them while making our life more difficult and then outbid them? There's already record of how much our congressmen can be bought for so it should technically be possible to figure out.
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Adam Ruins Everything is consistently wrong, uses weasel wording, omits information specifically to fit an agenda of his, and goes for shock value over actual facts. Viewing some of his own sources even quickly reveals that.

MannerSaurus posted...

Adam Ruins Everything is consistently wrong, uses weasel wording, omits information specifically to fit an agenda of his, and goes for shock value over actual facts. Viewing some of his own sources even quickly reveals that.

Lemme guess, conservative?

wah_wah_wah posted...

MannerSaurus posted...

Adam Ruins Everything is consistently wrong, uses weasel wording, omits information specifically to fit an agenda of his, and goes for shock value over actual facts. Viewing some of his own sources even quickly reveals that.

Lemme guess, conservative?

Literally all political parties do that.
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Fine, I'm sorry! I was just watching it on YouTube for entertainment purposes...

We all know lobbying is a thing. That's not relegated to one political stance or another. There are records and we can see the millions of dollars that are poured into our congressmen's pockets. I was just curious if average citizens could do something like that to benefit the people.

http://www.ips-dc.org/turbotax-lobbying-make-filing-taxes-difficult/

Turbotaxs parent company, Intuit, spent $13 million lobbying congress from 2011 to 2015 in an effort to oppose automatic tax filing. Of course, Turbotax is not alone. With them is H&R Block, another company Ive used in the past. They spent over $7 million in just the past five years. And thats just lobbying, not including campaign contributions.

That seems doable... after a quick google it appears Kickstarter raised over $500 million last year. GoFundMe has apparently raised billions.
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Mario_VS_DK posted...

wah_wah_wah posted...

MannerSaurus posted...

Adam Ruins Everything is consistently wrong, uses weasel wording, omits information specifically to fit an agenda of his, and goes for shock value over actual facts. Viewing some of his own sources even quickly reveals that.

Lemme guess, conservative?

Literally all political parties do that.

I'm still betting conservative.

The problem with that is they'll just match whatever the public can afford to donate. Can't say I haven't thought of it, though.

Otherwise we're just sending unethical politicians more money, which could help them in reelections.

I donate semi-regularly to Justice Democrats, as they're a populist party that has a lot of popularity.

wah_wah_wah posted...

MannerSaurus posted...

Adam Ruins Everything is consistently wrong, uses weasel wording, omits information specifically to fit an agenda of his, and goes for shock value over actual facts. Viewing some of his own sources even quickly reveals that.

Lemme guess, conservative?

It really is just a bad idea though. Adam ruins everything doesn't realize politicians won't stand up against the people that put them in power. The politicians that make millions off lobbying aren't going to mention any anti lobbyist policies.

To beat them we can't give them an inch.

Yellow posted...

wah_wah_wah posted...

MannerSaurus posted...

Adam Ruins Everything is consistently wrong, uses weasel wording, omits information specifically to fit an agenda of his, and goes for shock value over actual facts. Viewing some of his own sources even quickly reveals that.

Lemme guess, conservative?

It really is just a bad idea though. Adam ruins everything doesn't realize politicians won't stand up against the people that put them in power. The politicians that make millions off lobbying aren't going to mention any anti lobbyist policies.

To beat them we can't give them an inch.

I'm not even sure that was the proposed solution by Adam Ruins Everything. In the clip I watched, there was no proposed solution. Only explaining that the reason tax filing remains backwards is because of this lobbying.

Hm, I didn't watch it. I just assumed that's where TC got it from.

No yeah sorry. As far as I'm aware he hasn't proposed anything like this. It was just a crazy thing that went through my head when he mentioned the lobbying.
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