When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
P. J. O’Rourke
Buying and Selling
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They also go cheap.
Going by the brown bag cases that make it court, a congressional representative can be had for as little as $30,000.
Senators a bit more.
Presidents and VPs got for a few million.
The Ukrainians and Chinese probably have an updated price list.
Reminds me of one of my favorite lines from Leverage:
“You know the great thing about Congressmen? Fifty, a hundred grand well spent will get one elected. But then, once they’re in, the incumbency rate is over 95%! So you can get on an average 18, 20 years use out of one of them. In these uncertain times, buying a United States Congressman is one of the best investments a corporation can make!”
Inflation is a bummer, though.
Problem is, you need to buy those in bulk.
Their usable life is shorter but Presidents are more useful in the age of rule-by-decree to bypass congress. Better bang for the megabuck.
Naaah, you only need one; it’s all logrolling after that.
Once the MPAA “bought” Howard Berman, copyright was only safe for corporate transferees. Berman was the actual force behind the “Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998,” and was personally responsible for making it almost impossible in practice for individual authors — as opposed to publishers and other transferees — to have a takedown notice respected by ISPs.
The less said about why the two House main advocates of the legislation that made the USPS uncompetitive by forcing it to fund in the present all of its potential pension and healthcare obligations for 75 years in the future were the Members from the northwestern side of Atlanta and from Memphis, the better.
Legislators seldom wait for control of the entire market before placing themselves on the market. Tulip bulb for lunch, anyone?