Sam Dastyari — one rotten apple or just the tip of the iceberg?
By: A.C. Flory
Tags: Politics, My Soap Box, Bribery, Microsoft, Corruption

I’ve been having a conversation over on The Passive Voice that has disturbed me greatly. Not because it was unpleasant or rude, but because it has made me feel terribly naive at the ripe old age of 65.

To backtrack a little, the conversation began as a discussion about Amazon. We’re all pretty much Indie writers on TPV so Amazon features rather often in our conversations. Anyway, these are the relevant bits of a recent conversation between myself and Felix J Torres:

FJT: ..They [Amazon] are definitely being demonized like Microsoft ca 1995.

Hopefully, unlike MS in those days, they have more than one part time lobbyist in DC and have a few bought and paid for politicians in their pocket. Me: ..So cynical! I most sincerely hope Bezos is smart enough not to have to do business like that. FJT: ..If he doesn’t Amazon will get the same treatment Microsoft got for not contributing enough corporate funds to the politicians…. All that is a matter of record. As is the fact that MS now has one of the larger contingents in DC and regularly provide PCs and free software to Congress people… Me: ..I’m not denying it happens under the label of ‘lobbying’, but Amazon succeeded despite not doing what all the other companies were doing. If Bezos caves to the soft-corruption game of ‘gifting’ politicians, the ones to suffer long term will be /us/.

Apologies but Amazon is the /only/ large company that I admire. [I am so cringing now] FJT: ..Well, of course consumers suffer.

The cost added by the politicians and bureaucrats gets added to the sale price…. Once one player alerts the politicians there is money to be had in a market they don’t back off. Rather they descend en masse… Bezos would have to be an idiot to hear all the baying dogs calling for a lynching of Amazon and do nothing despite of what happened to Microsoft. And he isn’t.

Amazon’s publicly reported lobbying has been growing steadily. Even faster than their online sales are growing… Me: ..So there is open corruption that everybody knows about and accepts as normal?

In certain much maligned countries that might be known as ‘baksheesh’. FJT: .. Oh, just because it’s common knowledge doesn’t mean it’s accepted. But every once in a while a congressman gets caught and arrested with a brown bag with $30K. (Seems to be the going rate in the House. Senators are a lot more expensive.) Most politicians aren’t that blatant and merely call it “serving their constituents”. And many wrap themselves in principle like “protecting competition” or “looking out for the little people”. Me: ..A member of the Labor party here in Australia — Sam Dastyari — was caught getting cosy with some Chinese business man, twice. He was finally kicked out but now I wonder whether he wasn’t just the tip of the iceberg, the one blatant idiot who got caught.

Could I get any more disillusioned?

I will never understand why so many Americans picked a certain person to be their ‘champion’ against the swamp, but I’m starting to understand why they need a champion in the first place.

I have only quoted what I thought were the relevant parts of the conversation, but if you’re interested, you can find the whole thing here:

Just scroll down a bit.

So, is this something everyone else already knew except me?

I would like to think that Australia is less caught up in this nudge-nudge-wink-wink epidemic of greed, but I’m not a complete fool. How many more Sam Dastyari’s are there amongst our politicians? Do they all take bribes of one sort or another? Is that why, once the politics dies down, nothing is ever done to change this bloody situation?

I’ve long thought the concept of lobbying was wrong: in a democracy, the only people influencing politicians should be the voters. And yes, I know lobbyists are voters too, as are CEO’s of huge corporations blah blah, but if this bribery is as rampant as it appears, then our democracy is just a great big off-colour joke. :(

Not happy Jan.

Meeks