lobbying

The EFF is a successful lobbying organization, and would not have been nearly as successful if they didn't play this game.

I mean, I know lobbying costs money, but where can that much money possibly go?

There was no lobbying to do this, it was just the natural thing to do, in their eyes.

Just more outdated regulations put into place by an industry with significant lobbying budgets and political connections right?

They cited the aggregate lobbying of all the (gigantic) members of a trade coalition, and that statistic is misleading.

For instance, Boeing doubled their lobbying --- to lobby against the proposed elimination of the Export-Import Bank.

Of course it makes considerable sense for companies to hire retired government insiders to help them with strategy and/or lobbying.

Slight correction: lobbying spending numbers do not include donations to candidates or PACs.

There is a lot of politics and lobbying present, but there's also intertia.

There's an unbelievably vast propaganda and lobbying machine promoting the use of fossil fuels, even though - like smoking - they're killing our civilisation.

They're maybe more like guilds, but they also do a lot of lobbying on behalf of their profession, and provide group insurance and other services.

Once people realize that lobbying expenditures include salaries and media buys, it's not hard to see how the total gets into many millions of dollars.

"User testimonials" can't bear out anything; it's not data, especially from a company with such a massive lobbying and marketing operation.

Organizations can pay the expenses for a "captive" PAC (usually in the form of hosting it within their headquarters with all the costs that implies), but that spending is also excluded from reported lobbying numbers.

I doubt any major news source will try to write an exposé on Gates' funding of X lobbying organization or Y "grassroots" movement, because most journalists (and people) agree with Gates' goals.

At the point of billion dollar renewals the board decision becomes, "How can we best spend our marketing and lobbying dollars to gain an exemption to or remove this tax?" It also is very imbalanced.

Lobbying isn't a great thing, and it interacts very badly with PACs, but it certainly isn't millions of dollars in strippers.