https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/05/att-paid-bribes-to-get-two-major-pieces-of-legislation-passed-us-govt-says/
Payments helped AT&T obtain key legislative wins in Illinois, prosecutors say.
Did no one read the article?
This was actual legally defined bribery of a state lawmaker and the accused executive is going on trial.
What the article doesn't address is whether the legislation this bribe was paid for, will be repealed or impacted.
FYI it was a bill to remove AT&T's obligations as a Carrier of Last Resort in Illinois.
And remove any government contracts. Exclude them from.any future government bids for 10 years.
Revoke their corporate license. Death of corporations and criminals charges for those in charge should be on the table.
That's another thing. Should telecom really not be a utility in this day and age? But we let Nestle sell us water so that is never gonna happen.
Would that not be cruel and unusual punishment? Since we're considering them individuals via citizens united, a death penalty for bribery is extreme.
Criminal charges for those in charge and those who actually did the bribery, totally tho.
Yeah ... good luck with that considering how entrenched AT&T is is.
For example after 9/11 it was decided the country needed an interoperable public safety broadband network: The First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet).
I'll give you one guess as to which carrier got the contract to build and operate it.
It's very frustrating. Here in Ohio, there was a maybe bribery scandal on a bailout for two energy companies. The former house speaker and one or two other legislators got prison sentences.
The bailout stayed in place, however, and all Ohioans are stuck paying an extra $50 a month, just for having a fossil gas line active. If you have a gas stove, water heater, or furnace, it's fifty bucks a month just to be able to use them, plus whatever you actually use on top of that.
Read the article please.
23 million in 2022, but the former president of AT&T was personally indicted on Friday.
It was just the president for AT&T Illinois. The actual high muckety mucks won't get in any trouble.
Ok so what is 23mil to AT&T? Jack shit. It’s the cost of doing business, there will be no serious repercussions.
I agree, which is why it's WORSE that they were charged 23 million and still consider it the cost of doing business.
It's also like .. line 3. Literally asking for the smallest amount of effort here.
It's not like anybody in the government would actually consider a proper penalty. They need to stop having flat rates or stupidly linear fine scales with a cap. They need to make it an exponential scale with no cap, based on the net worth of the corporation. Same with the tax rate for rich people. But neither of those will ever happen because the companies and rich people write all the laws and then their puppets just sign off on them.
Why would they get fined for doing something that is perfectly legal and that every other company does daily?
22 grand... Are you fucking kidding me? That's all it takes? They should put att out of business for shit like this. Not a slap on the wrist here. How much did they make from bills passed due to this scheme?
I love how many of my fellow Americans crow about how we're so much better than the "corrupt" nations of the world.
Our bribe culture is merely more expensive. It isn't done at the peasant level as much solely because our owner class has cornered and legalized the bribe your own regulators market and made it too cost prohibitive for the peasants.
And when Americans "protest" by permit in designated protest zones, at designated protest times, deliberately out of the eyeline of those they're protesting and allocated/placed so as not to disrupt, we might as well masturbate at home. Protest means disruption, and if Americans actually protested in a potentially effective way that disrupted traffic and commerce as it should, our militarized police would go China/Russia/etc on our ass to protect capital gains over human life.
Our answer to corruption isn't to just turn a blind eye, it's to legalize it for the owner class and make it their exclusive domain.
Honestly, this country had more humanity when the mafia ran it than today's Wall Street reptiles. And that's no endorsement of the Mafia of old, just further condemnation of the owner class that would bathe your children in lead saturated water if it made them an extra nickel that quarter. At least the mafia occasionally took care of the mother/child of the people they killed, and wouldn't shut down their community's parks and sabotage their community's schools for a slightly larger take that quarter.
Honestly, this country had more humanity when the mafia ran it than today’s Wall Street reptiles.
Monsanto execs have a higher body count than many war criminals who set out to commit genocide, for example.
I forget which case it was but politicians were accepting 10k amounts for votes. A quick whip round could get that money.
I can only assume you're not referencing this article in your rant, because the guy responsible for this one is under criminal indictment for it
The $22,500 was paid in nine monthly installments of $2,500 in 2017, the filing said.
I hope they get slapped with structuring charges too.
Hm, no mention of the “then-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan” facing any charges for accepting the bribe.
I think the correct headline should be "AT&T got outed on paying bribes to get two major pieces of legislation passed". You can bet they did not only spend bribes on just two pieces of legislation.
Well I mean, yeah. Nobody is surprised by this. Except that the government is actually maybe possibly thinking of considering hypothetically doing something about it.