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0 pointsrsynnott2y ago0 comments

> organise a lobbying group greater than the NRA ($2.93M in 2022)

This is... a little misleading. They also have at least two PACs (here's the big one: https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs...)

Now, you could claim, though not particularly credibly, that money spent on PACs is not lobbying money.

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antupis2y ago

Still that is rather small like here Finland average organization uses 34 – 57 million euros to lobbying. source https://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/1...

pavlov2y ago

You’re misreading the study. It says they asked 115 people for a low and high range of organizational spend on lobbying, and the sum of the estimates was 34-57 million.

So divide 57 by 115, and you get about 0.5 million euros on average for the high estimate.

(Some of the respondents may work for the same organization which complicates calculating the average. Hence why they’re reporting the sums instead, I guess.)

jojobas2y ago

So, 10-30 million all up per election cycle, chump change for many venture investors for example.

>Now, you could claim, though not particularly credibly, that money spent on PACs is not lobbying money.

There are PACs and then there's AIPAC with a 70M/year budget.

eddtries2y ago

Fair enough, I googled and used the first reputable source I could find. But sure, including the two other PACs, this is still IMO small change. I thought we were talking hundreds of millions or even billions regarding the NRA.

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