I love how carefully the article steps around the central issue of who was doing the bribing. In context it seems likely it was Ticketmaster lobbyists, but the article would have you presume the tickets materialized from the ether and landed gently on a series of legislator desks.
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2024
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Does "accepting" a gift/ticket mean they used that ticket? What if someone accepted a ticket, put it on the form as a gift, but didn't use it? Or are they one and the same.
Prove that it wasn’t used.
They should never have been accepted in the first place.
I mean, yeah that's what I'm saying. Do they check to see if they were used? verything is electronic. There are no paper tickmaster tickets.
What’s your point?
Prove the tickets weren’t used. Prove that there is no corruption.
Once you receive those tickets, or whatever the bribe is, it’s a hook. Any amount of “yeah but” here only allows more corruption.
I'm asking if they check to see if the tickets were used. I don't know why that's difficult for you to understand.
ticketmaster can check.
But oversight committees or whatever? Good luck with that.
It’s almost impossible to verify those tickets weren’t used. Even if they can demonstrate they were someplace else the entire night- those tickets could have been given to friends or family. Or scalped, or any other sort of thing.
Even if they didn’t use them, they’re still a hook because of how it appears. Once somebody receives free stuff, in what is obviously a quid pro quo, any moral integrity is lost.
How is that so difficult for you to understand?
If they used in anyway then the bribe was successful. If they only accepted it as a "whatever thanks", filed it in the books, and then never used it then they were not successful bribed.
That's my point of view on it. Obviously flat out not accepting it would be key though.
I'm not well versed in the area of accepting bribes. But Im willing to learn first-hand. Wink wink
Your point of view is quite wrong.
“Oh you remember those tickets we gave you? That you accepted? If you don’t do XYZ, we’re going to leak that unreceived gifts. And it’s going to look bad because, well you did.”
That’s why they’re called hooks. They start small and inconsequential. Maybe not even wrong. But they get worse over time and you’re stuck.
That’s how corruption works.
The tickets were all listed on the forms they use to report gifts. There's no leaking the gifts like you're imagining.
That's all explained in the article.
Just because they appear on a form doesn’t mean that the public knows about.
A lot of graft gets covered up in bullshit that way.
The forms are literally for informing the public about gifts received.
I now know you haven't even read the article, so talking to you about this is meaningless since all you seem to want to be is right. I was asking a serious question about the process, not looking to argue about whatever it is youre looking to argue about. Thanks for wasting my time.
Enjoy the rest of your day.
Nice edit after the fact.
You're obviously emotional about this, and I could care less, I'm just asking about the process.
Chill out homie.
Considering how much the tickets cost the few times I was interested in seeing something live, $30,000 worth of tickets isn’t that many tickets. This feels like manufactured outrage to me.
The article goes into that, if you'd bothered to read it.
A freebie worth $590 is well below the $5,500 maximum campaign donation from an individual or business. But gifts like tickets can make a much greater impact, said Daniel Schnur, a government ethics expert and former chair of the Fair Political Practices Commission.
“If I send money to a legislator’s campaign account, I get a thank you note. If I attend a reception, I get a handshake. If I take them out to lunch or dinner, I get a conversation,” Schnur said. “But if I get them tickets for a concert or a basketball game, I now have a friend who takes my phone calls.”