wraggster
July 18th, 2013, 21:54
Here's a fun fact: The Entertainment Software Association spends more on federal lobbying than the National Rifle Association. According to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), the ESA reported $4.83 million in federal lobbying last year, compared to $2.98 million from the NRA. So why does legislation to keep violent games out of the wrong hands make it all the way to the Supreme Court while any effort to keep guns out of the wrong hands is a non-starter?
Part of the reason is those numbers tell only a fraction of the story. OnOpenSecrets.org (http://www.opensecrets.org/), the CRP tracks three big areas of political spending: lobbying, contributions, and outside spending. Contributions include money donated to candidates for office and political action committees, while outside spending is money spent on TV spots, mass mailings, robocalls, and other communications. It's in those two areas where the NRA far outstrips the ESA, with the gun lobby spending $1.52 million on contributions in the current election cycle compared to the ESA's $510,000. The difference in outside spending is considerably more dramatic, with the NRA's $19.77 million spent on communications infinitely outpacing the ESA, which hasn't reported a dime in outside spending in the past three election cycles.
But even these figures need to be taken with a grain of salt. GamesIndustry International spoke with Richard J. Feldman, former NRA political director and current president of the Independent Firearm Owners Association, to get some perspective on the subject.
"You can report everything you do as lobbying, but the requirement to do so is much more limited," Feldman explained. "If you send money or have a flier urging support of, say, Senate Bill 25, it's lobbying. If you send fliers talking about the issue but not the specific bill, it's not lobbying... So I might think I'm lobbying. You might think I'm lobbying. But I'm not required to report it unless I'm lobbying for specific legislation."
Organizations can also fudge the numbers on lobbying reporting. Feldman said some groups might consider the salaries of certain employees to be lobbying expenses, while others might not. Some organizations could reveal as much lobbying activity as possible "to puff themselves up," while others might prefer to be more selective in their reporting.
Robert Maguire, a researcher with the Center for Responsive Politics said limited transparency into the lobbying process not only caps the information the public receives, but also makes it difficult to say just how significant that information is.
"In a lot of cases, it depends," Maguire said. "It's always a hassle getting the relevant information to the public in a timely manner. And in this case, it's also a matter of trying to quantify the effect that a group had on a bill they were trying to influence, either at the state level or the federal level. It's hard to say. I'm inclined to say that's where the journalist comes in. You have to look at the data that's there, the issues they tried to influence in general. There are a lot of groups that spend a ton of money and appear to be tragically ineffective. There are others that spend a lot of money and seem to be very effective."
We looked at the political spending of a handful of well-known organizations and detailed them in the table below. The amount of influence a group is perceived to have in Washington, D.C. is not always proportionate to how much it reports spending, and these organizations' strategies on where to focus their resources differ greatly.
http://images.eurogamer.net/2013/articles/1/5/9/8/6/1/0/137391978711.png
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-07-15-games-vs-guns-how-the-esa-outspends-the-nra-on-lobbying
Part of the reason is those numbers tell only a fraction of the story. OnOpenSecrets.org (http://www.opensecrets.org/), the CRP tracks three big areas of political spending: lobbying, contributions, and outside spending. Contributions include money donated to candidates for office and political action committees, while outside spending is money spent on TV spots, mass mailings, robocalls, and other communications. It's in those two areas where the NRA far outstrips the ESA, with the gun lobby spending $1.52 million on contributions in the current election cycle compared to the ESA's $510,000. The difference in outside spending is considerably more dramatic, with the NRA's $19.77 million spent on communications infinitely outpacing the ESA, which hasn't reported a dime in outside spending in the past three election cycles.
But even these figures need to be taken with a grain of salt. GamesIndustry International spoke with Richard J. Feldman, former NRA political director and current president of the Independent Firearm Owners Association, to get some perspective on the subject.
"You can report everything you do as lobbying, but the requirement to do so is much more limited," Feldman explained. "If you send money or have a flier urging support of, say, Senate Bill 25, it's lobbying. If you send fliers talking about the issue but not the specific bill, it's not lobbying... So I might think I'm lobbying. You might think I'm lobbying. But I'm not required to report it unless I'm lobbying for specific legislation."
Organizations can also fudge the numbers on lobbying reporting. Feldman said some groups might consider the salaries of certain employees to be lobbying expenses, while others might not. Some organizations could reveal as much lobbying activity as possible "to puff themselves up," while others might prefer to be more selective in their reporting.
Robert Maguire, a researcher with the Center for Responsive Politics said limited transparency into the lobbying process not only caps the information the public receives, but also makes it difficult to say just how significant that information is.
"In a lot of cases, it depends," Maguire said. "It's always a hassle getting the relevant information to the public in a timely manner. And in this case, it's also a matter of trying to quantify the effect that a group had on a bill they were trying to influence, either at the state level or the federal level. It's hard to say. I'm inclined to say that's where the journalist comes in. You have to look at the data that's there, the issues they tried to influence in general. There are a lot of groups that spend a ton of money and appear to be tragically ineffective. There are others that spend a lot of money and seem to be very effective."
We looked at the political spending of a handful of well-known organizations and detailed them in the table below. The amount of influence a group is perceived to have in Washington, D.C. is not always proportionate to how much it reports spending, and these organizations' strategies on where to focus their resources differ greatly.
http://images.eurogamer.net/2013/articles/1/5/9/8/6/1/0/137391978711.png
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-07-15-games-vs-guns-how-the-esa-outspends-the-nra-on-lobbying