Following money in politics is important. Big Tech‘s political spending, in particular, is worth tracking because so many of these corporate titans get large government contracts and seek regulations that protect their business model.
So it’s great that the outlet Raw Story is looking at the donations to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee from Facebook’s PAC, lobbyists, and executives.
What’s odd is the accusation of hypocrisy. The headline reads: “Hypocrisy alert: Senators who scorched Mark Zuckerberg love Meta money.”
If Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) gets campaign contributions from Facebook’s parent company and its executives, and then he uses his position as a senator to attack Facebook, that’s not hypocrisy. If anything, that’s admirable — it shows that he doesn’t get bought off easily by his campaign donors.
Hypocrisy would be if Coons attacked other lawmakers for taking Facebook money while he himself took Facebook money. But we want our lawmakers to regulate companies based on the public good, not based on who funds them.
Nevertheless, this line of attack is common: Senator owns stock in company whose profits she wants to curb.
Hey, I don’t love lawmakers going after individual companies, but if you go after a company in which you’re invested, that shows that you’re willing to sacrifice your own wealth for your conception of the public good.
Liberals once accused Michele Bachmann of hypocrisy for wanting to trim federal spending on Medicaid while her husband accepted patients who paid with Medicaid.
I wrote at the time: “the Left uses this ‘conservative-benefits-from-government-program-she-opposes’ in so many instances that it needs to be addressed.”
“It’s ridiculous to say no one can criticize an unfair advantage he’s received. Are white males who have benefited from societal racism and sexism permanently barred from fighting for equality?”
About Warren Buffett’s low taxes paired with his advocacy of higher taxes, I once wrote, “Benefitting from something and advocating its abolition isn’t hypocrisy. It’s principle.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Implicit in the Raw Story piece on Facebook money is that politicians who disapprove of Facebook’s actions should donate to charity the money they received from Facebook sources. There’s a sense to this. There are some sources from which I would never accept money were I a politician, and which I would donate if I later learned I accepted that money.
But that’s a separate question that has nothing to do with hypocrisy.
