National Retail Federation says 2021 data was flawed and based on congressional testimony from president of an advocacy group
The powerful National Retail Federation (NRF) lobbying group has retracted a claim that “organized retail crime” accounted for “nearly half” of the shopping industry’s $94.5bn losses due to theft or “shrink” in 2021.
The industry group had said the impact of organized retail crime, which it previously claimed had increased by 26.5%, had become increasingly violent. Retail giants like Target, Walmart and Walgreens said it was threatening their businesses.
The NRF said the figure was based on a congressional testimony from Ben Dugan, the former president of an advocacy group, the Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail, and that an analyst from K2 Integrity, a risk consultancy that co-authored the report, inferred the “nearly half” claim.
Because at least in theory, lobbying is at the core of a functioning republic. If you and couple neighbors get together to try to convince your county aldermen to fix some potholes, that’s lobbying. Any time a person tries to influence their representative, it’s lobbying. It’s incredibly difficult to have actual codified laws that allow the things you want without also opening up tons of loopholes for corruption.
Why do you think it’s hard to separate the two? One involves receiving money or business perks and the other serves the community.
Because directly receiving money is already illegal. Anything currently legal is so because it’s protected by the same things protecting local organizations putting up flyers/billboards/radio ads/etc. Even stricter monetary limits don’t really work, as you end up catching things such national humane society ads, because if they contain any messaging regarding support for legislation/wanting new legislation it’s considered lobbying.
It’s really just an intro to the subject, but Knowing Better has a great video on it. Great leaping off point. The very short and very inadequate TL;DW is essentially that “get the money out of politics” doesn’t actually mean anything.
I don’t have time to watch the video but I will later. It’s never going to be possible to get the money out of politics 100%, but transparency and getting rid of super pacs would go a long way.
Oh there is absolutely more we could be doing, especially regarding tracking dark money spending. I was primarily pointing out that “we should just get rid of lobbying” is an almost entirely nonsensical statement.