By the way, as an aside, the final chapter here is that Protect our Future PAC went negative in May—perhaps a direct counter to BoldPAC’s spending. (Are folks here proud of that? Is misleading negative campaigning compatible with EA values?)
I wanted to see exactly how misleading these were. I found this example of an attack ad, which (after some searching) I think cites this, this, this, and this. As far as I can tell:
The first source says that Salinas “worked for the chemical manufacturers’ trade association for a year”, in the 90s.
The second source says that she was a “lobbyist for powerful public employee unions SEIU Local 503 and AFSCME Council 75 and other left-leaning groups” around 2013-2014. The video uses this as a citation for the slide “Andrea Salinas — Drug Company Lobbyist”.
The third source says that insurers’ drug costs rose by 23% between 2013-2014. (Doesn’t mention Salinas.)
The fourth source is just the total list of contributors to Salina’s campaigns, and the video doesn’t say what company she supposedly lobbied for that gave her money. The best I can find is that this page says she lobbied for Express Scripts in 2014, who is listed as giving her $250.
So my impression is that the situation boils down to: Salinas worked for a year for the chemical manufacturers’ trade association in the 90s, had Express Scripts as 1 out of 11 clients in 2014 (although the video doesn’t say they mean Express Scripts, or provide any citation for the claim that Salinas was a drug lobbyist in 2013/2014), and Express Scripts gave her $250 in 2018. (And presumably enough other donors can be categorised as pharmaceutical to add up to $18k.)
So yeah, very misleading.
(Also, what’s up with companies giving and campaigns accepting such tiny amounts as $250? Surely that’s net-negative for campaigns by enabling accusations like this.)
Thanks for checking. I initially thought _pk’s claims were overblown, so it was helpful to get a sanity check. I now agree that the claims were quite misleading.
I at least do not want to be associated with claims at this level of misleadingness. I guess it’s possible that this is just “American politics as usual” (I’m pretty unfamiliar with this space). To the extent that this is normal/default politics, then I guess we have to reluctantly accede to the usual norms. But this appears regrettable, and to the extent it’s abnormal, my own opinion is that we should have a pretty high bar before endorsing such actions.
I don’t think we have to accede to that at all—it’s not like it’s useful for our goals anyway. What probably happened is sbf’s money hired consultants, and they just did their job without supervision on trying to push better epistemics. A reputation for not going negative in a misleading way ever might be a political advantage, if you can make it credible.
I wanted to see exactly how misleading these were. I found this example of an attack ad, which (after some searching) I think cites this, this, this, and this. As far as I can tell:
The first source says that Salinas “worked for the chemical manufacturers’ trade association for a year”, in the 90s.
The second source says that she was a “lobbyist for powerful public employee unions SEIU Local 503 and AFSCME Council 75 and other left-leaning groups” around 2013-2014. The video uses this as a citation for the slide “Andrea Salinas — Drug Company Lobbyist”.
The third source says that insurers’ drug costs rose by 23% between 2013-2014. (Doesn’t mention Salinas.)
The fourth source is just the total list of contributors to Salina’s campaigns, and the video doesn’t say what company she supposedly lobbied for that gave her money. The best I can find is that this page says she lobbied for Express Scripts in 2014, who is listed as giving her $250.
So my impression is that the situation boils down to: Salinas worked for a year for the chemical manufacturers’ trade association in the 90s, had Express Scripts as 1 out of 11 clients in 2014 (although the video doesn’t say they mean Express Scripts, or provide any citation for the claim that Salinas was a drug lobbyist in 2013/2014), and Express Scripts gave her $250 in 2018. (And presumably enough other donors can be categorised as pharmaceutical to add up to $18k.)
So yeah, very misleading.
(Also, what’s up with companies giving and campaigns accepting such tiny amounts as $250? Surely that’s net-negative for campaigns by enabling accusations like this.)
Yeah, bummer, not happy about this.
Thanks for checking. I initially thought _pk’s claims were overblown, so it was helpful to get a sanity check. I now agree that the claims were quite misleading.
I at least do not want to be associated with claims at this level of misleadingness. I guess it’s possible that this is just “American politics as usual” (I’m pretty unfamiliar with this space). To the extent that this is normal/default politics, then I guess we have to reluctantly accede to the usual norms. But this appears regrettable, and to the extent it’s abnormal, my own opinion is that we should have a pretty high bar before endorsing such actions.
I don’t think we have to accede to that at all—it’s not like it’s useful for our goals anyway. What probably happened is sbf’s money hired consultants, and they just did their job without supervision on trying to push better epistemics. A reputation for not going negative in a misleading way ever might be a political advantage, if you can make it credible.