INTEREST GROUPS

What is an Interest Group? Interest groups are collections of people with shared attitudes who are to some extent conscious of their identity as a group and the attitudes they hold in common. With their shared attitude, these groups create a concrete organization to carry out their purposes.

“Interest groups promote their intents by attempting to influence government rather than by nominating candidates seeking responsibility for the management of government.” – V.O. Key Jr.

Who do Interest Groups represent? Interest groups include labor unions, religious groups, trade associations, farm associations, business firms, ethnic minorities, professional associations, cause or issue groups, hobby groups, foreign governments, city governments. They range in size, budget, means of conducting political activity, and amount of attention devoted to it. Groups vary in such characteristics as size, cohesion, clarity of goals, and status, which may be differently translated into political assets and combined in various ways.

Some Examples 1. AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) with 60 million members of people over the age of 55. 2. Common Cause organizes primarily to reduce the amount of money donated to politicians. 3. NRA- National Rifle Association has millions of members that pay dues to RESIST gun restrictions 4. AFL-CIO with nearly 14 million dues-paying members are part of this Labor Union. 5. Biscuit and Cracker Manufacturers Association which recently succeeded in ending an American tariff on imported fig paste, which was pushing up the price of fig bars and reduced sales.

HOW DO INTEREST GROUPS WORK? 1. Influence Public Opinion: Interest group activity ranges widely depending on the group’s resources, its goals, and the particular political context it must work within. Some activity is directed toward influencing public opinion: Use the examples below to assess HOW interest groups work and whether it is good or bad for government?

Billboard that can be read on the street.

Billboard that can be read on the street.

Message

__________________________ __________________________ __________________________ Good or Bad impact

__________________________ __________________________ __________________________

Message

__________________________ __________________________ __________________________ Good or Bad impact

__________________________ __________________________ __________________________

Message

__________________________ __________________________ __________________________ Good or Bad impact

__________________________ __________________________ __________________________

Message

__________________________ __________________________ __________________________ Good or Bad impact

__________________________ __________________________ __________________________

Political Action Committees (PAC) contribute MONEY to campaigns One of the key activities of interest groups is contributing support to favorable candidates in election campaigns. Since federal law does not permit interest groups to use their own funds for political contributions, PACs, or political action committees, developed as a unit within those organizations that could raise money and make contributions. PAC’s are the special campaign finance arm of the interest groups. They raise the money and decide the friends and enemies to target in the campaigns.

Explain how PAC’s work

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Good or bad impact?

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Lobbying is direct communication by an interest group representative with a government decision maker in the hope of influencing a decision. Others have defined it even more broadly as any form of communication made on another’s behalf and intended to influence a government decision. The term is usually applied to attempts to influence legislation: The definitions could also include communication with other government officials as well.

Total Lobbying Spending

1998 <> $1.44 Billion

2000 <> $1.56 Billion

2002 <> $1.82 Billion

2004 <> $2.18 Billion

2006 <> $2.62 Billion

2008 <> $3.30 Billion

Number of Lobbyists

1998 <> 10,662

2000 <> 12,703

2002 <> 12,325

2004 <> 13,364

2006 <> 14,660

2008 <> 14,800

CONGRESS

Explain how lobbying works

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Good or bad impact?

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Other Ways of Influencing the Government

Year

Interest Group Contribution to

Candidates

2006 $372.1

2004 $310.5

2002 $282.0

2000 $259.8

1998 $219.9

1996 $217.8

1994 $189.6

1992 $188.9

PAC Name Total Amount Dem Pct Repub Pct

National Assn of Realtors $4,020,900 58% 42%

Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers $3,344,650 98% 2%

AT&T Inc $3,108,200 47% 52%

American Bankers Assn $2,918,143 43% 57%

National Beer Wholesalers Assn $2,869,000 53% 47%

National Auto Dealers Assn $2,860,000 34% 66%

International Assn of Fire Fighters $2,734,900 77% 22%

Operating Engineers Union $2,704,067 87% 13%

American Assn for Justice $2,700,500 95% 4%

Laborers Union $2,555,350 92% 8%

Contributions of PAC’s to Federal Campaigns

Top 10 PAC Contributors to Candidates, 2007-2008

How do Interest Groups Influence the Government?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Good or bad impact?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Exit Slip#4:

Name Band 1. Create a Title:

2. How does this cartoon reflect the influence of interest groups in American Politics? Explain.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 3. In this cartoon, do interest groups have a positive or negative influence on government?

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Record Industry Sues College Students for Downloading Music

By Marc Fisher, Washington Post Staff Writer, Sunday, December 30, 2007 Despite more than 20,000 lawsuits filed against music fans in the years since they started finding free tunes online rather than buying CDs from record companies, the recording industry has utterly failed to halt the decline of the record album or the rise of digital music sharing.

Still, hardly a month goes by without a news release from the industry's lobby, the Recording Industry Association of America, proudly sending a new wave of letters to college students and others demanding a settlement payment and threatening a legal battle.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TASK: Imagine you like to download music and just read this article. Make your own poster for a DOWNHILL BATTLE, an interest group that supports downloading music. Express your NAME, GOAL, AND CONVINCING REASONS to raise awareness for your position.

Drinking Age

By National Youth Right Association

The United States has the highest and most rigorously enforced drinking age in the world. Communities nationwide have spent millions of dollars on police patrols, sophisticated driver's licenses and

propaganda campaigns to prevent people under 21 from drinking alcoholic beverages. Yet 51 percent of high school seniors and 26 percent of eighth-graders admitted drinking within the past 30 days in a 1996 government survey.

Much of the debate about the drinking age has centered around the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984, which forced states to raise their drinking age to 21. Government agencies and anti-youth organizations claim that law has saved thousands of lives, a "fact" usually repeated without question in the media. But independent researchers have regularly challenged that assertion after rigorously examining traffic fatality statistics.

The 21 Minimum Legal

Drinking Age saves lives.

It is interesting that so many people labor to discredit the 21 minimum drinking age law. The 21 minimum drinking age law has had the intended effect of saving lives on the road way. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates about 900 lives are saved by the law per year.

In 2003, the Centers for Disease Control looked at 49 peer-reviewed studies of the effects of changing the minimum drinking age law. Almost every study found that increasing the minimum drinking age to 21 saved lives (an average decrease in the number of highway accidents to 16 percent) and that lowering the minimum drinking age to 18 or 19 caused an average increase in crashes of eight to 10 percent.

Some bad news for high fructose corn syrup and its fans

When we last left our friends at the Corn Refiners Association, manufacturers of high fructose corn syrup, they were loudly

proclaiming the findings of an article in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition which determined that there was “no

scientific support for the hypothesis that high fructose corn syrup is causally linked to obesity in the United States . . . any

more or less than other caloric sweeteners” and “is in fact indistinguishable from sucrose in its metabolic effects.”

In other words, the effect of the high fructose stuff on the human body is essentially the same as that of simple granulated

white sugar. There are two points to be made here.

Top All-Time Donors 1989-2010 Summary

Rank Organization Total Dem

% Repub

% Tilt

1 AT&T Inc $43,505,105 44% 55%

2 American Fedn of State, County & Municipal Employees

$41,412,673 98% 1%

3 National Assn of Realtors $35,179,513 48% 51% 4 Goldman Sachs $31,200,662 64% 35%

5 American Assn for Justice $31,020,429 90% 9%

6 Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers $30,920,696 97% 2%

7 National Education Assn $29,960,425 92% 6%

8 Laborers Union $28,426,600 92% 7%

9 Service Employees International Union $27,650,957 95% 3%

10 Carpenters & Joiners Union $27,570,758 89% 10%

11 Teamsters Union $27,402,304 92% 6%

12 Communications Workers of America $26,748,746 99% 0%

13 Citigroup Inc $26,628,655 50% 49% 14 American Medical Assn $26,234,449 39% 60%

15 American Federation of Teachers $25,996,071 98% 0%

16 United Auto Workers $25,767,002 98% 0%

17 Machinists & Aerospace Workers Union $24,793,477 98% 0%

18 National Auto Dealers Assn $24,048,808 31% 68% 19 Altria Group $23,903,141 28% 71%

20 United Food & Commercial Workers Union $23,888,324 98% 1%

"By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of

interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community. ...The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society."

-James Madison, Federalist Papers

“Contrary to good morals. The lobby has reached such a position of power that it threatens government itself. Its size, its power, its capacity for evil, its greed, trickery, deception and fraud condemn it to the death it deserves.”

-Hugo Black, Supreme Court Justice “Interest group liberal solutions to the problem of power provide the system with stability by spreading a sense of representation at the expense of

genuine flexibility, at the expense of democratic forms, and ultimately at the expense of legitimacy.” - Theodore Lowi, political scientist AIM: Do interest groups have a positive or negative influence on American politics? Objectives: After this lesson, students will be able to:

Identify/Define: Interest Groups, Lobbyists, Political Action Groups (PACs).

Understand the nature of interest groups in the United States.

Discuss the goals of special interests groups (use specific examples).

Analyze the methods interest groups can use to influence public opinion.

Evaluate whether interest groups help or hurt American politics. Motivation: Music Downloading Controversy

1. How many of you download music? 2. How many of you download music illegally? 3. When there are so many legitimate places to buy music online now, why do you continue to get

songs/albums from filesharing sites? RIAA article

1. Describe the tactic the RIAA used to target college students who allegedly downloaded music. 2. Do you think that this was an appropriate way to punish students who illegally downloaded

music? Downhill Battle

1. How does Downhill Battle’s position differ from the RIAA? 2. What tactics does this group use to make their point? **What effect might these opposing groups have on this issue?**

Content: Background- Define interest group. What role do interest groups play in politics today? Why do you think that every issue has multiple interest groups?

What are the benefits of joining an interest group? Why do people criticize interest groups and the role they play in politics? Do interest groups help people express their opinions or do they only aim to convince people to see one side of an issue? Explain.

Activity: On the handout, there are examples of interest groups and the various practices they use to try to persuade public opinion. Each section includes space for the students to fill in information on the tactic and whether they believe that strategy/action will have a positive or negative impact on American politics. As a class, we will look at the section on public opinion, including information on Greenpeace, PETA and AARP. After we establish the model as a class, students will work in their groups on PACs, lobbyists, testifying and court cases. When the groups complete this work, they will decide whether they believe interest groups are a positive or negative force and they will create an interest group that either praises or criticizes interest groups. They will outline their position in preparation to prevent their platform in class the next day. Day 2 Motivation- Quotes from deToqueville and Key on outside interest groups in American government

1. What do deToqueville and Key say about the role of interest groups in American politics? 2. Do you think their opinions are still valid today? Why or why not?

Content: Continue group work from previous class. Groups will have a short time to rconvene and review and then they will present their work to the class. Students will meet with their partners for the pamphlet project. They will outline goals and roles for the pamphlet. Each group will be given a significantly abridged version of a healthcare bill that we will use for our class purposes (including this unit and our Congressional simulation). They will decide their position on the bill and what they want their interest group to represent. Distribute parties survey. If there is time, students will complete the survey in class and we will review their results. If not, they will complete it at home and we will review in class the next day. Summary: Answer AIM

RIAA Pre-Litigation Letters Sent to MIT: 23 Students Accused of Copyright Violations

May 8, 2007

Twenty-three MIT students have been sent pre-litigation settlement letters after allegedly illegally downloading copyrighted audio recordings, according to a press release from the Recording Industry Association of America.

According to a spokeswoman from the RIAA, the letters are part of a new anti-piracy initiative announced in February that offers students a chance to avoid a lawsuit by settling outside of court. The spokeswoman also said that the letters allow students to settle at a discounted rate compared to the damages sought in a civil suit.

The new initiative is a shift from the RIAA's previous strategy of filing "John Doe" lawsuits and subpoenas that order MIT to divulge the name of a student. Instead, the RIAA contacts schools directly with pre-litigation letters containing IP addresses — addresses used to uniquely define computers on the Internet — of allegedly infringing users and the dates of the offenses. The RIAA then requests that schools forward the letters on to users, according to an RIAA press release. The spokeswoman said that the majority of schools that received letters had forwarded them on to students.

According to a sample pre-litigation letter provided by the RIAA, the settlement process involves "lump sum" payment to record companies and deletion of all material infringing on copyright. The agreement also states that the party accused of copyright infringement agrees to not infringe on

"any other sound recording protected under federal or state law … whether now in existence or later created" or the agreement may become void.

Downhill Battle wages uphill fight vs. music industry

By Scott Kirsner | January 10, 2005

This month, Downhill Battle is sending a belated Christmas present to the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America, two Washington-based industry lobbying groups. The gift: stockings filled with coal.

Downhill Battle opposes the lawsuits that the two groups have filed against technologies like BitTorrent and Napster, as well as more than 7,000 individual users of file-sharing software. So in December, Downhill Battle decided to launch its own fund-raiser for three digital rights defense groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation: For every $100 donated to the groups, Downhill Battle would send one lump of coal each to the RIAA and the MPAA.

Last February, they organized an online protest called ''Grey Tuesday," in which more than 150 websites posted a copy of Danger Mouse's ''The Grey Album," which blended Jay-Z's ''The Black Album" and the Beatles' ''The White Album." This was after EMI, which controls the Beatles' catalog, had served Danger Mouse with a cease-and-desist order, demanding that he stop producing and distributing ''The Grey Album." The protest lasted 24 hours.

Downhill Battle's founders, Wilson and Nicholas Reville, don't view Internet file-sharing as a problem. They see it as the foundation for a new, legal music distribution system.

… ''What we'd like to see is a flat-fee licensing system," says Reville, one that would give listeners equal access to big name bands and

up-and-comers via file-sharing. A monthly fee of about $5 or $10, perhaps paid via a consumer's broadband provider, would buy a blanket license to download and use music; musicians and record labels would get paid from the licensing pool based on a song's popularity -- how frequently it is downloaded.

“In no country in the world has the principle of association been more successfully used or applied to a greater multitude of objects than in America."

–Alexis DeToqueville, 1835

“A prominent place must be given to the activities of private organizations if one is to understand the American

political system, for these associations constitute links of communication between the citizen and the government.” --V.O. Key, 1961

0

I-I