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Let's talk about rigging: here's an amazing new study that traces how corporations convert charitable donations into political influence washingtonpost.com/business/2019/…
A team of researchers headed by Marianne Bertrand at the University of Chicago compiled a dataset of A) every donation to a non-profit by a Fortune 500 company and B) every public comment on a regulation submitted to regulations.gov between 2003 and 2015
They made some surprising findings: First, when a firm donated to a non-profit, that non-profit became 2 to 4 times more likely to comment on a rule that the firm also commented on. Interesting! washingtonpost.com/business/2019/…
When these relationships surface, the non-profits involved say no, there's no WAY corporate donations influence our policy work at all. Inconceivable! However... washingtonpost.com/business/2019/… 
The second major finding: Non-profits who commented on a rule that a funder also commented on *were significantly more likely* to adopt the funder's viewpoint than they would have been otherwise. washingtonpost.com/business/2019/…
Last major finding: Because non-profits are viewed as independent entities, regulators take their comments seriously. So when a non-profit leaves a comment in line with a funder's viewpoint, the final regulatory discussion tends to more closely align with the firm's views as well
Net result: Charitable corporate donations "distort the outcome of the political process away from the public good and towards private interests," as the paper concludes. washingtonpost.com/business/2019/…
Cynics have long suspected that this is how Washington works. But this paper provides what is probably the most clear-cut, rigorous and quantitative data demonstrating that things work this way. washingtonpost.com/business/2019/…
tl;dr in visual form: washingtonpost.com/business/2019/…
