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.

  • pl_woah@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    Writing to your representative is a form of lobbying

    An unsolicited expert opinion is lobbying

    What’s messed up is the amount of money to run and that citizens united made unlimited funds possible

    Congressmen always worried about the cash they’ll need to get elected

    If there were term limits we would have faceless corporate buyouts with little experience, vs someone running on name recognition

    Heck I want a campaign finance max limit.

    • CosmicTurtle@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Unfortunately, term limits can’t stop this.

      Campaign finance reform can. Anyone running for office has a cap on how much can be spent. Political organizations also have a cap and they have to disclose who their donors are.

      No more dark money.

      I’d say we should go so far as to move to sortition (randomly selected people serving a term in office) but I am pragmatic.

    • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      An unsolicited expert opinion is lobbying

      Right. Politicians know nothing about technology half the time, right?

      Who does know - it’s people in the technology field.

      They have to communicate somehow. Not saying it’s not broken today, and I think you could have a clever setup of advisors, but at the end of the day there will just have to be some kind of input by experts.

    • chitak166@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Let’s just skip all the bullshit and move straight to direct voting.

      It’s been proven that congress doesn’t follow the will of the people, anyways.