Surprise Surpise

True democracy is simply not possible when moneyed lobbyists call the shots.

From Banks with political ties got bailouts, study shows by Steve Eder:

U.S. banks that spent more money on lobbying were more likely to get government bailout money, according to a study released on Monday.

The system is broken.

The Bush Administration Still Exists

The Bush Administration is still capable of doing damage to the average citizen of the United States. They are still out there. They are still capable of influencing government policy. Many have simply morphed into lobbyists.

From Watchdog: Bush ex-officials used leverage in private sector by Greg Gordon:

All told, 17 of 24 former Bush Cabinet members have taken positions with at least 119 companies, including 65 firms that lobby the government and 40 that lobby the agencies they headed, a liberal-leaning watchdog group said in a report Monday.

Melanie Sloan, the executive director of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said that the group's six-month investigation "has shown that most of these former Bush administration officials have cannily leveraged their time spent in the public sector'' and "made a mint on the backs of American taxpayers."

"It may be legal, but it is certainly not honorable," she said.

This should be against the law. Lobbyists have destroyed democracy in the United States. Bribery has replaced democracy.

McCain - Part Of The Solution Or Part Of The Problem?

From McCain Attacks Wall Street Greed—While 83 Wall Street Lobbyists Work for His Campaign by David Corn, Jonathan Stein, and Nick Baumann:

McCain has been quick with fiery, populist-tinged speeches. But one thing has been missing: any acknowledgment that McCain's own campaign has been loaded with the type of people he's been denouncing. (The McCain campaign did not respond to a request for comment; we will update the post if they do.) As Mother Jones previously reported, former Senator Phil Gramm, McCain's onetime campaign chairman, used a backroom maneuver in late 2000 to slip into law a bill that kept credit default swaps unregulated. These financial instruments greased the way to the subprime meltdown that has led to today's economic crisis. Several of McCain's most senior campaign aides have lobbied for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And the Democratic National Committee, using publicly available records, has identified 177 lobbyists working for the McCain campaign as either aides, policy advisers, or fundraisers.

Of those 177 lobbyists, according to a Mother Jones review of Senate and House records, at least 83 have in recent years lobbied for the financial industry McCain now attacks. These are high-paid influence-peddlers who have been working the corridors of the nation's capital to win favors and special treatment for investment banks, securities firms, hedge funds, accounting outfits, and insurance companies.

Read more here.

Bribing Congress Should Be Against The Law

From K Street Remains an Easy Street in Hard Times by Shawn Zeller:

Some clients might shy away from the idea of paying people to advocate to a Democratic congressional majority that continues to fight the perception that it’s more hostile than the Republicans to business interests. The National Association of Home Builders announced in February, for example, that it was temporarily suspending donations from its political action committee since Congress was neglecting the issues it deemed most important. Still, plenty of others are holding fast, pointing to various successes for their pro-business agendas with the Democrats during the past 15 months.

Money Is The Root Of All That Is Screwing Most Of Us

Does anybody stand up for the little guy anymore? Labor unions used to. Not anymore. Newspapers used to. Not anymore. I don’t know if Congress ever has, but they certainly are not representing anyone but big monied lobbyists now.

I’m sick and tired of the notion that rich people deserve the money that they have. That the reason they deserve it is because they have more skill and work harder than the rest of us. This may be true of some of them. However, it seems to me that some of the richest of the rich are simply stealing from the rest of us.

You don’t believe me? Let’s look at some lists and facts.

Recently, Fortune magazine published it’s list of the top 500 companies in the United States measured by revenue. Here are the top six companies:

1. Wal-Mart Stores - revenues: 351,139.0, profits: 11,284.0
2. Exxon Mobil - revenues: 347,254.0, profits: 39,500.0
3. General Motors - revenues: 207,349.0, profits: -1,978.0
4. Chevron - revenues: 200,567.0, profits: 17,138.0
5. ConocoPhillips - 172,451.0, profits: 15,550.0
6. General Electric - 168,307.0, profits: 20,829.0

The source of all that money is us, you and me. Do you think they might be overcharging us a little bit? Those numbers, by the way, are in millions of dollars. So for Exxon Mobil that number is 39.5 billion dollars. Number one is good old Wal-Mart. This is the company that is unionized in Canada, but not in the United States. Who bargains for the workers of Wal-Mart? Why, Wal-Mart itself does, so they can pay as little as possible to their workers so they can be number one on the Fortune 500. The Walton family also places high on the Forbes billionaire list every year. Do they really need to have that much more money than the rest of us? Money that they get to keep because they underpay their workers, and don’t provide them with any benefits. If Hillary Clinton becomes President will she help the Wal-Mart worker? Since she once was on their board of directors, I’d say the chances are quite slim.

Notice also the presence of General Electric on the list. The parent company of NBC. I wonder if NBC is ever critical of General Electric. I wonder if NBC is ever critical of any of the lobbyists employed by General Electric. Disney is the parent company of ABC. Remember the recent presidential debate on ABC, that big farce with George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson? It was the product of corporate profit being more important than democracy.

Out of the top five on the list, three are oil companies! Exxon Mobil makes a profit of 39.5 billion dollars and yet it claims with a straight face that it is not guilty of price gouging! We are being robbed at the pump, and Congress does nothing but hold a few hearings for show. Why is this? Time to look at another list. In 2005, the top ten oil companies spent a whopping $33,173,092 lobbying Congress and the Bush administration:

1. ChevronTexaco $8,550,000
2. ExxonMobil $7,140,000
3. ConocoPhillips $5,098,084
4. Marathon $4,290,000
5. BP $2,880,000
6. Occidental $2,042,177
7. Shell $1,478,831
8. Ashland $904,000
9. Sunoco $540,000
10. Anadarko $250,000

Bribery, you say? Me too. Apparently it’s not, though.

From Do the Crime, Do No Time by Nicholas von Hoffman:

There is no bribery in the United States because bribery has been defined out of existence. Anywhere else in the world, providing public officials and government administrators with meals, lodging, transportation, vacations and literally hundreds of millions of dollars in money for political activities is considered bribery. And it is illegal, even in places like Egypt, Russia and China. That they don't enforce their bribery laws is different from America, where we get around that obstacle by not having any.

So when Congress holds hearings and “grills” all those oil company CEO’s, it’s all for show. Congress gives the message to the public that it is doing something, and the message to the oil company lobbyists that it’s going to cost them even more money to buy their favors. Nothing is going to come from it except higher oil and gasoline prices.

Wouldn’t the cost of gasoline come down considerably if the oil companies weren’t spending so much money on nonessentials. Things like their CEO, their lobbyists, and their bought and paid for politicians.

Will things change with a new president in the White House? Most likely not. From Putting a Check on Corporate Power by Charlie Cray:

…the ultimate enemy of democracy -- corporate power -- extends far beyond the two major parties and the three major branches of government. The permanent government inside the beltway -- the 30,000 lobbyists that work for corporations and the dozens of corporate legal foundations, public relations firms, think tanks, trade associations and front groups -- will doubtless continue pushing their agenda forward regardless of who sits in the White House.

If Congress wanted to do the right thing and had any guts, they would outright ban any and all forms of lobbying that involved money. And after that they would pass laws that made independent news media a reality.

Greed is killing democracy in the United States.

The First Thing We Do, Let's Kill All The Lobbyists