Quote:
Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna
Most of the K Street lobbyists are hired guns representing corporate interests with very narrow and often-changing agendas. They are well-paid and heavily-funded with plenty of money to make sure their ideas are both heard and acted upon. Yes, there are some that represent private citizens--AARP, the NRA, even the ACLU--but most of the lobbyists are writing legislation and paying off Congress people and Senators with gobs of campaign contributions to assure that their bills are passed.
I don't think that the lobbyists for the banks, investment banks and real estate companies that made $600,000 in campaign contributions to Ginny Brown-Waite last year did so because they represented any broad group of private citizens. Congresswoman Brown-Waite serves on Barney Frank's finance committee, which I suspect was a much larger reason that she got the contributions than her great job of representing the residents of Sumter County and The Villages in her relatively small Florida district.
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I'm no fan of K Street, and I have friends that work there. They are indeed "hired guns," but I'm more afraid that restrictions on any type of approach methodology to government officials will lead us toward party dictatorialsim. The fact that we can have "hired guns" keeps us free, and any type of "gun control" on private access to inform, influence and hold accountable our government can be politically deadly.
I'm not a supporter of Ms. Brown-Waite solely because she is a 3-term incumbent and I believe in voter-induced term limits. However, the moneys she has received in financial industry contributions is basically chicken-feed in comparison to what was received by Mr. Frank, Mr. Reid, Ms. Pelosi and others. If we want to condemn for receipt of certain campaign contributions, let's do it broad-brush and not be party-selective. It's either a political "sin" or it isn't, and party label doesn't make one holy and the other hell-bound.
The 2010 Congressional election will be interesting. I have no idea if Ms. Brown-Waite will be seeking re-election, but would presume she will. Her opponent(s) have not yet come forward, and who funds him/her/them will indeed be a consideration as to worthiness for receiving my vote. It won't be due to wearing any particular banner saying Republican, Democrat, Whig or anything else, mainly because the parties have all proven to be corrupted by the greed of their leaderships, and that greed has led to selling smoke.