Nine Reasons Lobbying is Destroying the United States

I didn’t know that business lobbying is as old as our Constitution and protected by the first Amendment

My view of lobbying: It’s five buzzards at a two buzzard meal.*

I’m in favor of the Constitution, but there’s something wrong when:

1. 25 firms have been documented to have extensively lobbied for subprime mortgages.

2. Many of these companies made campaign contributions to both Democrats and Republicans.

3. The financial services sector collectively donated more than $2.2 billion to political campaigns and spent $3.5 billion on lobbying politicians in Washington D.C. These two processes are linked.

4. These 25 firms issued approximately $1 trillion in subprime mortgages to over 5 million borrowers.

5. These subprime mortgages resulted in many billions of dollars in revenue for these 25 firms.

6. Many of these 25 firms have received considerable portions of the $700 billion in TARP money.

7. Many of these 25 firms are leading the charge to repossess homes. And lobbied actively against measures to save people’s homes!

8. The bipartisan nature of the lobbying and campaign contributions has resulted in a deregulatory consensus on capital hill that is not shared by academic and professional economists.

9. It’s triple dipping when your company makes money on the subprime mortgages, you get bailed out by the tax payers and then, you take peoples homes and salvage their value.

When the Constitution allows this process, we need to take a serious look not at our Constitution but at the ability of large corporations to subvert our constitution.

Lobbying and campaign contributions are shifting the balance of power in our country from the voters to the major corporations.

How many times must the American public be raped before they understand they're being raped? And are we going to let our children and grandchildren continue to be violated?

Calvin Coolidge has not been treated kindly by history but he said something we need to remember ——“Prosperity cannot be divorced from humanity.”

It is time to stop the abomination of lobbying and campaign contributions.



*My view of lobbying and campaign contributions:

Bribe: noun. Anything given or serving to persuade or induce. Verb. To influence or corrupt by a bribe.

Lobby: n. A group of persons who work to conduct a campaign to influence members of a legislative body. V. To solicit or try to influence members of a legislature.

Lobbyist: A person who tries to influence legislation on behalf of a special interest.

If money is given to a political candidate or an office-holding politician before, during or after being contacted by a lobbyist for that organization, then the candidate or elected official has been bribed for services rendered or some service implied to be rendered in the future.

If an individual or organization gives money to both political parties or candidates running for the same office then they are, by caveat, guilty of bribery.