In an interesting departure from what we were taught in high school about America, government can be bought.
Corporations have an overriding voice when it comes to decision-making by government.
My letter to a congressman gets at best a form-letter reply. Corporations spend hundreds of millions on their issues totaling billions every year, not including campaign contributions .... and the reply they get is favorable legislation.
That's not news, of course. It's been going on for years, creeping up under the covers like a tick looking for blood.
I've not been able to find even one news report or academic article suggesting that corporate lobbying was largely good for the nation or the people. Not one. Disappointing.
Just because it's legal doesn't mean it isn't detrimental. The influence of the banking industry, for example. Their ensuing crash pushed millions around the world across the line to starvation.
In defense of the process, there is a need for knowledgeable discussion on the issues, but that necessary debate can be overwhelmed by paid talking heads. In the regulatory abandonment of banking constraints, congress was persuaded that not a single dollar could be lost in the derivatives exchange process .... it wasn't a single dollar, of course; it was trillions. We lost jobs and income, value in our homes, in our savings, and we went further into debt; the cost - around $104,000 for each US household. And we haven't yet recovered.
Greenspan, echoing the lobbyists before the crash, testified that there was no need for government oversight, because the derivatives market involved Wall Street “professionals” who could patrol themselves. That's what they told him, of course.
| Client | Amount Spent | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Finance, Insurance & Real Estate | $4,274,060,331 | 15% |
| 2 | Health | $4,222,427,808 | 15% |
| 3 | Misc Business | $4,149,842,571 | 14% |
| 4 | Communications/Electronics | $3,497,881,399 | 12% |
| 5 | Energy & Natural Resources | $3,104,104,518 | 11% |
| 6 | Transportation | $2,245,118,222 | 8% |
| 7 | Other | $2,207,772,363 | 7% |
| 8 | Ideological/Single-Issue | $1,477,294,241 | 5% |
| 9 | Agribusiness | $1,280,824,983 | 4% |
| 10 | Defense | $1,216,469,173 | 4% |
| 11 | Construction | $480,363,108 | 2% |
| 12 | Labor | $427,355,408 | 1% |
| 13 | Lawyers & Lobbyists themselves | $336,170,306 | 1% |
| Total | $28,919,684,431 | 99%[63] | |
| Note: Amounts do not include campaign contributions.[64][65] |