McCain: Lobbyists So Much More Trustworthy than the Masses
McCain also complained that the identities of people who contributed more than $200 million of Obama’s total take have not been reported, although that is allowable under federal law because the individual donations fall under the $200 reporting limit.“I’m saying it’s laying a predicate for the future that can be very dangerous,” McCain said. “History shows us where unlimited amounts of money are in political campaigns, it leads to scandal.”
Ultimately, the only problem with raising such big amounts is that the politician will be beholden to the donors and will feel it necessary to repay them with access and special favors. You know, the kind that McCain is embroiled in up to his neck and higher, as evidenced that his campaign is riddled with lobbyists, his campaign manager being a major lobbyist for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. McCain gets a great deal of support, monetary and otherwise, from these lobbyists and their big-player clients, and, totally by coincidence I am sure, his policies and Senate votes have fallen in line with these players’ interests. Being so close to the corruption, one can perhaps see why McCain is talking about the need for reform so much.
But what McCain is objecting to here is that Obama raised less than $200 apiece from more than a million average Americans; he calls this “dangerous.”
Um, Senator McCain? I think you need to go back and look up what the word “reform” means.
Sinclair’s Paradox: Follow the money.
Upton Sinclair said “it’s hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
The democratization of campaign finance could have huge implications. Just over the weekend, some Minnesota Republican spewed some McCarthyist stuff on cable T.V. Apparently her opponent raised hundreds of thousands of dollars over the weekend. Now that Minnesota Repubican (I can’t remember her name) is trying to do an about face. Ha ha!.
I wonder what happens to the K street project when the American people start to out bid the lobbyist. Untill now, a corporation could buy a politician fairly cheaply – only a few hundred thousand dollars could virtually get you legislation enacted in a non controversial area.
For Corporations paying executives millions of dollars that’s chump change. This signals and end to those salad days of payola. In the end, I think it will be good for lobbyist. They’ll have to tell their clients to ponny up orders of magnitude more amounts of money. Assuming they work on percentage, that means more money for them too, but perhaps less volume.