subject: How Obama Could Stop Corruption With ONE Simple Move [print this page] How Obama Could Stop Corruption With ONE Simple Move
First of all I have to say that the inspiration for this writing was Dan Carlin's Pod cast "Common Sense with Dan Carlin".
We have a huge problem with our government today and it's called corruption. We all know that lobbyists are out there paying our politicians to change their minds on the bills that they are voting for. Our current system of dealing with this is to make the amount of money that is paid out to our government by private companies publicly available. Just because they are not hiding it does not mean it's not corruption, if anything it makes it more offensive and in our faces.
If a Judge on the Grand Jury is being paid by company A and company A is on trial, legally he has to recuse himself. There is an obvious conflict of interest and an obvious bias, therefore it is illegal for them to judge this issue.
This is EXACTLY what needs to happen with our politicians. If politician A or his family is getting money from company B, then he can not vote on matters concerning this company or the industry that this company is involved in. Period. It really is that simple.
If Obama is the man that he claimed to be when he was running for office, then he would step up and put this law in place. Period. By not doing so he is joining in.
Granted this would cause mass chaos in our government, people would resign if they could no longer get rich by gaming the system. They are only where they are in our government because they were better at gaming it than the next guy. After this we would see a major change. New politicians would enter the arena who are concerned with the people and the country rather than their bank accounts.
Lobbyists are controlling the laws being written people. Lobbyists hired by big companies and OTHER COUNTRIES GOVERNMENTS! If they didn't make a difference in the ways that the politicians voted, then they wouldn't be worth their money. The entire industry would be an idea of the past if they didn't work. But they do, and they are here. They are affecting everything from sodas being offered in out elementary schools to how long our troops stay in foreign countries.
Total lobbying spending for 2010 was 1.78 BILLION DOLLARS! If you think that this amount of money changing hands isn't influencing the decisions that we see being made in the congress and the senate then your are blind my friend. And we haven't even touch on campaign contributions. Take a look that this webpage for a mind blowing look at the biggest spenders in campaign contributions http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?order=A . In 10 years AT&T has donated $45,299,254
Nearly equally divided between democrats and republicans. You tell me why that would make sense for them to do if their money wasn't working in their favor.
* In 2007, Pakistan had been getting criticism from the U.S. Congress and from the presidential candidates and in response has increased its lobbying and public relations activity in the U.S. The Hill reported:
Cassidy & Associates has inked a year-long $1.2 million contract with Pakistan's embassy in Washington, according to records filed with the Justice Department. Cassidy's work will involve an intense lobbying and public-relations campaign promoting Pakistan's status as an "important strategic partner of the U.S."
"We thought we had some challenging issues and we thought we should add another lobbying firm," said Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, first secretary of political affairs at Pakistan's Washington embassy.
If you didn't read between the lines that says, they are criticizing us, therefore we are going to pay them more money.
A Center for Public Integrity analysis of Senate lobbying disclosure forms shows that more than 1,750 companies and organizations hired about 4,525 lobbyists eight for each member of Congress to influence health reform bills in 2009.
Once again, we all know that this is happening, and it's so huge what can you do? Well, not much. But Obama could. He could, in one of his televised speeches, clearly indicate that he sees the open corruption and is going to stop it by simply making politicians follow the SAME RULES that a judge has to follow. Period.
