I don’t usually pay much attention to CNN or CNN.com. Any accusations of news snobbery would be accurate. However, if I wouldn’t be able to use the articles as sources in an academic work, then I figure they’re not much use to me for edification anyway.
I recently changed some settings on my browser homepage and set it to Google personalized. So I get CNN headlines off to one side. I read them to see what passes for news in the US of A and then ignore them. But today one caught my eye and then I couldn’t let go of it, so I read it. Here was the headline: Dobbs: Middle class needs to fight back now
What? Someone else besides evangelicals talking about class warfare. Well, it was probably a Republican trying to drum up more fear. I’m tired of fear stalking our highways and byways. It’s become this administration’s (and Congress’) stock in trade. Everyone is making a buck on it. But that’s another post for another time. This article piqued my interest and I read it. You should read it too. It’s an editorial by Lou Dobbs and he is advocating that we all register as independents during this election cycle. It’s quite good. But these paragraphs really caught my eye:
Yet in my entire career, I’ve literally never heard anyone in Congress argue that lobbyists are bad for America. In 1968 there were only 63 lobbyists in Washington. Today, there are more than 34,000, and lobbyists now outnumber our elected representatives and their staffs by a 2-to-1 margin.
According to the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity, from 1998 through 2004, lobbyists spent nearly $12 billion to not only influence legislation, but in many cases to write the language of the laws and regulations.
Individual firms, corporations and national organizations spent a record $2.14 billion on lobbying members of Congress and 220 other federal agencies in 2004, according to PoliticalMoneyLine. That’s nearly $6 million a day spent to influence our leaders. We really do have the best government money can buy.
I haven’t checked out his numbers. I’m sure it would be easy to, but I’m lazy. Even if they’re only slightly wrong, they are shocking. They mean that the legislative branch of our government is not in our hands. This branch of the government is supposed to be representing us. The “We, the people …” remember …
Given those numbers, I’m not sure that Congress (Democrat or Republican) can legitimately claim to be representing anyone other than the lobbyists who are writing the legislation and spending the big money greasing the skids.
On the other hand, when I look at how bloated and out of control our whole government is, just how would we go about cleaning it up, redeeming it, and beginning again? Anyone have any good ideas out there?
