Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Please Wait In The Lobby...



The US Constitution is extremely clear in stating that the elected representatives in America are employed by the people and for the people.  In fact, the salaries and benefits that Congress-members and the President receive are drawn directly from the taxes paid by the citizens of these United States.  To me this equates to the plain and simple fact that, once elected, these persons work for US; We The People.  Every choice and decision they make is to be made with the best interests of the constituents, first and foremost. However this is not the case at all.

    Influence peddling in the various representative offices all across the country has become big business.  OpenSecrets.Org shows that lobbyists spent over $3Billion each year in 2009, 2010 and 2011 to further the agendas of their clients, just in Washington DC.  This of course doesn't include PAC and SuperPAC contributions to campaigns, which would push this number to over $5Billion per year for the last 3 years. With a population over about 312Million in the United States, this averages out to about $150.00 per constituent.  Personally I know that I haven't donated that much money to any candidates, but how does that number look when compared to the number of congressmen serving? $1MILLION each is the average expense per congressperson for lobbyists to operate in Washington DC...WOW!


Total Lobbying Spending
1998$1,442,160,755$1.44 Billion
1999$1,441,147,787$1.44 Billion
2000$1,564,715,252$1.56 Billion
2001$1,646,924,358$1.65 Billion
2002$1,824,390,362$1.82 Billion
2003$2,044,890,243$2.04 Billion
2004$2,176,533,331$2.18 Billion
2005$2,423,887,260$2.42 Billion
2006$2,616,182,201$2.62 Billion
2007$2,854,755,140$2.85 Billion
2008$3,301,694,868$3.30 Billion
2009$3,495,423,969$3.50 Billion
2010$3,511,452,232$3.51 Billion
2011$3,303,887,675$3.30 Billion


    However, suggested grievance number three is about what is called the "Revolving Door", or how former elected representatives and staffers move between private and public employment.  This is really where the crux of the corruption issue in our government lies.  The influence of these corporate dollars coupled with personal expertise in the halls of Congress has become a quagmire that is as complicated as it is wrong.

In researching the various aspects of revolving door influence peddling in DC, I ran across an incredible amount of information regarding who is involved and how they make things happen for private, often corporate interests.  Below is a graph that shows just a few of the aforementioned revolvers and which large corporate interests they represent.  Some of the data maybe outdated, but is relevant to the topic.



    It is clear that the representative government as described in the US Constitution is not what we have now.  It has morphed into some plethora of corruption. We The People are paying for this to be done to us and now is the time to redress this issue with OUR government. If our government was truly representative of We The People, the graph below shows in comparison how the US Congress would really look.
Sources...
http//www.opensecrets.org
http://www.good.is
http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/government/national/revolving.html
http://www.wikipedia.com
http://governmentspro.blogspot.com/
http://politics.usnews.com/congress
http://www.the99declaration.org/eliminate_private_benefits_to_public_servances
http://dirtyenergymoney.org/view.php?type=congress