Quid Pro Quo

It's a quid pro quo.  Only the most gullible rube ready to buy swampland in Florida could think otherwise.  The citizen's watchdog MAPlight.org found that congressmen who voted for TARP, the "Troubled Assets Relief Program," received nearly 50 percent more in campaign contributions from the financial services industry (an average of about $149,000) than congressmen who voted no. 

And House Energy and Commerce Committee members who voted yes on an amendment in 2009 favored by the forest products industry, to allow heavier cutting of trees, received an average of $25,745 from the forestry and paper products industry. This was ten times more than each member voting no. The pattern repeats itself over and over, ditto for why wars go on when polls show most of the population is against them.

Read the rest at War Is A Crime

Occupy Wall Street Descends on Congress, Says: Money Out of Politics!

By Ralph Lopez 

A choice piece:

A rather remarkable OpenSecrets.org report on Occupy DC covers an earlier speech by Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig:

Lessig emphasized corruption in our current government -- not of the bribery variety a la Rod Blagojevich, but rather in Congress' dependence on money, money that is mostly from corporations and a tiny proportion of the population.

"Forget 99 percent, we are the 99.5 percent," Lessig told the audience "Only .05 percent of America gave the max contribution of $2,500 to candidates last election."

Lessig's statistics are correct, according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics. Only .05 percent of the U.S. population gave the legal maximum to at least one candidate, which was $2,400 per election during the 2010 cycle.

In fact, only 0.26 percent of the U.S. population gave more than $200, the level at which public disclosure of contribution records is mandated by the Federal Elections Commission.

Yet these 818,700 or so donors accounted for 67.7 percent of the total contributions to federal candidates that election cycle.

Closes strong: "They only call it class war when we fight back."

Well written and well documented with numbers.