Revealing data from from wired.com, -- further evidence that campaign contribution money talks:
Democrats who switched from opposing to supporting legal amnesty to telecoms that aided the government's warrantless wiretapping program received twice as much money, on average, from telcom political action groups than Democrats whose opposed the idea in March and again last Friday, according to an analysis of campaign donations by Maplight.org.Plaintiffs in 40 federal lawsuits had the telcoms on the ropes, for their spineless capitulation to the Bush Administration's illegal wiretaps -- and our asleep at the wheel federal legislature changed the law, and let these corporate criminals and tortfeasors completely off the hook.
220 Democratic members of the House voted against telecom amnesty in March, when the Democrats unexpectedly rejected a Bush-backed Senate spying bill. But, 94 of those switched their vote last Friday, supporting a bill ironed out by the House leadership that expands the government's ability to conduct blanket wiretaps inside American telecom facilities and freeing those companies from the 40 or so lawsuits pending in Federal court.
Maplight.org analyzed the contributions to both sets of the Democrats and found that those who switched their votes received, on average, 40 percent more money in campaign contributions over the last three years from Sprint, Verizon and AT&T's political action committees.
On average, those who changed their votes collected $8,359 dollars from those PACs from January 2005 through March 2008, while those who did not change their opposition collected $4,987.
Remember... it's the Democrats who are promising change in November... the same promise made in 2006, by the way.
So somebody's going to have to remind us again, because we've forgotten: What's the difference, exactly, between the spineless and self serving gaggle of Democrats who control the reins of Congress now, and the spineless pack of neoCON Republicans US voters fired in 2006?
We swear it's enough to cause us to grow politically cynical in our old age.
Maybe a few of our "yellow dog" Demo regulars can help us out with this.
Don't all speak up at once.
1 comment:
hmmm... So that's what prompted Obama to change his position on this issue. Not that it was the right thing to do but because it was the $mart thing to do.
Obama, who had said he would oppose any bill that would toss out lawsuits against the phone companies, now says he supports this new proposal.
So much for untouchable by special interests.
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