Occupy Wall Street Hits K Street

[xchrom]

http://www.thenation.com/blog/164081/occupy-wall-street-hits-k-street

If you want to understand how the top 1 percent have accumulated such power in American politics, look no further than Washington’s K Street lobbying corridor. Wall Street has long been the dominant player in the capital. “The banks,” Senator Dick Durbin said in 2009, “are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.”

The financial sector has spent more money on campaign contributions and lobbying than any other sector of the economy—$4.6 billion on lobbying since 1998, according to Open Secrets. This year, commercial banks and securities and investment firms have spent over $82 million on lobbying, employing over 1,000 lobbyists.

Given these facts, it makes sense that the Occupy Wall Street movement has spread to K Street. Since October 1, demonstrators have gathered in MacPherson Square, their numbers and visibility growing in recent days. Yesterday Harvard professor Larry Lessig, one of the pre-eminent advocates of true campaign finance reform, spoke to Occupy K Street. Nation intern Cal Colgan attended the talk and passed on some notes.

“Forget the 99 percent,” Lessig said yesterday. “We are the 99.95 percent of people who have never maxed out in a Congressional election campaign by giving the maximum amount. It is .05 percent of America who have given $2500 in the last election to a Congressional candidate, .05 percent, and Congress listens to them.” These are the same people who pay lobbyists to convince lawmakers to gut crucial regulations and oppose new ones.

[marmar]

1. Essential, since K Street enables Wall Street's destructiveness.

nt

[KoKo]

2. K&R

[Paka]

3. K&R. n/t

[meow2u3]

4. Banksters use organized crime tactics to control the government

Banksters use the exact same means to corrupt the government and control polticians as the mob uses to hold unions and small businesses captive to their will. The only difference between the banks and the mob is that the former is legalized corruption.

Billionaire banksters use millionaire professional lobbyists as "bag men" to make politicians offers they can't refuse. Either they take campaign contributions from industry or suffer a political death. To put it bluntly, the banksters are running a multibillion-dollar protection racket employing lobbyists to do their bidding. They use the same extortion and bribery tactics on government officials as organized crime syndicated do to force compliance from small business owners and neighbors. They exert undue pressure on enough elected officials to install industry insiders with massive conflicts of interest as heads of sensitive regulatory agencies. The agency chiefs invariably turn their heads the other way while the banksters plunder and loot the treasury.

The protection racket goes further; polticians are pressured into taking loyalty oaths to the industries who pay the lobbyists, who in turn bankroll their campaign coffers, silencing the will of the people who voted them into office. Any elected official with the courage to speak out against the power elite risks certain death, be it of their career or literally. There have been a number of brave elected officials who've tried to bring the PTB to their knees only to have been blackmailed by being outed for petty, personally embarrassing offenses, with the sole purpose of getting them out of the way. Elliot Spitzer was punished for prosecuting Wall Street by being outed as patronizing a hooker; Anthony Weiner spoke out against the banks and was outed in a sexting scandal. Paul Wellstone was actually whacked for speaking out against corporate corruption. No wonder no one has the guts to take on Big Crime on Wall Street.

[Laelth]

5. +1 n/t

-Laelth

[lucca18]

6. Exactly!

I want the "legalized" bribery by the lobbyist to stop, and I want campaign finance reform.
Will that day ever come?
I have hope. People are waking up.