Reply #26: What do we ALLOW paid lobbyists for foreign governments, when the American people

[Peace Patriot]

cannot get a word in edgewise in our own capital, for all the foreign country and global corporate predator lobbyists purchasing our supposed representatives?

Official ambassadors, yes. That can't be avoided. But paid lobbyists of foreign governments--as if foreign governments were just another interest group within our democracy? Do they pay taxes? Do they vote? Are they--by any stretch of the imagination (as with corporate entities)--some component of our sovereignty as a people? No, they oppose our sovereignty (just as U.S.-based and all global corporations do). They seek to control our government, and to override our will, in their own financial and political interest.

Why do we allow this--let alone allow our citizens to be paid agents of a foreign government? That is very nearly the definition of treason, isn't it?

I thought we had seen it all, when Hillary Clinton had Mark Penn as her chief campaign adviser while he was also the paid agent of the Colombian government--a government with one of the worst human rights records on earth, and on whom the Bushwhacks had larded $6 BILLION in military aid to kill thousands of union leaders and other leftists, and to keep the cocaine flowing onto our streets no matter what. Ahem. Sorry, but that's how I see it. We are paying billions to the narco-fascists running Colombia in order to maintain a pro-U.S. fascist state in South America. And the guy who was being paid to tout this heinous government to Congress was also being paid to run Clinton's campaign.

Talk about conflict of interest! That was mindbogglingly bad judgment on Hillary's part, and, as soon as it was exposed, she back-benched Penn, although he apparently continued to advise the campaign. Why did she back-bench him? Because it was wrong--obviously wrong--and she knew it.

But she is not alone in this kind of conflict. It is endemic in Washington DC. It is perhaps most notable with regard to Israel (another country that has been roundly condemned for its human rights abuses). But neither Colombia or Israel is an isolated case. Our interests as a people are constantly being shoved aside by the interests and paid lobbyists of foreign governments, international corporate predators and war profiteers.

There is a long, long list of things that we must do, if we wish to restore democracy in the U.S. This is one of them. Foreign and corporate lobbyists need to be outlawed. And that includes American citizen lobbyists for foreign governments, and former U.S. military brass lobbying for the war profiteers.

Good God, our nation's capitol has become a putrid, stinking cauldron of filthy money changing hands against our interests as a people. I doubt that we can end it quickly or easily--and certainly not before we restore public control of our voting system--but it must be done, if we are ever to be a free people again. Our capitol should be where our public business is done, and where our public interests are served, and no other.