Zombie Lobbyists Occupy Washington (Beau Hodai | In These Times)

[struggle4progress]

... On September 23, 2010, the U.S. House GOP leadership stood proudly behind soon-to-be Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in the warehouse of Tart Lumber Company in Sterling, Va., and delivered a promissory letter to a lionized American electorate. The U.S. House of Representatives Republican Conference “Pledge to America” proclaimed:

Voices in and out of a government whisper that our standing as the world’s leader of democracy and economic growth is ending. The American people do not accept these counsels of timidity, failure and despair ... Legislators in Washington have imposed an agenda that doesn’t reflect the priorities of the people. What’s worse, the most important decisions are made behind closed doors, where a flurry of backroom deals has supplanted the will of the people. ...

According to reports on file with both the U.S. Senate Office of Public Records and the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, Brian Wild—the Pledge crafter who was also responsible for monitoring the concerns and ideas voiced in the GOP’s online forum “America Speaking Out”—was a registered lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce from 1999 to 2005. He also served simultaneously as executive director of the Chamber’s Office of Advocacy and Grassroots Programs.

Wild lobbied against bills to raise the federal minimum wage, against the Patient’s Bill of Rights Act and against environmental regulatory legislation. He also lobbied for tort reform bills aimed at asbestos-related claims and in favor of bills to make it more difficult for debt-saddled citizens to declare bankruptcy ...

http://inthesetimes.com/article/12084/zombie_lobbyists_occupy_washington/

[Bill USA]

1. Thanks for this GREAT post. This is why I like the name "Corporate Lobbyist" party for the GOP.

Everybody should read this and pass it along, via email, Facebook, Twitter!... as well as bring it up when commenting on M$M articles!

Recommended ... and bookmarked.

Here's a tip: if your bookmarks are getting long (as mine are) and you are finding it hard to go back and find that especially good post you bookmarked a few months ago ("what was that title?")... copy the link to the article in the post and paste it into a text file to be saved on your computer. Put headings in the text file such as, TAXES, Lobbyists, Jobs Growth etc. Then under each heading you paste in the urls of good articles with the titles of the article in front of each url. This is one way to keep a file of urls to informative articles you can reference when you want to shoot down some Conservative Bullshit - which we see every damn day. .... Just a thought (for those who want to fight disinformation with legitimate information.)