We get the politicians that the corporations pay for

[n2doc]

Damian Carrington | Guardian (UK) | 12.15.2010
Thanks to MAPlight.org, we can today see who made the biggest campaign contributions over the last two years to the chairs of the powerful committees in the new US Congress.

What is really striking to me is how perfectly the area of responsibility of each committee matches the area of interest of the chair's biggest donors. You get what you pay for, it seems.

I'll start with the committees related to environment:

Committee: Energy and Commerce
Chair: Fred Upton, Michigan
Top donor, by interest group: Electric utilities ($177,100)

Committee: Natural Resources
Chair: Doc Hastings, Washington
Top donor: Oil & Gas ($75,921)

Committee: Agriculture
Chair: Frank Lucas, Oklahoma
Top donor: Crop Production & Basic Processing ($141,800)

Committee: Transportation Infrastructure
Chair: John L Mica, Florida
Top donor: Air Transport ($133,666)

See the pattern?

more
http://www.greenchange.org/article.php?id=6397

[Crazy Dave]

1. When we quit voting for whoever MSNBC says will win vs. who won't...

...then maybe the cycle will break. Corporations still can't vote for a candidate but they do a damn good job telling people who to vote or not vote for.

[Bandit]

2. Back in the beginning they had Bumbo

Bumbo was a concoction of mostly rum that politicians paid off voters with. Even George Washington gave out 160 gallons for slightly under 400 voters in his election..

"Bumbo was commonly used during election campaigns in colonial British America, to the extent that treating voters to gifts and other freebies during election campaigns was referred to as "swilling the planters with bumbo". George Washington was particularly noted for using this technique. His papers state that he used 160 gallons of rum to treat 391 voters to bumbo during campaigning for the Virginia House of Burgesses in July 1758.<2>"