More Washington Piggery - Lobbyists Are Feeding At The Trough Of The Stimulus Package

When we have a corrupt government beholden to monied interests, any attempt at stimulating the economy will surely end up serving those same monied interests instead of the sovereign. Our government is literally holding court. Just as similar pigs did in European colonial times. Bring your gifts to the table in return for political favoritism. This dynamic is seen in the continued foreclosures, defaults, bankruptcies and general rotting of Americans at record rates while the corporate profit bubble keeps on humming ... for now. It will collapse.

Our President has informed us that lobbyists won't play a role in fiscal stimulus. At least not within the executive branch. But the government in total seems unphased according to OMB Watch.

Many watchdog groups including the Sunlight Foundation are also reporting that government officials are failing to report contacts with lobbyists - witness the single lobbyist which has supposedly had contact with the Department of Defense. That's almost believable given the United States spends substantially more money on defense than the rest of the world combined and we have about 45,000 lobbyists in Washington.

Of course, we really know lobbyists have no impact on the decision making in Washington. How do we know this? Because the honorable Senator Grassley tells us it is so. I guess the reports of Wall Street lobbyists (lawyers) writing their own regulatory legislation aren't true. Or the fact that legislation not only deregulated financial markets but actually made it illegal to regulate certain financial derivatives and this was done to promote the economic well-being of the small business owner or entrepreneur and had nothing to do with Wall Street lobbyists. Or the fact that government destroyed countless banking regulations over the past thirty years wasn't done under the influence of lobbyists or huge sums of money or revolving doors from government to corporations and back. Or that legislation which paid companies to close factories and offshore them wasn't done under the influence of lobbyists. Or the health care lobbyists pumping millions of dollars a day are having no impact on how potential legislation is written. And I suppose the military-industrial complex lobbyists had nothing to do with pumping up our military budgets for profits at the expense of education, Social Security and other socially responsible programs. Or the bankster lobbyists had nothing to do with telling us Social Security should be privatized so we could hand our money over to the most corrupt institutions in our country's history.

I'm sure Senator Grassley is correct. He has participated in a Congress that has done all of these wonderful deeds and more because of their great altruism for the American people. His great compassion for the American people. Knowing deep in his heart these deeds were of great benefit to the community.

I guess I should humbly support all decision making by our government. A government that has served society so well in the last few decades. I know they will make the right decisions to get us out of this mess. A mess created by people working at McDonald's and Wal-mart. By entrepreneurs and small business owners. By main street America. All because they simply won't spend anymore or don't want to pay even greater sums of money to our wonderful government.

It's good to be the pig, er, king. Not much longer though.