2009, the year of the lobby.

[flamin lib]

After watching the demise of Health Care Reform I asked myself, ”Self (‘cause that’s what I call myself), why would otherwise reasonable people elected by we, the people, behave that way?” Then I went to OpenSecrets.org and found out.

Over the last ten years lobbies have spent $16.3 Billion on our congress. In 2008 alone they spent $2.1 Billion, more than double the $907 Million they spent in 1998.

So what are the largest industries represented by lobbies? Pharmaceuticals are the number one followed by Insurance at number two. Hmmm, that explains a lot. So who exactly are these lobbies and how many of them are there? Lets take Pharmaceuticals for an example.

In 2008 that industry spent $237 million funneled through 1,659 Lobbying Agencies with thousands of employees, many of them ex congress-people or their aides, to walk the halls of congress and petition “our” representatives with the point of view of their special interests. Let’s see, there are 435 representatives and 100 Senators so that works out to, uh, carry the one and round up, three entire agencies for every livin’ lovin’ one of those people we thought were representing us. $237 Million is $125,000 for every hour Congress was in session in 2008 or $443,000 per congresscritter.

So, what does $1.8 billion over ten years buy you? How about free access to $ Millions in research done by Universities with grants from the Federal Government. That’s right, drug companies do almost no research into new drugs. Virtually all of their R&D money goes into modifying existing drugs to extend the patent rights while your tax money pays for the research into new drugs.

Did you know that drug manufacturers routinely pay generic drug makers not to make less expensive alternatives to their top sellers? In any other industry that would be a violation of anti-trust law and the DOJ would be on them like a duck on a June bug.

Who does all the drug testing on these new drugs? Some independent agency? Nope, the makers and sellers of the drug being tested who have a vested interest in the outcome. Did you know that test data are not reported to the FDA? Only the portion of the results that the maker wants the FDA to see are reported. Little side effects like heart attacks never seem to make it into the reported data until, like VIOXX, the drug kills enough people to get the attention of the doctors prescribing it. Don’t think a drug maker would market a drug they know is killing people? How about Bextra, an arthritis drug made by Pfizer. Pfizer was charged the largest fine in history, $2.3 Billion, for promoting Bextra for treating symptoms for which it had not been tested, treatments that resulted in a 68% increase in deaths from heart attack. That’s okay though, Pfizer made $3.8 Billion in profits off the drug before being forced to recall it.

Drug makers do not have to test their drugs for improvements over existing treatments. They only have to show that their drug works better than nothing (sugar pill). In many cases new drugs are actually less effective than existing or even generic drugs.

So, for a $ Billion or so you get all that plus little perks like the Medicare Prescription drug benefit that increased costs to seniors, locked out re-importation and you get left out of the Health Care Reform discussion altogether.

And that’s just ONE of the industries lobbying “your” lawmaker.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lauren-kirchner/pfizer-playing-at-the-no_b_410724.html Drug lobbying

http://www.opensecrets.org/ source of way too much information about who owns government

[liberal_at_heart]

1. K&R

This is what we have to fight. Whether republican or democrat we cannot support politicians who take money from these corporations and then write legislation to support these corporations. If the democrats want to win they are going to have to run politicians who don't take money from lobbyists and who have the voting record to prove that they will fight lobbyists not join them. I want to vote democrat but if the democrats want my vote they are going to have to run someone who actually deserves to be in office. I want voting records. I want proof that these politicians are going to fight these lobbyists. You can't run a corrupt democrat and just insist on people voting for them.

[flamin lib]

2. To get money out of politics is simple.

Just pass campaign finance reform that says if ya' can't cast a ballot, ya' can't donate to a party or campaign.

There's nothing wrong with lobbying. There's nothing wrong with PACs. They both have a very valuable contribution to make in informing our legislators who cannot be experts on every issue and cannot foresee every unintended consequence.

There is something wrong with the huge sums of money pouring into both parties and every legislator's campaign.

If you go back and look at the Abramoff scandal, everybody who got in trouble BROKE THE LAW as it now exists. It aint' the lobbies, it's the greed.