Roemer slams super PACS, lobbyists

[No Elephants]

Trouble is, Roemer was telling the Senate, which replied, in unison, "But we love lobbyists and we all have our own super pacs!"

Okay, all 100 Senators did not really say that in unison. Not aloud, anyway. I'm guessing Sanders agreed with Roemer.


Still, gotta love Roemer, who ran for President, limiting donations to his campaign to a grand total of $100 per person. (Although Roemer was a Democrat when he held office, he was not running for the Democratic nomination. It hardly mattered, since he had no chance anyway.)

I know about Roemer's 2012 campaign only because Stewart and Colbert gave him free time on their shows, not because Roemer could afford to make his candidacy known.

Roemer never made the television debates, either, thanks to the debate rules the Republicrats and Demlicans joined hands to fashion.

We have the best democracy money can buy, IOW, a plutonomy. http://pissedoffwoman.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/the-plutonomy-reports-download/

See also:

Domestic policy (mostly): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council (ALEC is just one example, of course)

Foreign policy: http://www.polisci.ufl.edu/usfpinstitute/2010/documents/readings/jacobs_page2005.pdf (Article entitled "Who influences foreign policy?")

Roemer slams super PACS, lobbyists

Published: July 24, 2012 at 6:31 PM

WASHINGTON, July 24 (UPI) -- Former Alabama Gov. Buddy Roemer told a U.S. Senate panel Tuesday lobbyists and super PACs have far too much influence in Washington.

Roemer, who also represented Alabama in Congress, testified at a hearing held by the Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, which is looking into proposals to rein in influence peddlers.

"As the only person running for president who was elected both as congressman and as governor, it is my belief that Washington, D.C., is not just broken," Roemer said. "It is bought, rented, leased, and owned by the money givers. Special interests, the bundlers, PACs, super PACs, lobbyists, the Wall Street bankers, the pharmaceuticals, the corporate giants, the insurance companies, organized labor, the GSE's like Fannie and Freddie, energy companies, on and on and on and on.

"And this is not about one party versus the other, or about one person or another. It is about systemic and institutional corruption where the size of your check rather than the strength of your need or idea determine your place in line."

The hearing is the second called by the panel's chairman, Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to examine the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling in the Citizens United case, in which it held that the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent political spending by corporations and unions.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2012/07/24/Roemer-slams-super-PACS-lobbyists/UPI-23921343169072/#ixzz21c0dqNyx



P.S. ALL the stuff in boldface was true well before Citizens' United, though Citizens United is a convenient Democratic shorthand for "This, too, is the fault of Republicans---and only Republicans."

In a post-Presidency interview, Clinton, who entered politics as a relatively poor man but is now a very, very rich man, opined that lobbyists were very important and essential. I don't know about all that, but they certainly have been very effective, including with Bubba.

Bubba's statement came before the Citizens United decision, the immediate subject of Citizens United, of course, being an anti-Hillary movie. However, super PACs and lobbyists are not the same thing. One involves spending to try to influence the voting public and the other involves trying to influence the vote of elected officials by money, jobs, etc. and is therefore very hard for me to distinguish from political bribery, which happens to be against the law.