It's not as though I'm any brighter than the other folks I've been hanging with, here, for the last few years. 

But sometimes the words do feel particularly right, as in 'right on the money'. We like to say that in these United States, I wonder if that idiom was developed in the halls outside of the lobbies of our Congressional leaders, perhaps? 

Anyhow, I liked this title five years ago when the sentiment of Get The Money Out of Our Power was appropriate to the Hurricane Katrina aftermath. The ring of truth is hitting me as strongly, today, as it did on September 7, 2005. 

I'd hate to be that right, but I seem to remember the context being Bush's contratulations to the helluva job being done by Brownie. Think he's got anything to do with emergency aid to Haiti?

Nader's never been righter, Get The Money Out of Our Power.

Do you REALLY still believe this is a democracy?

From the New York Times, In House, Many Spoke With One Voice: Lobbyists’

Members of Congress submit statements for publication in the Congressional Record all the time, often with a decorous request to “revise and extend my remarks.” It is unusual for so many revisions and extensions to match up word for word. It is even more unusual to find clear evidence that the statements originated with lobbyists.


The e-mail messages and their attached documents indicate that the statements were based on information supplied by Genentech employees to one of its lobbyists, Matthew L. Berzok, a lawyer at Ryan, MacKinnon, Vasapoli & Berzok who is identified as the “author” of the documents. The statements were disseminated by lobbyists at a big law firm, Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal.


In an e-mail message to fellow lobbyists on Nov. 5, two days before the House vote, Todd M. Weiss, senior managing director of Sonnenschein, said, “We are trying to secure as many House R’s and D’s to offer this/these statements for the record as humanly possible.”

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[This piece began its life in response to CTMan's Independents, Fastest Growing Block of Voters, Reflect... Me?.]

Back in the dark ages, when I was young and a voter for the first time, I was a registered Independent.  That was partly due to the fact that I'd not enough insight or experience to know my own leanings much less to have tested them against party platforms.

What I call myself now is a lower-case "P" progressive and, like anyone stuck in the bipolar power struggle that disallows new entrants, I consistently aim to choose lesser evil. 

On rare occasion, I've considered "R" but that's become an impossible choice in the last ten years, or so.  Now, there's no choice in light of documents establishing that Republicans have been the proxies of a racketeering operation.

Max Baucus is a capital "D" example of why I can't be a knee-jerk Dem, though there are several I respect on that side of the aisle.

As I've considered the disappointment delivered by the full-house Democratic majority, I've come to a few tentative conclusions as to what's going wrong.

The breaking news in the lobbying world last Friday: lobbying firm Bonner & Associates had forged letters from minority organizations to send to Representative Tom Perriello (D-VA) in opposition to the American Clean Energy & Security Act. Now, of course, it is all an intern's fault (or is it a temp worker ... or a contract employee ... oh, it really doesn't matter since this goes against Bonner's long-standing practice of, well, engaging in deceptive and questionable lobbying practices.) 

This is a story that won't go away, for any number of reasons.

A gift that keeps on giving ...

I've just signed on to the petition circulated by the ACLU and phoned Webb and Warner's offices as requested by John Edwards. Thought I'd pass these initiatives on.