From GreatFallsTribune.com comes word that the US Chamber of Commerce thinks Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) deserves their Spirit of Enterprise Award, once again, for voting the Chamber's way at least 70 percent of the time. 

Only the numbers are staggering.  

For those with any insight to how our government is bought and sold, the players and the process are familiar. 

Today's WaPo article on health lobbying was apparently not subject to editorial review by one of Katharine Weymouth's 'salons' and provides hope that Management doesn't fully overrule journalistic values of the newsroom.  This is an important article: 

There are now five Republican governors involved in the rejection front. They are: Sanford of South Carolina, Jindal of Louisiana, Barbour of Mississippi, Perry of Texas and Bob Riley of Alabama according to USA Today. Where they come together is rejecting Federal assistance for unemployment benefits, and also for education and health expenditures.

If I've learned anything in a decade, it's that hundreds of millions of dollars spent by the single biggest lobbying entity --the US Chamber of Commerce-- over the same time, has an effect on the regulation and law under which the rest of us have to live.

The Chamber's Institute for Legal Reform was born against the backdrop of a Republican revolution that had been purchased by industry and their lobbying activities have especially favored those interests most averse to the tide of litigation that had begun to accomplish the objective of holding big business responsible for the civil damages left on the path of profitability.

The Chamber of Commerce ILR was delivered by C-section in time to take up the fight against US Government plans to sue Big Tobacco for recovery of medical costs after the Multi-State Agreement with most state Attorneys General left the Federal government recovering nothing at the end of 1998. 

So when I heard that President Obama is likely to nominate Mark Gitenstein for the top post of the Office of Legal Policy in a Department of Justice only beginning to think about depoliticizing itself, my reflexes were jerky, to say the least.

 Click the first arrow button on the monitor bar to play video

http://www.velvetrevolution.us/Video/Spoon-Int.wmv
Transcript below.