Monday, February 11, 2013

6 to 1

Trey Smith


Ever wonder why special interest lobby groups hold sway in our nation's capitol? It is because, inside the beltway in the halls of Congress and the Oval Office, they outnumber us. Not only do they outnumber the millions of peons in this country, but they even outnumber our Congressional representatives themselves! In fact, their numbers can be so large that their voices easily drown out all other voices combined.

Check out this video of Bill Moyers from 2009. The issue he is addressing is the "public option" in regards to the health care debate that brought us Obamacare. He explains that the chief reason the "public option" was dropped is that it didn't benefit the for-profit health care industry. Our representatives in Congress -- including several prominent "liberal" Democrats -- were bombarded with this message because the for-profit health care industry employs 6 lobbyists per every member of Congress.

People like you n' me simply can't manufacture that much clout. We certainly can write letters/emails, leave phone messages and maybe even have a brief face-to-face one-time meeting with our Reps and Senators or MORE LIKELY, their aides. We can sign petitions too, but those are easily cast aside.

Most of us don't have the wherewithal to wine-and-dine our elected representatives. We can't pay for them to fly to exotic locations for "fact-finding missions" or to deliver well-heeled speeches. We can't put together multimillion dollar presentations to woo our elected reps to our side. And we certainly don't have the funds or the connections to manufacture media frenzies that reflect OUR point of view.

About the ONLY power we possess is via the ballot box and that power is negligible. It is negligible because a) the special interest groups have a huge hand in the sorry candidates we get to choose from and b) once elected, those candidates are beholden to those same special interest groups who played a major role in helping them to get elected.

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