ELEVEN OF THE FEW: THE “LOBBYISTS” AND THE U. S. CONGRESS
The activity of “lobbying” is a “right” which is protected by the First Amendment of the United States
Constitution: that is, the “right of petition.” “Lobbying” is the “right” to influence “the decisions made
by officials in the government.”
In practice, it is the “right” to influence the enactment of legislation for the “benefit” of “special
interest” groups through “improper and/or unlawful” activity. Most likely, the term derives from
England by which it describes “approaches made to Members of Parliament in the lobbies of the House
of Commons.”
(The “right to petition” is the right of United States citizens to petition the government for the redress of
grievances [A grievance is a “wrong or hardship suffered, which is the grounds of a complaint.”].
A number of other civil rights are enforceable against the government because of this “basic of all
rights”: this “right” protects the right of public participation in government. And, it is a fundamental
right in the process of a “representative” democracy.)
The issue of “proper or lawful or non-abusive” lobbying is not being disputing in this e-article. It is the
“extensive corruption” which is allowed to operate within government at its various levels. This
“unchecked corruption” allows the American few to “purchase favor, advantage, and profit” at the cost
of undermining, American democracy.
The corruption of the “right” to lobby has and will eventually transform the American democracy into an
“oligarchy” in which the privileged will be permitted to feed upon the very existence of the “majority.”
That is, this “unchecked corruption” allows a “beyond the law” class of Americans to exist and to rule
within a democratic, political system (in which these few should always be subordinate to the many).
Although the history of lobbying pre-dates the U. S. Constitution, the administration of President Ulysses
S. Grant (1869-1877) increased the intensity of lobbying to “new levels of corruption” because of both
the “Reconstruction Era” and because of the conflict over “Railroad subsidies” (on the local, state, and
federal levels).
(The term of the “Reconstruction Era” has at least two meanings: first, it covers the history of the nation
from 1865 to1877 [following the American Civil War, 1961-1965]; and, second, it covers the
transformation of the Southern States, the former “Confederacy”, into one nation, from 1863 to 1877.
The “battle” between the Presidency [Presidents Lincoln and Grant] and the Congress [the “Radical
Republicans”] over the implementation [of the timing and of the degree] of a process of reincorporating the “Confederacy” with the “Union”, was the context and the opportunity for some of the
American few to achieve enormous profits as well as to achieve a “justifiable” revenge.
Of course, “profit” and “revenge” were poor motivations for achieving an “equitable union” of the
American people: and, politicians, on both sides of the issue of “Reconstruction”, were “for sale to the
highest bidder” (because of the continuing, internal conflict and competition among the American
“oligarchs”).
Thus, the U. S. Congress made itself available for the lobbying of “special interest groups” at a
tremendous cost- politically, socially, financially, and emotionally-to the American many.)
With the advent of the 1980’s, larger and larger numbers of “once-elected officials” became lobbyists
because of increased demand, higher compensation, and greater “turnover” of elected politicians within
Congress.
In 1995, the 104th Congress attempted to “reform” lobbying activity within the U. S. government.
The “Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995” (LDA) defined and required “lobbyists” who were “compensated”
to register with the Clerk of the House and the Secretary of the Senate so that their activities could be
reflected in their semi-annual reports. And, the “Lobbying Disclosure Technical Amendments Act of
1998” (along with the LDA) attempted to further require a report of the accounting of major
expenditures, and it was hoped that this Act would be able to influence future legislation (which would
“curtail” lobbying corruption).
The five “top sectors” by expenditures (between 1998 and 2010) were: (1) “Finance, Insurance & Real
Estate”; (2) “Health”; (3) “Miscellaneous Business”; (4) “Communications/Electronics”; and (5) “Energy &
Natural Resources.”
Of course, this ranking does not include the “campaign contributions” to various members of Congress.
And since “campaign contributions” reflect the actual measure of “improper and/or unlawful” influence
upon Congress, and since the “Legislative” and “Judicial” (Citizens United ruling of 2010) branches of the
U. S. government have and had “co-operated in hiding financial information”, this “reform” legislation
was “minimum to useless” in the limiting of “lobbying corruption.”
As of 2007, over 17 thousand lobbyists were based in Washington, D. C. alone. And since 1998, 43% of
the 198 members of Congress (who left office) have registered as “lobbyists.”
To re-emphasize, the American “oligarchs” (the “minority”) feel that they rule the nation because of
their ability to “control” the branches of the U. S. government through their corruption of the “right to
petition” [as well as through their corruption of other rights]: that is, they feel that they “own” the
democratic, political structure and the American many (the “majority”) within it.
After all, SCOTUS has ruled that “corporations have the same rights as individual U.S. citizens”: “the hell
they do!” Do the American “oligarchs” think that they can “pepper-spray” all 312 million of the
“majority?
Please, please keep trying: Bloomberg, Koch, and the other “minority” rulers of the United States of
America: see you in hell!
Post Script:
The OWSCN movements are in their 68th day.
The Settle police sprayed an 84-year old woman, Ms. Dorli Rainey, with commercial grade pepper. The
4’ 10’’ Rainey is a long-time, progressive activist who immigrated to the United States from Austria in
1956.
The “pepper-spray” incident occurred on Tuesday 15, 2011.
(“Occupy Seattle” was only one of over three hundred, “civil disobedience demonstrations” which were
occurring, simultaneously and nationally, on this 60th day of “Occupy America.”)
The Nazi, “brown shirt” [Seattle police] spokesperson and self-proclaimed medical expert, a Mr. Jeff
Kappel, in an attempt to justify the attack upon Ms. Rainey, stated that “pepper spray is not age specific.
No more dangerous to someone who is 10 or someone who is 80” or to someone who is pregnant or to
someone who is a priest or to someone who is a community leader or to someone who is an elected
representative or to any other person whose “civil rights” we choose to violate.
Of course, Ms. Rainey knows all about the Nazis. She was only 29 years old when she came from
Austria: and as a young girl, she experienced, first hand, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party
(NSDAP), an extremist, political party in Germany between 1920 and 1945, which was ended by the
international many (which was lead by the people of the United States of America) on April 30, 1945.
(The Nazi party was founded by Anton “the other” Drexler as a means of drawing “workers away from
communism” and any other “far left” groups. Initially, the Nazi party supported “anti-big business, antibourgeois, and anti-capitalist” causes. Its foci changed to anti-Semitic and to other rightist, extremist
causes during the 1930’s. In 1933, Adolf Hitler [1889-1945], its party leader, was appointed “Chancellor
of Germany by Paul von Hindenburg, the president of Germany and the “front” person of the German
few.
Hitler, rapidly, established a totalitarian, political structure [that is, the “Third Reich”] in which “the state
recognizes no limits to its authority”, and he attempted to control the entirety of the citizenry’s lives:
their race [Aryan], their social class, their education, and their thought patterns.
The party’s major emotional methods of control were greed, fear, uncertainty, and hatred.
The parasitical Nazis were against “capitalism, democracy, the Enlightenment, industrialism, liberalism,
Marxism, parliamentary politics, and trade unions.” And, if the Nazis were attempting “containment”,
“pepper spray” would only be one of their techniques for “pacification.”
[Their favorite technique of the Nazis was “death by government”: a genocide which was directed at
“diversity in general and at Jewelry in particular.” Some of their “favorite” targets were Jews,
homosexuals, Romani or Gypsies, blacks, exceptionality, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other political
opponents.]
To re-focus, Nazism was and is a form of an extremist, rightist, political thinking which had and has gone
mad: after all, the Nazis thought that they were the “Knights of the Round Table with “King” Hitler as
their savior and leader: how “crazy” can you get?)
The rightist, libertarian and current Mayor of New York City, a Michael Rubens Bloomberg, is the
grandson of a Jewish immigrant, Mr. Alexander “Erich” Bloomberg.
Do you think that “Erick” would support the Nazi, “containment” methods of his Jewish grandson, of the
Mayor of Seattle, of the Mayor of Oakland, of the Major of Chicago, and of all the Mayors of elsewhere?
If you look closely at Ms. Rainey’s digital image, the one in which she is being held by two members of
“Occupy Seattle” (one of whom is a U. S. veteran of the Iraqi War) after being “pepper-sprayed “ by the
Seattle, Nazi “brownshirts”, you will see the spirits of over 21 million people who were “denied their right
to exist” because they were viewed as “different, helpless, and disenfranchised “ by Anton, Adolf , and
their band of murders.
Along with the great Ms. Rainey, epluribusunumxiii.net wishes to salute the courageous “civil rights”
activist, the late Sister Jackie Hudson (a Catholic nun), who would not tolerate injustice to others. To
quote Jackie (through Ms. Rainey), one must always try “to take one step out of your comfort zone” in
order to help others.
Hell is not adequate enough place for the “oligarchs” and their “familiars”: they are too stupid to realize
that the “blood and tears” of the many will become permanent “stains on their souls.”
And, the “stains” are eternal as well as is the tsunami (of “Occupy Earth”) which is coming for them and
which will return them to their true “Fatherland”: that is, to a place where they can experience real
justice for their willful and destructive acts against humanity, a place of total darkness and a place of
continuous chanting of “ash-shab yurid isqat an-nizam” (Asyian).
Thank you Ms. Rainey, Sister Hudson and all those who cannot watch, simply, as injustices are enacted
upon “the different, the helpless, and the disenfranchised.”
(From “Occupy America” and the global many, “Asyian”)
To hell with the “oligarchs” (“Big” corporate, Bloomberg, Hindenburg, Hitler, and the other, extremist,
American and German social and political “elite”) and their “familiars” (U. S. Congress, U. S. lobbyists,
Seattle police and their like, Drexler, the Nazi “brownshirts”, and all those who watched while their
fellow citizens were being beaten and while their fellow citizens were being shipped to “work camps”
for processing [which were and are “owned, operated, and managed” by the privileged classes]),
Fromoneofthemany