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When rich people give away excess money to charities, that does not absolve them of guilt for the actions that made them wealthy in the first place. Just because Bill Gates gives away a bunch of money, that doesn't excuse he got that money using illegal monopoly tactics. You can't get credit for giving away money that you stole from taxpayers in the first place.

In recent years in particular, Buffett's wealth has been acquired using insider information from his cronies in the White House, actions that would have resulted in jail time for a less connected investor. Here's the way the circle works:

• Buffett and Goldman Sachs contribute buckets of money to the democratic party and the Obama campaign.
• When Goldman was in risk of going under, Buffett invests $5B in them to keep them going. It was a no risk bet because Buffett's buddies let him know before the general public that GS was getting a bailout. Notes on that at Trade With The Ultimate Insider.
• Buffett publicly thanks the US government for bringing stability to the markets, by which he really means money in his company's pockets.
• All the borrowed money plus $1.6B divident profit flows back to Buffett within 3 years.

There's endless stories on this theme, including major trades around the US auto industry bailout too. I believe the most recent is the Keystone XL mess. Peter Schweizer's "Throw Them All Out" book has a whole section devoted to Warren Buffett's tricks where he abuses his political ties for profit. Here's a video segment from Schweizer summarizing that. Buffett's money is just as dirty as if he'd robbed you with a gun; don't like the kindly old man disguise fool you.

Hey, it could be worse: I could be planning to vote for one of the candidates owned by Goldman Sach's.

You're right! JPMorgan and Citigroup are much better than Goldman Sachs: http://gawker.com/5874559/citigroup-replaces-jp-morgan-as-white-house-chief-of-staff

Anyone else see that as a scathing social commentary regarding American political priorities?

Doesn't matter, voting for him anyway.

Hey, it could be worse: I could be planning to vote for one of the candidates owned by Goldman Sach's.

Search the list. Ron Paul is on it too.

Anyone else see that as a scathing social commentary regarding American political priorities?


Doesn't matter, voting for him anyway.

Hey, it could be worse: I could be planning to vote for one of the candidates owned by Goldman Sach's.

There are elements of the defense industry in every state and they donate to nearly everyone in congress. For a few thousand in campaign donations to the right congressmen, they can get billions in contracts like this. That's why unless there's a significant public outcry, this kind of stuff passes all the time. OpenSecrets.org is an excellent resource for finding out what industries are contributing to your senators and congressmen. Internet sources like ThinkProgress and The Young Turks report on these sorts of things regularly.

Lobbying from the Movie/TV/Music industry overwhelming favors Democrats by nearly a 3:1 margin. There's a tendency for people to interpret politics as "D = good, R = bad" or vice versa depending on your political affiliation. It is never that simple.

They all have the same handlers, after all.

You mean Goldman Sachs?

They all have the same handlers, after all.

You mean Goldman Sachs?

Your two party system is entirely bogus, as the media blackout of Ron Paul from the caucuses has so clearly demonstrated. The RICH own the MEDIA for crissake ...

http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/

Requirement: A million dollars.
Disqualification: Openly admitting that you don't believe in fairy tales.

It'll likely cost more than a million dollars to successfully run for congress. In 2010, the average successful campaign for a house seat cost nearly 1.5 million. For the senate it was 9 million. ( data from: http://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/stats.php?display=A&type=W&cycle=2010 )

I think this is it right here:

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/contrib.php?cycle=2012&id=N00009638

And here's our potential future:

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/contrib.php?id=N00000286

I think this is it right here:

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/contrib.php?cycle=2012&id=N00009638

It's simple: the campaign contributions from banks and defense contractors matter more than votes ever did, since you can buy votes with the money, and after all someone has to get elected from one of the two parties.
Obama Top 2008 Contributors
Defense - Top Recipients 2008

It's simple: the campaign contributions from banks and defense contractors matter more than votes ever did, since you can buy votes with the money, and after all someone has to get elected from one of the two parties.
Obama Top 2008 Contributors
Defense - Top Recipients 2008

I have to say I got a chuckle when I got to the part about "inheriting" their IT problems. Obama "inherited" all his problems after all!

Let's be clear on one thing - then-Senator Obama went around the country, gave countless speeches, shook innumerable hands, and raised a record amount of campaign contributions to take on these very same problems he now blames the prior administration for... He asked for the job - he didn't draw the short straw, and as a sitting U.S. Senator at the time, he was in the best position to know exactly what he was getting into.

The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate didn't pull him out of a crowd - he stood on a chair and yelled "Pick Me, Pick Me! I have the answers!"

I've got a feeling government contractors like Lockheed martin have given generous "campaign contributions" to every Republican politician pushing for government spacecraft construction, with government sized profit margins for their chosen defense contractors.

Your answer lies in the data. Somewhere.

Namecalling cannot change the fact that all those welfare-programs have only increased social stratification.

You may now say: "What a preposterous thing to say, without those welfare programs it would be even worse"

Not so. Government expenses go to private interests. Obama wants to give a couple of billion to some friends and Romney surely wants to wants to pay back Goldman Sachs for years of support (and in fact, Obama was also supported by Goldman Sachs - wow, only a "fucking retarded loonie" could possibly think that maybe all those millions are not going to starving babies?)

The bigger the government, the richer types like Romney, Soros or Bernanke will get.

Namecalling cannot change the fact that all those welfare-programs have only increased social stratification.

You may now say: "What a preposterous thing to say, without those welfare programs it would be even worse"

Not so. Government expenses go to private interests. Obama wants to give a couple of billion to some friends and Romney surely wants to wants to pay back Goldman Sachs for years of support (and in fact, Obama was also supported by Goldman Sachs - wow, only a "fucking retarded loonie" could possibly think that maybe all those millions are not going to starving babies?)

The bigger the government, the richer types like Romney, Soros or Bernanke will get.

Obama may have had no sex scandals, but neither did Bush if that's your criteria. As far as non-sex scandals go, there's Fast and Furious for a start. There's all the "green" energy companies defaulting on their federally guaranteed loans. I'm sure it's entirely coincidental that they're owned by Obama campaign bundlers and supporters.

As far as Romney goes your complaints are:

1) He has too many children? Oh yes, how terrible that he has five children all of whom have bachelors degrees and four of which have post-graduate degrees. What a rotten place the world would be if everyone supported their children and instilled in them the necessary work ethic to finish college and graduate school and become doctors and entrepreneurs.

2) He doesn't pay an high enough percentage in taxes? He pays about 15%, which is higher than 80% of the tax payers in the country. In 2009 (the last year that the IRS has stats up for) there were 58,603,938 tax returns filed without any taxable income. I'll take the guy paying 15% over the 58 million who are paying between -6% (yes, there are people with a negative effective tax rate, i.e. they receive a larger refund than they had withheld during the year) and 0%.

3) The average effective income tax rate for households earning over $200,000 is only 9.9%. Add in FICA and that tax rate will still just be topping 13%. If you pay higher than 15%, then either I congratulate you on your exceptionally high earning or seriously recommend that you find a financial adviser.

4) Charitable giving is opaque? Huh? If you want to know where your money is going, then charitable giving is your best bet as you have total control of who you give to and you can select recipients that have just as much transparency as you desire.

5) Only about 60% of Romney's declared charitable giving went to the LDS church. The other 40% went elsewhere. Regardless I find it amazing that you can complain about the LDS church. Sure they may be wealthy on a per capita basis, but why? It's not because they're penny pinchers as they do copious amounts of charitable works and disaster relief. Remember these are a group of people who walked out of the United States because multiple attempts to settle down and do their own thing ended up in their homes being burned, their leaders being murdered and their land and chattels stolen. They crossed half the continent and settled in the middle of the desert next to a lake full of water they couldn't drink. And still they are thriving. Why? Because they believe in family, hard work, education and self-reliance. And you don't want people to look up to that?

That's quite some villain.

Maybe the problem is having a business model that is incompatible with sharing of information.

From the inception of the information revolution, information became easy to copy. It will be that way until you take away all computers and networks.

The real question - is there something we can do to reduce the damages these powerful industries do, while kicking and screaming on their way to irrelevance?

I'm sorry, if you want Congressman Smith to listen to you please insert $100k to his campaign every other year like the entertainment industry does: http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=2008&type=C&cid=N00001811&newMem=N&recs=20

You might get more response from him if you fund a challenger. Lamar Smith (and Patrick Leahy) would be prime candidates for influence via opposition, not support. Fuck their racket, get an opponent to so they sweat re-election.

I'm sorry, if you want Congressman Smith to listen to you please insert $100k to his campaign every other year like the entertainment industry does: http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=2008&type=C&cid=N00001811&newMem=N&recs=20

Reading that link was actually rather heartening! "TV/Movies/Music" now ranks second; "Computers/Internet" is first! Not by a large margin (Pee Wee's Big Adventure is now resonating) but still, it's now greater in all three categories (total, individuals, PACs) -- and, we can continue to talk to our bosses and convince our employers to contribute. Yeah, it sucks that we have to waste resources in order to protect liberty, but every action in life has friction associated with it, and should be accounted for in one's "master plans".

Maybe the problem is having a business model that is incompatible with sharing of information.

From the inception of the information revolution, information became easy to copy. It will be that way until you take away all computers and networks.

The real question - is there something we can do to reduce the damages these powerful industries do, while kicking and screaming on their way to irrelevance?

I'm sorry, if you want Congressman Smith to listen to you please insert $100k to his campaign every other year like the entertainment industry does: http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=2008&type=C&cid=N00001811&newMem=N&recs=20

Don't the assholes at Google have way more money than the assholes at Disney?

Google has a nice market cap, but otherwise it isn't necessarily wealthier than the media corps. Consider revenue; Google had $35.76B of revenue during the previous 12 months. Disney alone had $40.89B. The combined revenue of Time Warner, Disney, Sony and DreamWorks was $159.53B.

Incidentally, those media names figure prominently at OpenSecrets as big contributors. DreamWorks in particular punching well above its weight. About 95% of it goes to one party. It is left as an exercise to the reader to discover which one.

I guess they figure they can afford the risk.

If there is one thing they fear more than their desire for campaign funds, it's getting voted out of office.

Unfortunately, they aren't as afraid of that as you would like to believe.

Corporatism is just a facet of the right wing.

If that is what you truly believe, then you are part of the problem. The left wing is in bed with corporations just as much the right wing is. Your belief that your party is somehow innocent and uninvolved in this causes you to not question their actions. Because you don't critically analyze your party's actions, you give them carte blanche to perpetrate the very corporate cronyism you purportedly decry.

Corporatism is just a facet of the right wing. Right wing politics are about the maintenance and strengthening of the hierarchy of society, and corporations fit squarely into that hierarchy.

In some countries, that might be true. In America, corporatism is bipartisan. Seriously, go back and read the list of SOPA sponsors.

The left wing embraces corporatism as much as the right wing does, because corporations bribe the left wing just as much as they do the right wing. Check out Obama's johns and Romney's johns and try to tell the two whores apart.

Corporatism is just a facet of the right wing. Right wing politics are about the maintenance and strengthening of the hierarchy of society, and corporations fit squarely into that hierarchy.

In some countries, that might be true. In America, corporatism is bipartisan. Seriously, go back and read the list of SOPA sponsors.

The left wing embraces corporatism as much as the right wing does, because corporations bribe the left wing just as much as they do the right wing. Check out Obama's johns and Romney's johns and try to tell the two whores apart.

Won't happen. The anti-trust trial was nothing but a shake down. Before the anti-trust trial Microsoft gave almost nothing in donations. They started contributing, and they got a slap on the wrist and allowed to continue anti-competetive behavior.

He's the only acceptable one in the GOP bunch. Romney is second but he's clearly a 1-percenter and beholden to big money so you can't expect any solutions from him. Perry and Santorum are GWB squared and Libertarianism is a stupid outdated ideology so Paul doesn't make the cut either although he has a few good ideas. Gingrich has proven that he's an unethical asshole (just like Perry and Santorum.)

A vote for Mitt Romney is a vote for the banks. Let's take a look and see who's paying for his campaign. Shall we?

Goldman Sachs $367,200

Credit Suisse Group $203,750

Morgan Stanley $199,800

HIG Capital $186,500

Barclays $157,750

Kirkland & Ellis $132,100

Bank of America $126,500

PriceWaterhouseCoopers $118,250

EMC Corp $117,300

JPMorgan Chase & Co $112,250

The Villages $97,500

Vivint Inc $80,750

Marriott International $79,837

Sullivan & Cromwell $79,250

Bain Capital $74,500

UBS AG $73,750

Wells Fargo $61,500

Blackstone Group $59,800

Citigroup Inc $57,050

Bain & Co $52,500

Courtesy of Open Secrets:

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/contrib.php?cycle=2012&id=N00000286

If congress critters were subject to recall like their local and state counterparts you'd see a LOT more responsiveness.

Every member of the House must be reelected every 2 years. The reelection rate never drops below 80%. While I would support recall at the federal level, I don't know how much a difference it would make. Most people are simply too apathetic and ignorant about anything that doesn't obviously and directly affect their day to day lives.

http://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/reelect.php

It's worth noting that in his previous race that Obama's monetary base was made up hugely of small donors.

No, actually, it wasn't. But don't trust me, check this out: donor demographics

Google/Yahoo can simply don't return any results that include the names of Senators, and Representatives that supported the act..

or the names of companies that contributed to the above live. Join to opensecrets or something like that. If you gave money to Lamar Smith then .. oh shit, Google's on that list. Never mind.

Great. Google, who is supposed anti-SOPA, also paid for the guy who is most responsible for it. Or else they paid to unsuccessfully count-balance other bribes. Shit, we need a way to distinguish between these two different kinds of bribes.

The supreme court effectively killed campaign finance reform by declaring corporations as having free speech rights.

You talking about the Citizens United case?

I was never comfortable with the government telling us what kind of political speech was permitted. Citizens United is basically a bunch of people getting together to run ads that they couldn't afford individually; I don't see why that should be prohibited.

And even if you think a big company like GE shouldn't be allowed to donate money (like all the money they gave to Barack Obama) the reality is that they find ways to donate no matter what you do. The best you can do is to require them to do it out in the open and publicly declare how much they donated and to whom.

Pass meaningful finance reform. $200 limit per person. Open up the books fully of any entity lobbying or campaigning. No PACS, no bundling, no "issue ads," no corporate or union money. (A union and corporate money ban needs to be bound together or it favors one side or the other).

Okay, you pass this. Now all the major TV networks pick some junior Democrat guy from Chicago that we have never heard of and relentlessly push him as our next President. How do the Republicans fight this? Under your proposal they can't get together the money to run TV ads.

Better have the government start regulating the content of the TV news! Let's set up a panel of censors who will decide what speech is acceptable and what is not. Except for one tiny little problem... that's massively unConstitutional, and a horrible offensive power grab to the government, and we won't stand for it.

And my example of all the news media lining up to push a Democrat, while taken from recent history, might sound good to Democrats. But you have to imagine that your worst enemies somehow gain the upper hand and then see how much you like the idea. You guys always seem freaked out about Fox News. What if Fox News was watched by 75% of households and had serious power to influence public opinion? Would you be happy to have rules in place that made it impossible for you to afford to run TV ads to counter this influence?

Setting it up as a problem in game theory, the tenet "candidate who spends the most money wins the election" makes the outcome a foregone conclusion: elected government officials will be in the pocket of corporations, in all cases.

Another way to see this is that candidate who raised the most money also had the most number of supporters...

Only if contributions to, and spending on behalf, of candidates were limited to private donations with a fairly low cap so that it was actually number of supporters that determined revenue.

We do not have that situation. Corporations can now spend unlimited sums to promote a candidate. Wall Street firms with thousands of employees making high 6 figures (and up) have methods of bundling 'voluntary' maximum contributions (far above what 90% of Americans could afford) from their employees into huge packages of money.

Actually, it's not just the "campaign" money, it's the promise of a cushy job afterwards, and also Corps being able to pull favors for you with other congressmen who are already in their pockets. For facts, why just look at FCC members becoming *AA Goons, or just maybe search for lobbyist owns congress.

Oh, wait... You're looking for donation trails?

Gee, that wasn't hard now was it? What's that? Oh, you want COLD HARD FACTS... you mean, the info they've paid big bucks to hide very very well? Yeah, keep dreaming fool.

Setting it up as a problem in game theory, the tenet "candidate who spends the most money wins the election" makes the outcome a foregone conclusion: elected government officials will be in the pocket of corporations, in all cases.

Another way to see this is that candidate who raised the most money also had the most number of supporters...

No because who your supporters are matters more than the number. If Bill Gates' support is more important than mine, then it's no longer 1 person, 1 vote.

Setting it up as a problem in game theory, the tenet "candidate who spends the most money wins the election" makes the outcome a foregone conclusion: elected government officials will be in the pocket of corporations, in all cases.

Another way to see this is that candidate who raised the most money also had the most number of supporters...

I've been puzzling over the corruption caused by business influence on government for awhile.

Setting it up as a problem in game theory, the tenet "candidate who spends the most money wins the election" makes the outcome a foregone conclusion: elected government officials will be in the pocket of corporations, in all cases.

This may be a way out.

We've bemoaned our inability to influence the political system, but here we see a striking example of the population rising up and affecting specific government actions.

Public outcry stopped the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, or at least it helped. Similarly, public outcry attempted to hurt Bank of America and GoDaddy over their political beliefs.

If we can make this work it will give us the fine control over government that we have been missing. We've been able to affect small companies - HBGary, Stratfor, Ocean Marketing, Sony. (OK, Sony isn't that small, but it was a slice of Sony much smaller than BOA.)

Future companies may need to think twice before supporting oppressive or corrupt legislation - if only because of the chance that the people will rise up and hurt their bottom line.

We haven't had an effect on the really big companies yet (BOA), but I'm hoping that this grows to be a worldwide trend. We need to install a healthy dose of respect for public opinion. To put it succinctly, the companies have to fear the possibility of public retribution, both legal and extra-legal.

This will give us the power to affect legislation, to control the corruption. This will put government back in the hands of the people.

If we can make this work...

Ok, apparently url tagging doesn't work. Here's my citations:

Rating agencies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19amWOc1GJ8

Mass media: http://www.progressiveliving.org/mass_media_and_politics.htm - http://www.wifp.org/MassMedia.html - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownership

Presidential donors: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cid=N00009638

Communism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism

Socialism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

Corporateocracy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy

Vote for the guy who has taken the least in bribes, I mean "campaign contributions", from corporations. It's easy enough to find out how much from third party sites like http://www.opensecrets.org/

These patents are beyond ridiculous, they represent a mafioso style shakedown racket of the right to program a computer and a company-size-based monopoly on all progress and economic participation.

You'd assume that a system that destructive would eventually have to cause such economic damage to even the people who fund and benefit from it that it would just have to be changed, but that assumption wouldn't be taking into account U.S. Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions.

After being informed that the loaded gun of software patents was now pointed at the industry that finances and supports the manufacture of that gun, the banking industry, Sessions promptly sponsored and shepherded through Congress a bill that exempted the banking industry from software patents emanating from the likes of

DataTreasury -- which has only three employees, according to the company -- claims most of the rights to that technology, and has sued dozens of large banks alleging patent infringement.

(above excerpted from WSJ and http://www.leftinalabama.com/diary/566/ More from same sources:

Working closely with allies in the industry, the Alabama Republican championed an amendment that would allow banks to avoid paying what an industry executive says could amount to billions of dollars a year in royalties. The royalties, on a technology that converts paper checks into electronic images, are being claimed by DataTreasury Corp. of Plano, Texas, which holds a handful of patents related to the process.

So we can't even count on the the disease to finally kill the host because the host is to be artificially kept alive by bitchboys like Sessions.

So let's grasp the full scope of what's going on here.

The Big Players like Amazon, Microsoft IBM etc aided and abetted at every turn by the banks are creating and financing a system which is so fundamentally toxic to economic participation, even they can't survive it. The only way they continue to exist is through special legislative action tailored to nothing but their exemption from the consequences of the system they create.

Meanwhile, Sessions et. al. are busy legislating a system into existence which is so toxic that even the banking industry can't survive it, and it therefore needs to go to Sessions- cash in hand- in order to obtain a special dispensation from The King.

from: http://www.techlawforum.net/post.cfm/senator-takes-an-interest-in-patent-law-or-money>

readers may be interested to know that the Junior Senator from Alabama has received just over $100K from commercial banks in the last five years according to http://www.opensecrets.org./

So who's extorting whom? Are the trolls extorting the banks or are the banks and Amazon extorting would be competitors, or is Sessions extorting the banks?

It reads like some sort graduate student's thesis of self-stabilizing self-extortion rings where the simulation iterates until it finds its most stable, lowest energy state that nothing but pitchforks and torches can get it out of.

We are Rome.

Microsoft is one of Mike Lee's top donors.

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=2012&cid=N00031696&type=I

The House of Reps may very well pass this bill since it's currently Republican controlled, but it stands very little chance of making it through the Senate or getting signed by the President.

This is one of the problems in politics today - people automatically attributing everything bad to the party they oppose. Erroneously convinced that they bear no fault for the ills of the country, they continue voting the exact same corrupt politicians into office year after year. (In this case Democrat voters are in the wrong, but the exact same thing happens with Republican voters.)

The entertainment industry favors Democrats by a 2:1 to 4:1 margin. 7 of their top 10 recipients and 13 of their top 20 recipients are Democrats. Obama is their biggest recipient, receiving 4x more money from them than the next highest recipient (also a Democrat), and nearly 10x more than the highest Republican recipient. Barring a miraculous attack of conscience, he is sure to sign this into law if it passes.

The only thing that's stopping SOPA from passing in the Senate is that it's a House bill. The Senate equivalent is Protect IP.

I thank you for continually trying your best to go Republican, Democrat, Republican, Democrat. I might suggest that you might as well go 'for' and 'against', that'll save a lot of your 'for' people some wasted time because you'll run out of the 'against' pretty quickly. Mr. Chairman it's very clear we're gonna lose here eventually, and we're gonna lose in the worst possible way. We're gonna lose without all the facts, and we're gonna lose without the process being open in the way that I would hope it will be in the new year.

I thank you for continually trying your best to go Republican, Democrat, Republican, Democrat. I might suggest that you might as well go 'for' and 'against', that'll save a lot of your 'for' people some wasted time because you'll run out of the 'against' pretty quickly. Mr. Chairman it's very clear we're gonna lose here eventually, and we're gonna lose in the worst possible way. We're gonna lose without all the facts, and we're gonna lose without the process being open in the way that I would hope it will be in the new year.

I thank you for continually trying your best to go Republican, Democrat, Republican, Democrat. I might suggest that you might as well go 'for' and 'against', that'll save a lot of your 'for' people some wasted time because you'll run out of the 'against' pretty quickly. Mr. Chairman it's very clear we're gonna lose here eventually, and we're gonna lose in the worst possible way. We're gonna lose without all the facts, and we're gonna lose without the process being open in the way that I would hope it will be in the new year.

I thank you for continually trying your best to go Republican, Democrat, Republican, Democrat. I might suggest that you might as well go 'for' and 'against', that'll save a lot of your 'for' people some wasted time because you'll run out of the 'against' pretty quickly. Mr. Chairman it's very clear we're gonna lose here eventually, and we're gonna lose in the worst possible way. We're gonna lose without all the facts, and we're gonna lose without the process being open in the way that I would hope it will be in the new year.

I thank you for continually trying your best to go Republican, Democrat, Republican, Democrat. I might suggest that you might as well go 'for' and 'against', that'll save a lot of your 'for' people some wasted time because you'll run out of the 'against' pretty quickly. Mr. Chairman it's very clear we're gonna lose here eventually, and we're gonna lose in the worst possible way. We're gonna lose without all the facts, and we're gonna lose without the process being open in the way that I would hope it will be in the new year.

I thank you for continually trying your best to go Republican, Democrat, Republican, Democrat. I might suggest that you might as well go 'for' and 'against', that'll save a lot of your 'for' people some wasted time because you'll run out of the 'against' pretty quickly. Mr. Chairman it's very clear we're gonna lose here eventually, and we're gonna lose in the worst possible way. We're gonna lose without all the facts, and we're gonna lose without the process being open in the way that I would hope it will be in the new year.