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You have the right to be smeared by sleazy corporations and their Republican pawns.

You have the right to an attorney to defend yourself from Republican corruption, but it will be at your expense.

You have the right to remain silent.

Anything you say will be inaccurately portrayed by right wing morons, and will be used against you in a way that doesn't even make sense.

Clueless moron.

There are about a billion reason$ why you can't spelll DMCA without that BIG FAT BOUGHT-AND-PAID-FOR D .

Oh yeah, because when you think Entertainment Mogul - the first thing that comes to mind is a Republican? Are you on crack agin??

* Doug Morris, CEO Sony Music (Formerly CEO of Universal Music), Democrat: http://www.campaignmoney.com/political/contributions/douglas-morris.asp?cycle=08

* Lucian Grainge, CEO Universal Music (Owned by Vivendi), Foreign. Democrat PAC: http://www.opensecrets.org/usearch/index.php?q=Universal+Music&sa=Search&cx=010677907462955562473%3Anlldkv0jvam&cof=FORID%3A11

* Roger Faxon, CEO EMI (Under ownership of Citigroup), Foreign. No open records of contributions

* Lyor Cohen, CEO Warner Music, Democrat: http://www.campaignmoney.com/political/contributions/lyor-cohen.asp?cycle=08

(Foreigners can't make political contributions (at least not directly to campaigns), so I looked up PAC funding.)

The '1994' law was the 'Uruguay Round Agreements Act' passed by a lame duck Democrat majority congress shortly after it had had its ass handed to it by US voters. It was rapidly signed by Clinton.

Hollywood getting its monies worth.

U.S.A. government, http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000033404&year=2009

Or we can look up BSA or other "not for profit" orgs they use to buy the government with.

Leahy is beyond corrupt and firmly in the pockets of the MafiAA - essentially he's the new RIAA hand-puppet in Congress.

He's actually worse than Fritz Hollings (D-Disney) was.

What we need is major campaign finance reform to get rid of all the backdoor contribution scams going on. But good luck getting that to happen - especially with the 5 senile delinquent conservatives on the Supreme Court having struck down the last few attempts at campaign finance reform!

The big lie of omission here is that AT&T doesn't just have an executive in the White House, they've been giving out bribes^Hcampaign contributions to about 75-80% of Congress as well as the president and a lot of other movers and shakers. That's what makes them immune to any sort of government interference. Their efforts completely bipartisan, because AT&T's only ideology is to make more money for AT&T.

So, 10 or 15 years ago, when everyone began being raised isolated from anything remotely dangerous, not allowed outside, and were pandered to to be sure they didn't have their feelings hurt when we tried to teach them to spell ... we foresaw an entire generation of children that would be too stupid to do anything, and so spoiled and coddled to that they would expect the world to care for them and give them everything they want.

Some knew then we would end up with kids that would never really understand basic science well enough to go into university and not be completely wrong about how things work. Chemical free chemistry sets? No surprise there. We now have a generation that has been raised entirely with safety scissors, glitter, and nothing but comforting reassurance that it's OK to spell words any way you please, and have never cared about the sum of 2+2.

"Doomed as a species" was brought to mind. The places that didn't intentionally educate their children to be simpletons now have the advantage.

How much of this was fear of litigation, and how much was fallout from anti-chemical hysteria?

http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00282038

$211,925 tries to say "No"

Google sent four times that just to Barack Obama alone, and that didn't save them.

So I'm guessing the answer will be "Yes"

Well now, see? There's your problem. Google didn't grease the right palms. Obama doesn't hold Senate hearings. The Senate does.
I swear. These Washington newcomers can be so slow on the uptake sometimes. Learn how the game is played before you start handing out the cash.

I'm wondering if they are going to be asked to appear before the US Senate to explain their actions,

http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00282038

$211,925 tries to say "No"

Google sent four times that just to Barack Obama alone, and that didn't save them.

So I'm guessing the answer will be "Yes"

No, they mean general health services for women like cancer screening, birth control and information on/treatment for STDs. Less than 3% of Planned Parenthood's budget goes to abortion services, which includes counseling sessions about abortion that involve laying out a woman's other choices like adoption. When you attack PP, 97% of your attack is against run-of-the-mill medical care being made available to women who have difficulty getting it otherwise.

3%? I was told it was 10% by another poster above this one. And then another person, dougmc said that the Hyde Amendment bans all funding for abortions. So which is it? 10%, 3%, or 0%? Well, I can tell you that it is not 0%. See, if tax dollars goes to pay the water bill at Planned Parenthood, then that's money that PP doesn't have to spend on water. The money that they saved goes back into their general budget, which some of it (3%, 10%) goes to fund abortions.

And like I said before, if the number is that low, then why not spin off their abortion services to a separate company? It would be much harder to cut funding if PP didn't perform abortions. Better yet, why not fund a separate organization that performs all the PP services sans the abortions? Why Planned Parenthood? They are not the only organization capable of providing cancer screening and STD prevention.

Also, you completely ignored the fact that Planned Parenthood gets tax payer dollars and then turns around and gives to support political candidates, who then fund PP, who then supports political candidates.... You're OK with that?

Look HERE.

Strange. They are all Democrats and two Republicans. Is it any surprise that its the Democrats wanting to defend their funding? Is it any surprise that Democrats would block a bill would pay troops and avoids a government shutdown simply because it blocked funding for PP?

It's about a constitutional power given to congress specifically being usurped by the executive and the one thing that congress usually unites on no matter what's at stake, is the retention of their powers.

Congress created the FCC in order to regulate telecommunications which cross state lines, which does in fact include the internet. Under the Bush administration, the FCC moved to reclassify ISPs as largely unregulated companies, because the Bush administration loved its AT&T campaign contributions and wanted more.

The Obama campaign, however, was paid for far more by small donors (read: not corporations), so he is much less beholden to them (even if he does seem to have a love affair with the banking sector, mostly due to Goldman Sachs being his second-biggest donor). This is why he is willing to go to bat for the people more often, like trying to extend First Amendment protections to the Internet, than Bush was.

Republicans, of course, are not funded by the people, and so they have no interest in what is best for the country. Their funding comes from large, multinational corporations, so they will do what is best for those corporations and assist them in squeezing money from US pockets via tax breaks for the wealthy and deregulation of large corporations, and funneling the profit overseas via "free trade" agreements with countries with nothing to offer but cheap labor, like China.

One of the teams would have to be honest at all in order to be more honest than the other. I did say it sarcastically but I figured at worst it would just be true that they are on par. :) I still stand behind my sarcasm in the second half of my sentence that the actions of one party somehow excuse the actions of the other.

BTW I was looking around on the opensecrets site and found this page of oil and gas contributors. Since the top 100 contributors stop at around $1.5 million I was hoping to find a more complete list. On the page of top overall donors Koch Industries is listed as donating ~$2.8 million mostly to repubs, but on the Oil contributors page it says they gave ~$1.9 million.

I'm not trying to argue for either side here. The money involved in campaign finances is so dirty that it's hard to tell how much is really being passed around and by who. It gets even more complicated when you start to research organizations that have very liberal or conservative slants but don't contribute much directly to campaigns. I don't see the Quantum Endowment Fund or Soros Fund Management listed but I'm pretty sure George Soros's money finds it's way into Democratic hands. Media Matters isn't listed but they surely have financial influence on dems. Newscorp is also missing from the list but Rupert Murdoch's money arguably influences politics as well.

One of the teams would have to be honest at all in order to be more honest than the other. I did say it sarcastically but I figured at worst it would just be true that they are on par. :) I still stand behind my sarcasm in the second half of my sentence that the actions of one party somehow excuse the actions of the other.

BTW I was looking around on the opensecrets site and found this page of oil and gas contributors. Since the top 100 contributors stop at around $1.5 million I was hoping to find a more complete list. On the page of top overall donors Koch Industries is listed as donating ~$2.8 million mostly to repubs, but on the Oil contributors page it says they gave ~$1.9 million.

I'm not trying to argue for either side here. The money involved in campaign finances is so dirty that it's hard to tell how much is really being passed around and by who. It gets even more complicated when you start to research organizations that have very liberal or conservative slants but don't contribute much directly to campaigns. I don't see the Quantum Endowment Fund or Soros Fund Management listed but I'm pretty sure George Soros's money finds it's way into Democratic hands. Media Matters isn't listed but they surely have financial influence on dems. Newscorp is also missing from the list but Rupert Murdoch's money arguably influences politics as well.

I see quite a few unions at the top of this list. Service employees, teachers, carpenters, electricians.

http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/topcontribs.php

If you think your team is more honest than the other team, it's time for you to check your facts.

You make it sound as if re-election is a foregone conclusion....

Reelection rates are in the high nineties percentage-wise:

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

What is sad is the GOP on the candidate and national level is still so inept and scared of being called racist they don't look good to beat the most blatantly corrupt president of post-WW2 America.

Barak Obama got more than half his 2008 campaign money from small donors, and, probably as a result, has kept more than three times the number of campaign promises as he's broken (and could have kept many more if, for example, Congress hadn't gone out of its way to defund the closing of Guantanimo.) Compare to .

No, it's clear that, when it comes to Democrats and Republicans, the Republicans are far more corrupt, and are more apt to sell out to corporate influence; at least Democrats take money from--and listen to--worker groups, environmentalists and scientists on occasion. Of course, that's sort of like saying that a black hole is denser than a neutron star; sure, it's technically an accurate statement, but I sure wouldn't want to try to live on either one.

It might not happen... right?

Oh yes it will:
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/index.php

(Actually, until quite recently, they were the #1 campaign contributor, but #2 means they still will get what they want)

Perhaps we can hope that the government makes a move to protect consumers for a change?

I wish I shared your optimism but, It ain't looking good for us.

A million dollars buys you a lot.

Barack Obama (D)
Top Contributors

University of California $1,591,395
Goldman Sachs $994,795
Harvard University $854,747
Microsoft Corp $833,617
Google Inc $803,436
Citigroup Inc $701,290
JPMorgan Chase & Co $695,132
Time Warner $590,084
Sidley Austin LLP $588,598
Stanford University $586,557
National Amusements Inc $551,683
UBS AG $543,219
Wilmerhale Llp $542,618
Skadden, Arps et al $530,839
IBM Corp $528,822
Columbia University $528,302
Morgan Stanley $514,881
General Electric $499,130

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638

Not donating enough to the various political parties.

A quick check shows Google and its employees are pretty active politically, and I suspect that if Democrats want more money from them they just have to ask. It could be a shakedown, but there's not a shred of evidence that this is the case beyond vague claims that it's happened before. I find anyone who calls himself an "insider", let alone a magazine that calls itself that, to be consistently full of shit.

The simplest explanation for why liberal Democrats are conducting an anti-trust investigation is that their constituents want them to. Investigating a gigantic corporation in pursuit of a heavily regulated economy is as natural to them as hating baseball and apple pie. I think their notions of anti-trust are based on an economic theory consisting of fairness and pixie dust, but I don't doubt that they believe it.

That's a list of aggregated contributions by organization, meaning: those donations were made by individuals who work for those corporations.

If you go look at the McCain campaign, the list doesn't look much different , except the dollar values are lower.

And it's totally not surprising Obama's top contributor is the University of California. What point are you trying to make? A call center rep at Citigroup isn't exactly part of the ruling class...

Take a quick look at the campaign finances of President Obama and see if you can still make this comment with a straight face. He raised more than three times as much money as Senator McCain in 2008, including rather large contributions from: Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, Google, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Time Warner, General Electric, Morgan Stanley, and IBM. Granted I wouldn't call some of these new companies the 'Old Guard' but there are plenty on that list that fit the bill.

Source: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=n00009638

Care to check out #2 on the list of top political donors since 1989?

Its not about the position in the House leadership, its about name recognition and popular support.

Ron Paul has been running for President and gets a good share of supporters when he makes a run. Not enough to be a Tier 1 contender, but a strong Tier 2.

Example - Rep. Ron Paul raises $700000 in 24 hours
http://www.thestatecolumn.com/articles/rep-ron-paul-raises-700000-in-24-hours/

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00005906&cycle=2010
Cash on hand December 31, 2010 - $1,855,893

So now Ron Paul has closer to 2.5 million

Contrast to the Speaker
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00003675
Cash on hand December 31, 2010 - $126,342

Its not about the position in the House leadership, its about name recognition and popular support.

Ron Paul has been running for President and gets a good share of supporters when he makes a run. Not enough to be a Tier 1 contender, but a strong Tier 2.

Example - Rep. Ron Paul raises $700000 in 24 hours
http://www.thestatecolumn.com/articles/rep-ron-paul-raises-700000-in-24-hours/

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00005906&cycle=2010
Cash on hand December 31, 2010 - $1,855,893

So now Ron Paul has closer to 2.5 million

Contrast to the Speaker
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00003675
Cash on hand December 31, 2010 - $126,342

I would suggest obligating them to have any and all holdings in a blind trust. That's actually almost a de facto requirement in the US right now, in order to comply with disclosure rules.

No, no, no, no, no. We all live in democracy. At any moment, we can kick out any of our servant-representatives if they do the slightest thing wrong. Have you not noticed that we do this all the time? Why, I can think of at least one or two politicians who have been kicked out of office in my lifetime. I think. Well, OK, maybe they resigned. But we forced 'em to! Yeah!

And of course we have elections every couple of years, and usually only like 95% of U.S. House incumbents get to stay in office then. Sometimes its even a little less than 90%! Of course, I suppose some of them retire or die. But still, an overhaul of 2-12% of the legislature is a landslide!

How is it that they did that??? Maybe it was because some of the sheep Democrats reps. realized they better listen to their campaign donors ?

There, fixed that for you.

If it was a true tech leader then I might agree but would never see them allowing a Meraki style grid network. However it looks like these particular Senators are being paid shills.

Snowe - 7th largest donor was Verizon

Warner - 6th largest donor was Verizon

America has the best government money can buy!

If it was a true tech leader then I might agree but would never see them allowing a Meraki style grid network. However it looks like these particular Senators are being paid shills.

Snowe - 7th largest donor was Verizon

Warner - 6th largest donor was Verizon

America has the best government money can buy!

Say what you want about Joe Lieberman. He's no cheap politician.

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=n00000616

Customers want to access Netflix, and (presumably) won't use an ISP that won't carry Netflix.

Two problems:

1) Comcast is a monopoly cable internet provider in its area. There is no possibility of competition so they can pretty much do what they want. They have 6.897 million reasons for the government not to regulate their monopoly.

http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000461

2) Comcast probably provides movies and videos on demand for $$$. The strategy is to use their monopoly internet service to boost profits in their MOD/VOD service. Frankly, as a guy whom purchases his VOIP and his inet svc from two different companies, I'm surprised I haven't been shaken down yet.

Why was BP allowed to sleaze it's way out of full financial responsibility?

I wonder whose name shows up getting the most cash here. (you might have to re-enter a capcha code for that link to work..)

Anyone care to guess if it involves "Hope and Change"?

$9 million of campaign contributions buys you a lot I guess.

The EFF is not exactly swimming in money. In 2008, they actually spent $400K more than they took in. I'm happy that they spend more of their limited resources fighting for individuals than for well-heeled industries already well represented by lobbyists and millions of dollars pumped into political campaigns. I bet Time Warner alone spent more money on lobbying congress in 2010 than the entire EFF budget -- and I picked them because they were at the bottom of the list. I wouldn't be surprised to find that many TV/Movie/Recording industry companies each pay their retained lawyers many times the entire EFF annual budget. And the EFF is fighting on many fronts. So give them a break when they reserve resources to fight for the underrepresented.

Try http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?type=C&cid=N00003288&newMem=N&cycle=2010 & http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cycle=2008&type=C&cid=N00003288&newMem=N

I linked to the default page, and indicated which options to select to get the results I saw.

Try http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?type=C&cid=N00003288&newMem=N&cycle=2010 & http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cycle=2008&type=C&cid=N00003288&newMem=N

I linked to the default page, and indicated which options to select to get the results I saw.

How would this benefit Rep. Thompson's campaign & PAC funding? "Defense Electronics" firms are the #3 contributor to his campaign & leadership PAC for 2009-2010. "Computers/Internet" were #3 for the 2008 campaign.

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00003288

I'd say probably opportunism. They come to him with donations, big ones. Then he goes back to them when relevant laws come up, to get their preferred stance. Then he gets more donations for his next campaign. It is odd, I will admit, that Big Content has that much stake in VT. But if he's on the committee, then it's not too shocking that they would seek him out.

All the big tech companies are lobbying. Money-wise, Apple spends less on lobbying than other big tech companies. In 2009, Apple spent $1.5M while Google spent $4M.

http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?year=2009&lname=B12&id=

Plain and simple.

We make fun of China and other places, but it seems that our judiciary is now pretty much bought in many places.

Check out this article on how many businesses see corruption as a barrier to entry to markets.

And who do you think the judiciary (read "lawyers") has bought?

Here's a HUGE hint:

Each cycle, the contributions significantly favor Democrats. In the 2008 election cycle, the industry contributed a massive $234 million to federal political candidates and interests , 76 percent of which went to Democratic candidates and committees.

All those big name news outfits, CBS or FOX or what not, they are in the business of selling ad time. Digging and finding the truth costs money and produces uninteresting information. "Was there a mystery missile? Film at 11" collects eye-balls and sells ads. The amateur on the other hand does not have any incentive to hype the mystery and in fact has an incentive to debunk the myth. So he got it. Way to go.

Wish there are more such amateurs tracking the money and misinformation spread by everyone about politics.

getting a bit offtopic, but, there are such amateur sleuths following the money in politics... check out http://www.opensecrets.org/ and http://www.legistorm.com/

And this is incredibly more dangerous than, say, Michael Bloomberg funneling money into "Americans for Safe Streets" and running a bunch of political ads...

http://www.opensecrets.org/527s/527cmtedetail_donors.php?ein=263516710&cycle=2008

All those opposed to Citizens United are saying is that only the rich should be able to buy free speech.

Not terribly insightful, Exxon is prohibited by law from donating money. Employees of Exxon donated more to Obama than McCain in the 2008 election.

According to http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/search.php?cid=N00009638&name=(all)&employ=Exxon&cycle=2008&state=&zip=&amt=a&sort=A&page=2

Obama received $108,000 from 210 employees. Of those 210 donations, 41were more than $1000.

Mccain receved $64,000 from 95 employees, of those 95 donations 37 were more than $1000. The major difference in Obama and McCain contributions were the much larger mass of $100 to $500 dollar donations to Obama. They received pretty much the same amount from large donors.

McCain received quite a bit more money (about 3 to 1) from employees in the oil industry as a whole .... not that it really matters one way or another but your refuting of the gp was a bit off target.

I don't know how many lobbyists Westinghouse has

Typical corporate situation where a zillion corps own parts of a zillion other corps. However they seem to have blown about a couple million per year. So I'd guess a high single digit number of lobbyist equivalents, but probably dozens each working part time? Congressmen would see maybe fifty faces, but only get a handful of person-years of work out of the group (insert joke about sounding like where I work...)

https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/lookup.php?type=c&lname=Westinghouse&goButt2.x=0&goButt2.y=0&goButt2=Submit

There won't be another anti-trust lawsuit. Microsoft learned from their mistakes last time, and now donates enough to ensure it will never happen again. As documented here. It is really a shame that companies have to give money politically to avoid lawsuits, or that money donated can have any effect on lawsuits, but that is the reality of the game right now, and Microsoft is playing by the rules, and playing well. That's why there won't be another anti-trust lawsuit.

If the Rep's gain the house Upton (R-Mi) will become chair of the house telecommunications subcommittee. He's anti-net neutrality and also takes in a lot of money from Telcos. (AT&T Inc $93,600). But yeah, that's since '89 so he has been consistent.

"pulled the plug on efforts to work out a compromise among phone, cable, and Internet companies"

That right there is a perfect example of what's wrong with Washington. This debate, like so many others, doesn't consider the interests of the public, but simply the interests of the industry players directly affected by the new law.

There is absolutely no legitimate reason why the US government should be negotiating with AT&T (or Time Warner, or Comcast, etc). None. If the US government wants AT&T to do something, they can pass a law and/or issue a regulation that says AT&T has to do it. No negotiation required - if AT&T doesn't do it, the US government can then bring them to court. That's what makes the government different from a corporate partner of AT&T, and AT&T is subject to the government of the US as long as it's operating in the US.

However, there's an illegitimate reason why the US government negotiates with AT&T: AT&T is in the running at least for largest campaign contributor in the country.

Your decision to be titchy made me look it up. Turns out that the money was given not to the RNC, but to the RGA - they're different organizations. Still, that sort of thing happens - you mean one thing, you say another, when they're all in the same business.

If Fox didn't serve a market, it wouldn't be successful. If a large number of people feel like their voice isn't being heard, and you provide them with that outlet, you will make a lot of money. Rush Limbaugh realized this and has made himself a multimillionaire out of getting on radio and rambling for a few hours a day. Fox did the same. Why get upset about it? If the biggest problem facing America today is that there is one cable network that has the guts to be come down on one side of the political divide, then I think we're safe. After all, it's not as though England is riven with Guardian vs Telegraph death feuds.

As for the money, if you check out this article you'll notice that the parent companies of other networks, while not quite as one-sided (and before the $1M to RGA, News Corp wasn't so one-sided), have generally been well to the advantage of Democrats.

Opensecrets doesn't do a D-R split for individual vs PAC contributions from a given company, but if you'll take a look at this chart from 2008 and look at the GE subsidiary donations (all from individuals), you'll notice something: in the media subdivisions, nearly all the money goes to Democrats. Do you suggest that these people are somehow so noble that they check every bit of political prejudice at the door when they enter unto the temple of Journalism?

The MPAA, RIAA, and DMA have bought laws.

Don't you think that they have a right to expect a fair value for the legislators that they buy?

What good is buying a congressperson if you can't get the laws you want written the way you want?

Ever notice with party the MAFIAA goes to in order to purchase their laws?

Look here and here