$20 Million on Lobbying Defeats CA Privacy Bill

sphughes writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that banks, insurance companies and other corporations spent more than $20 million in campaign contributions and lobbying expenses to defeat a recent consumer privacy bill SB773. The story can be found here. These are preliminary figures through July and may actually run much higher. The bill had been modified from opt-in to opt-out but was still killed."

Comments

Until The Surpeme Court Restores Balance

[FreeUser]

Until the Supreme Court restores the balance it destroyed with its 1978 decision to equate corporate dollars and legalized bribery with freedom of speech, we can only expect this sort of thing to continue.

Even insurrection in the streets is unlikely to do much, as the corporate rhetoric will simply change to "don't give in to mass terrorism, and by the way, here's another two hundred grand for next years campaign." The sole method by which this can be stopped is for the voters to turn these fuckers out for good and put them in the unemployment line, but alas, the latter is prevented by corporate favors granting these useless ex-politicos positions as "consultants," with most of their "consulting" done on the golf course or the beach, while the former is prevented by the Media Cartel's monopoly on widespeard information dissemination which effectively locks everyone out of politics at the federal level who doesn't have millions to spend, thus closing the circle on effective citizen participation in govrenment at the federal level completely.

The Internet may play a role is offsetting this ... but as we all know, there are potent efforts underway to take that particular voice out of our hands in order to protect the cartels of Hollywood and Nashville, efforts designed to put us back in our place, on the couch, accepting whatever they wish to spoonfeed us.

So, what have any of you done about it, beyond a moment's expression of outrage?