{"id":4321,"date":"2011-11-01T11:25:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-01T17:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/election\/they-get-what-they-pay-for\/"},"modified":"2011-10-31T11:27:56","modified_gmt":"2011-10-31T17:27:56","slug":"they-get-what-they-pay-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/election\/they-get-what-they-pay-for\/","title":{"rendered":"They get what they pay for."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I believe most people in government are decent public servants. I\u2019m very reluctant to believe a large number of members of Congress take out-right bribes: \u201cGive me $$$ for my vote.\u201d However, it is clear that the cost of elections is corrupting everyone at every level, down to the local TV stations selling ads. Either there should be no political advertising (Free speech! Yeah, right.) or it should be <em>free<\/em> (x hours per candidate; no ads for causes; if you want to promote your cause, run for office).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/10\/30\/opinion\/sunday\/friedman-did-you-hear-the-one-about-the-bankers.html?_r=1&amp;pagewanted=all\">Did You Hear the One About the Bankers? &#8211; NYTimes.com<\/a> by Paul Krugman [hat tip to Pat Lyford]<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>[W]hat happened to us? Our financial industry has grown so large and rich it has corrupted our real institutions through political donations. As Senator Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, bluntly said in a 2009 radio interview, despite having caused this crisis, these same financial firms \u201care still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they, frankly, own the place.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Our Congress today is a forum for legalized bribery. One consumer group using information from <a href=\"http:\/\/Opensecrets.org\">Opensecrets.org<\/a> calculates that the financial services industry, including real estate, spent $2.3 billion on federal campaign contributions from 1990 to 2010, which was more than the health care, energy, defense, agriculture and transportation industries combined. <font style=\"background-color: #ffc000\">Why are there 61 members on the House Committee on Financial Services? So many congressmen want to be in a position to sell votes to Wall Street.<\/font> <\/p>\n<p>We can\u2019t afford this any longer.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/10\/30\/opinion\/sunday\/friedman-did-you-hear-the-one-about-the-bankers.html?_r=1&amp;pagewanted=all\">Did You Hear the One About the Bankers? &#8211; NYTimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I believe most people in government are decent public servants. I\u2019m very reluctant to believe a large number of members of Congress take out-right bribes: \u201cGive me $$$ for my vote.\u201d However, it is clear that the cost of elections is corrupting everyone at every level, down to the local TV stations selling ads. Either &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/election\/they-get-what-they-pay-for\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">They get what they pay for.<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}