There is a fine legal line between lobbying and bribery. A nation where bribery has become a way of life is a kleptocracy. Differing social and cultural norms around the globe have different expectations of when a monetary transaction is appropriate. Political campaign contributions in the form of cash, for example, are considered criminal acts of bribery in some countries, while in the United States they are legal.
Politicians, Court Officials, Doctors, and athletes receive payoffs, gifts or campaign contributions from powerful corporations, organizations and individuals. However, such a relationship does not meet the legal standards for bribery here without evidence of a quid pro quo: "a favor for a favor, tit for tat,"or "you scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours."
Follow the money; track political donations in all 50 states.
The ability of individuals, groups, and corporations to lobby the government is protected by the right to petition. Please scroll down from the link to the top lobbying sectors and their total spending between 1998 and 2010 and note these amounts do not include campaign contributions. Special interests retain lobbying firms, many of them located along Washington's legendary K Street; other lobbyists work in-house. Influence peddling happens often; as in election support money in anticipation of favorable policy.
The Best Government Money Can Buy? is an absorbing documentary about lobbyists' role in American politics, the far-reaching implications of their spending on elections and their threat to our Republic. It begs the question, just how influential are lobbyists? One of the core beliefs inciting the Wall Street protests has been our pay to play political system. This video shows lobbying groups writing our laws for congress and telling them what to say and do. It show how various groups and corporations look upon the billions of dollars yearly spent on campaign contributions and to lobby members of congress as investments. ($100 return for every $1 spent). The corruption of our political and judicial systems are exposed. and we are convincingly shown that government to the highest bidder has created an untenable situation. "A GOVERNMENT FOR THE PEOPLE BY THE PEOPLE," hardly exists.
Money makes the world go round but greed (the love of money) is the root of almost all evil.. Our republic is dangerously close to becoming a kleptocracy. The best tools we have to tame the beast (big government) are transparency, education and ethics with a keen focus on down-sizing to regain our roots of self-government.
"The vision of the founders was to set up a government that would remain small and unobtrusive via a system of checks and balances. That it has taken our government so long to get this big speaks well of the original design. The founders also knew the overwhelming nature of governments was to amass power and grow. The Constitution was to serve as the brakes on the freight train of government." Dr. Ron Paul emphatically calls for a return to that original design and for putting a stop to the eroding of our principles.
We can be more effective in responding to a situation if we understand its true character. The web is the fastest growing communications medium in the history of the world. A powerful tool, a window of opportunity, in our war of good over evil; the Internet continues to revolutionize the way we communicate and has enormous potential for reshaping the political process.
Morally bankrupt financiers, empire builders and leaders in their pockets make capitalism abhorrent with their predatory capitalism. Predatory capitalism due to big government interference and protection destroys people. Benign or ethical capitalism, America's founders' vision of the free market, creates a world of abundance for all.
"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things bought and sold are legislators." -- P. J. O'Rourke. The second things bought and sold are regulators! The free market is a more powerful and efficient regulator than government. Let ethics and the free market rule! Ethics and transparency! The state does not run the affairs of people in a free society. It upholds justice between people who conduct their own affairs.
Our friend in Liberty, Clifford Schaffer, is a history buff who created a library about marijuana laws. "The laws were absolute lunacy, passed by lunatics. Every major government commission in the last 100 years has said that the mj laws are a disaster."
Schaffer enjoys relating these historical facts: "Only two doctors testified before Congress for the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. The representative of the American Medical Association testified that marijuana was not a dangerous drug and there was no reason for the law. In response, the committee told him to shut up and leave."
Please note, cannabis medicines were once the “drugs of choice” in the United States. Until they were declared illegal, they had been used in about 30 prescription medicines for a 100 specific medical problems.
Schaffer continues, "The only other doctor was Dr. James Munch. His sole claim to fame was that he had injected marijuana directly into the brains of 300 dogs, and two of them died. When they asked him what he concluded from this, he said he didn't’t know what to conclude because he wasn't a dog psychologist. He also testified in court, under oath, that marijuana could make your fangs grow six inches long and drip with blood, and that it could turn you into a bat."
"Dr. Munch was the only doctor in the US who thought that marijuana should be illegal so he was appointed US Official Expert on marijuana, where he served for 25 years. That is just one example of the lunacy. There is far more than that in the history of these laws."
Decriminalize nonviolent behavior, get tough on violent crime! Across the US last year a third of the murders, almost 60% of the rapes and about half of the aggravated assaults went unsolved! The cumulative effect of this is horrendous. While we police individual recreational and medicinal use of drugs; murderers and violent sexual predators roam free.
The proliferation of paramilitary drug raids triggers violence instead of preventing it. Nonviolent drug users have been demonized into the enemy. It is morally bankrupt to punish nonviolent adults for making a safer health choice, cannabis or marijuana, compared to other legal medicinal/social drugs. The people believe in self-government and self-medication.
Steve Jobs could never deny the connection between Apple and psychedelics. He was a very honest man and he gave credit for the benefits he got from drugs. LSD played a huge role in the evolution of Apple. Much high tech and High IQ linked to drug use. "The 'Just Say No' generation was often told by parents and teachers that intelligent people didn't use drugs. Turns out, the adults may have been wrong."
The lobby system is not far from legalized bribery but asset forfeiture really is legalized extortion! We owe reparations to people for all this tyranny.Asset Forfeiture: What To Do When Police Seize Your Property an Ebook by ForfeitureEndangersAmericanRightsFoundation tells citizens what to do if it happens to them. It outlines the law with links to statutes, cases, and Internet resources. Asset forfeiture is a booming money tree for law enforcement; federal forfeiture raked in $2.5 billion in 2010 alone. Over 400 federal statutes trigger forfeiture but you don't even have to be charged with a crime to lose property to forfeiture.
Taking property from people who have made a safer health choice or have not been convicted of breaking a law is legalized discrimination and extortion! End asset forfeiture!
Sixteen states have voted to legalize use of cannabis/marijuana as a medicinal herb. Rescheduling marijuana for medical use is certainly a helpful step, but most smokers are not patients, and they should not have to act as if they are sick and pay some "pot doc" a fee for the permission to smoke.
Regulate cannabis like alcohol and tobacco or just reclassify it, as the herbal supplement it is scientifically!
Taxpayers have paid Monitoring the Future (MTF) to survey 2 million teens aged about 14 to 18 since 1975. In the words of MTF, "[M]arijuana has been almost universally available to American 12th graders over the past 33 years." And "The reason for not using or stopping marijuana use cited by the fewest seniors [less than 7 percent] over the 29 years of data included in this analysis was: availability." The number who say drugs are "easy to get" dwarfs the number who actually use them.
CNN reports: Teens drink bleach to pass drug tests!! Effective drug education based on medical science builds student's confidence to make informed responsible choices. Drug testing, scare tactics and other propaganda can cause terrible unintended consequences like this! The truth about drugs will keep our children safer. Sound medical and unbiased scientific knowledge are the most effective moral persuasions. Present policy falsehoods and scare tactics undermine our credibility.
Drug warriors are desperately trying to keep patients from a safe, effective, often essential medicine in order to "protect" teens by supporting policy that triggers despicable people to sell drugs to minors, recruit them to sell to their peers and arm them to kill the competition. It's been estimated, about a million teens now sell marijuana in our nation's schools. How can such tyrannical hypocrites, caught up in reefer madness, sleep at night and just get through their days except with copious amounts of alcohol or pharmaceuticals, maybe both?
Incarceration is seven times more expensive than treatment. Less than 1% of US are actually addicted to anything illegal. Restore public and law enforcement safety around the globe! Change to ethical policy and show fiscal responsibility! Save lives instead of ruining them. Restore Justice, the guardian of liberty!
Burzynski is an expose' on the business of cancer treatment and the United States government's relentless persecution of Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, a pioneering biochemist who boldly challenged the in bed with big pharma, FDA. Burzynski has won astonishing legal victories centered around Dr. Burzynski's gene-targeted cancer medicines he discovered in the 1970's called Antineoplastons. Keeping our government from revoking his medical license and staying out of prison has been a 14-year battle Dr. Burzynski and his patients have had to endure in order to obtain FDA-approved clinical trials of Antineoplastons.
Dr. Burzynski lives and practices medicine in Houston, Texas. Initially he was able to produce and administer his discovery without FDA-approval from 1977-1995 since the state of Texas, during that period, did not require that Texas physicians adhere to Federal law in this situation. That has since been changed.
The Spirit of '76 was the Holy Spirit and is our true north! God is one name for the Holy Spirit, the spark of life that resides in our mortal bodies. The part of us with ethics and with an interest in making the world a better place. Quite simple put, God is the union of our consciousness. It is a definite case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. This Spirit unites us, regardless of religion, politics or culture. United we can Downsize DC and be a shining example for people around the world to secure the blessings of liberty for us all including future generations.
"How do wars start? Diplomats lie to reporters, and then believe what they read in the newspapers." -- Karl Krauss (the Austrian H.L. Menken)
Cut the military industrial complex's budget to the bone. Empire-building, policing the world, and casting off the Constitution's restraints solidifies tyranny at home, devastates the economy, and increases the threats to our national security. I believe in, promote and defend a safer, constitutional, non interventionist foreign policy. This is the safer policy envisioned by our founders. I support our troops and want to bring them home safe.
I am a peace activist and feel our over grown military industrial complex and paramilitary law enforcement complex are the biggest threats to liberty we face. War is a tool governments use to make us more accepting of their waste of our precious lives and resources. War creates a booming economy for some on the suffering of many.
Do we want to be known as a disgusting military super power, policing the world or as a humanitarian super power? "Strike the root!" Be brave, that's how we end terror. All we have to do is stop being afraid, and stop acting out of fear.
Save lives instead of ruining them. Join LEAP, COP and DownSizeDC!
Get tough on violent crime! Restore Justice, the guardian of liberty!
Track your Senators' and Representative's votes by e-mail.
Changing who's in charge will not affect much. The real cause of this huge quagmire of failed policy is the beast, big government, that money hungry beast, Uncle Sam! Ma Freedom tells it like it is! The beauty of it is when we focus on down-sizing our government we regain our roots of self-government and secure the blessings of liberty for future generations and ourselves.
Compiled and written by Colleen McCool