[yummyfajitas]

We live in a democracy with free speech. This means that people are permitted to go to elected officials and ask for whatever they want. It's the job of the politicians to say no.

Incidentally, I don't know if you realize this, but the biggest lobbyists are primarily labor unions (e.g., the NEA, who donate more money than Goldman Sachs) and professional groups (realtors, trial lawyers), not corporations.

http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?order=A

[msg]

For reference, All time #6 is the NEA with $37M, #7 is Goldman with $36M.

If you look at people counts, the NEA has about 3.2 million people. Goldman has about 36,000 employees. Two orders of magnitude more contribution per person.

As a smaller business, their interests in the law are more targeted. And their lobbying is also very effective.

You can speak freely to politicians, but getting them to listen is not free. You buy their ear with campaign contributions and you hold the hammer of future contributions as you make polite suggestions about how the law should be changed in your favor.

I don't think it's fair to put politicians under that pressure. There's clear evidence that our system has failed in that way and we need to change it to move forward.

[jbooth]

Biggest lobbyists with records. Hard to track all that money going into PACs these days what with the recent court decisions.