thanks to Kevin Drum at the washington monthly.

Here is an article in Le Monde, of which the first 3 paragraphs are translated by me

American Elections: lobbyists, money, and power. AFP/KAREN BLEIER

Having become an integral part of American politics, lobbying is never more active that during elections when their clients want to get elected those candidates most receptive to their demands ("préoccupations"). The term "lobbyist" means attempting to influence the authorities. Lobby -- "large entranceway", in english -- evoking illusions of the longtime standing in the lobby trying to influence and talk to those who can influence events.

The first lobbyists are noted during the 1870 census. They slithered the lobby of teh Willard Hotel, near both the Treasury and the White House, hoping to rub shoulders with the Secretary of the Treasury, even with President Grant, who would drop by to smoke his cigars. Back in 1870, the President command a couple dozen salarys. Today, there are 900 high-level bureaucrats, often whom are merely the mouthpieces for lobbyists.

According to the federal statute, lobbying is a "communication" carried out by an interested party in front of an elected official or a civil servant of the presidency or the 200 federal agencies (public administrations), bearing on the formulation or the modification of a law. The law of 1995 (Lobbying Disclosure Act) defines as lobbyist whoever gains at least 5,000 dollars or spends at least 20,000 dollars for this activity during six months and has established more than one contact. Lobbyist must register themselves and regularly publish their accounts. In March 2005, 21,500 lobbyists were registered with the House of Representatives. The Center for Public Integrity estimates that 22,000 companies used the services of 3,500 lobbying firms and more than 27,000 lobbyists since 1998.

21,500 hired full time agents trying to influence 435 representatives and their staffs, or about 22 per Congressman. Some of the staff members are also past and future lobbyists. Many Congressman cross over to lobbyist after they retire from government.

As for the history of "K Street," you can find out more by clicking here.

Click here for the ABC Corporate memo to ABC affiliated stations requesting that there are 100 advertisers who are not to be aired on "Air America Radio" programs. This is called blacklisting.

When the public airwaves become surrogately owned by private corporations, the advertizers that pay for ads will pull their financial support when they do not like programming. You don't see them pulling ads from liars like Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, O'Reilly, and the Fox propaganda channel -- but here they are, requesting that ABC stations not get paid for the Air America programs they put on the air.

This is the anti-democratic nature of corporations, who have a real interest in screening the information that gets through to the public. We need to enforce the Anti-trust laws on these media conglomerates. How many stories in the news media will ever honestly inspect the actions of these corporations? None that the advertizers don't approve, because they don't care to have their monopolistic, immoral, illegal corrupt activities thoroughly explained to the public. This why the news is dominated by celebrity gossip or the civil court- room drama, just like McDonalds' hamburgers are added with phosphates, flavor "enhancers", and other fatty leftovers before they are freeze-dried.

And now these corporate advertizers have gotten so accustomed to this practice over the decades that they send lawyers to regularly staff the production meetings of the big media companies. Editors and executive producers all get promotions based upon understandings of how things work, and they pick journalists and reporters of the same mold. A single phone call from a General Electric CEO got ABC to pull a story on the failure of Nuclear Energy. Two Florida Fox News Reporters got fired when they refused to pull a show about MBT treated cow milk because a Monsanto lawyer wanted the story yanked after many failed attempts to rewrite the story. MSNBC canned its most popular show, Phil Donahue in the months just before March 2003 because the CEO's didn't want a show on the air that might be critical of the President and the war : popularity be damned.

Recall how pitiful the "press" did on the lies of the Iraq war, and the Ohio debacle of 2004 that had to wait until John Conyers independently formed a committee and published a 120 page cursory book on the plethora of suspicious irregularities that needed investigation. -- (Ken Blackwell meet Katherine Harris) -- The Press ignored (and continues to ignore) the way Choicepoint DBA got paid $4 million to provide a sloppy, 90% inaccurate felon list that Katherine Harris used to purge some 60,000 plus black voters from Florida polls that were not felons.

This is how the borderline between filtered news and censorship gets very ambiguous. A big advertiser doesn't like a certain person that is interviewed, or wants to reframe a video spot by clipping out some of the video. Words are editted and changed, not always with the same meaning or implication. The Headline Titles are rarely chosen by the story authors. Even whole details might be removed or altered at the whims of the editors and executive producers for reasons that are not altruistic or honest. The last resort is always to pull the plug, or put the piece in cold storage.

If you've been reading my blog regularly, you've come across my periodic tear down of some bogus reporting or story development. One thing you must remember : there are usually 3 or 4 different versions on the news wire for any big story. A news source is free to pick up the editted version instead of the original story. A lot of Associated Press (AP) and (now that it is owned by Rupert Murdoch) United Press International (UPI) stories are just selectively edited versions of an original story published by some other journalist somewhere else. Thus, unless you seek out the primary source, you might be getting the McDonald's burger instead of the real sirloin steak. Newspapers and local TV news stations are particularly vulnerable to this selective edited story phenomenom, because unless the reporting is local, they usually depend upon outside organizations for their information.

A short list of these advertisers will surprise you :

1. Bank of America
2. Exxon Mobil
3. Federal Express
4. General Electric
5. McDonald's -- Ronald McDonald despises the truth
6. Microsoft -- A fatal system crash might otherwise occur
7. Wal-Mart
8. Hyatt
9. Visa
10. MGM
11. Nestle
12. Frito-Lay
13. NYSE
14. Office Depot
15. Pepsi -- the choice of a brainwashed nation
16. The Discovery Channel
17. the U.S. Navy -- which loves Rush Limbaugh

Some of these are owned by larger holding companies and are not really independent financial entities.

From the DC Examiner, the other paper of record in the Nation's Capital. The story is by ANNE PLUMMER FLAHERTY, an Associated Press reporter.

The special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction found that Houston-based Halliburton's Kellogg, Brown & Root Services routinely marked all information it was giving the government as proprietary, whether it actually was or not. The government promises not to disclose proprietary data so a company's most valuable information is not divulged to its competitors.

By marking all information proprietary - including such normally releasable data as labor rates - the company abused federal regulations, the report says.

In effect, Kellogg, Brown & Root turned the regulations "into a mechanism to prevent the government from releasing normally transparent information, thus potentially hindering competition and oversight."

. . .

Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee, said that in 13 oversight hearings on the war in Iraq the committee found more than $1 billion in waste, fraud, abuse and what it called "shoddy work" by contractors.

"I'm convinced that this is the biggest waste, fraud and abuse in the history of this country," Dorgan said.

If the Democrats take control of the Senate, he said, they will launch oversight hearings on war matters ranging from faulty intelligence leading up to the war to wrongdoing by contractors.

And today's San Francisco Comical Front Page stories (keep in mind the Sunday paper really comes out Saturday afternoon ... which is another way for corporate headquarters to skim cuts and suck out more profits) :

1. A desperate, critical time in Gaza Strip at close of Ramadan - Matthew Kalman . . . Life is brutally hard in Gaza

2. Dems face a tug-of-war in own tent - Marc Sandalow, Washington Bureau Chief of bullshit, trying to sew the seeds of division. Ask yourself this Mr. Sandalow, what's the difference between how many Democrats are voting Republican this year, and how many Republicans are voting Democrat? And on the front page!

3. Forget the mashed peas -- you've come a long way, baby food - Tara Duggan . . .The health issues of organic baby food

4. THE CITY'S COST OF A LIFE REDEEMED - Kevin Fagan, Brant Ward . . . The cost of taking care of homelessness and drug addict health issues

5. Those wrinkles aren't from squinting YouTube, MySpace, computer gaming -- a big chunk of users approach middle age - Joe Garofoli . . . Wow, like oh my god, sooooo much more important then Halliburton corruption!

Don't give me credit. I "borrowed" this from bartcop, a pretty cool site.

"You ought to just back off, take a look at it, relax, understand that it's complicated, it's difficult," - Rumsfeld at a press conference 27 October 2006.

William A. Niskanen is chairman of the Cato Institute and former acting chairman of President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers.

Click Here for Mr. Niskanen (Chairman of the Cato Institute) explain why everyone should vote for a Democrat this year. He calls it "A Case for Divided Government."

The post is brief, maybe 10 paragraphs. He gives three historical points. Here is how he introduces the article.

For those of you with a partisan bent, I have some bad news:

Our federal government may work better (less badly) when at least one chamber of Congress is controlled by a party other than the party of the president. The general reason for this is that each party has the opportunity to block the most divisive measures proposed by the other party. Other conditions, of course, also affect political outcomes, but the following types of evidence for this hypothesis are too important to ignore:

Wow. The chairman of the Cato Institute.

Click here for the groundbreaking book that inspired generations by Jack Herer, The Emperor Wears No Clothes, or what I prefer to call, The Truth About Hemp.

This book was about 250 or so pages ... and was the nom de guerre of the environmental movement in the late 80's and 90's when I was a young man transitioning between high school, college, and the real world. The fact of the matter is that many of our current resource and production sources are the leftover decisions of a time in the past. Our current use of resources and energy production is not efficient nor wise and not even economical. For me this book opened up the huge reality of what choices and possibilities there are. I'll have to detail the current evolution of this thought process at a latter time.

The book was a book a fraternity brother actually introduced me to, and was actually quite well known on Tulane University campus where I went to college. The campus bookstore actually had copies for sale for a time when I was a sophomore, or at least I remember seeing the books for sale at the campus bookstore when I was a Sophomore.

If you need a quick synopsis, Click here for Chapter Two, which gives the historical reality.

I can't believe this is actually online now. Wow.

If you do a google on "Prescott Bush" these are the first 2 links you get (as of today) :

1. Click here for wikipedia.
2. Click here for an excellent account by the New Hampshire Gazette.

   Oh but there's more:

3. Click here for a story in the London Guardian.

4. Click here for Chapter 2 of George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography --- by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin

If you want more, do the google on "Prescott Bush" yourself.

Click here for the full article

Trips to the Marianas paid for by Abramoff for Republican Ralph Hall (R-TX) who represents the Texas Fourth Congressional District. The Marianas islands are a haven for the under age sex slave rings; but they are really all across the Far East, in Vietnam, the Philipines, Thailand, Burma, and India. But the Marianas islands are an American Territory. There are secret places.

Well, you see

Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX) took the floor of Congress in 1996 to question a 15 year- old girl's claim that she had been the victim of sex trafficking in the Northern Mariana Islands, a client of Jack Abramoff. "[S]he wanted to do nude dancing," Hall said. A lobbyist working with Abramoff helped Hall prepare his statement, and Abramoff had earlier paid for a trip by Hall to the islands.

...

Asked how the 1996 trip benefited the Texas Fourth Congressional District he represents, Hall said, “I think it benefits my constituents if you do anything that benefits the Peace Through Strength people, when you’re going out to bring information to them to help win the Cold War. That’s a benefit to them, to their strategic interests.”

So was the trip financed by Abramoff part of an influence peddling, black arts offering of sorts? I mean, the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, and what does denying the truth of sex trafficking have to do with the Cold War anyway?

Can you say, PERVERT.

Click here for the US news wire public release.

This is a breaking story. 65 Active Iraq Soldiers are standing down.

Active-Duty Troops Launch Campaign to Press Congress to End U.S. Occupation of Iraq

65 Members to Send "Appeals for Redress" Under the Military Whistle-blower Protection Act

10/23/2006 9:58:00 AM

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To: Assignment Desk, Daybook Editor

Contact: Trevor Fitzgibbon, 202-246-5303, or Alex Howe, or Laura Gross, 202-822- 5200, for Fenton Communications

News Advisory:

For the first time since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, active- duty members of the military are asking Members of Congress to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq and bring American soldiers home.

Sixty-five active-duty members have sent Appeals for Redress to Members of Congress. Three of these people (including two who served in Iraq) and their attorney will speak about this on Wednesday, Oct. 25 at 11 a.m. EDT.

Under the Military Whistle-Blower Protection Act (DOD directive 7050.6), active- duty military, National Guard and Reservists can file and send a protected communication to a Member of Congress regarding any subject without reprisal.

What: Three active-duty members of the military and their lawyer, a retired U.S. Marine Corps JAG, make comments and take questions from the media.

When: Wednesday, Oct. 25, 11 a.m. EDT