{"id":89,"date":"2008-05-24T10:51:32","date_gmt":"2008-05-24T17:51:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/xsml\/archives\/89"},"modified":"2008-05-24T10:51:32","modified_gmt":"2008-05-24T17:51:32","slug":"business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/2008\/05\/24\/business\/","title":{"rendered":"business"},"content":{"rendered":"

glenn greenwald<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Just in the first three months of 2008, recent lobbyist disclosure statements reveal that AT&T spent $5.2 million in lobbyist fees (putting it well ahead of its 2007 pace, when it spent just over $17 million). In the first quarter of 2008, Verizon spent $4.8 million on lobbyist fees, while Comcast spent $2.6 million. So in the first three months of this year, those three telecoms — which would be among the biggest beneficiaries of telecom amnesty (right after the White House) — spent a combined total of almost $13 million on lobbyists. They’re on pace to spend more than $50 million on lobbying this year — just those three companies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

as my dad would say “what a racket.” as in racketeering<\/a>. <\/p>\n

the executive branch asks companies to become accomplices in a crime spree. the companies accede. a few years later, the white house gets caught<\/a>. the companies get caught<\/a>. and now the legislative branch, via its unofficial intercessors, is asking these companies to pony up some money or else they’re going to get fined, prosecuted, whatever.<\/p>\n

it almost makes arguments for small government conservatism sound reasonable. why empower crooks to lie and steal? <\/p>\n

unfortunately that logic would also dictate that we do away with freeways because they lead to forty thousand deaths<\/a> each year when the reasonable response is to make freeways more efficient and less dangerous by making them more “transparent<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

the same logic applies to governance<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

glenn greenwald: Just in the first three months of 2008, recent lobbyist disclosure statements reveal that AT&T spent $5.2 million in lobbyist fees (putting it well ahead of its 2007 pace, when it spent just over $17 million). In the first quarter of 2008, Verizon spent $4.8 million on lobbyist fees, while Comcast spent $2.6…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}