It really is a bit ridiculous how easily our congress is swayed by lobbyists. Freddie Mac got away with murder by buying off anyone and everyone. Read more commentary and get more information about the money Freddie Mac spent to avoid regulation. Let me know if you agree that it is ridiculous how companies like Freddie Mac pay off the people charged with regulating them.

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Geek Politics

I made a pretty picture:



That's contributions to all congressional candidates since '89, versus all contributions from Fannie and Freddie.

The real percent is 0.08% of total, or 0.00008

they also spent a large amount of money lobbying congress, not just for their campaigns. But that isn't the only point I was trying to make, as your graph points out, there are many many companies that are just like Freddie Mac. Part of what I was trying to say was that it is all ridiculous. I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear enough.

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Geek Politics

This really comes as no surprise, much like the contributions to congress during the FISA immunization fight.


Full Article:
http://www.maplight.org/FISA_June08

No before you go screaming partisan this or that, read some of my other posts and the sig, I'd just as soon hang an (R) as I would a (D) for corruption. You'll have to note in that article however, the (R)'s where all BUT ONE (I'm guessing RP) already caved on giving immunity to telcos for domestic spying. Essentially, you were already on the payroll, and this article was aimed at how much it costs to get more (D)'s to 'play ball'.

I wonder really, who is getting paid in DC right now, for the coming fiasco/meltdown/emergency we just don't know about now. Not attempting to thread jack, but are lobbyists really protected under free speech? Was there nothing built into our form of government to prevent the whole sale purchase and abuse of power in DC?

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I love America, I just hate what the (D)'s and (R)'s have done to it.

Partisan hacks exposed: 6

Party before country, explain yourself, sir! <-- Wow.

I completely agree sabin. It is rampant on both sides of the aisle.

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Geek Politics

Pretty picture.

Scary by your numbers, that's $666,666,666.66/year over the last 9 years

What source are you using? Is the implication your making that they are small fish in a big pond? Or, are you trying express the outrageously large sums of money in total have been pouring into DC to purchase influence?

Thanks

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I love America, I just hate what the (D)'s and (R)'s have done to it.

Partisan hacks exposed: 6

Party before country, explain yourself, sir! <-- Wow.

I know that there was 900 million contributed to congressional candidates this race (opensecrets.org). I assumed that 20 years ago, they were spending half that amount, so I multiplied it by 10 for each race and again by 2/3 as per my assumption. It's a reasonable estimate for the purpose of the thread.

I got the 7.5 million figure from here

The point I was trying to make wasn't that they were small fry, but ya, that there's a bigger picture. Really, I think that for their market cap, that their contributions were appropriate. It's those companies who spend more than one would expect for a company of their size that I would worry about, which would represent a small minority of total contributions.

So the graph that would go with this better would be the company's average market cap over their average contributions. It would be an even smaller percentage more than likely, considering they used tens of billions (~80B and ~40B at their peaks).

A new AP investigative report shows how corrupt and foolish our politicians are.

Here's an excerpt, you should read the entire thing.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/081207/the_i...eddie_mac.html


Basically, the 4 republicans had who sponsored the bill were correct in their belief that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were financially unsound. Granted, by the time the bill was written 90% of the damage was irreparable and the bill itself was pretty half-a$$ed and lenient, but at least they tried. Unfortunately, even when the Republican's values were pointing them in the right way the party had too many bought and paid for goons to even get the bill out of committee in the Republican controlled congress. And yes, the Democrats were dumb not to see this crisis coming too, but I would prefer moments of ignorance to outright corruption.

I would hope that after the previous election Republicans would realize that they can't win elections based on guns, god, and gays. I am slightly right of center on many economic issues such as free trade, low corporate taxes, limited regulation, and other free-market principles. Unfortunately, it seems as if the current Republican party is to corrupt to follow their free-market ideals when they would have made a difference.

Actually, Mack, that's how Washington works. And the Democrats are no less corrupt. Both parties are puppets to big money.

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Some days it's not even worth chewing through the restraints.

nobody's saying otherwise.

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Because you know how to government do/
they never snitch on themselves, but they want you to snitch on you/