Posted on 10/18/2006 4:58:46 PM PDT by upchuck
[snip]
Our country's middle class is not just collateral damage in what has become all-out class warfare. Political, business and academic elites are waging an outright war on working men and women and their families, and there is no chance the American middle class will survive this assault if the dominant forces unleashed over the past five years continue unchecked.
They've accomplished this through large campaign contributions, armies of lobbyists that have swamped Washington, and control of political/economic think tanks and media. Lobbyists, in fact, are the arms dealers in the war on the middle class, brokering money, influence and information between their clients our elected officials.
Yet I've literally never heard anyone in Congress argue that lobbyists are bad for America. In 1968 there were only 63 lobbyists in Washington. Today, there are more than 34,000, and lobbyists now outnumber our elected representatives and their staffs by a 2-to-1 margin.
According to the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity, from 1998 through 2004, lobbyists spent nearly $12 billion to not only influence legislation, but in many cases to write the language of the laws and regulations.
[snip]
a record $2.14 billion [was spent] on lobbying members of Congress and 220 other federal agencies in 2004, according to PoliticalMoneyLine. That's nearly $6 million a day spent to influence our leaders. We really do have the best government money can buy.
But as I discuss in my new book, "War on the Middle Class," what if we all resolved that we would not permit either the Republicans or Democrats to waste their time and ours with wedge issues? Both parties love to excite their bases by focusing on wedge issues like gay marriage, the pledge of allegiance, school prayer, judicial appointments, gun control, stem cell research and welfare reform.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
What does he know about being middle class?
Yeah, right. Let's all become Democrats, in other words.
What a bunch of equine fecal matter.
Lou Dobbs is a liberal pinhead.
The only way the middle class is going to survive in the end is thru bloody revolution.
No he isn't. He has a wide range of interests.
Just a shill for the RAT party. Anyone who works for CNN is suspect, look at the trouble Bob Novak caused the GOP.
The middle class does not do revolution. The ruling class excites the rabble which then does the bloody revolution.
In Lou's mind, values are wedge issues....he is a liberal pin head and he is out stumping for the democrats, period.
Not only does he split his infinitive, he adds an extra, and improper, "to" in for good measure.
"What does he know about being middle class?"
For starters, he knows that the American middle class props up the other two classes.
Mr Dobbs has not a clue what the hell he's talking about, as usual.
The guy's a parasite. I watched his show tonight - he's running for something soon, that's for sure.
The tax receipts don't show that at all. So how is your statement true?
Lobbyists are a symptom. It is not that there is too much money in politics. There is too much politics in money.
I actually like Lou Dobbs--a lot. He is one of the few in the media who has not swept illegal immigration, border problems, terrorism, or our manufacturing decline under the rug. And he takes wacks at both parties. In short, he is NOT A STOODGE, as so many in the MSM are these days. My only regret is that he works for CNN, but he doesn't appear to tow the usual CNN line.
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