MOYERS - So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying & Corrosion of the American Government

[Dover]

Friday night, PBS


Robert G. Kaiser has been following Beltway politics for THE WASHINGTON POST for nearly 50 years. Bill Moyers talks with Kaiser about how our nation’s Capitol has succumbed to lobbyists and turned government into big business. Kaiser is author of SO DAMN MUCH MONEY: THE TRIUMPH OF LOBBYING AND THE CORROSION OF AMERICAN GOVERNMENT.


And, Bill Moyers sits down with Parker J. Palmer, founder and senior partner of the Center for Courage & Renewal, for a conversation about maintaining spiritual wholeness even as the economy and political order seem to come apart.

[slipslidingaway]

1. Thanks for the heads up K&R n/t

[Dover]

2. sounds like another good one!...n/t

[slipslidingaway]

3. Yes.... here is a link about the show with a few more details

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/02202009/profile.html

"...Kaiser tells Bill Moyers on the JOURNAL about Cassidy, a complex "self-invented" man, who escaped a poor childhood to amass a huge fortune in the influence industry, "To me, the Cassidy story is wonderfully illustrative of how Washington became a venue -- in my time and your time -- a venue for the great American pastime, which is not baseball, but making money."

Kaiser's is not a tale of heroes and villains, but of people ambitious for wealth and power exploiting the system on behalf of monied interests of all kinds, from universities to major corporations. While cautioning that the U.S. government has never been perfect, and that lobbying is protected by the first amendment, Kaiser argues that the system still could be improved.

It can be much more transparent than it's been. We can see people, what they're doing, much more clearly than we've been able to do so far. There are reforms that are possible. But we're never gonna make people into pure, you know, Christian gentleman. It doesn't happen that way.

Kaiser explains that as long as Washington is a center of money and power, it will tempt some people. He illustrates his point with the story that titled his book:

I went to Strauss, and I said, "Explain to me why the lobbying business has boomed so, in the years that you've been in it, 35 years." And he thought about it for a minute, and he said, "You know, there's just so damn much money in this."

[Dover]

4. Thanks. Too much money for sure, not to mention a revolving door for

plum positions in those very firms when they leave Congress! Or some other firm that has paid to play.

[slipslidingaway]

5. YW and kick. n/t

[slipslidingaway]

6. ...n/t

[GiveMeFreedom]

7. K&R n/t