The, “It's not a conspiracy” Theory

LOBBY: a group of persons engaged in lobbying especially as representatives of a particular interest group

lob-bied; lob-by-ing

1 : to promote (as a project) or secure the passage of (as legislation) by influencing public officials

2 : to attempt to influence or sway (as a public official) toward a desired action

So, it may not be an organized plot in that sense of the word, but it evolved.

Let's see, there are so many things and I personally have become aware of, I don't know where to start.

Let's start with this one.  The Milk lobby. Reconstituted milk is virtually indistinguishable from fresh and could be sold at a fraction of the price, but it isn't allowed. It is against the law. So much for freedom of being able to sell something beneficial to the public.  Who benefits from this? Milk producers and • • • congressmen, the recipients of the lobbying. Who loses? The rest of the nation. Has this ever been in the news? Yeah, maybe once. Just enough so they can say they "covered" the story.

[Let me point out that for a congressmen to benefit, it can mean directly; as in money or products but usually it means helping with staying in office as the primary goal, so that the benefits continue to roll in.  If they can keep getting reelected, that in itself is a windfall.  You have no idea the benefits of being a U.S. congressmen.]

Than there is an asphalt lobby believe it or not. So why an asphalt lobby? It seems that if you take used tires, a type of garbage this is piling up by the millions of tons in this country, and add it asphalt, it makes the roads last longer. What is wrong with that? You use less asphalt of course, hence; less profit for the asphalt industry. So who benefits from the 'don't force the industry to add used tires' legislation? The asphalt industry and of course; congressmen, the recipients of the lobbying. Who loses? The rest of us that didn't get a check from the asphalt industry lobby. Has this ever been in the news? Yeah, once.

The pharmaceutical industry has so blatantly benefited, especially from this last administration; I would say it was criminal. [Remember, the president doesn't pass legislation, congress does.] So who benefits from this? The pharmaceutical industry and of course, and congressmen; the recipients of the lobbying. Who loses? The rest of the nation, anyone that needed a cheaper prescription drug.  Has this ever been in the news? Yeah, a lot, but people seem to be paralyzed.

Yep, no conspiracy here as apparently everybody has congress doing something special for them, so it is fair to everybody, right? So what did special interest do for you?

Congress thinks nothing of spending millions on themselves. How about the ten million 'they' spent on their own personal subway in Washington D.C.? That was in the news, once.  They renovate their cafeterias (the Senate and the House have different) every other year. Kind of a rivalry about who has the better one so you know no expense spared. I think I got this item from 'Common Cause'. Also from the same source, when Tip O'Neil left office, a large moving van pulled up to his opulent office and everything (I mean everything, pictures, furniture, even the rug) was loaded up and sent to his home, including a very large expensive Mahogany desk. What is wrong with that you say? None of it was his! it was loaned to him from (you) the government while he was in office. He flat out stole it. When asked, “Why doesn't somebody stop him?” The replay was, “Why? They all do it.”  I'm absolutely positive I know of but a fraction of what is spent/stolen but “we” keep reelecting the same people to office. So congress voted that 'catsup' could be classified as a vegetable for school lunches, to save money, and they spend 'government' paid vacations on exotic 'fact-finding' vacations.

A few years back there was a voters revolt and a bunch of new people were voted into congress. Before they spent one day at work they were rounded up and given the 'word'. Wouldn't you love to hear what they were told?

Remember, over %50 of your congressmen are lawyers and they all have lawyers either directly advising them or some they work closely with.  So when there is a lawsuit (which always concern laws) who always wins?  A murder case, a divorce, a legal transfer of property, a criminal case, corporate battles, lawsuits over spilt hot coffee, who always wins?  The lawyers do, they always win, lawyers win when they loses and their client goes to the electric chair.  Lawyers write the laws.   Do you suppose they are going to write one that say makes it easy (and lawyer free) to process some litigation?   Ha!!!!   Isn't there just a little conflict of interest here?   I would probably need a lawyer to find out and I'm sure there are many that would be happy to help, for a fee.

The Clinton Administration was actively pursuing anti-monopoly legislation against Microsoft. They were making progress although in reality, probably just stalling tactics. Bill Gates agreed to admit that he did in-fact have 'secret coding' in his operating systems that allowed his software to run better than competitors. Of course as soon as, big business 'Bush' was elected all actions against Microsoft stopped. As Bill Gates admissions were to be part of a legal deal they cannot be used against him in any other lawsuit, it didn't happen.  There is something really screwed up with our system of government for one person to be able to dismiss a huge legal preceding like that, one that was entirely justified.

Do you remember the exposé on the sugar industry? Probably not, another one of those 'flash in the pan' deals where our media was too chicken shit to really try to fix an issue. It seems sugar in the U.S. costs about twice what it should. Recently a candy manufacture moved to Canada because of it. The sugar industry gives both political parties millions of dollars every year in donations (who knows what goes on un-reported) to maintain a virtual monopoly on sugar prices. Cheap imports should prevent that, right? Wrong! Imports are severely restricted. But dumb ol you and me go out and re-elect the same crooks to congress. Why? Because they tell us to. They have the money and Americans like to vote for either the person they hear the most of on TV (thank Saddam won't run this year) or the one they think will win. Americans deserve the screwing they are getting.

I told you, I told you, I told you! SUGAR update.

•••Sugar Industry Long Downplayed Potential Harm•••

November 21, 2017, New York Times

[link missing www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/well/eat/sugar-industry-long-downplayed] The sugar industry funded animal research in the 1960s that looked into the effects of sugar consumption on cardiovascular health - and then buried the data when it suggested that sugar could be harmful, according to newly released historical documents. Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at U.C.S.F. and an author of the new report, said that even though the newly discovered documents are 50 years old, they are important because they point to a decades-long strategy to downplay the potential health effects of sugar consumption. “This is continuing to build the case that the sugar industry has a long history of manipulating science,” Dr. Glantz said. The documents described in the new report are part of a cache of internal sugar industry communications that Cristin E. Kearns, an assistant professor at the U.C.S.F. School of Dentistry, discovered in recent years. Last year, an article in The New York Times highlighted some of the previous documents that Dr. Kearns had uncovered, which showed that the sugar industry launched a campaign in the 1960s to counter “negative attitudes toward sugar” in part by funding sugar research that could produce favorable results. The campaign was orchestrated by John Hickson, a top executive at the sugar association who later joined the tobacco industry. Mr. Hickson secretly paid two influential Harvard scientists to publish a major review paper in 1967 that minimized the link between sugar and heart health and shifted blame to saturated fat.

Industry hid decades-old study showing sugar's unhealthy effects

December 8, 2017, Chicago Tribune

[link missing www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/well/eat/sugar-industry-long-downplayed] More than four decades ago, a study in rats funded by the sugar industry found evidence linking the sweetener to heart disease and bladder cancer. The results of that study were never made public. Instead, the sugar industry pulled the plug on the study and buried the evidence, said senior researcher Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine and director of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. Glantz likened this to suppressed Big Tobacco internal research linking smoking with heart disease and cancer. "This was an experiment that produced evidence that contradicted the scientific position of the sugar industry," Glantz said. "It certainly would have contributed to increasing our understanding of the cardiovascular risk associated with eating a lot of sugar, and they didn't want that." Researchers at the University of Birmingham in England conducted Project 259 between 1967 and 1971, comparing how lab rats fared when fed table sugar versus starch. The scientists specifically looked at how gut bacteria processed the two different forms of carbohydrate. Early results in August 1970 indicated that rats fed a high-sugar diet experienced an increase in blood levels of triglycerides, a type of fat that contributes to cholesterol. Rats fed loads of sugar also appeared to have elevated levels of beta-glucuronidase, an enzyme previously associated with bladder cancer in humans, the researchers said.

Note: Read more about the sugar industry conspiracy. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the food system and in the scientific community.

Peanuts!  I almost forgot.  Did you know if you started a peanut farm today, (1990) you couldn't sell the product in U.S.?  Yet another item we are paying twice the going rate for.  Do you think Jimmy Carter cares?  Now do you know why he has that silly grin on his face all the time.

So no big deal, right?  So you pay a little more for peanuts, and sugar, and, and, and.   It evolved, the corruption evolved.  The peanut deal started as something to do with WWI, but it never went away.  It was one of many.  Your telephone bill contains a charge meant to pay off the WWI debt.  Another little nick out of your wallet.  The automated elevators in Washington D.C. (I don't remember where exactly, but government) have elevator operators (government employees) to push the button.  This is such a small thing that if you bring it up in political circles they laugh you into humiliation.   After all, they (the politicians) will tell you; "a million here and a million there, after a while it mounts up."

Remember it was the media that broke the story we could listen to Osama Bin Laden's satellite telephone calls.   I'll bet their proud of that. They also broke their to tell how we (scotlandyard) tracked the subway bombers across spain by monitoring their cell phone calls, Just recently (08-2006) several people were caught in the U.S. with a thousand disposable (untraceable) cell phones. Thanks media

Riddle:  What grows during a recession and prosperity, what votes itself more money for any excuse, especially if the economy is failing, what ---, ah-h-h; this is too easy.   But you will vote-em in again next election, won't you.

It would be so easy today to find out about your government, but people don't.

Here are A few things I found when I put "CONGRSSIONAL EXCESS" in a WEB search machine.

Wretched Judicial Excess

The Implosion of American Federalism. By Robert F. Nagel. Oxford University Press. 209 pp. $16.95 paper.

Next to the exponential growth of government itself, the most noteworthy feature of American political institutions in the past half-century has been the rise and acceptance of judicial supremacy.

OMB's Daniels To Step Down

‧ ‧ ‧ Daniels was praised by government reform advocates for his tough spending controls and implementation of the president's management agenda, which spelled improvements agencies should make in using performance data to make budget decisions, opening more federal jobs to commercial competition, and other areas. ‧ ‧ ‧

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But congressional leaders from both parties found him difficult to work with because of his strict views against government spending. Daniels blamed the recession and congressional excess for the federal budget swinging from surpluses to deficits during his tenure and promoted tax cuts as a means to eliminate the deficit.

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More lip service on spending reform

The Virginian-Pilot

April 15, 2004

Our Republican delegation in Washington never misses an opportunity to bemoan irresponsible congressional budget crafting.

But last week, when it came time to vote their convictions, they took a pass.

How else to explain votes by Sens. John Warner and George Allen and House members Ed Schrock and Randy Forbes to kill a sensible plan for restraining congressional excess.

During the cold war our congressmen built a bomb shelter costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars that was 40 minutes from Washington D.C.. Unfortunately, in their self-serving zeal they missed the fact that a submarine launched missile would reach Washington in only 20 minutes so the money was wasted. It has since been completely dismantled. (Green Brier) In contrast this same group of congressmen after careful consideration decided that ketchup could be considered as a vegetable when it comes to school lunches. Again; the same congress spent over one hundred thousand dollars each for video cameras (i.e. C-Span) that does electronic cosmetics on the congressmen so they don't look like the ancient decrepit old men that they are.

Unfortunately, your getting the leaders you thought you wanted.