re: pork barrel: somebody smarter explain this TPA shite that just got passed

quote:

---

But it was negotiated in secret - except there's ample evidence well connected lobbyists and corporations were privy to the language - and God knows how much was inserted to give advantage to the well connected.

---

I don't know the ins and outs of this particular deal, but I do know that this particular thought process is bullshite.

Let's pretend you are an average member of the US Congress.

You are a successful real estate agent, possibly an attorney. You won your little local popularity contest in your local district, and now you are a congressman.

A bill comes forward ... a bill to regulate concrete manufacturing.... you are a real estate agent and you don't know jack frick about concrete.

But you have to vote on the bill. What do you do? You talk to people you know who are in the business. People who know something about concrete.

Do you open the phone book and start randomly calling concrete companies from the yellow pages? No... because the yellow pages don't exist anymore. But even if they did, you still don't talk to random concrete people. You go through your list of contributors, there were 500 contributors. You see four of them are in the concrete business.

That's who you talk to. That's how you educate yourself about concrete.

Is that crooked?

It seems natural to me.

As long as the congressman votes his conscience after educating himself as best he can on an issue he knows jac shite about.

Of course lobbyists and corporations are consulted by congressmen, daily, reps and dems, talking about legislation. It would be incompetent of a congressman to not reach out to the organizations his vote will affect, on issues he knows jack shite about.