CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER
Legalized
Bribery Tracker at the Click of the Mouse, Coming Soon
21 Corporate Crime Reporter 21, May 16, 2007
In third world countries, it’s called illegal bribery.
Under the table payments.
In the United States, it’s called legalized bribery.
Legal campaign contributions.
Over the table payments.
Almost ten years ago now, former Congressman Cecil Heftel (D-Hawaii) was so disgusted with the system he worked under on Capitol Hill that he published an expose, book length, titled “End Legalized Bribery.” (Seven Locks Press, 1998).
To no avail.
Everyone in Washington knows how the system works.
Money in, favors out.
And most everyone accepts it.
Every once in a while, some prosecutor somewhere can make a case that there was something more than a wink and a nod.
Front and center – former Congressman Randy Duke Cunningham.
Now behind bars in federal prison in Tucson, Arizona.
But usually, it’s all above board.
Back in the 1960s, the automobile industry even got a law passed that exempted auto companies from being criminally prosecuted if they sold a dangerous product.
Nobody went to jail for cutting that deal.
Tell me no money exchanged hands.
But wouldn’t it be great to have a web site detailing over the table money to legislators and how they voted on special interest legislation?
Well, today, the San Francisco-based Maplight Foundation is unveiling a web
site it says will do the trick.
The web site combines all campaign contributions to U.S. legislators with legislators’ votes on every bill.
So, you can actually try to figure out where the money came from, where it went, and whether or not your member of
Congress voted for or against those pumping the money – over the table – into their campaigns.
So, for example, let’s say that you wanted to check on your Senator and how he or she voted on a bill (S. 1082) that passed the Senate last week (by a vote of 48 to 40) to prevent consumers from buying prescription drugs from abroad.
According to the press release put out by the foundation, the web site makes it “easy” to find out that in fact pharmaceutical industry gave $70,181 to each Senator voting yes on this amendment – more than 2.5 times as much as the $25,914 average the industry gave to each Senator voting no.
One problem.
That information is not yet available on the web site.
So, yes, the pharma contributions have been entered.
And yes, the votes of the Senators have been entered.
But the linkage information has yet to be entered.
So, no, for current votes, the web site is not yet up to speed.
But the web site holds out the promise, nonetheless.
Andrew Page of the foundation was kind enough to send us a link that shows us how the page will look once the linkage information is entered for the pharma import bill.
“Information that used to take days to uncover is now available at the click of a mouse,” said Dan Newman, executive director of maplight.org. “How often did Representatives vote with the special interests that financed their election campaigns? Now you can find out online in seconds.”
Someday.
Soon.
Corporate
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