The Lobby and American Campaigns

The Lobby and American Campaigns
April 13, 2007Peggy McCormack
My name is Peggy McCormack, and I have worked inside Congress and the California Legislature off and on for 30 years. I am currently teaching at a small college.
Almost everyone who talks about "the lobby", are woefully ignorant of the inner workings of Congress. Congress may be the last place that any form of representation of "the people" takes place. As it gets more and more controlled by monied interests, Congress becomes more and more homogeneous. However, with regard to foreign policy, there are always the few brave members who routinely challenge American Imperialist policy. This was certainly true with regard to Latin America, Vietnam and other US imperialist debacles.
It is not true of Israel. Have you questioned how this came about? When it came about? I worked in many Congressional Campaigns and with many Political Campaign firms. Most of the really good campaign firms are controlled by Zionists (read Tom Hayden's article in Counterpunch). They function as money laundries, provide expensive services for practically nothing, demand loyalty to Israel, walk out in the middle of campaigns if candidates do not swear loyalty to Israel, and as private consultants have great impact on reapportionment processes in major states. I am familiar with California because the Campaign Firm that routinely tried to take my former boss out of Congress either by running primary candidates against him, or reapportioning him out, has run the reapportionment in California for the Democrats since 1970. There are other Zionist entities, such as the Congressional Committee for and Effective Congress that "helped" Democrats throughout the US with their reapportionment and made sure that some anti-Israel candidates had districts drawn in order to make picking them off in a primary easy.
Congressional candidates are frightened of the lobby. They certainly don't want putting up with the hassles of having the "lobby" come after them, but worse, they fear being targeted. Ask Jim Moran, Congressman from Virginia's 8th District who refused to vote for every anti-Palestinian resolution that came before Congress, and spoke out against the nasty occupation of Palestinians. He endured day to day torment, outrageous surveillance, electronic eavesdropping bugs, photos by Zionist paparazzi's who followed him, and on and on.
Part of the problem of uncovering the details of how the Lobby works in effectively controlling the campaign technology and expertise is the need for research. My ex-Communist party friends here in California are as ignorant of how the behind the scenes political campaign work is done, as the average citizen. A quick example I often use: I was once hired by a campaign to literally keep volunteers busy and away from the major activity of the campaign. Donations, of course, and endorsements (In the Democratic Party labor), are the milk of American politics. Since the bulk of donations to the Democrats come from Israeli support groups, and Labor, ( Zionists control Labor PAC committees) the power of the Israeli "lobby" becomes clearer and clearer. Tie that to the overpowering control by campaign firms themselves, and yes, Ariel Sharon is right "We own the Congress".
If I could interview Congressional Black and Hispanic Caucus members "off the record" I would uncover recent and current campaign practices that my former boss endured, and sadly, that I watched intimately when I worked in campaigns myself – loans (that quickly come due if the member steps out of line, as my boss did), "loyalty oaths" prepared speeches, imbedded campaign workers, imbedded Congressional staff, partially paid by various lobbies (this could not happen if AIPAC and their dozens of clones had to register as foreign lobbyists).
Oh, and all those campaign firms that do the extremely expensive work of polling, paid voter registration, and precinct analysis (remember campaign firms do not have to report any of this work) – who pays for that? Blessed candidates get the benefits, but at what cost? It is interesting to note that the power of the lobby grew as campaigning became more and more computerized, and the need for more and more "experts" entered the game.
If I had the time and money, I would investigate this phenomenon, I don't, but someone needs to look at the "way it works".

Corporate Media Focuses On Wolfowitz’s Girlfriend, Not his World-Class War Crimes

Leave it to the corporate media to make a big deal out of Paul Wolfowitz’s shameless promotion of his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, while ignoring the larger story—the fait accompli fusion of neoliberal and neocon policies at the World Bank and the IMF.
“The neolib-neocon fusion is personified by Wolfowitz, close ally of the exceptionally corrupt, brutal Indonesian dictator Suharto during the 1980s and more recently, as deputy Pentagon leader, architect of and apologist for imperial theft and US corporate patronage associated with the illegal Iraq War,” writes Patrick Bond.
In fact, appointing the warmonger Wolfowitz to head up the World Bank was a studied choice—sort of like appointing a wolf to watch over a chicken coop—as the “relationship between globalization and militarism,” as Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey note, “should be seen as two sides of the same coin. On one side, globalization promotes the conditions that lead to unrest, inequality, conflict, and, ultimately, war. On the other side, globalization fuels the means to wage war by protecting and promoting the military industries needed to produce sophisticated weaponry. This weaponry, in turn, is used or is threatened to be used to protect the investments of transnational corporations and their shareholders.”
Of course, we can’t expect the corporate media to shine an investigative light on such things, lest they be tagged Marxists, never mind truth. Instead, we can expect the media to play up the tawdry side of the Wolfowitz story, as the idea is to sell the sordid side of things, from Britney to Paris and beyond, for as the neolib Milton Friedman would likely declare if he was still around, the essence of democracy consists of government policies that ensure profit-making while restricting “political debate to minor issues,” as Robert McChesney once put it. Indeed, these days, we don’t even get minor issues, as the corporate media concentrates on what should rightly be considered at best back page ephemera—the racist comments of a grumpish buffoon, Don Imus, and the seemingly never ending deluge of nonsense about American Idol contestants.
Meanwhile, thanks to Wolfowitz and his co-conspirators, nearly 700,000 Iraqis are dead and countless thousands more will ultimately die horrible deaths from various cancers as a direct result of depleted uranium and other military toxins delivered along with a heaping dose of “democracy,” neocon-style.
According to the UK Telegraph, the “affair is particularly embarrassing for Mr. Wolfowitz as one of his key campaigns at the World Bank has been to root out corruption and poor governance in developing countries.”
Obviously, the editors and careerist scriveners over at the Telegraph are simply doing their job, that is to say obfuscating the truth at the behest of the neolibs, who as vampires cannot stand the light of day, because the real job of the World Bank is putting the screws to corrupt leaders in the third world, privatizing assets—minerals, water, lumber, hospitals, roads, whole civilian infrastructures, and the future of millions of people, destined to end up as indentured zeks on the global slave labor plantation—and transferring wholesale wealth to bankers and “investors,” actually little more than unconscionable loan sharks and sociopaths. Meanwhile, we are told the “mission” of the World Bank is to “reduce poverty,” a cruel and perverted joke at best. Again, the “mission” of the World Bank and the IMF is to impose “austerity measures, “structural adjustment,” and “macroeconomic reform” on poor nations, that is to say easy marks for predators.
No doubt Mr. Wolfowitz is an embarrassment, as the neocon track record is Mafia-like corruption, and it should come as no surprise this natural inclination manifests itself in the conduct of their personal lives. Paul Wolfowitz will undoubtedly be shown the door, not that he will suffer consequence. Wolfowitz will likely retire to the university, not unlike his former co-conspirator, Douglas Feith over at Georgetown, and write his memoirs on the side. In America, we shower our high place criminals with favor.
In a perfect world, or one far more perfect than Bushzarro world, Paul Wolfowitz and his war crime accomplices would be made to do the perp walk in orange jumpsuits as they wend their way toward the gallows, as Hermann Göring, Wilhelm Keitel, Fritz Sauckel, Julius Streicher, and other Nazi plenipotentiaries did before them.