Will the House vote to expose the role lobbyists play in soliciting and donating to politicians really limit the influence powerful lobbies have on politics? Democratic presidential hopefuls pushed hard for the bill wanting to live up to their promises to clean up congress. This bill passed with an overwhelming majority 396 to 22 but as Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts put it, “As long as campaigns can spend an unlimited amount of money, they will find a way to get their hands on it.” Past limits to the dollar amount of contributions only pushed for politicians to find more contributors so the likelihood that this bill will make a difference in who has the most influence on our legislators is slim.
3 comments:
Great work.
Thanks for posting the Iron Triangle- Let me throw this out your way for the sake of speculation (as a fellow poli-sci student):
It really is not a triangle, its a much more sophisticated model that has at least 2 more tentacles: 1) Propped up think tanks that come up with the intellectual and ideological fire power for pro-military industry policies (Rand, PNAC, etc.) 2) The Mainstream media that manufactures consent within the bounds of the current status-quo that is created by government agencies and think tanks. This way, the complex does not have to deal with public opposition- this part is critical- the system could not function without the propaganda element. Lets be honest here, public support for a $700 billion dollar private, for profit, government subsidized technology industry funded by tax dollars would really be lacking political support except from those who have a vested interest in it.
Thanks for posting the diagram (originally produced by UT-Austin)
Indispensable reading is at Wikipedia, search for Iron Triangle. Great stuff there.
You're welcome to use my diagram of the MICC at http://rosehill.net I am impressed by the idea of an iron triangle, since it applies so widely to other industrial complexes. But I also tend to agree with Jsyvanen here: it has a lot of moving parts. Its almost an ecosystem. Calling it a triangle is a good entrypoint, but, it has so many dimensions. We are like the six blind men of hindustan (search google images for THAT!)
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