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Lawmakers Who Upheld NSA Phone Spying Received Double the Defense Industry Cash

Jango

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The numbers tell the story — in votes and dollars. On Wednesday, the House voted 217 to 205 not to rein in the NSA’s phone-spying dragnet. It turns out that those 217 “no” voters received twice as much campaign financing from the defense and intelligence industry as the 205 “yes” voters.

That’s the upshot of a new analysis by MapLight, a Berkeley-based non-profit that performed the inquiry at WIRED’s request. The investigation shows that defense cash was a better predictor of a member’s vote on the Amash amendment than party affiliation. House members who voted to continue the massive phone-call-metadata spy program, on average, raked in 122 percent more money from defense contractors than those who voted to dismantle it.

Overall, political action committees and employees from defense and intelligence firms such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, United Technologies, Honeywell International, and others ponied up $12.97 million in donations for a two-year period ending December 31, 2012, according to the analysis, which MapLight performed with financing data from OpenSecrets. Lawmakers who voted to continue the NSA dragnet-surveillance program averaged $41,635 from the pot, whereas House members who voted to repeal authority averaged $18,765.

Lawmakers Who Upheld NSA Phone Spying Received Double the Defense Industry Cash | Threat Level | Wired.com

Hmm. So I wonder if the 'no' voters voted no based off national security and what's good for the country or if they voted no based off what's good for their pockets and campaign financing.
 
No one cares about the implications of this?
 
Lawmakers Who Upheld NSA Phone Spying Received Double the Defense Industry Cash | Threat Level | Wired.com

Hmm. So I wonder if the 'no' voters voted no based off national security and what's good for the country or if they voted no based off what's good for their pockets and campaign financing.

Although it's been a relatively short time ago, we seem to have forgotten the
warning of President Eisenhower of dangers the Military-Industrial Complex.
Eisenhower's "Military-Industrial Complex" Speech Origins and Significance - YouTube
Add to that the total disregard of the Fourth Amendment with data-mining by the NSA
to "protect us".
With special interests and multinationals running the show, I'm afraid that our best days are behind us.
Oh well, at least we had a good run up to this point.

Just my $0.02
 
No one cares about the implications of this?

For those of us that are capable of understanding the implications of this factoid, so many are weary. We are weary of hearing yet another story demonstrating that Ike's nightmares have to pass with a vengeance. We are so tired of an utterly corrupted government, and of coming to terms with the reality that the domestic enemies of the US Constitution are well inside the gates, and well inside the Beltway.

We have met the enemy, and it is our elected and appointed representatives. :(
 
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