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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsLawmakers Who Upheld NSA Phone Spying Received Double the Defense Industry Cash
The numbers tell the story in votes and dollars. On Wednesday, the House voted 217 to 205 not to rein in the NSAs 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.
Thats the upshot of a new analysis by MapLight, a Berkeley-based non-profit that performed the inquiry at WIREDs request. The investigation shows that defense cash was a better predictor of a members 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.
Of the top 10 money getters, only one House member Rep. Jim Moran (D-Virginia) voted to end the program.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/07/money-nsa-vote/
Savannahmann
(3,891 posts)They'll tell us how those dollars didn't buy anything, those who voted against the Amash amendment were really patriots who were determined to defend the nation against all sorts of threats, and it was all legal anyway.
Generic Other
(28,979 posts)but certainly, I welcome an explanation.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Democratic Pragmatists or Centrists are way more radical an dangerous than the Tea Party.
They were/are part and parcel of the miserable condition we're in now.
Brigid
(17,621 posts)I'd that I am not at all surprised to hear this. I'm sure no one else is either.