15.6 million dollars on one side... 25 Large on the other.
Revealing numbers on lobbying for -- and against -- SB1 and AB1, the mining bills in the legislature.
$15,600,000 vs $25,000
http://www.wuwm.com/news/wuwm_news.php?articleid=11819
If that much money was spent on buying politicians, how much could have been budgeted for media? Buying favorable newspaper and television coverage?
[div class="excerpt" style="margin-left: 1em; border: 2px solid #6600cc; border-radius: 0.4615em; box-shadow: 6px 6px 6px #999999;"]The push to streamline Wisconsin mining laws started two years ago, when an interested Florida-based company complained the state’s permitting rules were too strict. Gov. Walker and Republican legislators tried to pass a bill to ease the process, but could not round up enough votes in the Senate last year. Now, with a larger majority, Republicans are making a second attempt. They held a single public hearing on their proposal last week at the Capitol.
“The members of those committees that were sitting there taking that public testimony had themselves received over $800,000 in campaign contributions since 2010 from these mining interests.”
That’s Mike McCabe, executive director of the government watchdog group, Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. It looked at a few dozen groups that registered to lobby in favor of mining changes, and tracked their campaign contributions, as well as those from their member companies and the companies’ employees. From 2010 to last summer, the donors gave $15.6 million to Gov. Walker and lawmakers. Republicans received the bulk of the money.
= new reply since forum marked as read
...to a site that generates free presentation graphics.
I thought it might be helpful to visualize what a ratio of 15,600 to 25 looks like.
http://easycalculation.com/charts/3dpiecharts.php
The 3D pie chart looks like a solid wheel of green cheese. Fully colored in
except that an ant or some other insect (with very small, very dirty shoes)
walked directly from one outside edge to the center. The "pro-environment"
part of the spending wheel barely registers.
What would be a better comparison is probably the size of the star Aldebaran
(number 5, below) against the size of the star, Betelgeuse, in this graphic
that shows relative astronomical dimensions:
