How do we hang the toxic money around the senators and congressmen?

[azul]

Have a round-the-business-hours watch of volunteers stationed at each office with the money sources and totals to greet lobbyists as they enter with the booty?




"BILL MOYERS: How do you create a movement out of them when they're many of them are just struggling to stay afloat personally?

GEORGE GOEHL: Yeah, there's a new level of collaboration between organizing networks that gives me a ton of hope. So, right now, you take our organization, National People's Action, or another national organizing network. We maybe we cover 15-20 states. And we're strong in some and not strong in the other. But if you put that all together, you have a federation of people moving around a set of ideas around a shared set of principles and a shared strategy. And you could really start to turn the tide. I do think on this fight, we don't win unless we figure out how to toxify the banking money in politics. Until...

BILL MOYERS: Do what?

GEORGE GOEHL: Toxify that money. It's amazing to me that the same banks that created the foreclosure crisis, sent the economy into the tail spin, needed and billions and billions of taxpayer bailouts, are still able to hand out millions in campaign contributions. You'd think there would be a political price to pay for taking that money. But Members of Congress like Melissa Bean, I wonder how she sleeps well at night. Well, I figured she must sleep on a bed of campaign contributions.

BILL MOYERS: She is?

GEORGE GOEHL: She's a Democrat from Illinois, who's been selling us out left and right. And until we as the public say, 'You're going to pay a political price for taking banking money from the same banks that created the crisis and we bailed out."' I think it's going to be a real uphill battle.

BILL MOYERS: The...

HEATHER BOOTH: In our view, it's at this sort of two part approach. One part is working this working the system and moving for legislation that is moving for concrete change. And this legislation is moving through Congress right now. And that legislation wouldn't have been there if there wasn't the leadership that President Obama's providing. But it also won't get through unless there's a grassroots support that George and other organizations are doing around the country. And focusing on the banks and the largest banks and the role they're playing.

BILL MOYERS: The Senior Senator for George's State of Illinois, Dick Durbin, he said this summer, you know, the banks own the place, speaking of the Senate, the House, and Washington. The senior Senator from George's State of Illinois, the majority leader of the Senate, Dick Durbin, told me on this broadcast, repeated what he had said in Illinois. He said, "The banks own the Senate.""

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/12112009/transcript4.html

[clear eye]

1. What a strange mix of guests.

National People's Action is a Marxist group, and Heather Booth may have been radical once, but more lately was active in the Obama campaign and now consults for groups like Moveon.org