From Wired:
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.
Of the top 10 money getters, only one House member — Rep. Jim Moran (D-Virginia) — voted to end the program.
IT REEKS.
No comments:
Post a Comment