Why hell, baby, whadja expect from our politicians? Integrity? Good investigative job! Many thanks! The era we live in now beats Orwell's vision, and even Hitlerian Reich nonsense, I've decided. It's far worse, so bad there ain't even a name for it and most likely this shit will be with us until we drop dead. Baby boomers like me have seen the best and worst of a generation...all that struggle to get..to this awful juncture.

As long as we have McDonald's, CostCo, Air America Radio, et al, life is still livable--a bit.

Damn. These Senators whore themselves cheap! I say we get $30-40,000 thousand together and see how many of them are willing to blow a donkey in Tijuana for it. From what I see, every fucking one of them would do it, and come back for seconds if enough cash was involved. Scum, each and every one of them.

I see no hope that Americans can get together and buy them back. It's nice we can vote to send people up to protect big business, except our votes are tabulated by the likes of Diebold, so were not really voting. That would be a bit too messy, allowing people to really vote and all.

Mal

If we humans always settled for what we can get easily. we'd still be swinging from branch to branch.

We're SUPPOSED to settle for McDonald's, CostCo, and Clear Channel (who is broadcasting most outlets of Air America). As long as we as a nation want nothing better, nothing is what we will get.

remember that a key vote in the process was the vote for cloture. So don't forget those hypocrites such as Lieberman that voted for cloture than issued a press release touting his vote against the bill. That's as bad, if not worse, than those who voted against the final bill.

Whether they voted for cloture and against the bill is of no consequence. Betrayal is betrayal. Hear that Lieberman?

Mary,
Thanks for a fantastic piece. I am quite impressed with your investigative skills and tenacity! Keep up the great work!

I agree with the anon person above...thanks for the investigative pieces on this issue. I am still waiting for reasons WHY they voted for this outside of
-Well we reform has been on the table for years and we just had to pass something (a bad bill is worse than no bill at all)
-It was going to pass anyway...if you can't beat em join em and we needed the money so we can stay competitive at election time
-Silence, no explanation.
-Well we passed the bill and will fix it later..yup and my check is in the mail too.

Not on person here saying how this will hlep or benefit their constituents.

I won't forget this and will wait patiently as to why they voted for this atrocity.

Voting for cloture is tantamount to voting for the bill. It's justa procedural game with a pre-determined conclusion. We are distressingly close to the guilded age. Politicans sell out cheap and when the election comes they are not held accountable for their actions by the voters. When you look at all the abuses of the past four years and the resultiant election returns what else can be expected? Both parties 'beltway' wings think that this type of whoring is okay.

This will continue through 2006. The politicans consider the voters stupid, easily scared sheep to be manulated by fear and greed shortly before elections. The times are defininly out of sinc. This pattern is unsustainable for all the reasons people have written about. The real question isn't when things will change but how. It would be best to have the voters in both parties demand clean government in '06 but that's about as likely as pigs flying.

Something that I've not seen a whole lot of: consideration of the possibility that Democratic lawmakers only heard from one side of the story on this bill.

We had very little time to mount an effective opposition to the bill, and it's possible, just possible, that some Democratic lawmakers got snowed by false facts and platitudes.

Jonathan, that was one of my thoughts as well. These guys also live in a bubble of the lobbyists and the Washington chattering classes - and this bill came up when they had very little opportunity to talk to people who might oppose it. One of the reasons that the bill was railroaded through was so that it could be done under the radar and voting for cloture meant that the arguments against the bill where never allowed to really focus on how bad this bill was. But Feinstein's statement against the bill was very explicit in talking about how bad this bill was especially in comparison to the bills put forward in previous years because there was no mitigating the worst of the bill by amending it to correct the worst flaws.

Careful with the assumptions. When you write that Paul Wellstone got $1000 from "the credit card industry" in 2002, what you mean is that a few people who made contributions to him work in that industry, and so identified themselves in the required information you must enter when you give a contribution. For all we know, they hate their bosses.

It appears that a lot of people who work for Microsoft gave Howard Dean a substantial contribution last year, even though a Dean presidency would have been a lot less friendly to Microsoft ueber alles than George Bush has.

Good Work!

Kohl owns a chain of Department stores that use revolving credit and therefore would be interested.