Hastert contracted to lobby for Turkey

Source: The Hill




Read more: http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/hastert-contracted-to-lobby-for-turkey-2009-04-10.html

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Well, many of us suspected that Hastert was going to complete his conflict of interest on the genocide bill brouhaha and start working for Turkish lobbyists, but I guess this confirms it. $35k a month isn't too shabby a "pension" for him now is it!

Also disappointing to see Dick Gephardt involved with this too as much as he is. I was earlier disappointed in seeing him so much in the coal lobby's hands when he was lobbying for "clean coal" heavily too.

I wonder if Albert Wynn is also working for $35k a month too with Hastert in this lobby since he followed the same path in resigning early after losing to Donna Edwards in the primaries to work for the same firm. Anyone else see news on him in this regard?

At least, it gives me the impression that someone finally understood what Sibel was trying to say.

Fucking Bush Sucker

Not that Beefy McBratwurst Denny Hastert would ever do that sort of thing.

look to lobbying as their payoff. Look at Billy Tauzin, Trent Lott,
Dick Army and the list goes on.

One solution is to give them a fat pension w/ some kind of
clawback for influence peddling.

Another solution is to outlaw this kind of influence peddling.

Better yet, why not both?

these fools. Meanwhile, the population--and their ranks keep growing, along with our obligation to pay them, their pensions and other benefits and their staffs, not to mention the cost of the real estate for all their offices.

The founders never intended or foresaw a Congress of this size, nor lifetimes in Congress. Not when people had to get back and forth to the capital from places like Vermont on horseback, leaving their wives alone to cope with their farm and all their kids.

Let'start a movement to amend the Contstitution to reduce the House to half its current size and cap it there forever. While we're at it, let's outlaw gerrymandering and ALL payments to and from lobbyists. Petititon the government for redress of your own damn grievances, not Dupont's.

Now, those are some changes I can really believe in. However, I don't hold out much hope for them. Not because of politicians, but because of the incredible apathy and inertia of the American voter. As always,

We have met the enemy and they is us.

....and everybody wonders why things are so broken... :banghead:

was Turkey asleep for the past 8 years? Why does Turkey have or need lobbying firm??

images of repulsion.

....isn't Turkey leaner than beef?

:hide:

He's filthy.

yeah, bout time he gets to come and go through the front door.

Skeezer - def.:

In 2007, amid intense pressure from the Pentagon, the White House and Turkey, 25 House members withdrew their support for a similar Armenian genocide resolution. At the time, military leaders warned that the resolution would undermine U.S. relations with a valued ally whose support was needed for success in Iraq.

Seven years before, literally minutes before Radanovich was going to bring a genocide resolution to the House floor, then-Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., pulled the plug following an urgent phone call from the White House.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/story/64210.html

Now you know why he's now a lobbyist for Turkey.

Basically Sibel has been mentioning this for a while now...Hastert is really one dirty bastard.

While running a banner headline pointing out that many on Obama's team are (oh no!) millionaires.

need to make it a flat out ban - NO lobbying for ANY foreign entities, if you have ever served in congress, and you can never RUN for congress if you've ever been a foreign lobbyist

hmmmmmmm

cannot get a word in edgewise in our own capital, for all the foreign country and global corporate predator lobbyists purchasing our supposed representatives?

Official ambassadors, yes. That can't be avoided. But paid lobbyists of foreign governments--as if foreign governments were just another interest group within our democracy? Do they pay taxes? Do they vote? Are they--by any stretch of the imagination (as with corporate entities)--some component of our sovereignty as a people? No, they oppose our sovereignty (just as U.S.-based and all global corporations do). They seek to control our government, and to override our will, in their own financial and political interest.

Why do we allow this--let alone allow our citizens to be paid agents of a foreign government? That is very nearly the definition of treason, isn't it?

I thought we had seen it all, when Hillary Clinton had Mark Penn as her chief campaign adviser while he was also the paid agent of the Colombian government--a government with one of the worst human rights records on earth, and on whom the Bushwhacks had larded $6 BILLION in military aid to kill thousands of union leaders and other leftists, and to keep the cocaine flowing onto our streets no matter what. Ahem. Sorry, but that's how I see it. We are paying billions to the narco-fascists running Colombia in order to maintain a pro-U.S. fascist state in South America. And the guy who was being paid to tout this heinous government to Congress was also being paid to run Clinton's campaign.

Talk about conflict of interest! That was mindbogglingly bad judgment on Hillary's part, and, as soon as it was exposed, she back-benched Penn, although he apparently continued to advise the campaign. Why did she back-bench him? Because it was wrong--obviously wrong--and she knew it.

But she is not alone in this kind of conflict. It is endemic in Washington DC. It is perhaps most notable with regard to Israel (another country that has been roundly condemned for its human rights abuses). But neither Colombia or Israel is an isolated case. Our interests as a people are constantly being shoved aside by the interests and paid lobbyists of foreign governments, international corporate predators and war profiteers.

There is a long, long list of things that we must do, if we wish to restore democracy in the U.S. This is one of them. Foreign and corporate lobbyists need to be outlawed. And that includes American citizen lobbyists for foreign governments, and former U.S. military brass lobbying for the war profiteers.

Good God, our nation's capitol has become a putrid, stinking cauldron of filthy money changing hands against our interests as a people. I doubt that we can end it quickly or easily--and certainly not before we restore public control of our voting system--but it must be done, if we are ever to be a free people again. Our capitol should be where our public business is done, and where our public interests are served, and no other.

Where are our lobbyists? Where are they, exactly?
Let's face it. Our government isn't working for us. Many of our Senators and Reps are often poor or middle class when elected. When they leave they are rich and working for the same people they've been working for all the time they were in office. And it ain't you and me.