Military Industrial Complex and the 1st and 4th Amendments

Several weeks ago the US house of representatives voted on an legislative amendment that would have curtailed the federal government’s ability to collect communications data about American citizens.  It was called, Amendment 413 – to end authority for the blanket collection of records under the Patriot Act. It failed by a vote of 205 YES to end versus 217 NO to not end.

As you know the house is controlled by republicans.  An outfit called Maplight compiles data on contributions to politicians and it did some interesting work on defense and related contractors contributions to those who voted for (YES) the amendment (remember, that would have curtailed the gathering) and those who voted against it (NO) or to keep it going.

Here is a summary of defense contractor donations based on votes for/against the amendment:

Contributor                                            Voted NO               Voted YES

Defense Aerospace Contractors               $ 19,230                     $ 9,093

Defense Electronic Contractors                   12,086                        5,794

Defense Shipbuilding Contractors                  5,988                        2,391

Defense Related Services                              3,104                        1,125

Defense R and D                                               782                           181

Defense                                                             279                           108

Homeland Security Contractors                        167                             72

If you add it all up, the representatives who voted to keep the gathering going collected 122% (over double) more than did those who voted to end it.  Coincidence?  Perhaps.

Here are some more statistics about this situation.  Twenty nine (29) representatives received $100,000.00 or more from the above “contributors” during the period 1/1/2011 to 12/31/2012.  Of those 29, 8 were democrats; 21 were republicans.  Of the 29, all but 5 voted to keep gathering the data.  Of the 5 who voted to stop 2 were republicans; 3 democrats.  Included in those republicans who got at least $100,000.00 and voted to keep it going were:  John Boehner and Eric Cantor.  Nancy Pelosi also voted to keep it going – she only collected $47,000.00.

Next we looked at the representatives who didn’t get even one cent from the “contributors.”  There were  28 of them – not a penny.  Sixteen (16) voted to end the collection of data.  Coincidence?  Perhaps.

Source:  http://maplight.org

It is to the shame of the republicans that this simple amendment failed.   Republicans are full accomplices to the record setting deficits and debt accumulated in Washington DC.  They do not stand for individual privacy as defined in the US constitution and they whine about the party in power – endlessly.  They are leaderless, spineless, meandering gypsies grabbing what they can to line their pockets for one more day (no offense intended to our authentic gypsy friends out there.)

It was said a long time ago – those who trade freedom for security, end up with neither.  The poster boy/girl for the political version of that statement is the republican party.