Foreign Government Lobbying is an Abomination and Should Be Eradicated Immediately – Part 1

If you don’t think that the endgame to all of this lunacy is a world where every America-critical movement from Black Lives Matter to Our Revolution to the Green Party is ultimately swept up in the collusion narrative along with Donald Trump and his alt-right minions, you haven’t been paying attention.

That’s because #Russiagate, from the start, was framed as an indictment not just of one potentially traitorous Trump, but all alternative politics in general. The story has evolved to seem less like a single focused investigation and more like the broad institutional response to a spate of shocking election results, targeting the beliefs of discontented Americans across the political spectrum.

– Matt Taibbi in RollingStoneThe New Blacklist

If we lived in a somewhat sane civilization, the all encompassing mass media obsession with the intel agency narrative that Russian meddling in the 2016 election (and apparently every other non-establishment American political movement) represents a serious threat to democracy, journalists and thought leaders might take a step back and look at the overall nefarious influence of foreign money throughout our incredibly corrupt society. But since we don’t live in a sane civilization, we’ll just continue to scapegoat Russia for everything while letting predatory homegrown oligarchs and their political couriers off the hook. After all, that seems to be the point.

I for one will not allow this nonsense to proceed without strenuous objection. It’s ridiculous to the point of comical that we’re turning a Russian troll farm spending $100,000 on clownish Facebook ads (like the one below) into a national security issue, while the Trump and Clinton campaigns spent a combined $81 million on Facebook ads. Moreover, 56% of the so-called sophisticated Russian ads were run after the election was over. We’re being told with a straight face that a Russian troll farm helped swing the U.S. election by spending a grand total of $44,000 on ridiculous Facebook memes.

This is a total joke. Only an childish culture with a subconscious imperial collapse fantasy would discover that a Russian troll factory ran the above and conclude it represents an existential threat to the Republic. Indeed, such a response is characteristic of a people completely unwilling and unable to deal with any of the very real and pervasive problems plaguing our society.

That said, foreign governments regularly do pay to access and influence American politicians, and I consider this a nefarious influence on our society. You just might be stunned to discover it’s not Russia doing most of this “meddling.”

The inspiration for this post came after I read a disturbing piece published at The Intercept titled, Bernie Sanders Wants Congress to End U.S. Support for Yemen War. Saudi Lobbyists Fought Similar Measure Last Year.

The article notes how each time there’s a bipartisan push in Congress to stop the U.S. government from actively aiding the Saudis in their genocidal campaign in Yemen, Saudi money swoops in to line the pockets of American lobbyists in order to prevent Congress from doing the ethical and constitutional thing.

The entire article is worth reading, but here’s what really caught my attention. Take a look at the kind of money the Saudis are throwing around D.C. to ensure the U.S. government remains committed to supporting a barbaric slaughtering of civilians in Yemen.

In September, Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif.; Tom Massie, R-Ky.; Mark Pocan, D-Wisc.; and Walter Jones, R-N.C., introduced a similar War Powers resolution to try to force a vote on U.S. support for the war in Yemen. Senior members of both parties, including Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., the Democratic minority whip, initially opposed that effort, as The Intercept first reported in October.

That measure also met with stiff resistance from the Saudi government, which maintains one of the largest lobbying operations in Washington. Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP, a lobbying firm initially hired by the Saudi government on a $100,000-a-month retainer, met with key lawmakers to influence the resolution.

Yes, you read that right. $100,000 per month, and that’s just one lobbying firm. Compare that to the $44,000 or so a Russian troll farm spent on 2016 election ads in total and you’ll see what a pathetic farce that whole narrative really is. Foreign government bribes swimming around the D.C. swamp are in fact a major problem, but it’s one we’re not tackling while distracted with the “Putin is responsible for everything wrong in our society” fiction.

To get a sense of how pervasive and insidious foreign government money is in our society, I strongly suggest you read the following article published by Politico a month before the 2016 election: Want to Be a ‘Foreign Agent’? Serve in Congress First.

There are so many interesting and troubling revelations in this piece, such as the fact that 11% of Congressional members who left Capitol Hill since 1990 have lobbied for or otherwise represented a foreign government, foreign-owned company or think tank.

Of the 1,009 members of Congress who have left Capitol Hill since 1990, 114 of them — just over 11 percent — lobbied for or otherwise represented a foreign government, foreign-owned company or think tank, according to a POLITICO review of records filed with the tiny DOJ office charged with enforcing the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a 1938 law passed to deal with the threat of Nazi propagandists in the United States.

Why isn’t Rachel Maddow screaming about this every night? I think you know.

Let’s now take a look at some numbers.

A Politico review of FARA spending records shows that Middle Eastern monarchies and former Soviet bloc nations, including Georgia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Belarus and Hungary, are becoming some of the top spenders on Washington lobbying — and they’re often hiring former members. Saudi Arabia, for instance, reported $1 million in spending in 2000; last year, it reported more than $13 million, part of a ramp-up in lobbying that’s made the kingdom one of many up-and-comers in the Washington foreign influence game.

The Saudis spent $13 million in 2015 to sustain political support for the U.S. government’s insane and suicidal Middle East foreign policy, but we’re now having a societal breakdown over chump change spent by Russian trolls on “Buff Bernie” Sanders cartoons.

Moreover, if you think this sort of money doesn’t change minds, think again. For example, it didn’t take all that much Turkish cash to completely shift the stance of former presidential candidate and ex-“representative” Dick Gephardt on Armenian genocide.

Take Turkey’s most prominent Washington lobbyist — Gephardt, a former House minority leader and two-time contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. During his time in the House representing Missouri, Gephardt was a champion for the Armenian-American community’s top priority in Washington: getting Congress to adopt a resolution recognizing the mass killing of Armenians by the Ottoman government in the run-up to World War I as a genocide.

It has been perennially opposed by the presidents of both parties — Obama promised on the campaign trail to recognize the genocide, but has not done so — thanks to vociferous opposition from Turkey, a member of NATO that has been critical in the U.S. military’s ability to wage war in the Middle East.

But after joining the private sector and taking Turkey as a client, Gephardt made a striking turnabout, lobbying his former colleagues on Capitol Hill to vote against the genocide resolution. His backflip on the issue has earned him charges of hypocrisy and even a boycott campaign by Armenian-Americans, as the St. Louis Post Dispatch reported earlier this year.

So what, you say? Gephardt isn’t in Congress anymore, he’s just a private citizen. What’s he selling then? Access.

Of course, hiring big-name former lawmakers doesn’t always get a foreign government much bang for its buck; some current and former government officials say that former members often don’t provide much more than an expensive method of securing the meetings that capable ambassadors and diplomats should be getting themselves. (For all its seeming intrigue, some FARA work is mundane. Ambassadors, for instance, will hire lobbyists to meet their yearly quotas for meetings with top officials, said one lobbying source.)

Part of the job — particularly with less-than-democratic governments — is managing expectations about how the U.S. system works. But also lobbyists benefit when foreign governments get worried about relatively minor legislative events, which can mean dollar signs for U.S. firms.

Above all, it’s about access — securing meetings with lawmakers and administration officials that a country’s official diplomatic representation in Washington will sometimes struggle to secure.

There you go. Foreign governments are paying intermediaries (lobbyists) to arrange meetings with the very people elected to serve as representatives of the American people. Every minute a Congressional member spends with a Saudi lobbyist is a minute he or she can’t spend on issues that affect the daily lives of the U.S. public. Is that Russia’s fault too?

FARA’s a total joke and, as outlined in the Politico article, has enormous loopholes that are constantly exploited. To prove the point, the Justice Department has brought only seven criminal cases using FARA from 1966 to 2015. In other words, the law’s a total joke.

Foreign governments should not be allowed to pay for access to U.S. politicians, and that’s a big part of what’s going on here. It’s an insane thing to permit, particularly since most of these countries have extensive diplomatic relations with the U.S.

The Saudis don’t need to pay to talk to the U.S. President due to the petrodollar, but they know it’s important to line the pockets of as many people in D.C. as possible to generate overall goodwill and ensure access to some extra meetings when uncomfortable legislation emerges. This is an abomination and should be completely illegal.

The next part in this series will highlight and discuss the egregious amount of foreign government money also flowing into U.S. think tanks, which then play a major and shadowy role in U.S. policy debates.

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In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

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11 thoughts on “Foreign Government Lobbying is an Abomination and Should Be Eradicated Immediately – Part 1”

  1. Fixation is usually a sign that something psychological is going on. The current Russia fixation really reminds me of what psychohistorian Demause wrote about the “paranoid collapse” and “upheaval” phase of psychological cycles in politics.

    “During this collapse period, groups often split into opposing camps even more hostile to each other than usual. Each sub-group claims the other is the real threat to order, hierarchy and authority, projects all id material onto the other group and itself identifies with the moralistic superego.
    … As the fantasy-leader appears at this stage to be extremely weak and helpless, these “crazy” delegate groups appear to be both uncontrollable and yet somehow extremely meaningful-whether they are Nazi youth groups or Millerite millenarians or Bolshevik revolutionaries or McCarthyite paranoids, they are able to hypnotize the public body far beyond their tiny size, because they reflect the main emotional conflicts of the moment of paranoid collapse far better than does the more prosaic fantasy-leader.
    … the group delusion allows the anxiety, confusion and ambivalence of the paranoid collapse to be relieved by establishing a new authoritarian figure to organize the group’s fantasy activities-only now with more irrational components: more paranoid, more inflexible, more irreversible, more power-centered, more intolerant, more grandiose, more violent.
    This “moment of group-psychotic insight” can occur over a long period of time with each of the delusional elements being worked out by different delegate groups … “Aha! I knew the enemy was real and not just in my head”
    … in in-dividuals this transition to the delusional phase is accompanied by a sense of uncanniness, suspicion and confusion-feelings which then disappear when the delusional insight is formed, because all the weaknesses and defects which during the collapse phase were felt to be “in” the individual are, during the delusional phase, projected into the enemy, so that the world seems once more to make sense
    … These group dynamics explain the hitherto unexplained fact that when the political psychologists Holsti and North(20) constructed a “paranoia index” and conducted a content analysis of German communications before World War I, they found that the paranoid content reached its apex at the very moment when the decision to go to war was made – that is, at the moment of psychotic in-sight when the group-delusion was formed”

    Now this probably doesn’t make too much sense without reading “The Origins of War in Child Abuse” and “The emotional Life of Nations” first, (see here: http://psychohistory.com/books/the-origins-of-war-in-child-abuse/ + http://psychohistory.com/books/the-emotional-life-of-nations/ ), but I think what is going on with the left these days is that they are in the paranoid part of their collapse phase ever since Trump got elected.
    They are searching for an enemy for that group psychotic insight: Nazis/Fascists/Racists, Trump, Russia.
    Now the dangerous thing here is that after the paranoid stage of the collapse phase comes the upheaval phase which often gets violent in some way. This is the phase where new wars are most likely to be started.
    Trump voters are still in the “strong” phase, but probably going to enter the cracking phase soon.

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  2. Rick is correct. Israel more than the Saudis are directing action in the ME, and elsewhere. Their influence in DC is far greater. In his AIPAC performance, Bibi basically bragged about how Israel controls everything, and those it doesn’t control will be left out in the cold!!

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  3. Rick and Regensordo, you’re right about Israel. However LB has covered not only the Israeli influence, but also the new Saudi-Israeli alliance and the new proxy war they are already planning in Lebanon now that the proxy war in Syria has failed to bring their desired result.

    “The U.S. and Saudi Arabia Are About to Make More Disastrous and Idiotic Mistakes – Part 1”

    https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2017/11/07/the-u-s-and-saudi-arabia-are-about-to-make-more-disastrous-and-idiotic-mistakes-part-1/

    Make sure you also read Part 2.

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  4. Totally agree with most of this article. I think the whole lobbying system is corrupt. If money doesn’t “buy votes” and a congress person is supposed to represent all their constituents equally, why is it that only those that make campaign donations (or favorable campaign ads) can get meeting with their representatives?

    On the Russia thing, I think Trump’s action and inactions do as much to inflame the Russia collusion story as anything the MSM does. No negative words about Putin. Perfectly normal? 97-2 vote Senate sanctions still not enacted. I’m not even sure how this is legal.

    Have I seen enough evidence to convince me that Russia and Trump colluded? No. Am I willing to wait fro Mueller to work for more than 10 months before deciding that Russia and Trump have NOT colluded? Yes. I don’t understand people that have already made a judgement, one way or the other.

    I read Taibbi’s article (thanks for the link). His arguements are weak. For example, if Russia was promoting *both sides* of the BLM debate, then how can they be a party to collusion? On the contrary, I think that the Russian influence on (not collusion with) BLM needs to be highly publicized and acknowledged to strengthen the movement towards real refomr efforst and away from divisive rhetoric.

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    • BLM is nothing but astroturf created and funded by Soros.

      It’s a complete crock of victimhood BS and it has nothing to do with Russia.

      As to sanctions. Russia isn’t the problem. But China is an entirely different story, and this Russia Snipe hunt is providing Jinping with massive amounts of cover.

    • Genaro, I don’t see how you can think that people of all races are treated the same by police. I’ve seen many studies that show otherwise, and not one to support your belief.

      I do agree with you that China is a bigger threat than Russia to the US, both politically and economically. However, I’m also pretty certain that Trump is not showing any favortism towards China. There’s no reason we can’t take a tougher approach towards both countries.

      In contrast, NK was never a real threat to the US in any way. They only reacted defensively, similar to a snake that you poke with a stick. Kim just wants to run his little kingdom without interference, and doesn’t want to be Saddamned. I hope Trump is sincere and successful in his negotiations with Kim. I do feel bad for the NK people, but given time (and a non-antagonistic US), I think they will work things out on their own.

  5. Look man, I had the crap beat out of me once for 15 minutes while handcuffed by a white cop and black cop who were partners and they had the wrong guy. They thought I was the purse snatcher. But I was the good samaritan chasing the purse snatcher. So I don’t need anyone to tell me about cops. I grew up in a city with one of the most corrupt departments in the country.

    It was an equal opportunity corrupt force. Didn’t matter what color they were, they were equally corrupt and crooked. Nor did it matter what color the perpetrator or suspected perpetrator was. You were still going to get the same really bad treatment.

    BLM is a crock of bullshit. Period. Black fathers are what matter, and there’s far too few of them that act like fathers to their children thanks to the virtual plantation welfare state created by Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society”.

    I know that treating symptoms while ignoring the cause is useless and dangerous. So I’ve got zero patience for anything else. If calling it out for what it actually is offends some people, that’s there problem. Because I also have no patience for self-important people who spend all their time worrying about whether or not they were disrespected. It’s funny how if you act respectable, that’s never an issue.

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    • Would it be OK if I converted this comment into a stand-alone article for publication on my website?

      There is no fee, I’m simply trying to add more content diversity for Writer Beat and liked what you wrote. I’ll be sure to give you complete credit as the author. You can learn more about the site by checking out my profile (my email and the website address are there…intentionally vague here to avoid spamguard) or just reply “sure” and I’ll handle the rest.

  6. Thanks for your good deed, and sorry for your punishment.

    Root cause analysis means to keep asking why. So why are theer too few balck men acting like fathers?

    To be a good parent you need to be a good provider. Why aren’t black men good providers?

    To be a good provider, you need a good job. Why do balck men not have good jobs?

    To get a good job, you need to spend your youth in school, not prison. Why are black youth imprisoned at a higher rate?

    Good question. Are you telling me that a white, surburban teenager is just as likely to be imprisoned for smoking marijuana as a black, inner city youth?

    “treating symptoms while ignoring the cause is useless”

    I think the biggest source of partisan views is lack of empathy. Of course, people who got imprisoned for marijuana use often times lost their right to vote, so that made getting their point of view heard even harder. Even in states that ahve legalized marijuana, you can’t sell it if you were convicted of a possesion crime., so those that were more likely to be convicted (ie, AAs), are shut-out of something that they might have been successful in.

    The changing view of drugs (excepting Jeff Sessions) is a good exmple. Now that many middle-class whites are dieing of opiod overdoses, America is shifitng hard towards a treatement instead of imprisonment mentality for drug adicts.

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  7. Mike,

    This is a great article that needed to get written. This is one of the biggest problems with America right now. Not only is congress listening to lobbyists who are paid by special interests of the extremely wealthy while ignoring the rest of the 99% but half of the lobbyists are working for foreign governments and foreign companies. The wealthy from other nations get rules and regulations passed that favor there interests and 95% of the less wealthiest population of this united states have no effect or get nothing they want passed through congress. There is a stat found on the website Represent.us that points this fact out. Check it out for yourself.

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