The corporados will oppose the Repug plan. The insurance industry doesn’t WANT any of those expensive old people to get insurance. What the insurance industry wants is what the Dems have already given them–a two-tiered system where people who won’t cost the industry much are forced to get insurance, and people who will cost the industry lots are taken care of by the government. The industry gets to take lots of money in, and the government gets to pay lots of money out. Corporado heaven.

The libertarian ideologues’ anti-government crusade is leading them into direct conflict with the corporados–and in the end, the corporados always win.

This will be smacked down in a big hurry.

According to OpenSecrets.Org, the top 25 net worths in Congress as of 2009 (the latest year for which figures are available) are:

1 Darrell Issa (R-Calif) $156,050,022 $303,575,011 $451,100,000
2 Jane Harman (D-Calif) $151,480,522 $293,454,761 $435,429,001
3 John Kerry (D-Mass) $182,755,534 $238,812,296 $294,869,059
4 Mark Warner (D-Va) $65,692,210 $174,385,102 $283,077,995
5 Jared Polis (D-Colo) $36,694,140 $160,909,068 $285,123,996
6 Herb Kohl (D-Wis) $89,358,027 $160,302,011 $231,245,995
7 Vernon Buchanan (R-Fla) $-69,434,661 $148,373,160 $366,180,982
8 Michael McCaul (R-Texas)$73,685,086 $137,611,043 $201,537,000
9 James E. Risch (R-Idaho)$38,936,114 $109,034,052 $179,131,990
10 Jay Rockefeller (D-WVa) $61,446,018 $98,832,010 $136,218,002
11 Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn)$64,210,256 $94,870,116 $125,529,976
12 Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif)$46,055,250 $77,082,134 $108,109,018
13 Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ)$49,083,204 $76,886,611 $104,690,018
14 Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) $-7,356,915 $58,436,537 $124,229,990
15 Alan Mark Grayson (D-Fla)$31,411,044 $54,966,522 $78,522,000
16 Gary Miller (R-Calif) $19,365,053 $51,833,526 $84,302,000
17 Bob Corker (R-Tenn) $9,778,047 $50,717,522 $91,656,998
18 Diane Lynn Black (R-Tenn)$14,673,049 $49,409,519 $84,145,990
19 Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ)$19,898,179 $43,797,589 $67,697,000
20 Rick Berg (R-ND) $19,347,579 $39,164,515 $58,981,451
21 Nita M. Lowey (D-NY) $14,900,036 $39,012,518 $63,125,000
22 Kenny Marchant (R-Texas)$13,303,385 $38,204,868 $63,106,351
23 Brian P. Bilbray (R-Calif)$25,143,635 $37,819,629 $50,495,623
24 Harry Teague (D-NM) $21,119,041 $37,102,019 $53,084,997
25 Denny Rehberg (R-Mont) $6,598,014 $31,421,505 $56,244,997

Because they did the same thing in 2008, 2006, 2004, 2002, 2000 and 1998.

And will again in 2012.

It’s actually more interesting than that. The vast majority of industries do indeed give their money to both parties, flipping the majority of their support from one to the other according to who is in power at the time. But there are indeed a tiny number who DON’T do that and who DON’T bet both sides–they consistently give the majority of their money to the same party, year after year. On the Repug side, that includes the oil/coal industry, the chemical industry, and the forestry industry. On the Dem side, it includes the media industry. Including News Corp. With one exception, News Corp has given the majority of its money to Dems every year since 1998.

I find that interesting.

Yeah, for some reason the “search” function there doesn’t seem to work on individual companies.

Go to the “Influence and Lobbying” tab and click on “Interest Groups”.

In the side menu, click on “Top Interest Groups to Congress”, then, from the list that appears, go to “TV/Movies/Music” and click on that.

Then look at the top of the page and find the tab that says “contributors” and click on it.

Look down the list of top contributors until you see News Corp (the Rupert Murdoch company that owns, among others, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal).

Look at the amount News Corp has given–and then look at the percentage of those contributions which have gone to Democrats and Republicans:

News Corp &385,383 71% 27%

For more fun, click on News Corp’s name, scroll down to “top recipients”, and click on “view more recipients”:

top ten recipients of News Corp money:

Boxer, Barbara (DCA) Senate $57,000
Waxman, Henry A (DCA) House $31,900
Berman, Howard L (DCA) House $28,350
Schumer, Charles E (DNY) Senate $15,000
Reid, Harry (DNV) Senate $13,100
Bono Mack, Mary (RCA) House $12,000
Maloney, Carolyn B (DNY) House $11,500
Leahy, Patrick (DVT) Senate $10,900
Boehner, John (ROH) House $10,700
Pelosi, Nancy (DCA) House $10,000

Ana side about Fox News:

I was poking around at OpenSecrets.Org (a website that tracks campaign contributions), and happened to notice that 71% of News Corp’s contributions for 2009-2010 are going to Democrats. Yes, that’s right boys and girls—-the owner of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal is giving almost three-fourths of its money to Dems, not Repugs.

Heck, this is no different than RomneyCare/ObamaCare—”let’s make everybody buy private insurance and give them subsidies/vouchers to help”. After they’ve spent the last year telling us how mandated private insurance is the bestest thing Dems ever did, they’re gonna have a tough time arguing now that mandates are bad bad bad.

Of course, Dems would not have that problem if they hadn’t sold out their principles and had instead stuck to their decades-long goal of government-provided health care for everyone.

I still use a little ASUS EEE netbook running on XP that I’ve had for years. I use a foldable solar panel with it and a Tekkeon external battery, and take it with me when I go kayaking or backpacking or traveling. Great little machine.

I carry my thumb drive on my keychain so I always have it for backups.

Nah, they’re libertarians. Right down to the “governments are communistic” ideology.

Hmm, so the Dems have a spine after all.

A very thin and fragile one which they don’t flex very often.

Oh, I don’t mind un-civility—–I’m pretty accustomed to being the only “dirty fucking hippie” in the room, and am eminently capable of defending myself when needed. ;)

By way of introduction, I’m the editor for Red and Black Publishers, a small lefty publisher here in Florida. I’m a longtime IWW member, worked for Greenpeace and the Sierra Club back in my younger days, and was very active in the nuclear freeze and Central America peace movement during the Reagan years.

The Dems lost me when they renewed the PATRIOT Act. Twice.

Passing RomneyCare–uh, I mean ObamaCare–was just another nail in the coffin.

I backed Obama in the primaries because I didn’t want to have Clinton’s third term.

Turns out that’s what we got anyway. (sigh)

And I’ll add my thanks to Brian too.

And also to everyone else. I’m brand-new here at FDL so I don’t know anyone yet, but from what I have seen so far, it looks like I’ll fit in just fine. :)

And of course even the Native Americans migrated here from someplace else.

And if you go back far enough, we are all, without exception, Africans.

;)

I would also venture the guess that more and more nations are also undergoing the “demographic transition” (as countries develop a higher standard of living, their population growth rate tends to go down).

I have a friend who likes to say (only half-jokingly, I suspect) that anybody who’s not Lakota or Lenape or Hopi or Chikasaw, should go back wherever the heck they came from. ;)

Sorry, I’ve not yet seen the movie.

The early immigrants are interesting to me, since I’m a longtime member of the IWW, and that wave of immigrants made up the bulk of the early labor movement.