Watch it, WATCH it….

(From The Wall Street Journal – my favorite newspaper) "...The worried industries and their trade groups are responding by hiring new lobbying talent, planning mass-market ad campaigns and, in some cases, focusing on getting goodies attached to legislation that they would rather see killed but know they can't stop.

The petroleum industry, for example, is preparing an ad campaign that seeks to justify oil companies' huge size -- and profits. The drug industry is weighing a mass-media counterattack of its own, emphasizing the good performance of the Medicare prescription-drug program. Student-loan titan Sallie Mae is rallying grass-roots support from college administrators. Small-business representatives are talking up tax breaks to offset what appears to be an inevitable increase in the minimum wage...."

That excerpt from:

Business Mobilizes to Defend Turf

Firms Plot Campaigns to Counter
Effects of Democrats' Agenda

(I’m not sure if you can link to it unless you subscribe to WSJ Online, but it’s at:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116787783571066718.html?mod=home_whats_news_us

HERE’S WHAT YOU CAN DO:

  1. Write, e-mail or phone your elected reps and tell ‘em you are watching, and they should not cave in to lobbying pressures.
  2. Arm your brain to critically scrutinize slickly produced commercials, print ads and online confabulations telling you how wonderful oil and pharmaceutical companies are.

Especially if you voted Dem in the last elections, you must be super tough on the new Congress. They’ve gotta stay firm – not only on Iraq – and true to their promises to clean up the shoddy mess left by the Repubs.

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