Posted on 09/12/2011 3:02:15 PM PDT by mdittmar
BOSTON, Sept. 12 (UPI) U.S. Sen. John Kerry said he has no time for lobbyists while on a congressional "supercommittee" tasked with cutting the federal budget deficit, a report said.
The Massachusetts Democrat said he also will not do any campaign fundraising during his tenure on the deficit-reduction committee, which has until Thanksgiving to find a way to cut $1.5 billion from the deficit.
The Boston Globe said Kerry is trying to address concerns about the committee's potential to be influenced by lobbyists while making major spending decisions.
"I'm not meeting with a lot of lobbyists; I'm meeting with people I choose to meet with, who can inform me, assist in the process of crunching numbers and dealing with consequences, and so forth," Kerry told the Globe last week.
Kerry said he won't raise any money while the committee is working "because I don't want people to think that I'm being leveraged by contributions. I just don't want the appearance of money being associated with anything I do on this."
Billion, trillion, shmillion, what's the difference...
Clearly the "journalists" and "editors" at UPI can't tell the difference...
How to bribe a politician:
A concrete salesman persuaded my Uncle’s small town establishment to pass an ordinance requiring all businesses to pave their parking lots with concrete. (For snow removal, don’t you know.) My Uncle owned a huge gravel parking lot and paving it would have cost several years’ worth of profit. So, he called the local DNC headquarters and made an appointment to speak with the head fundraiser. (Did I mention my Uncle is the local head of the GOP?) He described his problem, then said he would like to make a contribution to the DNC and how much did the fundraiser think was appropriate? “$5000.” (This was 1969, so $5,000 was a lot.) My Uncle wrote a check. The next day his exemption was delivered by messenger. He told me, you never try to stuff money in a politician’s pocket. They prefer a few degrees of separation. The DNC will get their cut to them.
Kerry has announced that he is taking bids. The DNC will get his cut to him.
Until November, Kerry will just have “his” lobbyists use direct deposit, but only after they promise to forget his secret account numbers in December.
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