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Who says money doesn't speak?

Congressman Joe Wilson may, or may not, have intended to attract attention to himself, but when he shouted out that Obama was a liar as Obama was addressing the Congress on health-care reform, he certainly is now notorious. But, then, our friend Joe may have a vested interest in health-care and seeing it continuing as it is.

TomDispatch in "The Washington Influence Machine" backgrounds the "largesse" [that is, financial donations] Wilson garners:

"Congressman Joe ("You lie!") Wilson is undoubtedly not completely ignorant about how our health care system actually works. After all, in the course of his career, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, he's received $244,196 in contributions from the health-care profession -- and that doesn't even count another $86,150 from the pharmaceutical industry or the $68,000 that came in from hospitals and nursing homes. In fact, if you go to the page at that organization's OpenSecrets.org website on Congressional contributions and start clicking around among the members of Congress, you'll be struck by how many times the health and pharmaceutical industries (and their lobbyists) pop up."

No less importantly, Andy Kroll in his piece on TomDispatch reveals the sort of money lobbyists from the health-related industry pour into Congessman and Senators:

"The sheer presence of lobbyists cannot be underestimated. Case in point: the legislative battle over health-care reform. As of mid-August, there were six lobbyists trying to influence health-care legislation for every single member of the House and Senate, Bloomberg News reported.

That's 3,300 lobbyists working on a single issue (three times the number of defense lobbyists) with nearly three new lobbyists joining the fray each day. So far this year, $263 million (or more than one million dollars a day) has been shelled out just for lobbying health-related issues, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Industry players have waged war to sway public opinion, spending $75 million on TV ads. Lawmakers up for election in 2010 have already seen $23 million flow into their nascent campaign coffers."

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