{"id":300,"date":"2007-04-03T10:20:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-03T10:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jwalking\/2007\/04\/non-existent-voice-of-poor-in-dc.html"},"modified":"2007-04-03T10:20:00","modified_gmt":"2007-04-03T10:20:00","slug":"non-existent-voice-of-poor-in-dc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2007\/04\/non-existent-voice-of-poor-in-dc.html","title":{"rendered":"The non-existent voice of the poor in DC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2007\/04\/02\/AR2007040201749.html\">story<\/a> in <span style=\"font-style: italic\">The Washington Post <\/span>this morning on Wal-Mart&#8217;s lobbying (and other federal lobbying) set me off on a research trail. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.opensecrets.org\/\">Center for Responsive Politics<\/a> &#8211; a non-partisan group &#8211; has released a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.capitaleye.org\/inside.asp?ID=255\">study<\/a> about lobbying the federal government in 2006. The total for the year is $2.6 billion. How is that money spent?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Drug companies &#8211; $166,500,000<\/li>\n<li>Insurance &#8211; $129,100,000<\/li>\n<li>Electric utilities &#8211; $107,200,000<\/li>\n<li>Business associations &#8211; $103,100,000<\/li>\n<li>Computers\/internet &#8211; $93,600,000<\/li>\n<li>Real estate &#8211; $82,300,000<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The rest of the list can be found <a href=\"http:\/\/www.opensecrets.org\/lobbyists\/index.asp?showyear=2006&amp;txtindextype=i\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The poor?  Well, they are all joined together in a group called &#8220;Human Rights&#8221; that includes groups as diverse as the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Taking out the ACS and the ACLU and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) the poor probably had less than $5,000,000 in lobbying representation in Washington last year.<\/p>\n<p>It is hard to fathom but out of the $2,600,000,000 spent on federal lobbying last year $5,000,000 was specifically about the (broadly defined) poor.<\/p>\n<p>This doesn&#8217;t just ensure that the poor will be with us always but that there will be more and more of them as their voices are further and further away from the corridors of power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A story in The Washington Post this morning on Wal-Mart&#8217;s lobbying (and other federal lobbying) set me off on a research trail. The Center for Responsive Politics &#8211; a non-partisan group &#8211; has released a study about lobbying the federal government in 2006. The total for the year is $2.6 billion. How is that money&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The non-existent voice of the poor in DC - J Walking<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2007\/04\/non-existent-voice-of-poor-in-dc.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The non-existent voice of the poor in DC - J Walking\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A story in The Washington Post this morning on Wal-Mart&#8217;s lobbying (and other federal lobbying) set me off on a research trail. The Center for Responsive Politics &#8211; a non-partisan group &#8211; has released a study about lobbying the federal government in 2006. The total for the year is $2.6 billion. How is that money&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2007\/04\/non-existent-voice-of-poor-in-dc.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"J Walking\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-04-03T10:20:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"J-Walking\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The non-existent voice of the poor in DC - J Walking","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2007\/04\/non-existent-voice-of-poor-in-dc.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The non-existent voice of the poor in DC - J Walking","og_description":"A story in The Washington Post this morning on Wal-Mart&#8217;s lobbying (and other federal lobbying) set me off on a research trail. The Center for Responsive Politics &#8211; a non-partisan group &#8211; has released a study about lobbying the federal government in 2006. The total for the year is $2.6 billion. How is that money&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2007\/04\/non-existent-voice-of-poor-in-dc.html","og_site_name":"J Walking","article_published_time":"2007-04-03T10:20:00+00:00","author":"J-Walking","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2007\/04\/non-existent-voice-of-poor-in-dc.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2007\/04\/non-existent-voice-of-poor-in-dc.html","name":"The non-existent voice of the poor in DC - J Walking","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-04-03T10:20:00+00:00","dateModified":"2007-04-03T10:20:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/#\/schema\/person\/8d4e1f712af51628c9c9c6fe0b4dab15"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2007\/04\/non-existent-voice-of-poor-in-dc.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2007\/04\/non-existent-voice-of-poor-in-dc.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2007\/04\/non-existent-voice-of-poor-in-dc.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The non-existent voice of the poor in DC"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/","name":"J Walking","description":"David Kuo blog, faith, politics, christian blog, tempting faith","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/#\/schema\/person\/8d4e1f712af51628c9c9c6fe0b4dab15","name":"J-Walking","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/5f6\/5f63a6f1b5a441bc89c6916d974cce16x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/5f6\/5f63a6f1b5a441bc89c6916d974cce16x96.jpg","caption":"J-Walking"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/author\/jwalking"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}