Political cash wins over reforms

Americans who follow the presidential primaries have surely absorbed the fact that super PACs, mainly funded by corporations and mega-rich donors, have effectively become the advertising arms of the candidates they favor. This runs entirely counter to the U.S. Supreme Court's premise, in its controversial 5-4 ruling in the 2010 Citizens United case, that it would be harmless and wrong to ban corporate funding for political advertising that is not directly coordinated with a specific candidate's campaign.

So much for ideological fairy tales. But that fallacious thinking about corporate money in politics is hardly the only flaw in the see-no-evil approach of weakened campaign and lobbying laws that let corporations run amuck against sensible restrictions on corporate cash.

Consider the latest analysis of data on lobbying excess, compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics and commissioned by the Union of Concerned Scientists. It reveals that the pharmaceutical, medical device and biotechnology industries together spent more than $700 million for lobbying from 2009 to 2011.

Overall, the three medical industries far outspent the oil and gas industries' $467 million in the same three-year period, and the insurance industries' $487 million.

These are mind-boggling figures, especially for the medical industry's pharma-biotech-and-device companies. They specifically targeted the Food and Drug Administration, which evaluates and monitors new drugs and devices for public safety. And they also targeted their spending and campaign donations on the lawmakers on sit on the panels and committees that approve their work.

Small wonder the concerned scientists worry about current proposals to derail reforms for these industries approved by Congress just five years ago. Americans who wonder why drugs that killed people and new medical devices that failed ever got on the market have their answer: Unregulated lobbying and cash in politics.

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