Last Post 67 days, 13 hours Ago
Despite Recession, Lobbyists Kick Off Holiday Parties
Lawmakers and Their Staff Invited for Open Bars, Free Food This Holiday Season
By JUSTIN ROOD and EMMA SCHWARTZ
December 3, 2008
One day after the U.S. officially acknowledged it was in a recession, it was party time in Washington for lawmakers and their staff, courtesy of the nation's corporate lobbyists.
The 2008 Capitol Christmas Tree stands on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol after a lighting... 
The 2008 Capitol Christmas Tree stands on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol after a lighting ceremony December 2, 2008 in Washington, DC. The 70-foot-tall Subalpine Fir was a gift of the state of Montana and it was decorated by ornaments handmade by schoolchildren of the state. 
(Alex Wong/Getty Images)
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For weeks, invitations and event lists have been circulating on Capitol Hill, carrying promises of open bars and free food. Though some organizations say they have cut back on events in the wake of the sharpest economic downturn since the Great Depression, many of 2008 's parties are shaping up to look a lot like the parties of earlier years.
"The partying always goes on," said Nancy Watzman of the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Sunlight Foundation.
Watzman directs the group's "Party Time" project, which tracks fundraising events and other parties where lawmakers rub shoulders with special interests.
The ABC News Investigative Unit is reporting on the holiday party scene again this season, continuing last year's coverage.
Click here to watch the full story from 2007.
Defense contractors, energy companies and telecoms are all sponsoring parties this year, taking over restaurants and renting out museums in the expectation of crowds hundreds strong.
Watzman said her group objects to the parties because "even though you or I might have an opinion, we're not invited. We don't have the same chances to hobnob with congressmen." To Read the Whole article Go To: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Story?id=6382907&page=1<| Member Comments | Total Comments: 2 |
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just_worried
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countrygrl2
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"But war, in a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice – a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice – is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other." - John Stuart Mill
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