Some Like It Cool

Posted By: dunnhaupt @ 08/24/2008 1:51:08 PM

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  Posted By: barrypropaganda @ 08/24/2008 9:17:44 PM

  "unlike Hillary he always seems to make the right decisions."
  
  how about you give me one? and how long have you known barry? can you tell me his first legislation?

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    Posted By: pearsoncrz @ 08/24/2008 11:01:01 PM

    Obama has lambasted lobbyists and moneyed interests who "have turned our government into a game only they can afford to play."
    
    "It's an entire culture in Washington -- some of it legal, some of it not," the Democratic hopeful told a New York crowd in June. But last year Obama introduced nine separate bills exempting foreign chemical company Nufarm from import fees on a range of chemical ingredients it uses in the manufacture of pesticides and herbicides.
    
    Nufarm wasn't the only beneficiary of Obama's efforts to reduce customs fees and duties. In early May of 2006, two Washington lobbyists registered to work on behalf of Astellas Pharma, a Japanese-owned drug company which also has offices in Illinois.
    
    Together, Obama's obscure measures -- known as tariff suspensions -- steered more than $12 million away from federal coffers, according to government estimates.
    
    While legal, Obama's bills on behalf of Nufarm and other companies are part of the special treatment machine Washington rolls out for special interests, say good-government watchdogs. With a dozen tariff suspension bills to his name, Obama stands out as the most prolific of any presidential hopeful on the topic. Sen. John McCain introduced none.
    
    "If you have a company...there's a whole factory set up to help you get these suspensions," said Steve Ellis, president of the Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. "It's a pay-to-play system you have to rev up and work." Hire the right lobbyist, pay the right fee, and you can save millions, he explained.
    
    Some say the tariff suspension process isn't how Washington should operate.
    
    In his speeches, Sen. Obama seems to agree: "We need a president who sees government not as a tool to enrich well-connected friends and high-priced lobbyists, but as the defender of fairness and opportunity for every American," the candidate said in his June speech. "That's the kind of president I intend to be."
    
    But his actions speak louder than his words.
    
    Junker defended tariff suspensions as good for American businesses. "It's nothing to be embarrassed, ashamed or suspicious of," he said.
    
    justifying the breaks for Nufarm to import a chemical known as 2,4 D and other ingredients by claiming they would "eliminate these unnecessary and avoidable...costs to [Nufarm's] consumers."
    
    But the company's financial reports, issued just two months after Obama introduced Nufarm's numerous tariff-lifting bills, indicate Nurarm was making more money than ever before in North America because it had increased its prices on its U.S. and Canadian customers, predominantly farmers, in particular on "phenoxy herbicides," a family which includes 2,4 D.
    
    Economics aside, some medical researchers have purported to find a link between high exposure to the chemical and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a type of cancer.
    
    http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/07/despite-rhetori