{"id":1138,"date":"2002-12-06T11:30:23","date_gmt":"2002-12-06T18:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/8stars.org\/aa\/2002\/12\/06\/politicians-for-hire\/"},"modified":"2002-12-06T11:30:23","modified_gmt":"2002-12-06T18:30:23","slug":"politicians-for-hire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/2002\/12\/06\/politicians-for-hire\/","title":{"rendered":"Politicians for hire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s an interesting project for a wealthy philanthropist with an interest in political reform:<\/p>\n<p>Set up two shell organizations that claim to have opposite goals regarding some aspect of public policy. Call them &#8220;Citizens for X&#8221; and &#8220;Citizens against X&#8221;&#8211;whatever. Target one member of Congress, and have Citizens for X lobby him intensively. Get him to introduce legislation favorable to their position. Document this process internally. Then have Citizens for X withdraw support, but have Citizens against X step in. Repeat. Once the two sides have demonstrated how completely this member of Congress is willing to be the bitch of whoever will pay, publicize the whole thing.<\/p>\n<p>It would be interesting to see how\/whether this affected the career of the Congresscritter in question, whether it led to broader reforms, and whether the public gave a damn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s an interesting project for a wealthy philanthropist with an interest in political reform: Set up two shell organizations that claim to have opposite goals regarding some aspect of public policy. Call them &#8220;Citizens for X&#8221; and &#8220;Citizens against X&#8221;&#8211;whatever. Target one member of Congress, and have Citizens for X lobby him intensively. Get him [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}