Remember when they accused Hillary of "pay to play"? Check out Mulvaney.

[Arkansas Granny]

Mulvaney, Watchdog Bureau’s Leader, Advises Bankers on Ways to Curtail Agency

Mick Mulvaney, the interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told banking industry executives on Tuesday that they should press lawmakers hard to pursue their agenda, and revealed that, as a congressman, he would meet only with lobbyists if they had contributed to his campaign.

“We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress,” Mr. Mulvaney, a former Republican lawmaker from South Carolina, told 1,300 bankers and lending industry officials at an American Bankers Association conference in Washington. “If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.”

At the top of the hierarchy, he added, were his constituents. “If you came from back home and sat in my lobby, I talked to you without exception, regardless of the financial contributions,” said Mr. Mulvaney, who received nearly $63,000 from payday lenders for his congressional campaigns.

Mr. Mulvaney, who also runs the White House budget office, is a longtime critic of the Obama-era consumer bureau, including while serving in Congress. He was tapped by President Trump in November to temporarily run the bureau, in part because of his promise to sharply curtail it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/us/mulvaney-consumer-financial-protection-bureau.html

These people are unbelievable. They don't even try to hide the corruption anymore.

[unblock]

1. don't try to hide it? hell, it's their core philosophy. it's their guiding principle.

they're proud of it, they think that's the way it ought to be.

[dalton99a]

3. +1

[onenote]

2. It's scummy. And its more common, on both sides of the aisle, than you might imagine.

In my four decades of work on and around Capitol Hill, I've seen this kind of thing from a number of members of Congress of both parties. It's relatively easy for a lobbyist to get a meeting with a member's staff. But meeting the member face to face -- that's often reserved for those who have established a donor-done relationship.

[unblock]

6. there's a new model in internet gaming that's applicable here:

"free to play, pay to win."

there are many internet games, particularly massively multiplayer online games, where you can play for free, but if you want to actually win, you have to pay for the goodies that really help you get ahead. i'm old school, so as for me, i call this "cheating", but these days it's called "a novel and brilliant business model that lets everyone enjoy the game".


politics has long been like this, anyone can get an audience with their representative (or a staffer, at least), but if you want your pet tax deduction inserted into legislation, in practice you gotta be a big donor to make that happen.

democrats have the decency to be ashamed of a system that basically forces them to operate this way; republicans are proud of it.

[poboy2]

4. "Its called pay to play folks" - Orange Tbag -nt

[Shrike47]

5. It is different when Democrats do it. The Swamp, etc.