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nike
11-10-2007, 02:10 PM
Found this interview on a WordPress Blog.

http://politicalinquirer.com/2007/11/09/lobbyists-in-dc-hate-ron-paul/

Direct link

http://www.pardoncheney.com/?p=135

Political Opinions: What do you think about Ron Paul?

AB SMITH: That’s a loaded question, I think his campaign is highly efficient in terms of money collected vs money spent.

Political Opinions: You’ve been in Washington a long time, you even start to sound like those guys (laugh) common tell me what you think about Ron Paul, not just the dance around answer.

AB SMITH: (laugh) Look, Ron Paul is a problem for a bunch of us. It’s not that he doesn’t take the money, his campaign pretty stated that he will take money from everyone, but he doesn’t care why you donate… he takes the money and pretty much stated “if you are too stupid to know what I stand for, then you deserve to have your money taken from your pocket”

Political Opinions: How does the process work in your industry.

AB SMITH: You agree that my name isn’t going to be on article?

Political Opinions: Yep… it’s agreed… if I published.. I would never get another story from you again.. so it’s in both our interests.

AB SMITH: Put it this way, legally, I could donate an unlimited amount of money to anyone I want. I will give you a generic example, a law is in the process of taxing computers. Some environmental group is stating that the additional costs of recycling a computer is costly and that the people buying them should pay a 10% additional tax to cover the costs. They hired a lobbyist firm to make their cause and now there is a percentage of congress that is on board with this. Now we got tech firms calling us right and left (in this example). The problem is the law states that I can only donate a $5,000 or so per company. IE: The company can only donate $5,000 to a politician. But the system is so freaking backwards that when something like a tax on computers show up in congress that I could spend huge amounts of money for my lobby effort. In this example, I want to stress that this isn’t happening.. it’s just an example of how much money I could gather in about 8 hours if I needed it for this or that effort. In this case, I would just inform a counterpart of this problem, and they would address their client… within a day I start the ball rolling to have millions of dollars in Washington…

The key is not to have the checks come from my office, the key is to have it come from other like minded areas. So in reality, I generally call another Lobbyist that represents the firm in question.

I would get $5,000 from AOL because they want to continue to throw that ‘buy AOL now icon on your desktop)
I would get another $5,000 from Intel because they want to continue to sell processors
I would get another $5,000 from AMD because they want to continue to sell processors
I would get another $5,000 from Microsoft because they want to sell Vista
I would get another $5,000 from Norton, because they want to sell their anti-virus stuff
I would get another $5,000 from Valve, because they want to sell video games
I would get another $5,000 from CDW, because they want to sell more products
I would get another $5,000 from Google, because they want more people to visit their site
I would get another $5,000 from Ebay, because they want more people to buy stuff from their site
I would get another $5,000 from Yahoo, because they want more people to visit their site.
I would get another $5,000 from Redhat, because they want to sell more servers

The funny thing is I didn’t even get to the computer manufacturers yet…

I would get another $5,000 from Dell so their product isn’t taxed
I would get another $5,000 from HP so their product isn’t taxed
I would get another $5,000 from Apple so their product isn’t taxed
I would get another $5,000 from local firm ABZ so their product isn’t taxed
I would get another $5,000 from regional firm ACB so their product isn’t taxed

When all is said and done, my 8 hours of effort (1 business day) I could have anywhere between 5-10 million… all in $5,000 dollar donations from all the industries and firms that touch the PC.

Political Opinions : Woah, you thought of that list off the top of your head in 2 seconds?

AB SMITH: What do you think I do for a living?

Political Opinions: How did that relate to Ron Paul?

AB SMITH: With him, I could send millions to his pocket, and if he intended to vote against my wishes, that money wouldn’t matter… he would still vote against my wishes. He’s a big problem if he ever made it into office.. thank God it looks like he won’t… not because I don’t like the man as an American.. it’s just that he would make my job hard.

Reading this made my head spin.

robertwerden
11-10-2007, 02:24 PM
Good, we dont need people like that guy corrupting the system

James R
11-10-2007, 02:30 PM
I don't believe that story is true. It seems somewhat off. One issue is that they mentioned specific company names.

seapilot
11-10-2007, 03:19 PM
Sounds like that is the way Dr. Paul is. Lobbyists dont ever bother him. I am now more inspired to work harder for Dr. Paul to make his job a lot lot harder!

Colin
11-10-2007, 04:53 PM
That's so fake.