On Jan. 27, 2010, U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee [[DSCC), issued a press release that included the following statement:
Fast forward two days to Jan. 29-31, 2010 and let's observe how he and Senators Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow were hard at work "putting the people's interests ahead of the special interests"."In the upcoming elections, voters will face a choice between Republicans who are standing with Wall Street fat cats, bankers and insurance companies - or Democrats who are working hard to clean up the mess we inherited by putting the people's interests ahead of the special interests.”
Along with eight other US Senators, they spent those three days at the Ritz Carlton South Beach Resort with more than 100 special interest lobbyists [[a.k.a."guests"). The official Itinerary of the "DSCC Winter Retreat" shows that the Senators only spent a total of 2 hours in meetings with their "guests" in addition to attending one breakfast, two receptions and two dinners.
Here is a sample list of the organizations that forked out $30,000 each to attend the "Winter Retreat":
- American Bankers Association
- AFLAC
- American Income Life
- Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers
- USAA Insurance and Banking
- Visa
- Lockheed Martin
- Northrop Grumman
- Ford Motor Company [[unfortunately, there's no justification for GM and Chrysler to send any "guests")
- AT&T [[source of executive talent for the new GM)
- Microsoft [[source of executive talent for the new GM)
- Hewlett-Packard
- Eli Lilly & Company
- Merck
- American Hospital Association
- American Health Care Association
- McDonalds
- Fedex
- UPS
- Time Warner
- Comcast
- Disney/ESPN
- Discovery Channel
- Union Pacific
- BNSF Railway
- Marathon Oil
- Edison Electric Institute
- Heather Podesta + Partners
Pot - meet kettle!
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