Does Your Member Of Congress Work For You?

... or for them?



We can't examine every single district for you and see which members of Congress have been taking inordinately large contributions from commercial banks and Wall Street and then voting against their constituents' interests and for the special interests of those who are financing their comfortable career trajectories. But you can look up your own congresscritter here at Open Secrets. As a courtesy, we decided to look at the members of the House with the most outrageously corrupt records-- the worst of the worst.

Keep in mind that the Securities and Investments Industry ($51,518,351), commercial banks ($18,193,119), mortgage bankers ($5,113,510), and other-- mostly crooked-- finance related industries ($21,806,405) have donated over $95 million dollars to federal politicians this year alone. Do you think they are just being generous or do you think they are buying influence? And do you think that influence is meant to benefit consumers and workers and regular families... or something else?

When you examine which members of Congress they have showered the most money on-- and combined that with which members of Congress have been the most willing to enable their corporate agendas you come up with the same names again and again and again-- a bipartisan array of this year's worst crooks in Congress, although each careful to stay within the bounds of the corrupt laws they helped design.

These numbers only include bribes "donations" from commercial banks, mortgage banks, the securities and investment industry, and finance and credit companies. The figures would be much higher if we included lobbyists ($24,960,004 so far this year) working for these industries and other related sectors. Each of these crooks could be Olbermann's Worst Person Of The Day just based on what they suck up from these industries and the favors they do for them in return. Here's a real Dirty Dozen of the worst villains in the House, 8 Republicans and 4 nominal Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party:

Rahm Emanuel (D-IL)- $729,200
Spencer Bauchus (R-AL)- $483,350
Melissa Bean (D-IL)- $383,278
Chris Shays (R-CT)- $362,720
John Boehner (R-OH)- $357,000
Eric Cantor (R-VA)- $318,650
Steny Hoyer (D-MD)- $286,099
Tim Mahoney (D-FL)- $270,590
Roy Blunt (R-MO)- $227,025
Dennis Moore (D-KS)- $170,751
Tom Feeney (R-FL)- $126,200
Patrick McHenry (R-NC) $61,550

There are also members of Congress who don't take bribes from these characters and who don't do their bidding but who, instead, stand up for working families. In fact, there is one, who is being targeted by right-wing front groups-- like Freedom's Watched-- because she is incorruptible and unwavering in her consistent stands for ordinary Americans who don't have the resources to buy influence. Her name... Carol Shea-Porter, the freshman representative from New Hampshire. We need dozens of members like Carol-- and we're workin' on it-- but meanwhile, please think about giving her a hand so we don't lose one of the new good and dependable members that we do have.