Todd Akin (Source: House of Representatives)
The audio is horrible, but the transcript will guide you through. Keep in mind that this is not a recent comment from Missouri Senate candidate and House of Representatives member Todd Akin. These are comments he made on May 11 of this year at a Fair Tax Kansas City Meeting.
It is worse than the disturbing statement Akin made in August that women who are legitimately raped rarely become pregnant. That statement was factually wrong, and Akin admitted to it later. This one is not a distortion. It is the sad truth that applies to most politicians.
Akin is right. Politicians do remember who helps them. It is just rare to find one who admits it as blatantly as Akin does.
Contributing to a candidate opens the door to access and getting favorable legislation and treatment. Basically, political contributions are bribery. It is has been going on like this since the first election, and it won’t go away. Maybe money’s influence can be lessened. However, with corporations able to spend money freely in campaigns, money is even further entrenched in the political process.
MAN: I’ve got a question, it’s kind of personal. What’s the best way to get in touch with a Congressman? Just write them a letter? I’m not on the internet so I don’t have that option.
AKIN: Yeah. Well, there’s a lot of different ways, ok? Writing them a letter is, I mean everybody says [inaudible]. The one thing we do is we pick up on the volume. If all of the sudden we’ve got 400 letters in the office, especially all hand written personal letters on something, woohoo! That just hit the radar screen. You’ve got incoming, you know? So, you pay attention to a big block of them. The staffers answer the letters because there’s no way as a Congressman I could begin. So, writing a letter is ok. If you’re going to write the letter say I represent 15,000 crazy fanatics. You want to try to create as much leverage as you can. So, the other question is — I’ll tell you, it sounds sort of self-serving to say it but if you go out and somebody is working on campaigns and you find out that you like them, you think they’re a good person, you go help on their campaign, that gets their attention.
I’m in a three way primary for the US Senate. I’ve gone to people and asked for their support, their help, or their endorsement and some people say yes. They write me a decent check. I remember that. The people that I thought were friends that tell me to go away because they are supporting someone else, I remember that. You know, I can remember back to 12 years ago. You remember who’s helping you. That’s one way that people get to know Congressmen and Senators.
