{"id":227124,"date":"2010-01-25T15:45:58","date_gmt":"2010-01-25T20:45:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/?p=63499"},"modified":"2010-01-25T15:45:58","modified_gmt":"2010-01-25T20:45:58","slug":"marion-berry-cry-me-a-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/227124","title":{"rendered":"Marion Berry: Cry Me a River"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Retiring<\/p>\n

Retiring Blue Dog Rep. Marion Berry (D AR-1)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Marion Berry takes a swipe at Obama on his way out the door<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Berry recounted meetings with White House officials, reminiscent of some during the Clinton days, where he and others urged them not to force Blue Dogs \u201coff into that swamp\u201d of supporting bills that would be unpopular with voters back home.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been doing that with this White House, and they just don\u2019t seem to give it any credibility at all,\u201d Berry said. \u201cThey just kept telling us how good it was going to be. The president himself, when that was brought up in one group, said, \u2018Well, the big difference here and in \u201994 was you\u2019ve got me.\u2019 We\u2019re going to see how much difference that makes now.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

What a crock.<\/p>\n

According to the Center for Public Integrity<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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So far this year, the Blue Dog Political Action Committee<\/a> is on track to shatter all its fundraising records; in fact, the total for the first six months of 2009 \u2014 more than $1.1 million \u2014 is greater than what was raised in the entire 2003-04 fundraising cycle. Furthermore, according to analysis by the Center for Public Integrity of CQ MoneyLine data, the energy, financial services, and health care industries have accounted for nearly 54 percent of the Blue Dog PAC\u2019s 2009 receipts (up from 45 percent in 2004).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Opensecrets ranked the 52 members of the Blue Dog caucus in order of money they had taken from the health sector since 1989. Berry came in 10th at $571,664<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Marion Berry is the Vice Chair of the Blue Dog health care task force<\/a>.\u00a0 The Blue Dogs were responsible for jamming every single shitty piece of lobbyist-written legislation into the health care bill.\u00a0 They decided early on to try to make the House bill more like the Senate bill, because they said that would be more popular.\u00a0 Take a look at the polling<\/a> — it isn’t by a long shot.\u00a0 In swing districts like Berry’s.<\/em><\/p>\n

If Berry wants to blame anyone, he should look to his Blue Dog bretheren who have been soaking up the lobbyist cash — and delivering.<\/p>\n

Did Obama put a gun to his head and make him take it or something?<\/p>\n

\"Share <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Retiring Blue Dog Rep. Marion Berry (D AR-1) Marion Berry takes a swipe at Obama on his way out the door: Berry recounted meetings with White House officials, reminiscent of some during the Clinton days, where he and others urged them not to force Blue Dogs \u201coff into that swamp\u201d of supporting bills that would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4102,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-227124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}