Makes you wanna vomit: One senator’s healthcare-industry contributions

​Last week, in a blog entry round-up of local efforts to counter Republican bullshit on health-care reform, I made a joke that wasn’t really that funny. Local labor unions were encouraging their members to call in to urge passage of HR 3200, otherwise known as America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009. I suggested that if people wanted to sound really smart about how far our representatives and senators have crawled up the ass of the health-care industry, they could easily look at campaign contributions on file with the Federal Election Commission. 

My not-so-funny joke:

If you really want to piss yourself off while having fun clicking around on cool maps, head over to the Federal Election Commission, which makes it really easy to see, for example, how much Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts banked in his last campaign (and, hell, money from tons of other medical industry interests, too – like the American Association of Clinical Urologists, who kicked in $5,000).

I’m as big a fan of bathroom humor as the next gal, but the reason that joke wasn’t so funny is because, by that point, I was just beginning to look at all of Roberts’ contributions from medical interests, and already it was making me sick.