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It pays to pay up ...big!

Mind-boggling is a word which comes to mind when reading this report in The Huffington Post on what lobbyists spent in 2009. And, yes Virginia, it was a year of recession in the US:

"The final reports are in and we can now officially say that 2009 was the most profitable year ever for the lobbying industry.

The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics tallied lobbying income data from tens of thousands of disclosure filings, and the data show that special interests of all stripes spent $3.47 billion lobbying the federal government in 2009, up from $3.3 billion the previous year.

How did the influence industry manage such a banner year despite a battered economy? The simple answer is that the Obama administration's aggressive change agenda has prompted businesses to open their wallets to an unprecedented degree in the hope of preventing reform."

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