July was a wonderful month for my blog. Thanks to StumbleUpon.com, I had over 30,000 visitors to this site. If you haven’t signed up for StumbleUpon.com to explore all the great sites to match your interests you are missing out on a excellent opportunity.

Today I wanted to talk about conflict of interest because it plays a very large role in our lives through government. Conflict of interest means that there are special interests have extensive influence where that influence is highly questionable and unethical. This not having any conflict of interests was in the past a highly regarded value that was considered important but this value has been almost totally disregarded in Washington DC. Here are some examples of that total disregard for the conflict of interest value:

George Bush II came from the oil business and gave oil companies free reign in running up profits and they got subsidized at the same time. This lack of regulation and rampant profit making was compliments of the Bush family and their being in bed with the oil companies.

Dick Cheney was the former CEO of Halliburton and when he was Vice President Halliburton got billions of dollars of no-bid contracts compliments of his office as VP and his tie to the company.

Senator Baucus of Montana is completed tied to the insurance industry through top aides and campaign contributions and he is in charge of the Senate hearings on health care reform. His bias is bought.

President Obama has had 37 visits from executives of the insurance industry at the White House. That is way too much conflict of interest happening. How many citizens groups or advocates for the public options have been to the White House?

Big Money means big influence, we have been subsidizing tobacco, oil, mega farms, and others all because of money influence which is a conflict of interest. This is wrong and there would be all the health care funds needed if there wasn’t so much of our money going to those that already have lots of money.

Isn’t it time for government to come clean, to remove all the special interest influences so that Washington DC can again be the government of the people?

Have a great August weekend.