Winship gives us many details of corporate lobbying which mainstream media almost totally ignores. But such lobbying together with campaign contributions and control over the machinery of both parties are the indispensable methods used by the capitalist ruling class to control the way government works. Lobbying goes hand-in-hand with campaign contributions. The former advises the legislator on how to vote and the campaign contributions are held out as the carrot. If a legislator defies his benefactors, he risks having them both withdraw funds from his electoral campaigns and their funding of another candidate to run against them.
This is what happened to Sen. Frank Church's brilliant career in the Senate: he was opposed to the Vietnam War, he investigated the illegal operations of the CIA, NSA, FBI and other secret services and uncovered many of their actions ranging from intercepting, tracking, and opening US mail to assassinations of foreign leaders. He prophetically warned the nation about their use of new technologies that made it possible for these agencies to intercept all communications among Americans.
