experience with um
uh dealings in government are that i'm one of these three million dish owners in this country
and we've been fighting since about nineteen eighty six to try and get some legislation enacted against some of these cable companies and how they've been stumping on their competition and what little there is
and it's a very pro consumer type of legislation but we're constantly running into trouble trying to get it passed because we're up against huge pack money donations from the cable TV industry
uh-huh
in this country and i've come to learn that a lot of these politicians unless you can mobilize enough consumers
or voters to make a stink about an issue if there's a big pack check involved they'll take the check every single time
uh i guess it's not totally
not understandable you know i'm i'm sure that if you're looking at whether or not you're going to get elected and have enough money to run that they've got to uh got to take that into consideration
oh sure but i think it goes i you know a little of it obviously is they're getting themselves prepared for when they're out of office when they become consultants or high-powered lobbyists themselves
and uh i i think that although some of the people that we have in elected office are upstanding honest people i think that as they're in the system from longer and longer
they get corrupted by it basically by losing touch with the people that they're supposed to be serving and i think they forget who it is they're supposed to be representing
it's uh well it it's it's such a complicated thing let me just relate to you uh
an experience that i had with politics at a lower level uh and i think what it boils down to is that if you can't find compromise you're not going to be successful
um-hum
um in eighty six i was president of of an association called DPMA Data Processing Management Association
um-hum
uh which was actually at the time we were the third largest chapter in the world we had five hundred plus members
and it was just i mean an absolute uh unforseen unforseen unforeseen thing that a woman should become president in this good ole boy city okay
don't misunderstand me now but it it all came down to the fact that you had to be able to deal i mean we had uh our board our officers and our board board of directors of about twenty people now this is a good size group of people to manage
and to come to one voice on on certain things you understand
and in my year we did perfectly fine and the the gentlemen that came behind me was a uh wonderful intelligent smooth really good looking successful young black man
but he had his own agenda and wouldn't compromise with people he thought that because he was president he could drive through whatever he chose
um-hum
and it was a terrible a terrible situation
i mean the whole thing almost fell apart
and i think what you have to do i mean you i think it's important to have an agenda but you also have to be able to to compromise on it because if the majority are against you
and you lose more than two or three times you know you lose it it been a terrible situation for you and your reputation
sure
and i think what happens is in order to get anything passed in the big political system in Washington you have to you know compromise with other people and vote for something you don't really believe in
but so that they will vote for something that you're asking for
yeah that's that kind of um you know i in a in it's gotten very pervasive
when it comes to expectations on the part of members of each of the party that you try not to cross party lines on certain votes especially these days
and the problem comes about when you have somebody who wants to vote for something the other party advocates strongly and
and they really want to vote for it
yeah well in some cases they do they vote their conscience and then of course you know they may be punished for not doing the appropriate thing that that came down with the cable issue
yeah uh-huh
because we had a Republican Senator uh John Danforth who is strongly in support of it but then you had the White House strongly against it because it would reregulate to an extent
yes it would
and they just wouldn't hear of it at all so we had trouble but he stood his ground
and carried with him a lot of influence you know people underneath him who are Republicans but at the same point it causes a lot of strife and then people dig their heels in and
and you know there's probably about ten percent or maybe less than that five percent of the people who can vote their own conscience and still be successful but all the rest fall by the wayside
um-hum
yeah you have to be a real old timer and powerful to be able to do that especially when it's committee assignment handout time and
right right i am
things like that
