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By Root 621 0

Corporation, or SAIC as it is commonly known. SAIC’s largest customer by far is the U.S. government, which accounts for 69 percent of its business according to SAIC’s filings with the SEC. (SAIC was supposed to build a new, pro-American TV and radio network in Iraq but bungled the job badly.) The remainder of Cunningham’s top contributors reads like a Who’s Who among the merchants of death: $9,500 from Northrop Grumman, $8,000 from Raytheon (which makes the Tomahawk cruise missile), $8,500 from Qualcomm, and $7,000 from Boeing. All this for just one congressman.

Busby’s biggest contributions are $2,000 from an outfit called “Blue Hornet,” which designs websites, $1,835 from members of the Cardiff School Board, and $1,080 from employees of Mira Costa College.

One ingenious measure of how money displaces people in our political system, compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, is the zip codes from which each candidate gets his or her individual contributions. For Cunningham the chief one is 92067, Rancho Santa Fe, with $62,795 in donations. Rancho Santa Fe is well known as a beautiful, underpopulated enclave of extremely wealthy people, many of them foreigners. It is followed by 92037, La Jolla, not a poor town, which chipped in $24,000 for Cunningham. The next two zip codes are 20003 and 20007, both of which are in Washington, D.C. Cunningham received the fewest donations from 92065, Carlsbad. Busby’s are the direct opposite. Her best zip code is 92007, her hometown of Cardiff, the residents of which have given her $8,415, followed by 92009, Carlsbad; 92014, Del Mar; and last 92091, wealthy Fairbanks Ranch, which gave her a mere $1,000. Cunningham’s money comes from the following localities, in descending order: San Diego, Washington, D.C., New York City, and Orange County, California. Busby’s comes entirely from the San Diego metropolitan area.

Cunningham knows with precision who gives him money and what its providers expect of him. As the Japanese like to say, you don’t have to tell a geisha what to do. He has 100 percent ratings from the National Right to Life Committee (he is adamantly opposed to giving women the right to choose), the League of Private Property Voters, the Christian Coalition, and the Business-Industry PAC, and an 80 percent rating from the Gun Owners of America. Over the last decade he has received $44,600 from the National Rifle Association, more than any other member of Congress except Representative Don Young, a Republican from Alaska. There are no places in the 50th District to go hunting, least of all with an Uzi or an AK-47.

Cunningham’s voting record likewise reflects the fact that national neoconservatives and the munitions industry now own him lock, stock, and barrel. As one might expect, he voted for the No Child Left Behind and PATRIOT acts. He also voted yes on the following measures: the law banning partial birth abortion; the $350 billion tax break for the rich, passed on May 23, 2003, by a vote of 231 to 200; a law prohibiting liability lawsuits against gun makers and gun sellers whose products are used to commit crimes; the Medicare Prescription Drug Act, passed in the middle of the night on November 22, 2003, by a vote of 220 to 215; and the Emergency Wartime Supplemental Appropriations Act of April 3, 2003, that included $62.5 billion for the war in Iraq.

Cunningham talks a lot about patriotism and putting the country first, but although his voting record in 2003 was 98 percent for what President Bush wanted, in 1999 he had only a 20 percent record of supporting President Clinton. Opposition to Clinton is, of course, almost the functional definition of “patriotism” among Cunningham’s wing of the Republican Party, which sought to impeach the president for a venial sin but which is indifferent to evidence of mortal sins committed by President Bush, particularly his leading the country into war against Iraq based on a tissue of lies.

Within Congress, Cunningham is a member of the National Security Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, a forum the military-industrial