According to the Center for Responsive Politics – lobbying money actually went down last year. After a record high of $2.5 billion spent in 2009 to influence Members of Congress – there was a slight drop off in 2010. Does that mean lobbying went down – or was the bar just set too high in the middle of the health reform debate? Or something else that nobody's discussing? The President of the American League of Lobbyists blamed the poor economy for the slight decline in lobbying dollars. But the dirty little secret - the unspoken reality - is that since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision opened the door to unlimited election spending directly on TV by corporations and billionaires – laundering that money through is increasingly obsolete. Instead – transnational corporations, billionaires, and foreign governments just cut out the middleman and buy their own candidates for elected office. Goodbye, Democracy - Hello, American Oligarchs and Oligopoly.