THE SPECIAL INTERESTS GO MARCHING ON AND ON, HURRAH, HURRAH... The Wall Street Journal has an excellent article chronicling the desperate attempts of various rapacious and over-indulged industries to spend the Republican majority into safety. The piece starts with the drug industry, whose sweetheart deal preventing Medicare from centrally bargaining drug prices will, according to Nancy Pelosi, be overturned within the first 100 hours of Democrats taking control. Hoping to head that off, the industry has donated almost $14 million, 70% of it to Republicans. In total, the 2006 midterms are forecast to be the most expensive ever, costing $2.6 billion. Three-quarters of this, or $1.85 billion, will come from business interests. That's a sobering statistic: In this age of people-powered politics and netroots-driven donating, it's easy to forget that business interests still fund the mechanisms of our "democracy." That doesn't change if Democrats take control, and there's a real question if, when business lobbyists begin knocking on their doors and promising the money needed for retention of their fledgling majority, they'll be able to role back some of the grotesque corporate giveaways that Republicans enacted because industry lobbyists knocked on their doors and offering the money needed for majority protection. As the old saying goes, business has no eternal allies and no perpetual enemies, just permanent interests. And the same can be said for politicians. --Ezra Klein