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President Barack Obama greets Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker John Boehner before delivering the State of the Union address in the House Chamber at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, February 12, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

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There are two sides to the story of special interest money in Washington, according to an op-ed today in The New York Times by Peter Schweizer, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution. While the traditional narrative is that politicians are corrupted by wealthy interests, Schweizer says we may be getting it wrong.

He says some politicians are involved in a type of “legal extortion” to get their hands on cash, with terms like the “tollbooth” and “milker bills” describing some of these practices. Whatever you call it, it doesn’t sound like the type of democracy we’d ideally like to have. He writes: