Leaked recording: pollution lobbyists discuss exploiting Syrian refugee crisis

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Lobbyists have their own lobbyists now?

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Someone should report him to the Department of Redundancy Department.

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in triplicate

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Congressmen are cheap so lobbyists started expanding their budgets to get more money for their lobbyists.

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Havce to say it. They sound like children trying to be grownups by impressing the slightly older kids with clever plans.

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“Pollution Lobbyists”

It is a sad day when that is a thing.

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I came to say something snarky about the difference between “pollution lobbyists” and energy companies, which would presumably include wind and solar. Then I read their actual words, and it sounds like they work for Snidely Whiplash.

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They do indeed. ‘AGRP’ is the “Association of Government Relations Professionals”. If you prefer sticking closer to home, ‘NASL’, the National Association of State Lobbyists, might be for you. The Public Relations Society of America probably counts as well.

You would at least hope that they would view their work with the requisite shame; but no.

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It´s lobbyists all the way down!

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my god, it’s full of lobbyists

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Getting back to the matter in hand, is it time to require Voight-Kampff tests to be given to our leaders of industry? Not only wanting to use a humanitarian crisis to save themselves a few bucks, but the few bucks they want saved are from laws requiring them to keep the rivers clean. Do these replicants not drink water?

Fortunately there seem to be some actual human beings at the meeting to leak this account.

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The Voight-Kampf? That’d be unfair to the human psychopaths and quite a few sociopaths too.

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Colour me unsurprised that it’s actually true.

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I can never seem to fully grasp just how much of the dystopian future empire checklist the USA is fulfilling…

Every day a new wonder!

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I don’t know if it’s just me, but the idea of sneaking changes to the law in unrelated legislation seems antithetical to the democratic process. Why is this accepted as part of our system of government, who started it, and can it be stopped?
Does voter apathy surprise anyone after seeing how our system has become so dysfunctional that “sneaking” in laws has become common?

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They tried before and it was ruled anti-Constitutional.

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This is an attempt to do so, and while a lot of governors have line-item veto power, it seems like this could be done another way without giving the executive branch undue power over legislation. A subcommittee of congress that makes determinations on “relatedness” of line-items or somesuch. It’s sad that this was something that people from both sides of he aisle were in favor of, and seems to pragmatic, but they couldn’t find a way. Of course, a lot of really great appropriations have probably only been allowed to happen riding the coattails of a military spending bill or some other nonsense. But that’s also pretty sad…

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Sorry…I’ve been professionally “accredited” by the PRSA (during a much earlier, naive, less-than-admirable phase of my career) …and I can say without reservation that most PRSA folks are not sophisticated enough.

They try…but most are simply too nice to do that kind of work. There are a few slicks, but they are rare.

big lobbyists have little lobbyists
on their bills to write 'em
and little lobbyists have lesser lobbyists
and so on
ad infinitum.

basically, they’re like fleas.

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