Curious. It’s sounds like a group interested in how cash is taken out of companies.
They submitted comments in 2013 to international banking regulators over margin requirements for derivatives, and did the same in 2014 to five U.S. regulators.
I expect they just don’t know who their donors are. Suitcases full of cash get left in hotel lobbies to be picked up. They have no idea what they are lobbying for, they just provide lots of expensive dinners for assistants to politicians, and occasionally send out an incomprehensible press release.
By now we must be at Peak Lobby, so it’s not like any more will have any effect.
Incidentally, book plug, this reminds me of Joseph Heller’s Closing Time.
Surely their privilege to lobby at all is at risk here.
And surely that - their privilege to lobby - is the only thing which really matters here.
Wouldn’t it be tyranny if groups like the FEC had enough clout and budget to actually enforce the law? It would be like the Soviet Union, I tell you.
Jesus f—in a unicorn why is it so difficult <—rhetorical pls no dont k?
I’ve registered as a lobbyist as part of a project and partly just to see how that particular registrar worked. You pretty much had to give it all up, who you are, who you want to lobby, about what, for whom, and when you did you were to report when, where, how, repeat whom and why then update per contact if you wanted to be legit.
“if you wanted to be legit” is the clincher I suppose. I prefer legit so all the ties that bind don’t chaff me much.
Who would want to be legit if it means so much paperwork?
It wasn’t so bad, can all be done online, and these mofos, unlike me, can totally afford secretarial staff*.
*job creators? NOT
The first rule of Fight Club…
I admit I don’t have much love for bureaucratical jobs. Can’t we have instead some jobs that are producing some actual value instead of pushing pencils over forms and forcing other people to spend time and energy on crap?
Seeing as how the corporate lobbying industry has grown alongside the ease at which corporations reduce the perceived value of jobs vs the actual value, the answer to your query is a resounding “No.”.
Bureaucratic jobs have the disadvantage of often staying in the way of real jobs. I would prefer those people to be unemployed over forcing me to fill yet another form.
The problem with your statement prior was the “instead”. The same instead just had you preferring unemployment over employment of your fellow being as an argument in favour of employment?
“As well as”. Try that in it’s place. It is what we have now, and besides the fact of bureaucracies actually being jobs, the particular bureaucratic positions in question, the checks on lobbying, serve public interests and jobs are in the public interest, where paying for labour is often regarded as not at all in a corporation’s interest.
You seem, but probably are not, describing a world of people before bureaucracies. That was a tribal world where it has been had in ours, in the past. Most unpleasant for all but a very very few.
As for that form, in the case of lobbyists, what form would you have them not filling in, where the forms are public disclosure of their interactions with public institutions with the purpose of private gain?
Not having a check on lobbying government is just about the worst hill to die on in the war against needless bureaucracies.
Employment in a productive job is the best alternative. Unemployment sucks but at least does not harm me directly. Employment in a bureaucratic job that adds unnecessary work to my job is impairing me directly so I prefer such job holder to do anything else including nothing.
There is no alternative as it isn’t even close to a binary choice in any system known to humankind.
Unemployment does harm you indirectly and probably more directly than you expect. Deciding on unemployment as preferable for another based solely on what you find best for you alone is as fine an anti-social sentiment as any.
Employment in bureaucratic jobs that benefit you and your job both directly and indirectly far outweigh the harm you find inflicted by a necessary form to assist in those benefits.
The topical process that generated your statements belies your convictions. As stated, the registrar, a large one that I have direct experience with, is largely automated for the registered and is simple to use.
The only trouble people have with it is that it holds them accountable to the public for their interactions with public institutions by revealing their ends and means to the public.
Like or not, the right to petition the government for redress of grievances is protected in the first amendment. Limits can exist, possibly more since there is hiring of a third party involved, but it definitely falls under “right” not “privilege.”
It’s the “right of the people,” not “the right of corporations.”
Now, even though Citizens United has passed, there are restrictions on it that lobbying groups must abide by. So, in the case of lobbyists, it most certainly is a privilege.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
