Obama and the lobbyists.

[Direckshun]

There have been a number of things said about Obama hiring lobbyists, and has made a number of statements about hiring lobbyists, that I feel a few things need to be said to attempt to stem the complaints that will inevitably arise from the memyselfI's and Donger's.

Here are a series of facts that, from my point of view, are undeniable. Lobbyists create a problem in Washington because they exert undue influence on public policy to further their own causes regardless of what it does for the population at large. Lobbyists are also, in virtually every case, the foremost experts on their subject of interest. It's impossible to find somebody who knows more about guns than the NRA, or knows more about the environment than the Sierra Club. Harnessing the power and intellect of lobbyists has been a trademark of every administration in modern history. Lobbyists working for past administrations have gotten in trouble by working for the benefit of their past check-writers. This was a systemic problem in the Bush administration, which even had Cheney working on behalf of Halliburton. Obama made the blanket promise to not hire lobbyists on the campaign trail. He has since hired at least a dozen lobbyists, listed here (http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090128/pl_politico/18128) by Politico. This in effect has broken his promise. Scrolling the list of lobbyists that Obama has hired reveals that only a few of them have been hired in a field that close to what they lobbied for. This does seem to hold consistent with a more detailed explanation Obama described during the campaign trail that was less absolutist: that he wouldn't hire any lobbyist to a department to which they lobbied two years before hiring. This more nuanced promise has nonetheless been broken at least a time or two, anyway. According to Politico, the Obama administration has made the exceptions sign agreements that they will recuse themselves in any situation where they have to deal with their old employers.
Thoughts.

[Jenson71]

Thoughts:

The influence of a lobbyist is ultimately only determined by the integrity and wisdom of the policymaker. If policymakers have the peoples' best interest at heart, then those lobbyists who pursue the peoples' best interests will be successful, and those lobbyists who forsake the common good will be uninfluential. Ultimately, we are concerned with the policymaker.

Lobbyists are a natural part of government. They can also be focused to the good of a nation. We just need to make sure there are more good than bad, and the influence they have is in accordance.

[HonestChieffan]

Making a rule to not hire the very best is pretty stupid.

[patteeu]

Cheney was never a lobbyist for Haliburton or anyone else. Unless Obama has promised not to hire anyone who has ever held a high rank in a corporation or anyone who presumably has friends in the corporate world, I don't see why you've dragged Cheney into this discussion. Furthermore, Dick Cheney didn't work "on behalf of" Haliburton while in the Bush administration. He worked on behalf of the American people. Your "undeniable ... facts" are neither.

I move to strike all references to Cheney from the record.

[memyselfI]

Making a rule to not hire the very best is pretty stupid.

Making a rule with the intent to break it is pretty stupid.

[SHTSPRAYER]

I don't see why you've dragged Cheney into this discussion.

Why? Libtard SOP.

:)

[patteeu]

Thoughts:

The influence of a lobbyist is ultimately only determined by the integrity and wisdom of the policymaker. If policymakers have the peoples' best interest at heart, then those lobbyists who pursue the peoples' best interests will be successful, and those lobbyists who forsake the common good will be uninfluential. Ultimately, we are concerned with the policymaker.

Lobbyists are a natural part of government. They can also be focused to the good of a nation. We just need to make sure there are more good than bad, and the influence they have is in accordance.

Excellent post. I would have gone with "will not be influential" instead of making up a new word though.* :p

Edit: I stand corrected. I just looked it up and found that at least one online dictionary considers "uninfluential" a word. I would have still gone the other route, but that's apparently nothing more than a preference.



---------------
* I've been known to do this same thing before though, so I'm just having fun with you.

[memyselfI]

Well Obamba has proven rather impotent to fight lobbyists inspite of his Highness. ROFL



http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/THE_INFLUENCE_GAME_STIMULUS_LOBBYING?SITE=FLROC&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Lobbyists skirt Obama's earmark ban

Economist: Not Easy to Ditch Budget 'earmarks'

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama's ban on earmarks in the $825 billion economic stimulus bill doesn't mean interest groups, lobbyists and lawmakers won't be able to funnel money to pet projects.

They're just working around it - and perhaps inadvertently making the process more secretive.

The projects run the gamut: a Metrolink station that needs building in Placentia, Calif.; a stretch of beach in Sandy Hook, N.J., that could really use some more sand; a water park in Miami.

There are thousands of projects like those that once would have been gotten money upfront but now are left to scramble for dollars at the back end of the process as "ready to go" jobs eligible for the stimulus plan.

The result, as The Associated Press learned in interviews with more than a dozen lawmakers, lobbyists and state and local officials, is a shadowy lobbying effort that may make it difficult to discern how hundreds of billions in federal money will be parceled out.

"'No earmarks' isn't a game-ender," said Peter Buffa, former mayor of Costa Mesa, Calif. "It just means there's a different way of going about making sure the funding is there."

It won't be in legislative language that overtly sets aside money for them. That's the infamous practice known as earmarking, which Obama and Democratic congressional leaders have agreed to nix for the massive stimulus package, expected to come up for a House vote this week.

Instead, the money will be doled out according to arcane formulas spelled out in the bill and in some cases based on the decisions of Obama administration officials, governors and state and local agencies that will choose the projects.

"Somebody's going to earmark it somewhere," said Howard Marlowe, a consultant for a coalition working to preserve beaches.

Lobbyists are hard at work figuring out ways to grab a share of the money for their clients, but the new rules mean they're doing so indirectly - and sometimes in ways that are impossible to track.

Congressional earmarks have had a bad name since the 2004 scandal that sent superlobbyist Jack Abramoff to prison and earned the congressional spending committees a new nickname: "The Favor Factory."

Obama, who campaigned promising a more transparent and accountable government, is advocating a system that will eventually let the public track exactly where stimulus money goes through an Internet-powered search engine. In addition, Democratic lawmakers have devised an elaborate oversight system, including a new board to review how the money is spent.

But none of that will happen until after the bill becomes law. Even critics of the earmarks system acknowledge that specifying projects upfront offers some measure of transparency.

"We hate earmarks, but at least it's a way of tracking where influence is had," said Keith Ashdown of the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. "There is a challenge now that projects will be added behind closed doors without a paper trail."

Indeed, some lawmakers hearing from local groups say they're doing their own lobbying of governors and state and local officials who could have say-so over the funds.

"I've talked to my governor and suggested some things I think are important in our area," said Republican Rep. C.W. Bill Young, who represents St. Petersburg, Fla. "He knows what the needs are."

Democratic Rep. Ed Pastor of Arizona suggested it's not entirely accurate to say there will be no earmarks in the measure. "There are and there aren't," Pastor said. "A lot of it depends on what the formula looks like."

For instance, the House measure, which includes $358 billion for road, water and energy programs among others, gives priority to transportation projects in high-unemployment areas that could be begun and completed quickly and that state and metropolitan transportation authorities have included in their long-term plans.

In California, Buffa, now board chairman of the Orange County Transportation Authority, said he's changed his strategy from asking for specific projects to pleading for more favorable general guidelines, including more money for infrastructure projects overall and a formula that lets cities - not states - decide how to spend it.

His organization has enlisted Potomac Partners, a large firm that specializes in lobbying for project spending, to help.

In most cases, lawmakers know exactly which projects in their districts can benefit from the money, even though the legislation won't spell them out. State and local officials have released lists of projects that could start quickly and be completed within a few years.

In Orange County, they include freeway improvements and the Placentia Metrolink station. The American Shore and Beach Preservation Association, which is pushing for more water projects to be funded, wants repair and restoration of beaches from Sandy Hook, N.J., to Newport Beach, Calif.

Members of Congress are privately outlining their priorities, too.

"Everybody's making their list and checking it twice," said Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the minority leader. "You are inevitably going to have a lot of projects that are not going to pass the smell test."

Some groups are careful not to get too specific, fearing that public scrutiny could draw unwelcome attention to projects easily caricatured as special-interest goodies, such as a 2007 earmark for spinach growers that found its way into an Iraq war spending bill or the now-infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska.

The United States Conference of Mayors released a 300-plus-page list of some $150 billion in "ready-to-go" projects that quickly became fodder for criticism. It included money for the Miami water park, which McConnell has ridiculed publicly, and a skate park in Portland, Maine.

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials was more guarded about its list of 5,000 projects totaling $64 billion. No specific projects were mentioned - just the number in each state and an overall dollar amount - making it impossible for lawmakers, advocacy groups or members of the public to criticize any one item.

Peter J. "Jack" Basso, an association executive, said it's up to states to decide what goes on their "ready-to-go" wish lists, but that the projects must meet rigorous tests including clearing environmental reviews.

"We really rely on them to pick things that, frankly, are not bridges to nowhere," Basso said.

[patteeu]

There was no "systemic problem" of lobbyists working for the Bush administration getting in trouble by working for the benefit of their past check-writers. While it's possible that some of that happened, as it very likely happens in every administration, the bigger problem was the demagoguery of the opposition who don't acknowledge the positive role that lobbyists play in our governing process (as the thread starter has done to some extent and as Jenson71 has expanded upon).

[patteeu]

Well Obamba has proven rather impotent to fight lobbyists inspite of his Highness. ROFL

In another thread, Direckshun only found 2% of the massive spending bill to be pork. I pointed out that this process was likely to result in far more than that once actual projects were determined. I used an example of a community near my home that hopes to get a spot at the trough to fund a swimming pool and another one that wants to expand it's community center. Thanks for providing an article that exposes this subterfuge.

It was always embarrassing to have to accept that Republican Ted Stevens was a big-spending pork king. He's a street thug compared to the mafia kingpins responsible for this bill.

[SHTSPRAYER]

From moonbattery.com:

Tax Cheat Geithner Hires Lobbyist as Chief of Staff
Now that US Treasury Secretary has become one of the most powerful positions in the world, it would be nice to have someone with integrity in the position. Instead we have tax cheat Timothy Geithner, who after promising to keep lobbyists' snouts out of the $700 billion TARP trough, promptly hired Goldman Sachs lobbyist Mark Patterson to serve as his Chief of Staff.

Goldman Sachs has already gobbled up at least $10 billion of the bailout loot. My guess is, that was only the appetizer.

Patterson isn't the only prominent lobbyist to find a comfy home in our new government. White House aide Cecilia Munoz lobbied just last year for the Hispanic answer to the Black Panthers, the National Council of La Raza ("the race"). Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has been lobbying for one of the most malignant cancers eating away at our society, the NEA.

Obama promised transparency — and the rot that characterizes his regime is admittedly transparent.

[HonestChieffan]

Making a rule with the intent to break it is pretty stupid.

No, thats Chicago style politics...