These articles are getting more and more interesting all the time. TAP’s simonstl is putting together articles about legislative reform, each of which takes the issue up from a particular point of view. It’s a great exercise in persuasive argument: putting yourself in someone else’s shoes as best you can to come up with the best reasons for them to support your cause.
Today’s serving is an unusual one. Today, he’s tackling lobbyists and why they should support legislative reform. That sounds nuts on the face of it, but when you read the article, you will find there are more surprising and persuasive arguments than you might have thought. I did:
the albany project :: Lobbyists – Selfish Reasons to Support Reform
- No more double standard. Today’s New York Times pointed out that lobbyists seem to be the only ones punished for violations – legislators get off with barely a slap on the wrist. I don’t think anyone – probably especially the lobbyists – thinks ethics enforcement should work that way.
- More competition means better threats. Right now it looks like New York State lobbyists can only pursue legislators’ hearts with carrots – lots and lots of carrots. The leadership has pretty much the only sticks. In a reformed legislature, lobbyists could help take it to the voters when they don’t like a legislator’s views.
This is really quite brilliant. Not being in Albany, it’s hard for me to say whether or not this is really a valid set of arguments for your average lobbyist. On the outside looking in, however, the argument seems to be made fairly well that this reform is about letting in some competition. That’s great news for the young bucks and the newbies, but not so much for the entrenched elite, which is exactly the same position we find ourselves in where legislators are concerned.
I’m going to fold this one because it’s getting long. . . . .
It actually restates an interesting question in a provocative way about the “American Dream” and it’s attendant ambition: do people really want to tear down the walls they’re so desperately trying to climb over? After all, if there’s no wall, there’s nothing to work for.
It’s kind of a “What’s the Matter With Kansas,” kind of thing. There are many people voting against their economic interests, allowing politicians to give all the goodies away to the rich, because they actually think that there’s hope that they may be rich some day. I wonder how many young lobbyists would support legislative reform knowing that they would endanger the very job they hope to attain.
He also makes a valid argument for lobbyists being a bit stuck in a trap: they have nothing to offer an entrenched elite other than more and more goodies. They have no way of backing out of their relationships because there’s very little hope of anyone leaving the legislature.
On another level, in the comments, robinia makes the following interesting point:
Selfish Reasons: Pro or amateur?
Otherwise, one important point to remember is that the Citizen and nonprofit lobbyists are far more numerous than the pros on any given day at the legislature. Despite dysfunction, voters continue to expect the legislature and administration to function as a real government, that they can petition and participate in.
We typically make the point when arguing for Clean Money, Clean Elections that there are so many lobbyists in Albany. 18 for every politician there, as I recall. This comment points out that most of them don’t seem to be the evil, horn-sporting imps we’ve all come to expect. So, who is doing the real damage? Is there any way to score these types of things? I’m sure most of those non-profit lobbyists spend a lot of their time trying to schedule around the big corporation’s lobby visits, but is there a way to play pin-the-lobbyist-on-the-bill? And how much strain do citizen lobbyists put on the system, anyway? Is there some plan to curb this effect, and how would you avoid Constitutional issues in that case?
I’m hoping someone over there at TAP or elsewhere can enlighten me about these questions. . .
In any event, the rationales presented in this article serve more purpose than just convincing lobbyists to support reform, anyway. Far more important (in my estimation, anyway) is the brainstorming of ideas for reform. A while ago, I took to what I called “shadow boxing” on the Clean Money, Clean Elections issue: I watched the editorial sections of California news websites for arguments against their version of CMCE and wrote blogs to develop counter-arguments. This seems to be a more proactive but similar intellectual exercise.
Every little bit helps, because before too long, this issue will need to be brought fully and forcefully into the public arena and out of the blogger/activist/insider milieu. When that day comes, we need lots of counter-arguments for all the objections to reform we know are coming.
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