Lobbyists are a crucial part of the political process as far as educating legislators and their staff. Legislators cannot possibly know the workings, let alone the body of statutory and case law at play, with every activity and industry legislatures have to regulate and facilitate.
Seems like you realize the money they spread around is the problem: bundlers, megadonors, super PACs, dark money, financial and agency’s disclosure laws, etc., that’s where we need to start reforms.
It’s unpopular, but yeah. Also, people forget that lobbying is, at it’s core, a group of citizens with a particular interest in a specific area banding together to try and convince a politician that what they want is the best course of action. If BLM started lobbying seriously like the NAACP does (or did; I don’t know how active they are now), they’d still be working for the same cause, and likely more effectively. Yeha, you need your ground game and people in the streets engaging in protests and demonstrations, but you also need people that will directly engage with lawmakers to get shit done.
People think of the NRA as nothing but a national organization working at the federal level, but for a long time–before they really started to suck under Wayne LaPierre–they did a ton of work with lobbying at the local level, and actively worked for what their membership wanted.
Lobbyists are a crucial part of the political process as far as educating legislators and their staff. Legislators cannot possibly know the workings, let alone the body of statutory and case law at play, with every activity and industry legislatures have to regulate and facilitate.
Seems like you realize the money they spread around is the problem: bundlers, megadonors, super PACs, dark money, financial and agency’s disclosure laws, etc., that’s where we need to start reforms.
It’s unpopular, but yeah. Also, people forget that lobbying is, at it’s core, a group of citizens with a particular interest in a specific area banding together to try and convince a politician that what they want is the best course of action. If BLM started lobbying seriously like the NAACP does (or did; I don’t know how active they are now), they’d still be working for the same cause, and likely more effectively. Yeha, you need your ground game and people in the streets engaging in protests and demonstrations, but you also need people that will directly engage with lawmakers to get shit done.
People think of the NRA as nothing but a national organization working at the federal level, but for a long time–before they really started to suck under Wayne LaPierre–they did a ton of work with lobbying at the local level, and actively worked for what their membership wanted.