Corporate lobbyists are there precisely to HIJACK the US government AWAY from the American people,

all for the lowest, most contemptible, mercenary reasons.

They have been doing so, so successfully for so long that people & politicians take it for granted.

Politically impossible means unacceptable to corporations.

But when the majority of Americans support a public option, that doesn't even register on the DC political scale.

Corporate lobbyist hijacking was successful yet again.

Originally posted by whatukno
Government lobby groups should be banned from any state or federal building. They should be banned from talking to, discussing with, or interacting with any federal employee or elected official.

Any group, firm, PAC, or cause found guilty of lobbying members of the government should be tried under RICO and have all assets seized.

Any elected official to have any dealings with lobby groups should be found to have committed a first degree felony punishable by life in prison without possibility of parole.

Whatever happened to this?

If they did a forensic audit of the upper 5% of the families and the most wealthy companies and prosicuted under RICO as stated above well, we wouldn't haveany mony problems at all now would we. How does a century without taxes of any sort sound?

I think we are due for a Jubilee about now.

I'm courious. How would we define a "lobbyist" as opposed to a citizen/group of citizens who are simply trying to communicate a need to their elected officials?

I suppose an easy answer would be that lobbyists are paid to try to persuade a member of congress while a citizen/group of citizens are not paid to do so....

...However, does that mean that a citizen or citizen group cannot hire a lawyer to speak on their behalf? Lawyers are more eloquent and better at communicating than most average citizens, so I can totally see an honest citizen group hiring a lawyer to speak on their behalf. Would that be illegal under this proposed law?

What about a larger group? One that is organized to the point that it has some paid staff -- say, for example, the SPCA (the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals). Let's say the leader of the SPCA, who gets paid for what he does, tries to persuade his congressional representative to pass a law that helps prevent some animal cruelty. Would that be illegal, seeing that the person doing the persuading is a paid advocate?

Perhaps the people at the SPCA feel they aren't good at communicating their message. Would the SPCA be allowed to hire an outside PR firm to communicate for them, and communicate that message to congress?


What about other advocacy groups who have paid members or who hire consultants to better present their advocacy message, such as:

American Civil Rights Coalition
Diabetics International Foundation
Friends of the Earth
National Coalition for the Homeless

Would the paid staff/consultants of these advocacy groups be allowed to speak to members of congress about certain laws that could be passed to help out their causes? It sounds as if you are saying that only individual citizens should be able to speak to their congressman -- however, I would imagine that a 75 year old diabetic would rather have an advocacy group speaking on their behalf.