Via TPM, stories like this are important:
But lobbyists and many of the businesses they represent say K Street is being unfairly demonized by a White House intent on scoring political points with scandal-weary voters. They warn that the latest policy will severely handicap federal regulators, who rely heavily on advisory boards for technical advice and to serve as liaisons between government and industry.
“It’s taken me years to learn what the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade is,” said Robert Vastine, a lobbyist for the Coalition of Service Industries who also serves as chairman of a trade advisory board. “It’s a whole different and specialized world. It is not easily obtained knowledge, and they are crippling themselves terribly by ruling out all registered lobbyists.”
It’s great that the Obama administration is doing this. It is.
But the most interesting part of this, to me at least, is the defense that the lobbyists put up. It’s of a piece with the Kaplan/WSJ opposition to health care reform, with the general Village defense of torture, and so on.
BDeevDad
I bet this is the sum of Robert Vastine’s knowledge on the subject.
Linkmeister
And the very next paragraph explains more about Mr. Vastine:
Gosh. You don’t suppose he’s got at minimum a little pride of authorship going here, do you?
DougJ
And the very next paragraph explains more about Mr. Vastine:
Yup.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Letting businesses come to the table and not their paid shills will shed light on who is exactly for or against whatever is being discussed. Business and lobbyists have packed these boards to influence matters in their favor. From the howls of pain alone I can tell this must be a good move by the Obama administration.
Political actions are like movie ratings; if the critics like it then it sucks eggs, if they pan it then you know it has to have some good in it.
Bootlegger
These “advisory panels” are the primary reason that our regulatory bodies boldly claim, and I’m not make this shit up, that there job isn’t to enforce the laws but to strike a balance between private sector profits and the People’s interests.
Just one example, coal companies can rack up literally hundreds of violations before any kind of punitive action by government is even discussed.
It’s even local, some of my neighbors here in central Kentucky are organizing to oppose the construction of a new coal-fired power plant on the Kentucky river by our local electric “co-op”. When we asked the state AG to investigate the “co-op’s” permitting violations they released a statement that said, again not making this up, the AG would ensure that electricity costs would be kept low for central Kentuckians. Fuck the law, says the state attorney general, its the money that matters.
Chuck Butcher
This may sound funny, but lobbiests do provide an important service by doing extensive research to back their position with research. The problem comes in looking at only one side’s research. It isn’t as counter-intuitive as it sounds because there are lobbies for both sides and even more sides of most issues.
There is a serious limit to budget and staff for Congress to do original research. Now staffing governmental boards with paid shills is asking for trouble but there also is an issue of just how many people with expertise are available. If I could find somebody to pay me to try to influence legislation, how many of you’d have a big problem with it? Then if the Fed Govt said, “hey, you’re really on the ball with this, how about giving us a hand,” would you figure I’m automatically disqualified?
Don’t worry, it ain’t gonna happen.
Brick Oven Bill
I’ve worked in Central America. Build a wall.
Yutsano
@Chuck Butcher: Actually it’s not strange at all. It’s why the selection of Geithner wasn’t at all surprising to me. Someone who actually knows how the economy works seems to be the best person to be in charge of it. Not that I’m a Geithner fan, far from it. Having seen how too coddling he is to Wall Street I’d remove him for Elizabeth Warren in a heartbeat.
Chuck Butcher
@Yutsano:
I don’t know where I’m at on him exactly. I’m not satisfied with business as usual on WS, but I’m also aware that the economy is on real shakey ground right now and we do know how WS reacts to “shocks.” I have trouble believing Pres Obama is exactly satisfied either. If he is, we’re about as fucked as it gets because nobody with any credible chance of getting elected shows any more promise as being more dis-satisfied.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
From what I understood, if businesses want to have an in-house (direct employee of the company) ‘lobbyist’ on these panels then they can do so. It’s the lobbyist ‘companies’ that this seems aimed at. From the article:
This will sure hurt the lobbyists who get paid from multiple sources but it doesn’t prevent companies from being on panels. All they need to do is create a corporate office position for their ‘lobbyist’ and they are in business. Hell, I am sure that someone will figure out a way to fuck it all up again in no time at all.
I have faith in human nature.
inkadu
@Linkmeister: Ha! That follow-up paragraph is journalism, where you make a subject look by merely stating facts.
I don’t much about the General Agreement on Tarriffs and Trade, but I do know that Wikipedia said it ended in 1994. This guy is really old.
@Chuck Butcher: If their research was anywhere near honestly done, I might agree with you. But I’m guessing most lobbyist presentation are full of exaggerations, half-truths, bold-lies, false premises, and unrealistic modelling… so, no, they might not provide any service at all except to waste time and confuse the senators.
And lets not pretend the lobbyists are really using logic. Is it really so hard to understand that raping a woman and than locking her up in a storage container is wrong? Is it hard to understand that if your long-distance telephone company is also your internet provider that it might not be a good idea to let the telephone company block internet telephone protocols? Does it take a medical degree to make the connection between heavy metals leeching into groundwater from mining operation and crippling health problems?
Lobbyists don’t bring arguments to the table. They bring money.
Chuck Butcher
@inkadu:
fucking WP ate another one.
What do you call the people paid to bring the argument that heavy metals are leaching and are poisoning?
The word is lobbiest. Just because they’re on your side of an issue doesn’t make them something else. Simplistic examples don’t amount to squat. Legislation has intended and unintended consequences whatever your world view. You sure the hell better try to minimize the unintended ones and that may mean paying some attention to your adversaries.
You like shoot from the hip bullshit? Well you had 8 yrs of GWB to show you how well that works. I don’t like it from them and I don’t like it from my side, either.
If I seem to be getting short, a second time through pisses me off
Chuck Butcher
@inkadu:
You hang an honest Congressman out like that and you’re done.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
You sure about that?
Chuck Butcher
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
sometimes I can spell, other times…
inkadu
@Chuck Butcher: For every good lobbyist, there are 10 bad ones fighting against him with better connections, more money, shinier brochures and consideration for the board of directors for the senator’s family members. If we got rid of all lobbyists, we’d be much better off. It’s a completely tilted field.
You’re pretending that the lobbying process comes out with good legislation; but it doesn’t. It turns out crappy legislation that benefits the few at the expense of the many. Congress has passed so many stupid fucking laws because of lobbyists, I’m willing to see how many stupid laws they pass WITHOUT lobbyist. What do we possibly have to lose?
inkadu
godamnit. i have to go to sleep. night all. don’t let the gobble-gobble of the turkey ghost wake you.
Calouste
@Chuck Butcher:
It would be nice if lobbyists were actually there for their subject knowledge rather than their contacts and presentation skills. With the current set up with lobbying firms, most people have the feeling that the emphasis is on the latter.
Yutsano
@inkadu: The real problem, and I swear I’m not making this up, is lobbying is Constitutionally mandated. The only reason I can think of why a corporation can legally lobby is the fact that under the law they are considered persons. The case dates back to the 19th Century and should have been overturned years ago, but it is what it is.
Cerberus
@Chuck Butcher:
Not entirely accurate actually. The “good guy” lobbyists often use pre-existing studies done by actual scientists. Often, they form to begin with owing to the outgrowth of a scientific consensus on an issue (see the “Green” lobby).
This is a ballgame entirely removed from the “think tank” school whose whole existence is to have “scientists” “produce” “research” whose end goal is pre-determined and whose findings are abortions of science rejected by the system of peer-review and the world of reality as exists. These lobbyists are also often the reason that good guy lobbyists are even needed to begin with. Why would we need a green lobby if there weren’t a thousand energy lobbyists flooding congressmen with dollars to ignore all those eggheads and their research on the dire aspects of climate change?
Indeed quite often the only need the good-guys have for commissioning research is to confirm the existing consensus or follow up on a common sense inference and essentially confirm it for posterity. They also, most critically, don’t. Good guys know that lobbyist commissioned research is often tainted and self-selected as well as bad science. Thus they instead, if they are honest, ask the government to select unbiased respected researchers to examine the problem instead if no university is already dealing with it. This is because they care that their cause is based in reality rather than their wants and desires.
So having lobbyists “bring their research” is an obfuscation of reality. We’d be much better off if we only admitted genuine, respected scientists presenting only research that has been peer-reviewed and confirmed to be accurate.
But in this country, that’s practically heresy.
Chuck Butcher
@Cerberus:
Somebody has to bring whatever and that costs money. Thus, most everybody gets paid to present. Now you can kick all the BS studies you want and that doesn’t change the fact that the “good guys” get paid as well.
Buying an entre doesn’t mean everybody does it nor does it mean that good stuff doesn’t get presented for pay. The deal is to separate the chaff from the BS. Sure, what the GOP does is buy what they want to make BS points, and so?
You guys want to take one brush and paint everybody with it and that’s horse shit. I know some of these legislators and I know some of the people who are paid to talk to them and you’d be real glad of it. You think somebody runs the research on the number of homeless and just emails that to a Senator? Or pick your issue, there’s research and then there’s possible solutions presented. You think a Senator has the staff to do that? He DOES NOT. Those people who present get paid to do it, that’s how it is done and that’s how it has to be done unless you propose to staff Congress to do it – and you can’t and won’t.
The fact that there are crooked used car salesmen doesn’t mean you can’t go buy a good used car from a lot.
jayackroyd
Comment #1
At Netroots Nation, Valeria Jarrett said (“claimed” is probably a better verb) that when a lobbyist tries to set up an appointment to argue on behalf of a company,she calls up the CEO of the company directly, inviting him to stop by
,
jayackroyd
Comment #2
I read through the other remarks, because I was afraid this was too obvious.
The reason agreements like the GATT and legislation like the health care bill are labyrinthine nightmares is that lobbyists are trying to affect the language on every page. Just as accounting companies love complex tax law, lobbyists love incomprehensible legislation, and do their best to make it happen.
jayackroyd
Sorry.
Comment #2
I read through the other remarks, because I was afraid this was too obvious.
The reason agreements like the GATT and legislation like the health care bill are labyrinthine nightmares is that lobbyists are trying to affect the language on every page. Just as accounting companies love complex tax law, lobbyists love incomprehensible legislation, and do their best to make it happen.
gizmo
How about We the People get one advocate for every lobbyist? 1-1 seems fair to me. And for every visit a lobbyist makes to the White House, the people’s advocate gets one, too.
Cerberus
@Chuck Butcher:
Okay, your comment is a bit obtuse, but I figure you’re saying that a good lobbyist operates like an aggregator or a professor wrangling either personal narrative collections or actual research to present.
Which is great and all. I just wished that actually occurred on a level of sanity. Right now, we have people buying bad studies to obfuscate the public, buying off legislators, and inserting their interests directly into legislature that creates a system where in order to counter the deep pockets of industry and corporations, one must play the same twisted game. Thus if you have science or a thousand personal accounts, you can’t just have a guy present the evidence, but have to pay an army of lobbyists to shmooze and bribe legislators to even hear the evidence in favor of the cause.
Now, there’s a perfectly good case that we have the system we have and it’s best to master the game. In the system we have, lobbyists for good are necessary and appreciated. But the system itself does lend itself very easily to the science-illiterate, a think tank is worth more than a thousand personal narratives and a hundred thousand non-biased studies and that is just bad for policy.
Now the senators themselves shoulder some considerable blame, both for being so bribable as well as being science illiterate enough to treat a bullshit study the same as a real one for ideological reasons, but the chaff would be far less if there were far stricter requirements at least on what lobbyists can present as science if nothing else.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Chuck Butcher:
Been there, done that plenty myself. :)
I would not go so far as to say that all lobbyists are bad but I have read more than enough about ‘professional lobbyists’ to know that the system sucks talent from our government and military. Some corporations use that talent to enrich themselves from government coffers, in some cases, to our detriment.
I don’t really see much changing except that corporations will just put in a board-level ‘partner’ to represent their interests and that might slow down the lucrative revolving door between the military/government and the lobbying firms. The system sucks the way it is and maybe shaking it up will produce some changes.
As fucked as things are now I don’t see how it could hurt though I guess we will find out if it does or not. Like I said above, I have faith in human nature, someone will find some way to exploit it soon enough.
Chuck Butcher
I guess that lobbying, like any other human activity, is as good or bad as the participants at a given moment. We really cannot expect legislators to be experts in every field or to employ experts in every field so there is a lack that needs filling. Things are not simple in most applications of law. Loopholes need closing, exceptions need be made, and when all is said and done circumstances will still present things that weren’t even considered because it just wasn’t looked at in enough depth.
You could probably get a list of bad outcomes of well intentioned laws as numerous as the commentors here. Even if the other side has “cooked the books” in an effort to get advantage there may well be buried in the BS things that actually do need to be addressed in order to make good law. That is one of the good aspects of adversarial politics – if anybody bothers to pay attention to it.
Yes, not mucking up the works with BS would be a lot better, but you also need to remember that negotiations don’t really end where you start.
MR Bill
Here’s Steely Dan doing “Black Friday”. Given the default of Dubai on over $40 billion today, might be too dang appropriate. Some commenters are saying it might be the Credit Anstalt of this century’s Great Depression. Probably overblown, but not good.
I’ve been a ‘lobbyist’ for arts funding and environmental (forest/water)issues, one of those citizens herded to the Georgia Legislature to meet, usually with little result. I always got the feeling the real deals were going on elsewhere, and we well intentioned citizens were sort of a fig leaf for the gaming of the legislative process….
MattF
Obama’s threatening the revolving door– Government-> Lobbying firm-> Industry -> Government -> et cetera. Wouldn’t be surprised to find these people changing their job titles in the near future. Gotta pay that big mortgage on that house in Great Falls, somehow.
And I have to say, in passing, that lobbyist’s complaints remind me of the old joke about Romanians– they’re the only people who can follow you through a revolving door and come out ahead.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Sounds rather elitist to me. ReaLAMErican’s skip all the book learning and rely on common sense.
PaulW
Who run Bartertown?
Brien Jackson
bago
@PaulW: Whar my s be at?
Cassidy
Something tells me this isn’t entirely fiction.
jeffreyw
Good morning folks. Can I lobby for a new thread? Do I make anyone unhappy that I am a lobbyist? I promise to use my powers only for good.
kay
They want an outsize voice. They can still work for Caterpillar and sit on an advisory board. What they can’t do is be a lobbyist, work for Caterpillar and sit on an advisory board.
The vast majority of people don’t have a registered lobbyist advocating on their behalf.
The general public’s representative at the table is (ostensibly) the legislator or the appointed official at the administrative agency.
The lobbyist wants extra access. They want to sit on the board and access the government agency or legislator. That gives the commercial entity they represent an outsized voice, and puts the general public at a competitive disadvantage.
The lobbyist in the article who claims he advocates policy that is “good for everyone” (from his particular industry view, anyway) recognizes this, so insists he’s not lobbying for a specific industry, but instead acting as a general advocate for the public good.
kay
They are already ridiculously over-represented. Let’s see. We had 7 registered industry lobbyists on the advisory board for one trade agreement, out of twelve.
Trade affects every worker in the country, and every consumer in the country. But seven specific industries or companies had an advocate at the table.
Leaving (maybe) five seats for everybody else.
One for labor, so the entire non-management workforce gets one, maybe one for consumer concerns, if some non-profit was willing to hire a lobbyist.
Yeah. That’s a level playing field. No wonder most of us were getting creamed. They still have an almost ludicrous advantage.
jeffreyw
The complete calvin & hobbes 1/2 off at amazon (via calc risk). Go there from here and give John a piece of the action.
Bill H
Just because a research firm is paid by, say, the coal industry to do their research doesn’t mean that the research they did doesn’t legitimately prove that “clean coal” is for real. They are independent research firms and are not influenced by whoever pays them.
And I just bought a really neat bridge. Got a good deal on it. Want to see a picture of it? Here.
jeffreyw
@jeffreyw: oops, not calc risk, rather from the big picture
Waynski
If Congress really needs this kind of research, which they probably do, why can’t they fund non-profit, non-partisan organizations that can give them a circumspect picture of issues and then they can make up their own minds? Our system seems to be hopelessly mired in this black/white advocacy in a world that’s increasingly gray.
jeffreyw
More of that newfangled black and white picture takin.
freelancer
Ask not for whom the bag douches, it douches for thee.
Waynski
@feelancer — Well done.
Xanthippas
Indeed, it would be nice for our public officials to learn to write their own regulations.
trollhattan
I wonder what president McCain thinks of this? Wasn’t this his big thang a few years ago?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Cerberus:
Bingo! Somebody give this person a prize.
And thus we reach the crux of the matter.
The problem isn’t the junk science for sale. The problem isn’t that lobbyists are acting as aggregators and presenters of so-called data in so-called studies.
The problem is that each so-called study comes bundled with a big fat envelope full of campaign cash. Without that envelope stuffed with cash (yeah, I know, these days it’s all electrons, I’m just being metaphorical here), the junk science and bullshit studies aren’t nearly as powerful. And all the countervailing good data and good studies in the world won’t help when our Reps and Senators are for sale to the highest bidder. We have govt by eBay, and us ordinary chumps aren’t even invited to the bidding process most of the time.
The rest is a sideshow – if you doubt that, go take a look at how legislation was written earlier in the history of the US Congress long before studies and junk science were a factor. Lobbying has been a parasitical infestation of parliaments and a threat to the general welfare ever since representative democracy was invented, long predating the modern use of scientific studies for the purpose of influencing public policy. For that matter, it goes back even further since every other form of govt. predating democracy had some form of narrow factional influence peddling associated with it (hangers on at court, etc..).
Solve the campaign money problem and the junk science problem will be reduced to the level it is at currently in the judiciary – where judges are just as science illiterate as Reps and Senators, but less driven by campaign cash (at least for the benches with lifetime appointments).
And at least part of the solution to this money problem is to pour sand into the mechanism of the revolving door identified by Matt at #30 above. If a Congresscritter can’t know for sure that they will be able to feed at the piggy trough should they be ejected from office, perhaps they might think twice about screwing the voters who are going to decide on their continued employment in the next election.
Making companies show up with their own people rather than hired guns when they want something from the govt. won’t stop that process, but it will add friction, if for no other reason than that Company X may think twice about putting ex-Congressman Porklips on their permanent payroll to lobby for them if ex-Congressman Porklips has the nasty habit of going onto TV or writing op-eds in the newspaper calling fellow Americans traitors, spewing vile racism, lying his fncking face off about everything under the Sun, etc., etc.
That disincentive doesn’t apply to hired lobbyists because they are so disposable. There is little reputational risk for a company hiring a lobbying firm full of slimeballs, because they are easily replaced and only tangentially connected with the company. Not so for your own people. So make a company which wants to lobby the govt. have to man up and put their own ass on the line in choosing the sort of folks who are representing them. I like that a lot.
Tony J
Oh? I thought that joke was about Hungarians.
Corner Stone
@jeffreyw:
Spot
@Linkmeister:
I thought you said Vaseline.
Wile E. Quixote
So let me see if I have this straight: we recruit lobbyists to government advisory boards that are charged with making policy recommendations because of the supposed expertise of the lobbyists.
This is like an episode of White Collar without attractive and likable characters.