I, Lobbyist

[unhappycamper]

I, Lobbyist
Art Brodsky
Posted August 9, 2007 | 04:20 PM (EST)


The Chicago debate among Democratic presidential candidates has cast quite a shadow over the lobbyist community here in the Nation's Capital. The candidates, with one exception in Senator Clinton, are competing with each other to see who can be the most vicious in demonizing the hated "lobbyist."

So it is with some reluctance that I must declare to all my friends and whatever readers there are out there that I, Art Brodsky, am an official lobbyist. What makes me a lobbyist? Simple. I'm on the list.

~snip~

At the beginning of the year, the new Democratic leadership promised to crack down on the very lax Congressional ethics process that had produced not only the Jack Abramoff scandals, but also an entire culture of influence. Here at PK, we decided out of an abundance of caution that it would be prudent to file a lobbyist registration with the appropriate offices on Capitol Hill for those us who occasionally pay a call on Congressional staff and, very occasionally, on legislators themselves.

Hence, my name turns up on the list. When some campaign worker runs my name through the lobbyist database, there I am. Hence, my money would no longer be welcome in a number of political campaigns - assuming that I had much money for such things.

I note for the record, that not only am I on the list, but so are many friends. Free Press and Consumers Union have registered their staffs as lobbyists. The Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club and the ACLU, to name just a few, are also good guys on the lobbyist registration list. There are lots more, and most of them have been officially registered for much longer than has Public Knowledge.

Having outed myself as a lobbyist, it's important to note that we do everything today the same as we did before. We still take on the telephone companies over Internet Freedom, and still take on the content companies over digital copyright issues. We still work with some phone companies on copyright issues, and might yet work with some content companies on issues of mutual interest.


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on edit to fix link

[sybylla]

1. You know, I've lost all sympathy for this argument

The argument that says if we ban lobbyists from donating we ban the good guys too.

Too bad.

If this is what we have to do to clean up the atmosphere in DC and in our own state capitols, then so be it. There are other ways politically active organizations (as opposed to corporations) can help candidates for office.