CA: Legislature Opens To Lobbies
Calwatchdog reports the doors to the state capitol are being a bit re- arranged, with business and lobbys being given access to the old public access venues. At least they're being honest about it.
I have a different take on special interests than most, as I've wrote here before. We're all special interests. You, I and all the different groups are special interests that have our own things we want government to do, or not, for us.
I'm not sure I see anything wrong with that, short of the crony capitalist stuff that regularly seems to go on in Sacramento. For instance, fire alarm companies lobbying for laws requiring smoke or carbon monoxide detectors in new homes. Or companies involved in drug testing lobbying to make it easier to drug test high school athletes. I'm told that sort of thing happens all the time. It shouldn't.
Not sure how you can draw the line between a special interest such as myself or a gun rights group and one that is in the fight for strictly some profit. Then again, is there really anything all that wrong with profit?
They say they'll change the door arrangement eventually. I'm not sure it matters since the whole thing has been an open secret up to now anyway.
posted by Fred Mangels @ 12:35 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
At least lobbying is not practiced as it was in the 40s and 50s when Artie Samish had an office in the old Senator Hotel across from the Capitol and had a wooden dummy that he called Mr. Legislature.
Then there was Assembly Speaker Jessie Unruh, who once commented that "If you can't drink their booze, eat their food, screw their women and then vote against their bills you have no business in the Legislature."
If you can't drink their booze, eat their food, screw their women and then vote against their bills you have no business in the Legislature."
Probably true, though.
Probably so. Some people just "sell out" faster than others. Being a "sell out" is not a positive connotation. Yet, we worship sell outs, and elect them to office.
It seems hard to find people with real convictions these days. Religious people seem fake, conservatives seem fake, liberals seem fake. Everyone just wants to be labeled. They dont want to have to think about issues or reality.
To quote Jerry Brown, ‘Never underestimate the coercive power of the central state’. Lobbying is just greasing the skids to make sure that coercive power goes in a direction favorable to you.
It's very transparent. Attack an individual right, make tons of money from both sides lobbying for or against, drop it then bring it up again in a few months time with slightly different wording. All the while, the citizens fight the bills, as they should, but are too dumbed down to cull the bad lawmakers from the herd.
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