Hillary Clinton got herself into a bit of leftwing hot water at the YearlyKook.....errr, ummm...YearlyKos convention - from Politico:
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton offered an unusual defense of a hated Washington insider caste -- lobbyists -- before an audience of political outsiders in Chicago Saturday, drawing boos from the audience at the YearlyKos Convention and offering an opening to her rivals.“A lot of those lobbyists, whether you like it or not, represent real Americans,” the New York senator said in defense of her decision to accept campaign contributions from lobbyists. “They represent nurses, they represent social workers, yes, they represent corporations that employ a lot of people.”
“I don’t think, based on my 35 years of fighting for what I believe in, I don’t think anybody seriously believes I’m going to be influenced by a lobbyist,” Clinton said.
Yeah, whatever, Hill - anyways...
This is a subject Matt and I covered extensively in Caucus of Corruption, especially as it relates to the Abramoff scandal. It is a book everyone should read - not just because Matt and I are a couple swell guys whom you'd all like to meet, but because we really did put a lot of effort into trying to describe the problem of corruption in politics. While the ultimate purpose of the book is to expose both the corruption and hypocrisy in the Democratic party and the way it has been relentlessly covered up by the lapdog MSM, we didn't ignore the problem of corruption in the GOP, and our hope is that we'll eventually get to a point where we really reform the way government conducts business. Of course, such reform is impossible until the MSM starts to report the whole story, and Democrats start to admit their errors and expel their corrupt elements from the seat of power. In my view, nothing better demonstrates what we're up against then the issue of lobbying.
Democrats, of course, made great play about lobbyists and how the GOP - supposedly - was in the pockets of the lobbyists and were selling our government to the highest bidder. Little notice was given to just how deep the Democrats were in to it - such facts as Reid's $68,000 in Abramoff-orchestrated donations, his letters on behalf of Abramoff clients right after they made large donations to him and, of course, the fact that his own children are lobbyists with business before the Congress Reid serves in. The Democrats were only interested in tarring Republicans in the service of Democratic political victory - the problem with lobbying was entirely ignored and Hillary, unintentionally, has hit upon an important point: lobbyists essentially bribing politicians for their vote is bad and must be stopped, but lobbyists, as a group, are not inherently evil.
Thanks to Democrats making a partisan issue out of it, the word "lobbyists" has come in the public mind to mean fat-cats shmoozing politicians for favored treatment. There is a lot of that going on in DC, to be sure - but it is both sides of the aisle and, in my estimation, Democrats are much deeper into such muck than Republicans are. But a lobbyists is also someone who, say, goes to DC and tries to get some money for special education for your community; to get some money for necessary infrastructure repair; to get some onerous regulatory agency off the backs of the people. The plain fact of the matter is that all 300 million of us can't go to DC and make our demands known on a daily basis to our Congressmen - we, the people, need advocates in DC who will represent our interests. Such advocates are, heavens to Betsy, lobbyists. Yep, both the guy from the NRA and the guy from Greepeace who are in DC talking to legislators to try and move things their way are lobbyists - even though most NRA members and most Greenpeace members hate lobbyists and think such people should be booted out of government...all the while being quite certain that their guys in DC wouldn't do anything as crude as lobby Congress. Boot out the evil lobbyists, and you'll also boot out your saintly advocate for all that is decent in the world.
Hillary was just pointing out the obvious - but, also, something which is flabbergasting for people who have been relentlessly propagandised by self-serving special interests to believe that if only the other side's special pleaders were out of the loop, all could be made well. It doesn't work that way. It can't work that way. As long as we are a federal republic, we simply must have lobbyists. The key to good government isn't to boot out lobbyists, but ensure that everyone's cards are on the table. Better than a raft of lobbying reforms would be the simple tactic of mailing, once per year, to each registered voter just who has given how much to their elected officials from the federal level on down. In politics, nothing fumigates better than light - which is why, unfortunately, our Democrats (especially) have spent so much effort obfuscating the real issue. The Democrats, on the whole, don't want the people up in arms demanding real reform of lobbying - they just want 50% plus one of the people to think that the GOP is corrupted by lobbyists and that Democrats aren't.
Another thing Matt and I discovered in our writing is that the laws about lobbying are so complex that what is legal can easily be cast as illegal, and what is illegal can easily be passed off as something legal. Its not 100% clear just who can do what to and for whom. I can't give the spouse of my Congressman $10,000 in return for the Congressman's favorable vote on my proposal - but I can get away with donating $10,000 to my Congressman's "leadership fund" which, as it turns out, employs the spouse of my Congressman at $10,000 per month for fundraising consultation. See how it works? It is like that - it is intentionally like that; because politicians like it to be that way, and Democrats are especially enamoured of profiting personally from their positions (not for nothing did Jefferson insist that the legal work to set up his being bribed be drawn up by his lawyer daughter...no, I'm not kidding).
Hillary is going to catch a lot of leftwing grief over this and I expect her to try and triangulate her way out of the mess. How successul she'll be remains to be seen - but the really sad part about it is that she spoke common-sense truth (and that is the rarest of all birds coming from the mouth of a Clinton) and she's gonig to have to juggle her way back into the good graces of the left, which is angry over something they don't know the truth about, but are quite certain they are on the side of the angels. Strange world we live in - and lets hope that some day soon everyone wakes up to what is real, and starts demanding reality from all concerned.
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