Tag Archives: lobbying

Banks’ Lobbyists “Help” in Drafting Financial Bills

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Who writes the laws? The lobbyists.This isn’t completely true, but it is true to a very large extent as this article explains.

The thicker the law, the more opaque the legislation, the more opportunities their are to make money. There’s a reason Obamacare is a stack of papers taller than a man, same for Dodd-Frank. Both laws deal with impossibly complex areas of the economy best left to market mechanisms. To a very large extent the problems which both Obamacare and Dodd-Frank seek to address, access to healthcare and a corrupt banking system respectively, are problems created by prior government involvement in the marketplace.

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(The Running of the Bullsh..ters) Congress Members Sprint for Money to Lobby After Election

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After every election one can see the Running of the Congressmen (also known as the “Running of the Bullshitters”) from Capitol Hill, down Constitution Avenue, then onto Pennsylvania Avenue, through Downtown DC to the finish on K Street.

It’s really quite a spectacle.  But a word of advice—don’t try running with them the way people do with the bulls in Pamplona, it’s much more dangerous.

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Pro-CISPA Forces Spent 140 Times More Lobbying Than Opponents

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Interests supporting a controversial bill aimed at improving cyber security, set for a House vote Thursday, spent 140 times as much lobbying Congress as those on the other side of the debate and have dozens of former Capitol Hill insiders working on their behalf, an analysis by the Sunlight Foundation’s Reporting Group shows.

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The American Conservative Union joins with lobbyists to oppose budget cuts and the Tea Party

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Crony capitalism is pervasive. Both major parties are engaged in it and in the attached article we see a great example of an important organization which has long championed “small government” officially but has now abandoned its principals. The American Conservative Union is afraid that a new breed of small government types are actually going to try to make government smaller.  This means cuts to defense and transportation. Both are conduits to constituencies the ACU is friendly with.

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How the Meat Lobby Hacked the Sequester

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The hamburger lobbyists have earned their meat for this year. As sequester loomed, along with the prospect of the shutdown of plants and federal inspectors furloughed, the guys on K-Street went to work. No doubt a bunch of free sirloin dinners were served at dining establishments around Capitol Hill leading up to deliberations.

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Why don’t more “conservatives” embrace a truly free market in energy?

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*Originally published 1-26-2011

One of the core principals of conservative political and economic thought is that the market must be allowed to work. When the market breathes innovation flourishes, costs come down, and entrepreneurs and business people can make economic decisions based on what will grow their businesses, not how best to avoid red tape. Businesses rise and fall based on the degree to which businesses can deliver a product that meets a need in the market. This is the key economic principal to which most conservatives say they adhere. Why then do we not insist on a free market in energy?

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