I wonder how much it would take for private citizens to hire their own lobbyists?
edit: in case this isn't glaringly obvious, the joke is that we do have our own lobbyists. They're called congress.
They're just horrible lobbyists.
edit: in case this isn't glaringly obvious, the joke is that we do have our own lobbyists. They're called congress.
They're just horrible lobbyists.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/american-people-hire-highpo...
I guess I can see your point, but I think, in general, lobbyists are thought of as external to the congressional establishment, despite the similarity in possible roles, such as you point out... well, at least that's the way it works in my head, fwiw.
Are they really? I suspect a lot of representatives are successful largely due to their ability to get federal funds directed toward their districts. The point I would want to make isn't that representatives should be better at shuffling money around, but rather that the whole game shouldn't be about shuffling money around.
To make this clearer: the way the system is set up, your Congressman isn't lobbying for any individual, they're lobbying for a percentage of the voting block that is sufficient to return them to Congress next vote. This is why campaigning on single issues is so common, and so successful for power-blocs such as the Christian Right.
(This isn't to go into gerrymandering, which further skews the 'democratic' input of your system. If you didn't already know that only ~8-12 seats in Congress are actually contested in terms of party fealty, you really, really, really should do).
This is where I think current "politics" is lagging many decades behind modern society.
Politicians are fundamentally geographically defined. They get voted in (or out) by groups of people with no relationship with each other beyond happening to live nearby. That idea worked out fine when your village was your whole life, and it works OK for "big issues" that affect everyone (like taxation, education, military), but there are a lot of issues where there is more than enough public support to deserve representation but that support is not geographically localized enough for the current system to give the people concerned a voice.
So many of the things I end up shouting at the television or newspapers about are in this category.
What _I'd_ love to be able to vote for:
A Congressman for The Internet
A Congressman for Copyright and Patents
A Congressman for Motorcyclists
A Congressman for Citizens Rights WRT Government & Law Enforcement
Instead, the issues that concern _me_ are debated and voted on by people who don't give a damn because they know there's not enough geeks/musicians/inventors/entrepreneurs/motorcyclists/libertarians geographically clustered enough to make any difference at the polling booth, and so the only issues that ever get addressed are ones with a local enough aspect to risk having a likely effect on a city/state/federal elections outcome.
Society has spread beyond having my circle of friends and acquaintances being "other people in my village" - and in the last 20 years the internet has magnified that change enormously, political and legal structures haven't changed to reflect that. (and may never - my circle of friends crosses national boundaries in ways that probably make my desires of how I'm personally politically represented impossible)
There aren't really that many corn farmers out there. Maybe you meant "a large percentage of her campaign donors are corn farmers"?