Paying Attention For A Living
Irradiated by LabRat
One of the better of several available screeds pointing out that the “People’s Rights” amendment would pretty much exist to give the government the ability to summarily muzzle, sue, or disband any entity larger and more profitable than a garden party that it disapproved of.
I feel others more qualified than I have done a perfectly fine job of presenting the idea that a)This is what it would effectively do, and b)This would be a very bad thing, bad far out of proportion to the ills it’s meant to address.
What I would like to note is on the subject of the entities this particular broad stroke is no doubt aimed at: lobbying groups, PACs, special interest groups, all conglomerations of persons whose business is to bother legislators and the public at large in the name of their particular goal: I am glad that they exist and I wish them continued existence.
There are a large number of issues, policies, and subjects in general that I care about, and I do not have anything like the time or energy to pay attention to all of them all at once. I don’t have the time or energy to pay attention and due diligence to any one them, in fact. I am downright pleased as punch that there exist groups whose paying jobs and reason for existence revolve around professionally caring about things that I do and exerting influence on people who have a direct relationship with these issues.
This system is not without its large and systemic flaws. Groups who represent the interest of majorities wield more force than those who represent minorities; they suffer profoundly from principal-agent problems; they sometimes “represent” me in ways I truly wish they would not; they pursue goals I consider irrelevant or actively counter-productive; they blow issues that are not of particularly critical relevance out of proportion in election cycles; they are a primary contributing agent to how legislation winds up bloated, byzantine, and full of irrelevancies.
There’s also the fact that people I consider my sworn ideological foes have access to exactly the same processes and have their own leviathan lobbying platforms, but I consider this acceptable. My only wish is that they be more self-evidently stupid or hateful more often, not that anyone have the power to make them go away.
But, without the professional issue-obsessers and interest-pushers, my- and every other individual with those various enumerated rights we’re supposedly being protected by such a bill- influence over the actual process of creating policy relevant to various issues we care about dwindles to effectively zero. There’s this blog, which doesn’t stay on a single topic for more than a day or two, and there’s the standard letter to the congresscritter, which the critters mostly don’t read, and that’s about it. The remaining source of influence dwindles to the government and whoever happens to be immediately buddies with the people in it, which takes the fundamental problem of said government having an extraordinarily narrow and blinkered perspective on the country and the world in general and makes their isolation total. (Remember, media corporations would get their rights stripped, too.)
It’s a terrible voice, but it beats the hell out of no voice.
May 8th, 2012 at 8:51 am
If Washington started paying attention to the 9th and 10th, we wouldn’t need a 28th. Just sayin’.
May 8th, 2012 at 9:03 am
Good post and excellent points… and 1A is STILL important, along with the rest of them!
May 8th, 2012 at 3:14 pm
I don’t have an issue with lobbyists per se, my issue is with them giving money and gifts to politicians.
I could vote for an amendment which restricted campaign contributions to registered voters who live in the precinct, district, or state. No other entity, corporeal or not, would be allowed to spend a single cent in furtherance of a candidate.
As for presenting your group’s viewpoint to legislators, have at it. Only no spending money to influence them.
May 8th, 2012 at 3:40 pm
I’m not convinced that money in politics is the Big Hairy Deal it’s often made out to be. For one thing, my impression is that it’s a lot easier for a fringe candidate to get money than it is for s/h/it to get other forms of electoral/networking/media support (see for example Rick Santorum and Ron Paul) — this bodes well for those of us who’d like to see the 90%-ish incumbent reelection rate knocked down a few tens. Strict campaign finance laws seem to tilt the playing field even further towards those with the right personal connections, which usually means incumbents and party elites.
For another, it’s not obvious to me that getting the money out of politics would make it any less corrupt. If I’m a Congresscritter out of Detroit, I don’t need to be wined and dined by GM’s lobbying staff to realize that propping up the Big Three is very good for my reelection chances. They could have scrupulously honest, utterly transparent, and incredibly strict policies against lobbying full stop and I’d still have very strong incentives to treat big industries in my district (or big industries that do business with my district, or…) preferentially.
I don’t think the lobbying industry is a source of corruption; I think it’s simply a status game, much like the fashion industry. Get rid of lobbying and politicians and those with influence over politicians will find other ways to advertise their status.
May 9th, 2012 at 12:04 pm
+1
May 10th, 2012 at 9:46 am
Lobbying itself is not a problem. It is a reasonable response to a phenomenon, and that phenomenon is the real problem: It pays to farm the government.
Whether that can be fixed outside a Heinlein or L. Neil Smith novel, I dunno…but I mean to try.
May 10th, 2012 at 10:47 am
Just once I’d like to hear a politician answer the question with:
“I don’t have an opinion on gay marriage because marriage itself is none of the government’s damn business to begin with. Next question…”
Just once.
May 11th, 2012 at 1:47 am
Holy hanna, how do they misunderstand the system that badly? The rest of us have shit to do, so we get together and hire a guy to go say our stuff for us.
I’ve got a public high school diploma, a few credits of college and whatever the Army’s taught me, and I get it. It’s their job to get how this works, and they still miss that bad? WTF?
Starting to think it’s pitchforks and torches time (or woodchippers and rifles, or whatever), how the heck do they not understand a simple job?