The Little Guy Plays With the Big Boys

I just read a short synopsis of today's papers on Slate. A story on the New York Times front page caught my eye.

Apparently, schools, fire departments, and other public entities are "hiring lobbyists to make funding appeals to Congress on their behalf."

They are reportedly seeing a return on the tax money spent on this venture, and it is proving to be a lucrative process.

I am all for this. We need to learn to play their game, so we can reap the benefits. I think we should all hire lobbyists. Hell, we should all become lobbyists. Maybe we'll force a change in the system.

I know a lobbyist who is tremendously influential in Florida law (he's even written some of them). Lobbyists are becoming the ghost writers, the Karl Rove's. They are the ones who get things done. Let's all take a page out of the "Florida town," which gets 285.83 dollars for every dollar spent in taxes. Can you imagine what we could do with that kind of money?

I think it is a very good use of our taxes. If this is how the system is going to work, we need to learn to play along. Of course, it gets a lot more depressing when you think about the money it takes to hire a lobbyist to fight for you. LOBBYISTS: teach free classes, set up a pro-bono system like lawyers (is there one?), help this cause!

Of course, that will never happen. Lobbyists are hired to fight for causes. How many ideals can these people have? (My friend and his recent actions are excluded from that nasty comment.)