> shocking to me how lobbying is legal in the US.

Lobbying is legal in most (all?) of Europe too. It's a slippery activity to pin down, not amenable to banning because it consists of nominally innocuous activities. You can put degrees of limitation on activities that reduce what you'd call lobbying, but I don't see how you could make it fully illegal.

I thought giving gifts etc was illegal in Europe, but apparently not?

It's (basically) illegal in the US as well.

Lobbying itself is not bad: legislators need information to make decisions about things, and lobbying provides them with it.

The bad, and frankly unbelievable part, is the whole "money is speech" and the fact that it's OK for lobbyists to just transfer money in many different forms to politicians as a firm of persuasion to vote for/against certain pieces of legislation.

I really love how "bribery" has been re-named "lobbying" and everyone is OK with it.