Petition: You expend resources to advocate your views to a public representative.

Lobbying: You expend resources to have a third party advocate your views to a public representative.

Lobbying is a form of petition. It sometimes draws attention because corruption becomes a technique -- just as is the case sometimes with direct petition -- but it is as different from corruption as direct petition is.

No staffer-only meetings, the representative must sit through it and must fulfill a quota of X office hours per month, set according to their schedule. Each person / group gets 15-20 minutes. The hours can be cancelled up to 24 hours before for emergencies but must be made up within a week. How does that sound?

I get a bit mad when people suggest that representatives don't have time for that. That's their job, damnit! Make time.

This would really cut down the power of nepotism / cronyism in lobbying and bring politicians back down to earth, closer to the people they represent. Everyone should have equal access to their representative.

15 minutes per issue for eight hours (no accounting for breaks or time between) would be 32 issues. Per week. Even 40 hours a week is 160 groups, which seems pretty small given the size of the US.

Lobbying and staffers exist because the time of our representatives is really limited. I think it's a really awful solution, but I'm not surprised that it exists.

To make things more time efficient, you could even say than more than 5 people, with a designated spokesperson, can group together to block out an hour of time instead of making the representative hear the same issue the 5th time, and they have the benefit of being able to explain one subject in depth in an undivided manner.

Today we have the most amazing transportation and telecommuting technology available to perform duties in D.C., along with staffers to help. If representatives still can't make time for their constituency, maybe we ought to rethink their work division and responsibilities. Otherwise we run the risk of having presidents who don't know the price of milk.

We don't have a government that produces representative policy outcomes for reasons of corruption and systemic flaws, like bad election mechanisms.

I think most people are not aware how commonplace this is.

Take Senator Ron Wyden’s son, Adam—directly upon graduation from his Columbia MBA program he started his own hedge fund, no doubt capitalizing on contacts he made interning at the $19-billion fund of one of his father’s supporters, David Shaw. “Not many college kids get to intern on a D.E. Shaw portfolio for the summer,” Brian Marshall, who once ran the fund, was quoted as saying in a 2011 Bloomberg article on the younger Wyden.

It might be a stretch here, but I think this is quite related to Piketty's groundbreaking book on capital -- this is the nature of the beast, wealth remains in the family through connections, and this is just one of the ways how it happens.

We all know how many people get jobs because of connections... the privileged among us just take it for granted -- indeed because it so unremarkable we often just forget how we got there or don't think much of it (I'll confess that I initially got a well-paying job (that I was entirely unqualified for) purely because of family connections). Just think how many of these backroom "hey instead of paying me $2000 for my campaign, hire my daughter who's having trouble finding employment" dealings there are that go unreported and are never found out. I'd say it absolutely is commonplace.

No, I don't think we all know this. Most of the people I know did not get jobs through family connections. I suspect a trend analysis would show that the number of high-income workers who achieved their position through nepotism or some other form of non-achievement-based social connection is declining, not rising.

We're social animals, and "connections" will always be valuable. I don't see any evidence that D.E. Shaw treated Wyden's son differently because they wanted something out of his father.

Seriously though, after working at a prestigious institution and seeing how often lunch and dinner conversations between peers involved talk of how "my daughter can work in your group!" and "your son can work in my group!", my intuition tells me this is just the way it is - nepotism is pretty much everywhere. Sure, more anecdotes, but that's all I got until someone does some solid research on it.

For now here're two more articles, that may have some more information: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/01/3...

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/07/in-prais...

There's no requirement that data must be exhaustive. And in most social science research, it never is (actually that is frequently the case in hard sciences, too).

While it is large in scope, this is mostly about how campaign funds are funneled to relatives, and doesn't appear to include favoritism in banking, lobbying, foundations, etc.

Congress is bought and our laws are bought.

Unfortunately sometimes citizens have to resort to the old-fashioned and not 100% accurate "judge for yourself, based on the partial information that is available, to figure out what the bigger picture is".

The people with the funds and power to connect all those dots are in the set of people who are somewhat likely to have benefitted from those connections. I don't see a big move to get that research funded any time soon.

Sure, that's a tactic that happens in lobbying, just as its a tactic that happens in people directly advocating their own views.

I am not saying that lobbying is free of corruption. But the reason the two often go together isn't that lobbying is fundamentally corruption, its that lobbying is an expensive form of petition, which makes its community of users overlap considerably with the set of people/groups with the resources to effectively engage in corruption independently of whether or not they were using an intermediary to do advocacy to public representatives.

Now that is hard to judge from the outside, but that is the real difference.

I suspect many people believe those in power now are mostly selling their vote for cash not making decisions based on the merit and just happening to side with those giving piles of cash because they heard those people give explanations of why favoring them was a good move for the country.

Which is also usually corruption and a violation of campaign finance laws which prohibit coordination between unlimited "independent" expenditures and candidates or campaign committees controlled by them.

Let's say you don't want oil companies to drill in ANWR. You give some money to the Sierra Club, who uses it to pay their staff to fight bills that would allow drilling. Those salaries would be reported in part as lobbying expenditures.

There is a constant confusion between campaign contributions and lobbying. They are distinct. Most campaign donations do not come from lobbyists, and most lobbyists do not contribute much money to campaigns.

Lobbying does not involve any exchange of value. Even buying dinner for a member of Congress is a felony.

That's quite a whopper. Instead of buying your congressman dinner, how about hiring his son or nephew for a "job?" It took me about 2 minutes of searching to find a huge report on how congressmen pipeline campaign funds to relatives "working" as "campaign consultants."

Holding a bake sale for the Sierra Club is just a time-waster to keep the peons busy while the real Washington is playing a whole different game, by different rules, with several orders of magnitude more money.

The short answer seems to be that in return for good committee assignments, congressmen are required by their party to meet certain fundraising goals. If congressmen do not meet these goals then they may get removed from choice committees and the lack of funds will put them at a competitive campaign disadvantage. It's to the point where congressmen may spend over 2/3 of their time soliciting funds and must regularly solicit lobbyists for money.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/04/19/150904641/why-lobb...

Because everything costs money, it's possible for every side of every argument in Washington to level accusations of corruption. That does not mean that they are all right.

And, money is hardly the only corrupting influence in human affairs. Religion, racism, sexism, xenophobia, environmentalism, empathy, and a whole host of other emotions and beliefs power the fights at the federal level. In fact the adjudication of these competing beliefs is the express purpose of our system of government.

But hosting an Obama fundraiser in Silicon Valley where each couple who wants to attend writes checks for $64,800 to the Democratic Party, why, that's just the cost of doing business!

This is, of course, what happens when Obama comes out here for fundraisers at the "Portola Valley home of star Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and his wife" and the "home of Marci and [Flipboard founder] Mike McCue of Palo Alto": http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2013/05/17/obama-headin...

Now, this isn't limited to the Democratic Party, of course, though they're better at extracting money from tech execs nowadays. Point is that it's rather silly to say "buying dinner for a member of Congress is a felony" when there are far more lucrative alternative means for influence-peddling politicians to extract $$$ from influence-seekers.

One of the biggest problems in discussing lobbying is that members of the press habitually and intentionally confuse their readers about what is and is not lobbying.

To go back to my ANWR example--I'd be interested to know how many of the attendees at that Obama dinner (or any $64k/plate dinner) were registered lobbyists for the Sierra Club.

edit to add: If we want more citizen participation in government, it has to start with an accurate understanding of how they can participate. Framing lobbying as something that necessitates $64,000 donations does not help people understand how they can support nonprofits (like for example the Sierra Club or ACLU) that engage in lobbying but not huge campaign donations.

Most people take too narrow a view of lobbying.

Writing a check for a $64K/plate dinner with Obama means you've reached the pinnacle of lobbying: a casual after-dinner-with-drinks conversation with the president while looking over the twinkling lights of Silicon Valley and talking about what the administration's regulatory priorities should be. And remember Obama wants you and your pals to continue to bankroll the party; meanwhile, the two college kids with a shoestring self-funded startup that's about to get squashed by that new regulatory priority don't know what hit them. They can't afford $64K a year in salary, let alone for an Obama fundraiser.

Also, why focus only on "registered lobbyists?" I recall looking into this a decade ago and the most influential lobbyist of the second half of the 20th century, MPAA's Jack Valenti, was not always a registered lobbyist.

It's a very narrow legal definition. There are plenty of ways to get around registration, including having congresscritters arrange to call you instead of you calling them, making sure only 20% of your time is calling "covered officials," giving speeches and TV interviews, golfing with your pal who happens to be Senate majority leader where only 1% of that is talking shop, etc.

One way to think about this is that congresscritters write the laws dealing with lobbying. Another definition of "congresscritter" is "future-lobbyist-in-waiting." It would really be a shame if they limited themselves and their bank accounts too much in the future. Right?

"Lobbying" is not a synonym for "influence." Treating it that way makes it impossible to speak specifically about how things are and how you think they should be. It would be like calling every software bug a "buffer overflow" or every browser "the Internet."

Well, that puts a cramp in dating. No more, "I owe you one, let me buy you dinner"

Let's say a congresscritter introduces a bill in the U.S. Congress requiring art websites to verify the age of their users so Junior can't access DeviantART or somesuch. "WE MUST DO IT FOR THE CHILDREN! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" intones Rep. Deanna DeGatte (D-Colo.) on the floor of the House of Representatives, and then the president says he thinks it's a good idea.

If you hire your college buddy who now works in DC and regularly goes drinking with DeGatte's chief of staff, because this stupid law would put you out of business, is it lobbying or corruption? Or is corruption when mainstream art galleries, who are facing Internet corruption, hosted a fundraiser for DeGatte, and then she introduced her bill a day later?

Hint: Consider the difference between offensive and defensive lobbying.

Don’t worry - if you don’t have money, you can influence government by voting! But who or what you vote on is dictated by a lobbyist. In other words, they set the table and you get to decide which side you sit on. Don’t like what you see? You can walk out in the rain with the other Americans who don’t bother voting.

Great example: 2008 financial crisis. Ordinary citizens were opposed to giving the banks bailouts, like 99% to 1% in polls. The banks beat the will of the people because they are heavy contributors to both major parties. Don’t worry - most of the important politicians behind that move are still in power, because there are a lot of stupid voters in this country. Good thing we also take a “one-size-fits-all” approach to voting and force the will of the (proven stupid) masses on all individuals.

And that’s why lobbying works and won’t ever change. You want representation in this country? You better have money.

Changing this system is Lawrence Lessig's prime objective...

* We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim (http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_t...)

* On Aaron Swartz and the unstoppable walk to political reform (http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_the_unstoppable_wal...)

Those pious white house pentions are lobbying

"Nice company you have here, would be a shame if anything happened to it...."

Most lobbying does not including campaign contributions. Where campaign contributions are made, they must be reported and there are strict rules against the contributions personally benefiting the person running for office or his friends and family.

http://nation.foxnews.com/2014/03/28/reid-scandal-deepens-ca...

They are obviously not strict enough or they have no teeth. This kind of thing happens all the time. You read an article here or there about obvious corruption but then you very rarely see follow-through against the politicians. These ethics rules are written, revised, and enforced by the politicians themselves. What do we really expect?

It's kind of like the debacle of insider trading being allowed by members of Congress. Outright criminality that would land many in the private sector in jail (Martha Stewart), but we put up with it from our elected representatives.

Yes, because formally registered lobbyists have not also done under the table deals since time immemorial...

For example, lobbying would be when the NRA gives tons of donations to the local republican candidate or party. The party can then use those funds to buy commercials and other advertising.

Corruption can be seen when someone directly benefits from money changing hands.

Corruption would be where the NRA actually writes a huge check to a congressman so they vote a certain way on a bill. There would be a direct benefit since the only person getting the money is the politician.

It's a thin line for sure, but the difference is who benefits and is it directly or indirectly? Remember the old saying, "follow the money"? That's how you define it.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States

Highly recommend his book about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic,_Lost

It is basically the way that our government is run by corporations, rather then the people they govern. It is one of the main reasons I detest politics.

I naively assumed it was present everywhere; but it's good news if it turns out that is not the case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee

Have fun following the paper trail when donation disclosure can be delayed, and you can accept donations to your committee from other committees, creating as long and obfuscated a donation trail as you like, and then take the pooled-together corruption money and use it for anything you want.

I suppose it is still better than secret compensation under the table for favors, though. In some sense.