Ahh. Now That Smells Like A Law I Can Love.

Do you understand the role of Lobbyists? Well, I know what they like to explain their role as, and I think I know what they actually do. Here's what lobbyists claim is their role in government. First recognize that elected Congressmen and Senators are not conversant in every field of interest that will come up in the course of his or her term. That's true. In fact it's pretty self-evident given the way they tend to screw things up. So the lobbyists say their job is to help these legislators get up to speed on the various issues. Okay, now here's where I begin to diverge from their thinking. First, our legislators don't have the time to get up to speed on each issue. That's why they have staffs. Secondly, lobbyists have been "helping our folks to get up to speed on issues" for some considerable time and look at the mess they still make of things. So, I admit our legislators, both on state and federal levels, need help on the issues. Some of what comes up in congress is pretty intensely complicated and even once it's explained, many still don't know what it's all about. Of course much of that stems from the legislators inherent inability to understand more than the one single issue on which he or she based his whole campaign. But should our laws be written by obviously and admittedly biased individuals who are paid handsomely to sway legislators toward or away from specific legislation? Ya know, there used to be a department in the government whose job it was to collect all the pertinent information, pro and con, on any issue under consideration by congress and then pass on that information along as well as make recommendations based on the information. It was called the "Office of Technology Assessment". But it was disbanded about 19 or 20 years ago, which then made lobbyists invaluable almost overnight. So if our government was smart enough at one time to develop such a group, how come they're too dumb to do it now? Well it's not so much that they're too dumb as it is that they'd rather trust somebody who they know is biased than somebody who they don't know what that person prefers. In other words, if your favorite campaign donor wants a law passed, then they know who to turn to for just the right flavor of wording.