I'm not one to believe in conspiracy theories, in fact, I rather enjoy ripping them apart as the paranoid delusions that are the fevered dreams brought about by a bit of bad cheese. But occasionally, I wander across something that even I have difficulty processing and digesting. This may turn out to be my own personal paranoid rant, but stick with me.
We've all heard about lobbyists. But for those of you who haven't heard the term before, or don't understand what it really means a lobbyist is a person who is employed to persuade legislators to vote for legislation favoring their employers. Fuck that's a lot of words. Let's set an example to make this easier.
Let's say that you are the CEO of, say, an oil company. You know where there's a keen spot to drill for the black stuff, but there's a law coming up that puts an end to your drilling activities. How can you stop this? Well, you could email legislators, but good luck getting a response within 20 years. This is the option most mere mortals have. But this is no good for you. You don't have 20 years. You're lucky if you have 4 because then the fickle public gets to vote other people into those offices, possibly. So what do you do? You hire a pimp. Shit, sorry. Fucked that one up. You hire a lobbyist.
This individual's job is to talk to the legislators you want, buy them shiny toys, take them out to eat (let's hear it for wining and dining), get them laid by the best hookers (see? I wasn't needlessly facetious calling them pimps), give them money and essentially do whatever it takes to get the legislator to vote in your favor. This is the option that most mere mortals cannot take nor afford.
Oh wait, buzz kill. The legislators have to report their pretty gifts, meals and such (well, probably not the hookers). At least, according to the laws they have to, or they could get a slap on the wrist from the Ethics Commission. But wait, who is this "Ethics Commission"? Well, from my own research, these are often appointees, people who are already involved in the game of politics and now, by dint of appointment, are tinged with the "owes a favor to X". Do you really think they are going to come down hard on the people who gave them their job? Seriously?
Alright. Let's play pretend. Let's pretend the legislators play by the rules. That sorta puts a damper on things because they can only accept so much money in cash, prizes and blowjobs. So now what can you do? The simple answer? Join A.L.E.C.
Yeah, I can hear you now, "What the fuck is ALEC and why should I care?! And hurry up, Charlie Sheen's about to say something crazy again." First of all, fuck Charlie Sheen. Second of all, ALEC is the American Legislative Exchange Council. Look them up I'll wait.
All done? I'll go ahead and assume you've seen an innocuous website and are wondering what the big deal is. This 'think tank' is for public legislators and private enterprise to get together and create 'model legislation' in order to try and get to the 'best practices'. Oh but, fuck you public. You get no say in the matter. You're not important enough. Look, I'm not being entirely unfair. I'll quote ALEC from their own website:
"One of the most important resources ALEC provides to its members is model legislation. Through the combined effort and unique partnership of public and private sector members, model legislation is drafted, deliberated and approved by one of ALEC's eight Task Forces. These bills provide a valuable framework for developing effective policy ideas aimed at protecting and expanding our free society.
While ALEC provides the resources, our members, long known for their legislative activism, introduced hundreds of bills based on ALEC model legislation. During the latest legislative cycle, dozens of ALEC model bills were enacted into law."
I don't know about you, but that strikes me as pretty fucking scary. These laws affect you. These laws are fomented between private enterprise and public legislators and apply to every person living within the states. You live in a state, don't you?
A prominent example of this is the Arizona immigration law. ALEC is the source, it's where this law was built. It came together in one of these model sessions, then got carried home nearly word for word to Arizona. But wait, I'm not quite done yet. I'm sure you're asking yourself "The hell does any of this have to do with lobbyists?"
Well, at ALEC's little parties, I'm sorry I mean 'meetings', there are additional parties, golf tournaments, balls, hookers, goddamnit, I keep coming back to the hookers. Sorry. I have no real proof there are hookers. Yet. Anyways, these extra affairs are usually paid for via the various corporate interests but guess what? As long as they are in town for their ALEC meeting, legislators don't have to report anything more than that they were attending this conference. Sounds like a lobbyists wet dream to me.
Look. I've said it over and over. Politicians are the most self-interested, self-serving groups of people I can think of, outside of CEO's. I'm not anti-capitalist, but I also recognize that public legislation shouldn't favor anyone, whether they own billions of dollars, or don't have two pennies to rub together. The law is meant to be the impartial mediator, the wise sage, Solomon ready to cut the motherfucking baby in half, not stab the two mothers and see which one dies first.
This isn't a problem of parties either. I can hear you Demosluts cheering at me for taking on Republibitches. I've said it before, you both can go suck each other dry. At the same time that this sort of backdoor policy making is going on, the White House wants to turn more people into felons. So still, fuck you both.
A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence; or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, 'Huh. It works. It makes sense.' - Barak Obama
What makes sense now?
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