Kudos to Nick Schultz at American Enterprise for the very revealing chart. See his post here.

Are lobbyists that bad?

If the government was about to make sheet-rock illegal because of bad or misguided information and you were in the sheet-rock or home-building business, wouldn’t you seek to persuade the lawmakers than their efforts were wrong? Wouldn’t you seek to give them better information or explain how that law will dramatically increase the costs of homes?

Every business or service sold has unique characteristics that few in Congress understand; they depend on lobbyists to fill in the blanks.  And Congress is not always driven by the highest of motives. They are frequently duped by industries that appear to be fighting to protect the public, but really are just trying to use the law to make life harder for their competitors.

Do we want a health care bill with no inputs from doctors, pharmaceutical companies, or health insurance administrators?  Do we want a trade bill with no input from the producers and consumers who will be harmed? Do we want an energy bill with no input from those who actually produce and distribute …. energy?

Obama and most others have criticized the input of lobbyists and the influence they have yielded. Yet the biggest recipient of campaign funds from the controversial insurance giant AIG, the PAC assembled by  Countrywide Financial, and from Fannie Mae was Barak Obama.  If he was so opposed to lobbyists’ influence why didn’t he reject their campaign contributions?

While critical of the influence of lobbyists, the president’s dramatic growth of government will only increase the activity and influence of lobbyists.  Lobbyists are caused by excess government regulation; a growth in regulation is guaranteed to cause an increase in lobbying activity.

In spite of the rhetoric to the contrary you can expect to see more lobbyists under this president, not less.

Much has been written about the Climate-Gate, but Mark Steyn applies his clarifying wit to it in this article “Cooking the Books on Climate.” Read the whole article here.

Excerpt:

“The trouble with outsourcing your marbles to the peer-reviewed set is that, if you take away one single thing from the leaked documents, it’s that the global warm-mongers have wholly corrupted the “peer-review” process. When it comes to promoting the impending ecopalypse, the Climate Research Unit is the nerve-center of the operation. The “science” of the CRU dominates the “science” behind the United Nations IPCC, which dominates the “science” behind the Congressional cap-and-trade boondoggle, the upcoming Copenhagen shakindownen of the developed world, and the now-routine phenomenon of leaders of advanced, prosperous societies talking like gibbering madmen escaped from the padded cell, whether it’s President Barack Obama promising to end the rise of the oceans or the Prince of Wales saying we only have 96 months left to save the planet.”

HKO comment- credentialism does not overcome the emotional and psychological impediments to the truth. Over dependence on professional peers is just another form of elitism.  “skepticism is the price knowledge pays for truth.” When skeptics are demonized the truth suffers. Who peer reviews the peers.

Boris Johnson, a classically educated journalist and previous mayor of London, responded to the catastrophic climate predictions of James Lovelock:

“Like all the best religions, fear of climate change satisfies our need for guilt, and self disgust, and that human sense that technological progress must be punished by the gods. And the fear of climate change is like a religion in this vital sense, that it is veiled in mystery, and you can never tell whether your acts of propitiation or atonement have been in any way successful.”

From ‘Superfreakonomics- Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance‘ by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

HKO comments – and I would add that it is like old time religion in the way that non believers are demonized.