One: Redress Petitioners (Lobbying is a right under the first amendment.)
Two: House Demo’s priorities: union bosses before kindergartners (WA dem house takes money from kindergarten and gives it to teachers.)
The first article is full of wisdom. If you want to have people stop doing something, you have to remove the incentive for doing it. Why would any corporation send lobbyists to get a special regulation or tax code that favors them? Why would they want to get earmarks and favorable officials? Because, of course, they can. If we had a federal government that reflected the 19th century, then there wouldn’t be any power or favors in Washington DC to dole out. There would be no lobbyists since there would be no money to be made lobbying.
The second is right along with it, except it has to do with state government. Why does the teacher’s union have so much influence over the state legislature? Because they have an incentive to do so. As long as the state legislature determines what the teacher salary is in Washington State, the teacher’s union is going to be a fixture in Olympia, sucking money out of the taxpayer’s pockets and putting it into the teacher’s pockets.
The way to get rid of lobbying, once and for all, is to reduce the size of government so that there is no reason to lobby.
If the federal government simply focused on national defense and regulating interstate trade (rather than limiting that trade), if the federal powers ended when the constitution said they ended, then there would be a tiny budget that was a fraction of what it is today, even if we kept the same level of defense spending. Defense spending is, after all, a fraction of our overall federal budget compared to all of the social welfare and entitlement programs.
More importantly, if we had a tax code that didn’t allow for loopholes or exemptions or special favors, if we treated all industries the same, there would be no need for special tax laws that favor one industry or one sector of an industry.
And if we didn’t have so many officials, there wouldn’t be so many officials that could be influenced by lobbyists.
And we can end lobbying and the interference of private industry, such as the teacher’s union, in our state politics and government if the state simply stayed out of the education industry and all the other industries. If it simply took up a role as a provider of the infrastructure, such as roads, and a keeper of the law, then there would be no reason to see representatives from Boeing, Microsoft, and the teacher’s union in Olympia.
It seems Ronald Reagan was right. Smaller government is the answer, because government is the problem.