And at least Newt married his mistress....and is still married to her.

Once again you prove stupidity has no bounds. Do you have some FACTS on Fred Thompson's corruption? Or is this again just how it is in your own private little Twilight Zone?

There is nothing inherently corrupt whatsoever in being a lobbyist. It's 100% legal and every bit as protected by the 1st Amend. as Shaun's calling Bush an idiot is.

Bush isn't an idiot Rick, he's irrelevant.

Your naiveté concerning lobbyists is adorable.

"At least Newt married his mistress" is morally reprehensible. if you don't want to stay married to someone, divorce them and move on. Don't cheat on them while they are in the hospital, then divorce them and move on.

So are used car salesmen, tele-evangalists, etc. and while not corrupt, there is a perceived "sleaze factor". IMO, it's the "revolving door" from being elected, to making big $ using those "political connections" thus derived, that most of us abhor. You say it's 100% legal, yet Abramoff is a convicted felon :).

Abortion is 100% legal. :rolleyes:

No, Shaun, I think the one he divorced while she was in the hospital was the first wife. He was cheating on her with the one who became his second wife, then cheated on her, divorced and married the bimbo. He's a serial cheater.

He actually said his first wife, the one treated for cancer, wasn't young enough or pretty enough to be a president's wife. Pretty good grounds for divorce, if you're a Republican.

Oh, and 'family values' Newt refused to pay child support and alimony for wife #1. Apparently, he left them in such a bad state, their church had to take up collections for them.

I never said what Abramoff did was legal at all. He defrauded clients and worked against them for other clients, billing both sides and I believe he was convicted on a boat partnership scam in FL that had little to do with his DC lobbying. Plenty of people are in prison for crimes that 99.99% of others in their industry never came close to committing. By your definition, all children's books authors must be equated with Tookie Williams.

OK, I'll concede that...forget about Abramoff and they're still "sleazy" :)

Though this is totally unrelated to Newt, my own personal experience with lobbyists is that they are one of the best ROI's in the world. I guess they're like lawyers or insurance companies, in that everyone hates them until they need one. My old company's bread and butter was video news releases. When the whole Armstrong Williams thing blew up and Congress was talking about banning fed. agencies from using them (a huge chunk of our business and totally legit.), we hired a lobbyist. This guy got a 6 mos. retainer and was one of the Bush mafia guys (you know what this means if you work in DC). Anyway, he and his boss basically got us access to the folks who were writing the new law. Believe me, it's impossible for lawmakers to be experts or even somewhat knowledgeable on most of the stuff they regulate. They need lobbyists to explain to them what their laws will do to certain companies and industries. When some of those lawmakers realized what they wanted to do was going to severely punish companies that helped their own offices communicate to the media and their consituents, they made the new rules a little more reasonable.

If the government never comes after your industry, then you probably don't care about lobbyists. But our government is a legalized extortion racket and when they have you in their sights, you have to pay up and get a lobbyist to rein in the government. A complete overhaul of our tax code would fix this, but that's impossible for obvious reasons.

Rick, I'm quite sure that I'm niave about how "DC works", but the scenario you describe is exactly why I have the attitude that I do. In a nutshell, your company "paid for access", and got the legistation they "paid for", and that itself is wrong from my perspective. Has our government become the exclusive domain for those that have acce$$, and where does that leave the rest of us?

Most people are interested only in their own success and well being. Lobbysts pander to this interest. Not that this is wrong, as long as what their "sponsors" want does not have negative effects on others.y

So what would you do if the gov't. were about to legislate your company out of business when you've done nothing wrong and indeed the lawmakers had no idea what they were talking about? Write your congressman?
You call it paying for access. The 1st Amendment calls is petitioning the gov't. for a redress of grievances. While any of us can probably get an appt. with our own congressman, he's probably not the one writing the law that's hurting you and congressman not from your own district won't respond to your requests. It's a racket, but you have to pay into it to get them off your back. Ask Bill Gates about that. MS had one lobbyist in DC when they got a huge ruling against them around 2000. Guess how many they have now. And the gov't. has stayed off their backs.

Hey Rick:

So how many paid lobbyists do you have in DC?

<G>

To my knowledge we have no lobbyists. We only hired one because of the VNR law that was coming down the pike and that problem got fixed quickly. It was all sort of a coincidence, because Gephardt's office was a longtime client of ours and one of his top guys left to become a lobbyist just about the time this all happened. The new law was gonna sting his business too, so he was a natural fit for us. But since we had paid a 6 mos. retainer, we just used one of his guys to get us meetings with all his buddies working in fed. agencies. It really was amazing. Places I couldn't break into with mos. or yrs. of phone calls and emails just opened up magically when this guy picked up the phone. As I said, he (not Gephardt's guy, but rather his co-worker) was one of the Bush mafia. Those are the old school TX folks who started working for Bush as their first job out of college when Bush was first running for gov. in TX. Those folks are pretty well placed now and they are all friends with one another. So hooking up with one of them tends to open doors. Since there's nothing in works right now, which would hurt our business, we have no need for a lobbyist. In fact, most of the legislation that gets interest groups and lobbyists all riled up is usually good for our business, as we feed their press releases to the wire and the more controversy, the more press releases they issue. Disclaimer: we also work for Newt's consulting shop, though they are not my own client.

Bite my naivete. Do you have ONE FACT to support your statement? Or is this another in the long list of cr*p you've spouted that you cant support?

Oh yeah, I forgot to add that I really don't consider myself naive about lobbyists.

Moral relativism is killing our country.

"At least Newt married his mistress"

I actually have a huge problem with Newt's behavior regarding his previous wife. I don't know if they were separated at the time or what was going on between them while Newt was carrying on with Calista. I do know that he lived in a tiny rented apt. owned by a local Church just across from the Capitol, while his wife, Marianne, lived in GA. She was in DC a lot, but I don't believe she spent much time in that apt. Anyway, his behavior was reprehensible and he rightly resigned. And that baggae will probably be what keeps him from ever being president. However, I still think he has the best ideas of anyone out there. Perhaps his staying out of politics will keep those ideas coming and keep him saying exactly what he thinks. I like that.

I think you've been jaded by DC politics too long! What you percieve as a "redress of grievances" is what many of us interpret as "legalized bribery" ...we'll just have to disagree on this one :)