Oh to be a lobbyist..

[The Gaijin]

Talk about a recession proof job! Talk about a growth industry! Talk about real coin to be made.

We more power flowing to the Federal government - and soon more tax dollars flowing in - every group will lobbying for their fair share.

Wall Street, the Auto industry, manufacturers, unions - who won't be spending big bucks in Washington to get a piece of this new pie??

[Rick Lee]

And hiring a lobbyist has one of the best returns on investment in business. If the fed. gov't. didn't have the power to reward and punish businesses it likes or doesn't like, there'd be no need for lobbyists. But the system is a win-win for the lobbyists and elected officials.

[ErVikingo]

To put it all in perspective, our past Sheriff was just released from prison for corruption charges. He just got a job on a law firm as a lobbyist......

From Wikipedia:

Kenneth C. "Ken" Jenne II (born 1947), is a former Democratic member of the Florida State Senate and a former sheriff of Broward County, which encompasses Fort Lauderdale in southeastern Florida. Jenne resigned as sheriff in September 2007, after having pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion and mail fraud. On November 16, 2007, he was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison.[1]

Politics
By 1972, Jenne was a prosecutor for the Broward County State Attorney's Office. Following his time as a prosecutor, he was elected to the Broward County Commission and served as commission chairman in 1976.

Jenne was elected to the Florida Senate in 1978. He would remain in this position for 18 years. Jenne is credited with holding a majority of the top committee chairmanships in the Florida Senate, including the position of Senate Democratic Leader. In January 1998, Florida Governor Lawton Chiles, a fellow Democrat, selected him to become Broward County sheriff to succeed the late Ron Cochran.[3]


[edit] Law enforcement
As sheriff, Jenne directed a 6,300-member organization with a $638 million budget. Under his direction, the organization was responsible for law enforcement and fire rescue duties in 14 cities and towns, as well as all unincorporated areas of Broward County.[4] He resigned on September 4, 2007 in light of federal corruption charges.


[edit] Corruption
Jenne resigned in September 2007 after agreeing to plead guilty to federal tax evasion and mail fraud charges after a corruption investigation uncovered crimes in his outside business dealings, federal prosecutors said. Jenne faced a possible grand jury indictment on more serious money laundering charges.

Jenne pleaded guilty to three counts of tax evasion and one count of mail fraud conspiracy and was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison.[1]

Several of Jenne's long-term Democratic allies, including former Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth and former Florida Senate President Jim Scott, pleaded for leniency.

[ErVikingo]

My grandma would say "we have a goat looking over the lettuce"

[Jim Richards]

Lobbyists, in DC? Who'd of thought?

[djmcmath]

How, exactly, does one become a lobbyist? I suppose you don't just wake up one morning and say, "Oh golly, I'm a lobbyist!" There must be some career path, or an application process, or something ... right?

Dan

[Rick Lee]

Originally Posted by djmcmath

How, exactly, does one become a lobbyist? I suppose you don't just wake up one morning and say, "Oh golly, I'm a lobbyist!" There must be some career path, or an application process, or something ... right?

Dan

Allow me.

It's almost impossible to become a lobbyist unless you have extensive legislative or executive branch experience. Forget all that Schoolhouse Rock How a Bill Becomes a Law stuff. The way it really works is only known by those who've worked on the Hill, in the agencies or in the state houses. And you need a pretty encyclopedic knowledge of who's who, where they're from, what committees they're on and also know all the other staffers. Basically, you have to know how to get clients' problems solved.

Say you run a small factory that supplies some of the paper used to make dollar bills. And say there's a good chance of a major push for a new one dollar coin. Well, you're gonna be against that because it's gonna cut into your revenue severely if not lose you the contract.

But wait! Your congressman and senators aren't on the relevant committees and so they can't do much for you except vote against it once it comes to the floor. So you hire a lobbying firm in DC that specializes in government contracts and federal printing issues. They'll have a lobbyist on staff who will know everything there is to know about this issue, who the co-sponsors are, who their main constituencies are, when the bill is getting marked up in committee and who all the staffers are writing the bill. And that lobbyist either goes to bat for you or lines up meetings with senior staffers and brings you along to make the case yourself.

My best friend from Pittsburgh was just here in Phoenix today. He's from Johnstown orginally and his father runs a hospital out there. He's very close with John Murtha. One of Murtha's former staffers is his hospital's lobbyist. He told me he paid his lobbyist $250k one year and got $20 million in federal funding to cover vets displaced by a closed VA hospital due to too many empty beds. That's what you call a serious return on investment.

[djmcmath]

Wow -- not only a win for the hospital, but a win for the lobbyist. I'd love to make $250K in a year. ... For each client.

Unfortunately, I only understand the way that the government works in the textbooks, which means that I have no concept of how it really works. Tragic that they're so different.

Thanks,
Dan

[Rick Lee]

Originally Posted by djmcmath

Wow -- not only a win for the hospital, but a win for the lobbyist. I'd love to make $250K in a year. ... For each client.

Unfortunately, I only understand the way that the government works in the textbooks, which means that I have no concept of how it really works. Tragic that they're so different.

Thanks,
Dan

Well, take solace in the fact that there really is a cumbersome leglislative process and the government does tend to follow it. But where it goes once it becomes a law is up to the POTUS and the SCOTUS and that's where things are open to interpretation.

Lobbyists make ridiculous money. But remember, a lot of those guys did a lot of years on the Hill, making almost nothing, working 80 hrs. a week and not being allowed to do things you and I wouldn't think twice about like letting a friend buy you a beer or give you tickets to a baseball game. Where else in the world can a 30 yr. old make billion dollar decisions and only earn $40k a year? That's how it works on the Hill. Becoming a lobbyists is the reward later on.

[mattdavis11]

Rick nailed it. It's not only a combination of what you know about the process, but who you know. It would be fairly easy to become an internal lobbyist. By internal, I mean a corporate employee who tends to the needs of the legislature and their staff. They tend to monitor bills, buy lunches, sponsor happy hour gatherings for staffers and attend committee hearings, but they often don't know the intricate details of the process. These types of lobbyists usually are assigned a hand full of members to work and remain in contact with. They are known to start fires, and are a dime a dozen. A general understanding of the process and an outgoing personality are the basic requirements.

On the other hand, the hired gun lobbyist has a very close connection with the members, which has developed over many years of interaction. These are the ones that would be taking members hunting and fishing, offering up their vacation home for the members personal use and the like. They usually don't have members assigned to them unless it's a chairman of a committee, the speaker/president of the Senate, or a powerful loose cannon that lobs bombs at the interest group. These types of lobbyists are the ones the corporations turn to when the heavy lifting needs to be done. They know the process very well, are often former members or long time staffers, and are the ones who tend to put the fires out.