Lobbying hit record $3.5 billion in 2009

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Health care and business interests led the way as clients spent a record $3.5 billion on lobbying last year, prompted by Obama administration drives to reshape federal policy for the medical, financial and energy industries.

Amid a stagnant national economy and the worst unemployment in nearly three decades, lobbying expenditures grew by 5 percent from the $3.3 billion spent in 2008, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The growth also came despite efforts by President Barack Obama to curb lobbyists' influence.

The figures underline the vast and growing sums that industries, unions and ideological groups are spending to shape laws and regulations. Put another way, the $3.5 billion is about half what the government expects to spend this year on the entire federal court system.

Makers of pharmaceuticals and health products spent $267 million lobbying, the most ever recorded by a single industry in a year. Business associations spent the second highest total, $183 million.

Among individual groups, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was easily the biggest spender at $145 million. Exxon Mobil Corp. was a distant second at $27 million.

Highlighting how lobbying expenditures have grown in recent years, such spending totaled $1.4 billion in 1998, the first year for which the center has comparable figures.

link

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Somehow, the "law store" needs to be closed. It's not doing the country any good when legislation is for sale.

[scandal 951]

One of my all time favorite political cartoons. Sums it right up.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

One of my all time favorite political cartoons. Sums it right up.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

I have always said we have the best politicians that money can buy!

Here are former lobbyists Obama has tapped for top jobs:

1. Eric Holder, attorney general nominee, was registered to lobby until 2004 on behalf of clients including Global Crossing, a bankrupt telecommunications firm [now confirmed].
   
2. Tom Vilsack, secretary of agriculture nominee, was registered to lobby as recently as last year on behalf of the National Education Association.
   
3. William Lynn, deputy defense secretary nominee, was registered to lobby as recently as last year for defense contractor Raytheon, where he was a top executive.
   
4. William Corr, deputy health and human services secretary nominee, was registered to lobby until last year for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a non-profit that pushes to limit tobacco use.
   
5. David Hayes, deputy interior secretary nominee, was registered to lobby until 2006 for clients, including the regional utility San Diego Gas & Electric.
   
6. Mark Patterson, chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, was registered to lobby as recently as last year for financial giant Goldman Sachs.
   
7. Ron Klain, chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden, was registered to lobby until 2005 for clients, including the Coalition for Asbestos Resolution, U.S. Airways, Airborne Express and drug-maker ImClone.
   
8. Mona Sutphen, deputy White House chief of staff, was registered to lobby for clients, including Angliss International in 2003.
   
9. Melody Barnes, domestic policy council director, lobbied in 2003 and 2004 for liberal advocacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the American Constitution Society and the Center for Reproductive Rights.
   
10. Cecilia Munoz, White House director of intergovernmental affairs, was a lobbyist as recently as last year for the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group.
    
11. Patrick Gaspard, White House political affairs director, was a lobbyist for the Service Employees International Union.
    
12. Michael Strautmanis, chief of staff to the president’s assistant for intergovernmental relations, lobbied for the American Association of Justice from 2001 until 2005.
    

This doesn’t count Tom Daschle, who never registered as a lobbyist but got paid millions for his political connections in pursuit of preferential treatment for his clients in the health-care industry.

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/02/03/the-...administration/

Edited February 16, 2010 by Lone Ranger

[scandal 951]

This doesn’t count Tom Daschle, who never registered as a lobbyist but got paid millions for his political connections in pursuit of preferential treatment for his clients in the health-care industry.

Nor should it, since Daschle was never brought into the Obama Cabinet or Administration, for precisely this reason.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Are all lobbyists created equal?

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Are all lobbyists created equal?

Stupid question. Are all lawyers created equal?

[Dan J 277]

I have always said we have the best politicians that money can buy!

Here are former lobbyists Obama has tapped for top jobs:

1. Eric Holder, attorney general nominee, was registered to lobby until 2004 on behalf of clients including Global Crossing, a bankrupt telecommunications firm [now confirmed].
   
2. Tom Vilsack, secretary of agriculture nominee, was registered to lobby as recently as last year on behalf of the National Education Association.
   
3. William Lynn, deputy defense secretary nominee, was registered to lobby as recently as last year for defense contractor Raytheon, where he was a top executive.
   
4. William Corr, deputy health and human services secretary nominee, was registered to lobby until last year for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a non-profit that pushes to limit tobacco use.
   
5. David Hayes, deputy interior secretary nominee, was registered to lobby until 2006 for clients, including the regional utility San Diego Gas & Electric.
   
6. Mark Patterson, chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, was registered to lobby as recently as last year for financial giant Goldman Sachs.
   
7. Ron Klain, chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden, was registered to lobby until 2005 for clients, including the Coalition for Asbestos Resolution, U.S. Airways, Airborne Express and drug-maker ImClone.
   
8. Mona Sutphen, deputy White House chief of staff, was registered to lobby for clients, including Angliss International in 2003.
   
9. Melody Barnes, domestic policy council director, lobbied in 2003 and 2004 for liberal advocacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the American Constitution Society and the Center for Reproductive Rights.
   
10. Cecilia Munoz, White House director of intergovernmental affairs, was a lobbyist as recently as last year for the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group.
    
11. Patrick Gaspard, White House political affairs director, was a lobbyist for the Service Employees International Union.
    
12. Michael Strautmanis, chief of staff to the president’s assistant for intergovernmental relations, lobbied for the American Association of Justice from 2001 until 2005.
    

This doesn’t count Tom Daschle, who never registered as a lobbyist but got paid millions for his political connections in pursuit of preferential treatment for his clients in the health-care industry.

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/02/03/the-...administration/

This is unfortunately a bit of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Many of the most knowledgeable people in a particular area of expertise have some kind of ties to interest groups or companies in that area. If you dont pick them, you get damned for picking people without the experience.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

This is unfortunately a bit of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Many of the most knowledgeable people in a particular area of expertise have some kind of ties to interest groups or companies in that area. If you dont pick them, you get damned for picking people without the experience.

Yep. It is a small circle of friends, that have the knowledge to make it all work. But, you can't pick and choose, who are the "good" lobbyists, and who are the "bad" lobbyists, well, not Constitutionally at least.

[scandal 951]

This is unfortunately a bit of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Many of the most knowledgeable people in a particular area of expertise have some kind of ties to interest groups or companies in that area. If you dont pick them, you get damned for picking people without the experience.

I say, let's try that for a change. It's gotta be better than what we've been doing. Surely in a nation of 300+ million, we can find someone other than an insider and former paid lobbyist to fill, say, the Deputy Interior Secretary post.

[luckytxn 2,265]

Didn't Obama the Socialist sign an order forbidding the hiring of lobbyists?

[Ali G. 37]

Obama did say he is going to restrict this once in office.. Just saying...

[lostinblue 1,989]

http://www.triallawyersinc.com/healthcare/hc07.html

Trial Lawyers, Inc. finds politics a lucrative investment.

Tort reform is a bitter pill for Trial Lawyers, Inc. to swallow, and the litigation industry gives lavishly to buy the support of legislatures and judges. At the national level, Trial Lawyers, Inc. wins over politicians with concentrated political-action-committee giving and bundled individual contributions. In the last political cycle, lawyers and law firms again led all industries in federal political giving, spending a staggering $182 million on federal campaigns alone—outspending the corporate health-care sector by more than 50 percent (see graph, p. 19).[222] Although no comprehensive numbers are available for state-by-state trial-lawyer giving, anecdotal evidence from some of the nation's largest states suggests that the litigation industry’s political influence at the state level exceeds, if anything, its influence at the federal level.[223]

Federal Giving: Trial Lawyers, Inc. Stands Apart

PAC donations from the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA)—Trial Lawyers, Inc.'s government-relations "home office"—are perennially among the nation's highest to the Democratic Party.[224] Democrats receive 93 percent of ATLA's contributions, which helps explain why every Democratic senator opposed the president's medical-malpractice reform bill in the last Congress.[225]

PAC gifts, however, only scratch the surface of litigation-industry giving, which Trial Lawyers, Inc.'s leaders and their firms bundle and distribute directly to candidates. Senator John Edwards's presidential campaign was almost wholly funded by the lawsuit industry,[226] and when he joined John Kerry's ticket, much of that fund-raising apparatus followed: the Texas law firm of Fred Baron, who chaired the Kerry-Edwards campaign's fund-raising efforts, has made a princely fortune in Fen-Phen litigation.[227] Other major 2004 contributors included Waters & Kraus, a firm whose suits have targeted Vioxx, vaccines containing thimerosal, and the cholesterol-lowering drug Crestor;[228] and SimmonsCooper, a firm in Madison County, Illinois (the nation's worst jurisdiction, according to the American Tort Reform Association),[229] which has a major practice suing the manufacturers of painkiller OxyContin and hormone-replacement therapy Prempro.[230]

While 74 percent of lawsuit-industry contributions go to Democrats[231]—including almost all those given by the large donors mentioned above[232]—Trial Lawyers, Inc.'s health-care division funds key Republicans, as well. The Senate judiciary committee chairman, Republican Arlen Specter, has been called "the favorite senator of the trial lawyers."[233] Small wonder: Specter's son Shanin (pictured with his parents below)—one of Pennsylvania's most successful medical-malpractice lawyers—is also one of Trial Lawyers, Inc.'s top fund-raisers.[234] Florida's newest senator, Mel Martinez, is also a former plaintiffs' lawyer, as are his fellow Republican senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Mike Crapo of Idaho.[235] And Trial Lawyers, Inc. is keen to recruit more GOP candidates, particularly in the populist, socially conservative South.[236]

A Multipronged State-by-State Attack

Tort law is largely in the jurisdiction of the states, and the trial bar has diligently cultivated its influence over state legislatures. West Virginia’s legislature is so beholden to the trial bar that the American Tort Reform Association calls its entire legal system a "judicial hellhole."[237] In larger states, the litigation industry targets political giving to maximize influence. Trial lawyers gave $10 million to legislative and statewide-office candidates in California's last two political cycles, including over $1 million for state attorney general Bill Lockyer's last two campaigns.[238]

When Trial Lawyers, Inc. loses in the legislature, it falls back on the courts, using its most seasoned strategy—litigation—to block reform. For years, the lawsuit industry has packed the courts with friendly judges who not only liberally interpret rules to the trial bar's advantage but also unabashedly engage in judicial activism to strike down tort-reform measures as unconstitutional, often on tendentious legal grounds. Just this summer, the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down the state's statutory $350,000 cap on noneconomic damages in medical-malpractice actions.[239] Why? In an opinion authored by chief justice Sarah Abrahamson—who receives almost half her campaign funding from the trial bar[240]—the court found the statute to be "unreasonable and arbitrary because it is not rationally related to . . . lowering medical malpractice insurance premiums."[241] The court disregarded the General Accounting Office's explicit finding that "medical malpractice suits are one of the leading costs for insurance carriers."[242]

While 74 percent of lawsuit-industry contributions go to Democrats, Trial Lawyers, Inc.'s health-care division funds key Republicans as well.

Frustrated by Trial Lawyers, Inc.'s influence over both the legislatures and the courts, reformers in states with referendum and initiative powers have taken to the ballot box to attempt to reduce lawsuit abuse. These efforts sometimes succeed —e.g., last year in California, where citizens reformed the state's notorious "shakedown statute," despite the $4 million Trial Lawyers, Inc. spent trying to drum up opposition.[243] Also last year, Nevada citizens voted in limits on pain-and-suffering awards and contingency fees in malpractice cases.[244]

While voter-referendum drives have met with success, the litigation industry often counters with initiatives of its own. Last year, for example, Florida's citizens passed an initiative limiting excessive contingency fees in medical-malpractice suits.[245] Trial lawyers responded with two succesful initiatives, including a "three-strikes" rule that strips the license of doctors who lose three malpractice suits.[246] A three-strikes provision sounds sensible—until one considers that doctors already settle thousands of groundless suits and that legal outcomes in medical-malpractice cases bear little or no relationship to actual doctor error, so that doctors who wish to stay in practice face a powerful incentive to settle even the weakest claims, for sizable amounts. While it's unclear whether the trial bar will generate enough new settlements to recoup its lost contingency fees, experts like law professor Lester Brickman argue that, with this counter-initiative, the lawyers have "trumped the doctors."[247] As the Florida story shows, Trial Lawyers, Inc.'s sophisticated government-relations operations make it difficult for reformers to keep the upper hand for long.

PUBLIC PITCHMEN

Trial Lawyers, Inc.'s medical-malpractice operations today include suits against not only individual doctors but also health-care facilities such as hospitals, nursing homes, and clinics. Juries tend to have less sympathy for what they perceive to be impersonal, faceless institutions. Accordingly, hospitals lose over half of malpractice cases—doctors lose only one-third—and the average compensation in suits against hospitals is over $6 million, a healthy 225 percent more than the average verdict against doctors.[183]

ATo block reform, Trial Lawyers, Inc. goes beyond its direct political contributions to influence public, legal, and academic opinion with its well-oiled public-relations machine. Trial Lawyers, Inc. targets the media with allied "consumer groups" bearing innocuous names like Consumers Union, Public Citizen, the Center for Justice and Democracy (CJD), and CJD's subsidiary, Americans for Insurance Reform. But these "public interest" groups have deep connections to the litigation industry. Consumers Union receives between 9 and 20 percent of its budget from unclaimed class-action funds.[248] Public Citizen Foundation's board looks like a Trial Lawyers, Inc. leadership meeting, including Lisa Blue of plaintiffs' firm Baron & Budd and Joseph Cotchett, who's also on the Association of Trial Lawyers of America board;[249] Public Citizen boasts its own litigation division,[250] and group founder Ralph Nader has come under fire from other consumer advocates for his deep financial ties to the trial bar.[251] While the CJD closely guards its donor list, its sole stated mission is to "educate the public about the importance of the civil justice system and the dangers of so-called 'tort reforms,'"[252] and its board is populated with the trial bar's most zealous advocates in the academy, as well as media hounds Michael Moore and Erin Brockovich.[253]

In taking on big pharmaceutical companies, the lawsuit industry is helped immeasurably by Public Citizen's scare tactics. They led the fight against breast implants and Bendectin, both of which have been shown repeatedly to pose little health risk. Sidney Wolfe,[254] the director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, calls prescription drugs a "massive public health problem" costing 100,000 lives per year[255]—without mentioning the millions more lives saved and improved by modern drug technology. Public Citizen produces an annual report, "Worst Pills, Best Pills," which paints scores of prescription and over-the-counter medications as too dangerous for public use: their "do not use" list now numbers 185 and includes such medicine-chest standbys as the cough syrup Robitussin, the decongestant Sudafed, and the antacid Mylanta.[256] While urging consumers to avoid these common medicines "under any circumstances" may seem bizarrely extreme, consider that Public Citizen's "health letter" last year extravagantly suggested that "[w]eapons of mass destruction are hard to find in Iraq [but] in modern medicine they are abundant."[257]

Beyond attacking pharmaceuticals, Public Citizen and its allies issue disingenuous reports designed to obscure the very real danger posed by medical-malpractice litigation. Since April, Public Citizen, CJD, and Americans for Insurance Reform have each issued separate "studies" that blame the med-mal liability crisis on insurance companies.[258] Long-term statistical analysis of the groups' own numbers, however, shows that medical-malpractice payouts have risen far faster than insurance premiums (see graph, p. 14).[259] While these "public interest" groups resort to statistical misrepresentation to make their case, their reports are still uncritically trumpeted by mainstream media outfits like the New York Times[260]—lending unearned credibility to Trial Lawyers, Inc.'s public-relations flacks.

[Pooky 3,930]

Didn't Obama the Socialist sign an order forbidding the hiring of lobbyists?

But that was just while he was campaigning. You should know that everything changes once a candidate gets elected President. Happens every time.

What changes is the nature of the information flow. The number of people deriving their news from online sources had multiplied exponentially since BushBaby got elected in 2000. So more people know that Obama has reneged on his campaign promise and more people are commenting on it. Same story, just more exposure.