Lobby Quotations

While lobbyists are not allowed to pay for a trip, the parent company can. Which is confusing, because the lobbyist can come along.

You don't know where the trip went. You don't know who went on it. You don't know if a lobbyist was on it.

Because the Second Amendment is an incomprehensible mess, because too many lobbyists have argued that it is an absolute protection of actions and items never considered at the time of our nation's founding, and because there is a clear state interest in protecting the lives of its citizens, the words must be removed from the Constitution.

I remember when I was a young social worker, the first time I went to the state capital in Arizona, where I eventually served for seven years, I was so nervous to go and lobby my state legislators. Because I only had a master's degree at the time in social work.

Agribusiness - with its wicked powerful lobby and its infiltration of top bureaucratic posts - essentially runs roughshod over the government agencies that are supposed to monitor it. It's the rich fox guarding the filthy, overcrowded henhouse.

Bottom line is, it's good they're in China. . . . But there's a lot more they can do when it comes to thinking through the human rights implications of their business practices. If high-tech companies are serious about doing the right thing, they can join together and lobby for more transparency and accountability in the way in which Chinese officialdom deals with Internet services.

He will not be able to raise any money from lobbyists for that because he has indirect control of it.

You have those rare occasions when an issue gets a lot of publicity and coverage and that's when most legislators would vote in accordance with the mainstream views back home. But those are rare occasions. On most issues and most bills, the level of public concern and understanding is, frankly, very low. And when that goes down, the amount of power and influence lobbyists have in that (Statehouse) goes up. That is true on most issues.

We don't have any objection to a ban being imposed on lobbyists buying food, beverages or other gifts for lawmakers and their staff. The Legislature simply went far beyond this prohibition, though, cutting deeply into our ability to communicate for our clients and invading the privacy of people who simply want their representatives to listen to them.

Global poverty is the product of reversible policy failures overseen by politicians, past and present. The poorest of the poor don't vote in American or European elections. They don't make donations to political parties or hire lobbyists in D.C., London or Canberra.