Quotes About Lobbying

I found that the corridors of power in Delhi were littered with lobbies of various kinds.

We plan to pick up another five seats in the Senate and hold the House through redistricting through 2012. And rather than negotiate with the teachers' unions and the trial lawyers and the various leftist interest groups, we intend to break them.

It is fairly well-known what has been behind that climate change denial in America: vast sums pumped into an ignorance industry by the oil and gas lobbies.

four very powerful corporate lobbies have repeatedly come out on top and turned our democracy into what might more accurately be called a corporatocracy.

Is there a way forward, when campaign financing and mega-lobbying have displaced the common good and have led Americans to despair about the functioning of the political system? Since incumbent politicians won't vote for campaign reform on their own, are we doomed to a vicious circle of big money, big corruption, failing public services, and a collapse of democratic rule?

You and I both know that as long as our representatives are held hostage to their funders - and their funders are not all of us - our system will not work

When I went to Harvard and studied planning, I found I didn't have the skills or the strength to become the kind of public person who could go out and lobby government agencies.

From the beginning of time, business has cozied up to government and gotten restrictions on competition and subsidies and stuff.

It has become more and more obvious that there is one political party in America, and that is The Business Party.

The simple truth is that our businessmen do not want a government that will let business alone. They want a government they can use.

A politician taking campaign money from gamblers in Nevada is like one taking campaign money from the auto people in Michigan. Gambling is our legal business.

Republicans can't run for office without the support of business.

Without putting the brakes on out-of-control campaign contributions from individuals and corporations - it will be business as usual, with 1 percent of Americans pulling the strings.

The reality is that most of what happens in American politics is transactional. People look for ways to influence those in power by throwing money in their direction.

Politics in modern America has become a lucrative business, an industry that has less to do with policy and a lot more to do with accessing money and favors. As we will see, bills and regulations are often introduced not to effect policy change, but as vehicles for shaking down people for those money and favors.

They were directed to hire certain well-connected advisers and lobbyists in Washington. "You hear about bribery in China," says Herbold. "They have nothing on us. We are just more sophisticated about it.

We have to spend a lot more time training people to be good advocates of U.S. business.

Washington is filled with people making other people's arguments for money.

Similarly, in 2014, former Senate majority leader Trent Lott (R-MS) and former senator John Breaux (D-LA) became the main lobbyists for Gazprombank, a subsidiary of Russia's largest supplier of natural gas. More recently, in 2016, millions of dollars in Russian money was funneled to Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell3 and other high-profile Republicans to finance GOP senatorial candidates.

Certainly, my advice is that communicating, lobbying, fundraising and engaging the public in policy and politics is far more exciting and inexpensive via the Internet. Old guard organizations like Common Cause had to evolve to embrace this new environment.

To dissociate politicians from capitalists is slightly disingenuous, to put it mildly. U.S. lawmakers are competitive and auction themselves to the highest bidder via the lobby system.

If somebody invented cigarettes today, the government would not legalize them.

According to economist Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, who served as assistant secretary of the treasury in the Reagan administration, Dick Cheney used his two terms as vice president to fill environmental agencies, including the FDA, with corporate-friendly executives. Jeffrey

The word that identified what we did not possess was "money," . . . The other word was "votes," so that together "money votes" was "open sesame" to the deep caverns of the American political system.