legislative body gets a charlie horse

Raw Story

In a bid to make lobbying reform legislation a better candidate for passage this week, House Republican leaders have stripped out language forcing lobbyists to provide detailed disclosure of fundraising activities and contacts with lawmakers.

[..]

House Rules Chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.) scrubbed the requirement that lobbyists list contacts with lawmakers because he feared that it "could have a chilling effect on lobbying," his spokeswoman said.

Makes sense. Why try to curb lobbying too much when you're going to get kicked to the curb in 2006 anyway. I mean, hey, nobody likes you anyway right? -

Public approval of the job Congress is doing has dipped to its lowest level of 2006, and is now the worst Gallup has recorded since the closing days of the Democratic majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994. The current approval rating for Congress is a near-record low according to Gallup survey trending.

Just take the damn money.

Nobody really expected you to finish this race. You flew out of those starting blocks* and that's what counts, right? A valiant half-effort if ever there was one. Now just fake a bad leg cramp, fall to the ground and bag it.

*Although it would have been good if the starting gun (read: Jack Abramoff) didn't have to be shot directly next to your ear (read: Jack Abramoff *and* Tom Delay).

Update 4/24/2006 2:03 PM: Let's see what OpenSecretes.org has to tell us about Dreier -

Burson-Marsteller $1,000 PAC Contribution 4/15/2005

PMA Group $1,000 PAC Contribution 3/12/2005

[Edit: Fixed PMA link to go to PAC page instead of Lobbyists - PMA is listed as both - this FEC/campaign finance law stuff is confusing!]

I realize this is only a couple thousand of the $592,702 he received in 2005-2006 PAC Contributions as of 3/13/2006 but this Burson-Marsteller seems worth knowing more about:

Burson, 85, is founding chairman of Burson-Marsteller, largest public relations agency in the world. He recently began a blog at burson-marsteller.com.

[...]

Q: Do you read from the Internet? You now have a blog. Have you read other blogs that were worth the time?

A: I am not a regular reader of blogs, although prior to starting my own I perused several blogs over a period of two or three weeks. They were interesting and well-written, but my problem is simply that there's so much to read that one is forced to make choices. My principal reading from the Internet is when I am interested in a specific subject, such as a new prescription from my physician, and then I print it out rather than read from a monitor.

OMG. Oldest. Blogger. Evar. I would check out his blog but seeing as how Burson-Marsteller is doing more than 70 percent of it's business with Republicans so far this year I don't think I would like it. :-p

Update 4/24/2006 4:25 PM (Super Duper Tangent Edition): So I decided to check out Mr. Burson's blog -- all four posts in almost as many months -- and some of it seems OK (nothing I read popped out as wingnutty or neo-con-y) but he does seem to pull a big fat U-turn between a March 22, 2006 post titled "The Role of the Public Relations Counselor" and a April 24, 2006 post titled "Time Frame Compression: Media Multiplicity and Opinion Formation":

March 22, 2006 (emphasis mine):

Communicating with external audiences is an equally difficult undertaking. The public relations executive must convince the public that the corporation is, indeed, being responsive. Critics on the outside looking in tend to question a corporation's sincerity. All too often they mistake a real and genuine response for a seeming response. When a corporation asks for time to make an adjustment, the critics declare that the company is merely stalling in the hope it won't have to act at all. The fact is the corporation is often slow to react. It's that kind of a creature. It's easy enough for the chief executive officer to issue a public statement that reverses a long-standing policy overnight. But it's just as difficult for a CEO to mandate change as it is for the President of the United States. Policy changes in themselves are not enough.

If the corporation informs the public the company has a new policy, the public may very well respond: "So what! We're not interested in knowing about policy changes; we're interested in substantive acts. What have you really done?" And if the corporation does not inform the public that it has, in fact, changed its policies, the public can accuse it of failing to take action. Effective external communications, therefore, is critical. The public relations executive must convince the public that the corporation is responsive, that it is taking actions that exceed mere policy statements, and that genuine progress is being made toward meeting public expectations.

and April 24, 2006 :

The problem for society is whether leadership can survive under conditions that are influencing, perhaps even forcing, and our leaders to respond to measurable public demand. Would it have been possible for President Roosevelt to support the British war effort against Nazi Germany with the constant din of the media and polls overwhelmingly in favor of strict neutrality? Could President Nixon have opened the doors to a relationship with China if diplomacy had been conducted in a fishbowl?

There's something about forming attitudes and opinions that calls for deliberation and considerable discourse give-and-take. Maybe we would be better off if we could freeze the time frame compression that gives us the instant gratification that both media and public now crave.

Ahh, yes. Opinions are like assholes; everybody's got one. Trouble is, when you're talking about our elected officials everyone has a vote** too, a cool refreshing vote to wash down our opinion and asshole combo meal. The disconnect revealed in these two Burson posts is that one hand there is a need to effectively show the public you hear their concerns and are being responsive and on the other hand there is an assessment that people are too uppity and knee-jerky with their opinions - why don't these people just cool it? Well, since Mr. Burson brought up the POTUS I would say it's pretty clear that Bush is hoping that whole 'fire Rumsfeld' public opinion will blow over. In fact, it's quite clear he thinks 70 percent of us just made up our minds too quickly about him being the Worst President Ever. Really, aren't we all just being a little hasty? The answer of course is no, we're not being too hasty. He had his chance, years ago, to be a leader (or 'The Decider' as he put it recently) but now we all know Bush is a miserable failure. He should start listening to us and he can start by firing Rumsfeld. But that's just my opinion. ;-)

**(well, sort of, see Electoral College)