Tales of the Swamp

            Our last focus in the world of political advocacy was on what some might effectively refer to as the “swamp,” also known as the people who run our government and make the decisions that dictate the direction of the country. Perhaps one of the most important topics to delve into and understand, especially in today’s current political climate. Our readings focused on small aspects that affect policy making, such as earmarking and judicial behavior, while our speaker offered great insight into the day in the life of one of these decision makers. Reflecting on the readings and the speaker’s comments, as well as current events, it’s almost impossible not to notice how our current government is failing to make decisions despite all the pieces being in place for them to. Specifically, the negative effects of today’s highly partisan ideas and conversations have led to major failures for the majority caucus in attempts to pass a healthcare repeal, and as the world watches, these same issues could potentially derail a tax overhaul.

            As we discussed in class, effective governance is the result of accommodation. Our reading examined one of these accommodations in-depth: earmarks. Earmarks were used by Congressmen and women to secure funding within an appropriations bill for a specific project or issue in their district in return for their vote of approval. Our professor referred to this as “internal horse trading” or inside policy advocates - politicians were advocating and lobbying with themselves to achieve their political agendas. We also discussed the fact that there are a variety of venues which members can use to change or influence behavior, effectively, “greasing the wheels.” However, we no longer use earmarks and even pork barrel spending is frowned upon, to keep members from adding any and whichever addendum they would like to a bill, addendums that cannot be voted on by the whole body. The loss of this ‘accommodation’ method has led to a loss of governance and larger division of increasingly ideologically coherent parties.

    Our speaker reflected on the outcomes of this loss of accommodation and governance through his discussion of the hyper partisanship and polarization of the country. They acknowledged that people in their position are doing the job “for the people, to help the people,” but the only way they can do that, and the only real thing that matters on the hill is the number 218 (or 51). Those numbers reflect the majority seats needed on the respected floors of Congress to enact and push through policy change - the majority essentially is the ‘ultimate gatekeeping of policy.’ And while majority is needed to accomplish even the most mundane Congressional tasks these days, a few years ago the majority could be achieved through government lobbying of each other. Our speaker talked about the days when “blue dogs” and “Tuesday morning republicans,” members who were moderately partisan/leaning, and who were most likely to swing across the fence to make a deal. These members in the middle represented the clear majority of the American people as most Americans found themselves identifying as moderates.

However, as our professor and speaker noted, we are no longer living in a period of moderate swingers and American parliamentarianism - as Washington Post writer Michael Gerson describes it: “the polling snapshot of President Trump at one year since his election is interesting — if “interesting” is defined as a downward spiral of polarization, pettiness and prejudice that threatens the daily functioning and moral standing of the American republic. Our times are not normal — and it is a disservice to the country to normalize them.” This new hyper partisanship and loss of the middle ground is not helping anyone, not the majority or the minority, and two very big issues in country today that have been addressed in the last year reflect this.

    The biggest example of this failure has been in the GOP’s attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Since gaining the majority in the House, the Senate, and the Executive Office, the Republicans have yet to be able to pass a repeal due to their lack of accommodation and warped procedures. The most recent breakdown of majority control was with the Graham-Cassidy healthcare bill, in which the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, would not even call the vote to the floor because they knew it would be defeated. This was because of outcries from the public and Democrats, but also due to rushed process and loss their own party votes.

The Senate is using the budget reconciliation rules — a process that protects the result from death by filibuster but also hamstrings what the bills can actually do. The budget reconciliation process was created in 1974 to expedite Congress’s budget process. The idea was to create a shortcut for an annual bill aligning how much Congress intended to tax and spend with how much it was actually taxing and spending. The bill was given special protections from the normal delays and impediments of the legislative process — notably, it was protected from the Senate filibuster and could only be debated for 20 hours. The result was that a reconciliation bill could pass with only 51 votes, while normal legislation could be held to a 60-vote threshold. However, legislators began trying to use this process to push their pet projects through reconciliation which resulted in Congress creating a roadblock called the “Byrd Rule,” which limited the kinds of bills that could use the shortcut. The Byrd Rule holds that every provision of every bill that goes through reconciliation needs to raise or lower spending and taxes and that the minority party can challenge any provision of a budget reconciliation bill before the Senate parliamentarian that violates the Byrd Rule, it’s struck from the bill. And so, writing legislation under reconciliation means, first and foremost, trying to write a bill that will survive those parliamentary challenges. That’s a very different task than writing the best bill possible.

 Therefore, when the GOP uses reconciliation to write major legislation under extreme and bizarre constraints, such a deadline to pass the healthcare repeal by October 31, 2017 and releasing the bill barely two weeks beforehand, the result is that important bills in American politics are compromised and defective from the start. This was the case with the Graham-Cassidy bill, as Senators held only one hearing on the bill and changed it multiple times in attempts to reconcile with Senators who were against the bill. However, their accommodations were not enough to sway the votes of their own - of McCain, Murkowski, Collins, and Paul.

    The reconciliation process is a method which grants and allows for policy change within the government to increase and expand its authority. And despite the failures of its use in repealing Obamacare, the GOP has enacted it in both the House and the Senate as they fight to see their tax reform dreams come true. Reconciliation has allowed the bills to pass by slimmer margins than is normally needed and now the two different bills will head to conference to amend the differences between the two and ensure no parliamentary opposition. However, it should be noted, in the spirit of discussing accommodation, that while the House bill passed, the Senate bill was almost compromised due to a lack of compromise. The Senate holdouts were Senators Corker, Flake, and Johnson, who wanted to ensure certain aspects of the bill would not affect their policy agenda - for example, Johnson was fighting to raise the corporate tax rate to help small businesses, and Corker wanted a trigger to put in place. While some of these conditions were appeased, Corker’s was not, resulting in a nay vote from him, and the tax bill passing the Senate floor by a majority of only 51-49.

    As was mentioned, the bill is now headed to conference. Each party in the House and the Senate have nominated their “conferees,” the members who will work to create a single bill that does not violate the Byrd Rule and will be able to reach the President’s desk by Christmas. In this sense, the members will use the variety of venues our professor mentioned to change political minds and influence voting behavior. While the healthcare bill did not work out, the GOP is holding on to their majority by their teeth as they push for their number one goal of tax reform to pass.

    I mentioned in my opening that understanding these small aspects of the “swamp” is especially pertinent in today’s political world, and the two example of government lobbying in action that I discussed demonstrate this thoroughly (I believe). Hopefully in conference our representatives will attempt to achieve a bipartisan result - as our speaker noted, there is value in collective work and government. By achieving a bipartisan bill (which, honestly will probably note happen with the tax bill), the government will show the public that they are working to support their needs and that the government is effective. However, the hyper partisanship that is controlling the decision-making of members will only lead to further polarization, or a deeper “downward spiral.”

The Women's March

In our latest journey into the realm of political advocacy our class focused on protests and their ability to (or to not) enact change in the system. From our readings, class discussions, and our guest speaker, who is an organizer herself, we’ve learned that protests can be effective. This effectiveness comes as the results of specific steps taken to organize and tactics used to spread the message and reliant on a few key components of any protest. It is the spirit of this understanding, that protests are powerful political tools, that I examine the Women’s March: what did they do right, what did they do wrong, and what’s next for the movement. 

The analysis, “Do Political Protests Matter?” from Madestam, Shoag, Veuger, and Yanagizawa-Drott, found that political protests can “build political movements that ultimately affect policy.” While their analysis focused on the Tea Party, their examinations could be applied to many large protests due to the nature of their experiment (the rain). One important aspect Madestam, et. al. evaluated was the impact of a protest’s size - considering the Women’s March was one of the largest political protests (over 400,000 people in D.C. alone, and over 600 sister marches) maneuvered in modern history, we can hope that the impact is similar or greater than what the study found from the Tea Party movement. The impact of a protest’s size will most likely be perceived through political action or on election day as the study found that larger protests usually lead to incumbent representatives voting more conservatively, increased voter turnout, increased strength of movement, and higher chances of incumbent party leaders resigning. We’ve already seen some of the repercussions of the Women’s March in this past month’s elections, with multiple women being elected, including the first openly-transgender woman, and higher turnout from many minority groups. And as we’ve all learned, the election of Trump and the Women’s March inspired thousands of women to run for their local government office.

The sheer size of the protest in D.C. alone is enough to strengthen a political movement, but as Corrine McConnaughy noted in her article, “4 Lessons for Today’s Women’s Marchers from the Suffrage Movement,” it is the 600+ sister marches across the country and around the world that may be more politically important. The sister marches in local communities also reflect Madestam, et. al’s findings that “personal interaction within small groups of citizens serves as a crucial channel for the transmission of new political views leading to increased political activism.”

As we discussed in class, protests are effective in building awareness or making a statement before energy can gather, addressing a problem before change can happen, and demonstrating public opinion in a loud manner. Shom Mazumder argues in his Washington Post article, that a successful movement has three “crucial factors in common,” of which the Women’s March has incredibly displayed two: messaging and nonviolence. The messaging began with a meme that spawned a worldwide movement and produced some very iconic images, specifically the Pink Pussy hats, and many creative posters. This creativity, our speaker mentioned, is critical to secure an enduring message, and helps to bring home ideas in a powerful and meaningful way. Our speaker made a strong point in acknowledge that a protest’s leverage is people power; she also mentioned that protests are only “one tool in the toolbox.”

And that’s what a protest is, a tactic, not the end all of a campaign. This brings us to exploring what the Women’s March did wrong in their protesting spirit. One of the biggest issues with the Women’s March was that they did not have a game plan beyond the protest and their platform was not released until a couple days before the march took place. McConnaughy argues that it’s okay not to know exactly what the policy objectives are yet and that gorals and a policy agenda will reveal itself, but Mazumder and our speaker contend that organization is key, and is the missing “crucial factor” all successful movements have in common. Our speaker was very adamant that when organizing a protest, one must have a ‘game plan’ and must design a strategy that sets goals and finds targets, while inspiring a base. I would agree that simply protesting without the next steps in mind is harmful to the overall accomplishments of a march. Even one of the march’s founders, Carmen Perez, admitted that “" we didn't necessarily have a lot of time to think about next steps."

Without the organization in place the messaging can be thrown off. Our speaker made it clear that mobilizations designed smartly are the most effective. So, what went wrong with the Women’s March in terms of organizing and messaging? For one, inclusivity was a huge issue and barrier for many participants. Our speaker acknowledged that in creating a mobilization, one must create a narrative of support, but this narrative fell short for many women who did not join because of the lack of intersectionality presented in what most people call “white feminism.” The organizers themselves were an intersectional group of strong women, but due to a lack of organization and messaging, many people did not realize this until afterwards, or they did realize and still felt a lack of support among their peers. The Women’s March might have been one of the largest in history, but does it count if we forget a large number of the population? Another issue with inclusivity could be the very liberal messaging and manner of protest - although the movement’s platform and beliefs are obviously more liberal ideas, Republican women who voted against Trump did not feel as though they could support the movement. Our speaker also brought up the issue of classism and elitism in protesting - there is a large population of people who don’t have time either physically or mentally to care about the issues because they are more focused on keeping the lights on and food on the table.

Without organization, the follow-up is non-existent or useless. Our speaker acknowledged that follow up from a protest is key in retaining engagement with participants. Her suggestions: have fieldwork/canvassing teams in the moment to connect with participants at the height of their political action, respect people’s time, keep in touch through meetings and town halls, and master the art of the one-on-one. All of these suggestions should be included in the game plan - which was not made. The Women’s March inspired thousands of women the day of and kept the momentum going for a few months after that. However, their efforts fell short - on their website, the Women’s March Global has a “10 Actions in 100 days” plan that would include writing to your Congressional representatives, attending town halls, or participating in the “Day Without Women” demonstration. Nevertheless, only three plans are listed on the website and many were not followed through within the “100 days.”

So, what’s next for the Women’s March? It’s been almost a year since the pinnacle moment - what do the organizers do from here? How do they re-engage the population and sustain the energy from the original movement?

The Women’s March group has released an extensive platform of ideas and beliefs that share their focus and policy agenda. Carmen Perez noted that the movement does not focus on any single issue, but instead the “focus was to make sure that [the movement was] intentional, intersectional and made sure that people feel heard.” This increases the inclusive intentions of the movement, and as our speaker noted there is currently an opening in social movements for anyone to become involved. Our speaker also stressed the importance of making sure communities are being heard as organizers and in solidarity with those who need the most support - it’s about building connections between communities. Organizing shifts communities from where they are to where they need to be - the Women’s March has all the resources, people, and potential to accomplish this.

It’s important to remark that policy achievements take time and energy, and that sustaining the energy from a large protest may be difficult to do, but it is what keeps the agenda moving. The movement will need to engage as many people as possible on as many of their ideas as they can - not every woman/ally can be focused on every aspect of the agenda, but if you garner enough support for each one from different groups, the coalitions will help to make a difference. One coalition that the Women’s March is working with right now is the Women’s March Youth EMPOWER coalition with Peace First, Rise to Run, Teen Vogue, The Justice League NYC, The Gathering for Justice, and Rock the Vote. The program upholds the Women’s March values and platform, and its goal is to provide young people with the tools needed to create high school and college chapters that guide students in making a positive impact in their communities. As McConnaughy mentioned, coalitions are hard, but necessary movement work.

The Women’s March was symbolic of so many ideas and emotions that our country is feeling. With the proper work and motivation, it can continue to make waves and hopefully, one day, enact change.

{Sources for Women's March information!}

https://www.womensmarch.com/global/

https://www.womensmarch.com/mission/

https://www.npr.org/2017/04/28/525764938/100-days-in-womens-march-still-inspires-but-can-the-enthusiasm-hold

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/womens-march-organizers-address-intersectionality-as-the-movement-grows_us_5883f9d9e4b070d8cad314c0

All These Polls

The impact of public opinion on policy has been a hot topic of debate since the conception of the democratic government system. Another concept up for debate: whether polls are effective in determining the public’s opinion on policy and whether these should be used to determine policy. As for the latter use of polls, it is clear from the knowledge available, common sense, and our speaker’s comments that polls should not influence policy. I question the fairness and usefulness of polls in light of our speaker’s concerns regarding the changing attitudes, motivations, and tactics pollsters are using today, as well as various issues surrounding the concept of polls in general. I personally have been skeptical of polls from studying them throughout my undergraduate career and have tried to better understand how they work and what influence they have on portraying the public’s mindset to the politicians. Are polls being utilized properly and effectively, or are polls simply a cover to convince the public that their opinions matter?

Polls can be effective in understanding the public’s “complex” opinion – this is something that I agree with, our speaker agreed with, and our readings agreed with. However, I agree with a few conditions attached. I agree that the polls can be helpful in gauging the public’s perspective but only when they are created and understood in context and in weariness of the public’s fragile mindset. I believe that it is essential to gauge polls based on the demographic context of the group being asked – for example, we discussed in class how the terms “illegal alien” vs. “undocumented workers” would be interpreted depending on which group you were asking. One can assume that if you’re asking a group of anti-immigrant sentiment, they would react negatively to the former or both. In this case, word choice becomes the biggest advantage or drawback to a poll depending on what result a pollster is trying to achieve. The public will interpret questions in a variety of ways, so polls must be made to eliminate as much confusion and bias as possible. It is entirely too easy to change and manipulate opinions if demographic context and word choice is not taken into consideration before distribution, collection and analysis.

The continuity of polls helps to boost credibility and a pattern of public opinion, however, the public’s compound mindset can throw patterns off or skew polls in different ways. For example, our speaker spoke about the impact of contradictory opinions, such as the abortion debate. She also made an excellent point in that people tend to pull away from controversial issues and disengage because they don’t want to resolve their own problems. This is evident in many highly controversial areas including abortion, gun control, and even the 2016 election. How can we comprehend the political behavior of the public if we do not consider the various thought processes that occur in everyone’s minds? Beyond this, polls need to care about the audience, an aspect that our speaker and I both believe to be disappearing in today’s political climate. Pollsters are moving away from understanding ordinary life which is often more telling of the people’s ideas and thoughts than direct questions about policy.

It is in the milieu of these changing attitudes, motivations, and tactics of pollsters that I question the usefulness and fairness of polls. “Pollsters have lost their souls.” This quote from our speaker spoke volumes to me because I feel that it is quite reminiscent of the entire political world currently. Politics suck the soul out of the representatives, the people who study it, and the people it effects. Our speaker mentioned that she does not believe polls to be “left-leaning” as the President claims, nor does she deem them to be biased in any way overall. However, she did argue that the media is influencing polls in a sometimes negative or biased way – polls are often connected to media partners and may follow the media course. For example, one could argue that Fox News polls are probably skewed in the favor of conservatives and MSNBC polls are skewed in the favor of liberals. Besides the media’s polls having an agenda, media also influences polls in the amount of attention they provide – a pollster wants their poll to be shown and analyzed, they are “desperate for attention” and today’s media coverage has resulted in “overkill.” This media coverage and bias was quite evident in last year’s presidential election: polls were used to determine the outcome of the election and the public’s feelings about the candidates, and although they appeared to be wrong in many circumstances, they garnered a lot of media attention and scrutiny which led to more polls regarding similar topics.

I question the usefulness and effectiveness of polls because it is a topic that is under-studied and hard to grasp. Their usefulness could be proven or disproven, but I believe the debate would still exist. The government, especially at the conception of our country, has very rarely trusted the public’s opinions, hence the many different types of government structures that emerged since “demokratia” was introduced in Athens. It is easy to understand why leaders would be wary of the public’s opinion today – as we’ve discussed in class, the public often lacks the knowledge to truly engage with a poll. As our speaker mentioned, there were multiple polls gauging opinions on Hope Hicks, but unless you’re a diehard consumer of politics, the average person would probably not know who that was. Or even in our class example, I had no idea what the Kingdom of Bhutan was. I also wonder the effectiveness in light of historical context – our speaker told us that FDR was the first president to use a public opinion poll to measure the public’s thoughts on the war, and even though the public was very much against US involvement, we went to war. We know that polls should not influence policy, but I believe they should at least be taken into consideration when making decisions that impact the entire country.

Considering all of these aspects of polls and their lack of impact on influence, Burstein’s argument that the public does influence policy needs some embellishment as to how. Gillens and Page argue that the upper class and interest groups have more influence on policy than the average citizen, and this would make sense considering all we’ve learned about “mobilized bias” and the need for resources to have an effect in the grand scheme of things.

These issues with polls make it hard for me to believe that polls are effective in understanding the public’s political opinion. We've seen them fail - the 2016 election and even the 1948 election come to mind. However, polls can be useful in other ways – in Season 1, Episode 7 of the West Wing, the administration believes that polling and sampling would produce more accurate census results. They are likewise effective in understanding ordinary life such as figuring out the public’s favorite color, favorite sports team (not the Dallas Cowboys, by the way), or which guy the Bachelorette should choose. Polls can even be fun - we've all posted a poll on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram about whether we should get a haircut, order takeout, or whatever else we can't make up our minds about. How much do polls really engage the public though? 

So, are polls actually impactful and useful for pollsters, politicians, and the media or are the simply a show for the public to think their opinion matters?

Think Tank Thoughts

I (and I assumed a couple of y’all) almost applied to intern at a think tank. If I am being honest, I am slightly glad that I never did because what I have learned about think tanks in these last couple weeks of studying them leads me to believe that I might not have been satisfied.

That’s because I didn’t really know what a think tank even was. I still am not quite sure what a think tank is wholly. And unlike interest groups where average Americans hold strong opinions, when it comes to think tanks, the public doesn’t know that much or hold any real opinions regarding think tanks. I think that this is a red flag on the credibility of thinks tanks altogether. Although our professor and our speaker believe that think thanks produce a “net positive” in the political world, I would argue that the lack of transparency, the ambiguity, and the obvious partisanship of thinks thanks invalidate this positive. 

Rich labels think tanks as “independent, non-interest based, non-profit organizations that produce and principally rely on expertise and ideas to obtain support and influence policy-making.” Unfortunately, the scholarship and reality of think tanks do not support this ‘definition’ totally. Specifically, the think tanks are not wholly “independent,” nor are they “non-interest based.”

One aspect of think tanks that weakens any credibility or authority is the lack of transparency, specifically in regards to donations. While our speaker’s think tank does well to share who their donors are and offer information to the public, the majority of think tanks do not do this. And according to our speaker the amount of funding think tanks receive is ‘absurd’. Medvetz used the term “disparate” to explain the funding and resources that think tanks rely on – reliance could lead to a lack of integrity, or a conflict of interest, in research. Who is donating to think tanks? And is the money influencing the research? Our speaker questioned this also, wondering if the power of money was strong enough to push narratives and offering a solution of using government money to fund both sides to avoid outside influence or other influencing factors. While the public is in uproar over which special interests donate to which representatives and question whether these donations have any influence, there does not appear to be the same concern when it comes to research funding. However, I would agree with our speaker that money has some influence on what type of research is being done and for what angle it is being produced. Our speaker also argued that money could somehow “buy silence,” to produce works that conform to a donor’s ideas and do not challenge the status quo or question the authority (or the donor’s beliefs). 

Another aspect that detracts from any level of credibility is the overall lack of knowledge or formal definition that is available. While Rich may have his definition, Medvetz argues that any definition of a think tank is not completely viable or known, using the term “structurally ambiguous,” and even our professor who works for a think tank has described them as “occupying an ambiguous role in the policy-making world”. I believe that this lack of knowledge – of how a think tank operates, hires, influences, etc. – does nothing to lend these institutions credibility or authority. Whereas with special interests, while there is not an extensive pool of research, there has been credible research done and analysis into how special interest operate and how they influence. This lack of scholarly attention, according to Rich, has allowed think tanks to hold a historical low-profile contribution to policy-making and has made it difficult to account for the role of ideas and expertise in American politics.

The last straw in the camel’s back for credibility is the obvious partisanship that is known with a majority of think tanks. For example, the Heritage Foundation leans right, and the Worldwatch Institute leans left, no question about it. Our speaker was somewhat adamant that think tanks should officially adopt an ideology and claim it openly, which would lend to more transparency and perhaps some credibility. But most usually attempt to maintain that “non-interest based,” unbiased front to claim authority. And while I understand that special interests are also ideological, they are at least very open about it and their influence is generally known. Rich describes think tanks as less organizations that are committed to objective analysis of policy problems, but more as organizations that turn experts into advocates and policy information into communication nowadays, pushing different narratives to fit different molds. They have moved on from their intended role as producers of credible expertise or research and objective writing and are now more focused on contributing to potential debates over ideas. Medvetz explains how one type of policy expert is a “salesman” who is good at selling an argument and, as according to our speaker, making political jargon more understandable for politicians which could possibly open a door for influence. This partisanship makes it very difficult for researchers and politicians and the special interests who also use the research to find common ground and realize the truth. Our discussion in class also lends to this idea of think tanks being echo chambers with the power to influence, but not necessarily change ideological beliefs through facts, especially since most of the time facts might not be found in the middle ground. How this partisanship influences policy is another question that cannot fully be answered – as I’ve mentioned in class, I watch a lot of hearings, and think tanks policy experts or representatives are usually available for comment, or a representative uses research done to prove a point – however, how credible are these ‘facts’ that are being quoted? And could research from a think tank on the other side of the aisle contend or corroborate? If the facts contend, or cannot be found in the middle ground, why should they have any part of policy decisions or representatives’ arguments? 

Beyond these points, I believe that think tanks are well-intentioned and were created to bring forth that “net-positive” our speaker and professor both believe in. If think tanks adopted different measures, perhaps some of the ideas that our speaker put forth, and strived to be less ‘ambiguous and weird’ they could have a credible and authoritative role to play in policy decisions. Until then, I will remain skeptical, albeit hopeful.

Lobby Away

In the last few weeks our Political Advocacy class has been learning about and discussing a very important aspect of our political culture – special interests, otherwise known as lobbyists to the greater public. Lobbying often receives negative attention or is accused of being biased against the public yet lobbying is a staple aspect of our political world and is one of the many ways representatives are able to understand the public and serve their constituencies. We were able to meet with a speaker who works in the lobbying world and has extensive knowledge on this subject and he happily shared his opinion with our class. His company is a full-service government affairs firm that monitors the actions of states that may impact the various organizations his firm supports. Here I will analyze his overall opinion (and how it reflects the work he does) and compare it to the ideas put forth by academics regarding what special interests are and what they do.

“How many of you believe that lobbying is bad?”  - Majority of class raised their hands.

“Okay, I’ll tell you why you’re wrong. Think of anything, whatever you want and understand that everything you use or love or want has been lobbied for.”

The speaker put forth many examples, one being makeup. His company represents a large corporation who oversees many big-name makeup companies and he explained how they lobby for makeup. For this argument, he explained a scenario of a proposal to ban a chemical that certain makeups containing SPF have – his group, and other makeup lobbying groups, would argue against the state that without that chemical the SPF is useless and that it is necessary to continue production of such products and provide a safe product to consumers. This is simply one example to support his opinion. His company represents many other large corporations who seek support in approaching the government to help their cause or find support for their vision.

This idea that groups, such as a large makeup corporation, retain lobbyists to voice their wants and needs to the government is rooted deep into the history of lobbying groups. Wright’s discussion on the “Evolution of Interest Groups” puts lobbying in the context of its original ideas. The United States is a representative republic based government and while some, such as James Madison, feared that factions and interest groups would turn the country against each other and lead to a ‘tyranny of the majority’, the union was built to represent the concerns and needs of the constituents within its borders. Men fought for independence on the idea of “no taxation without representation,” in which “taxation” could be replaced with several other priority concerns Americans possessed then and now. The government is here to serve the people and therefore should respect the people.

It is this idea of the government’s role as protector of the citizens and provider of safety that led to the formation of special interest and lobbying groups. The right to free speech and the right to petition the government allowed groups who felt slighted by big law-making decisions or other groups to come together and fight for their rights and opinions. Wright uses the example of the American Postal Workers Union which was a group of postal workers who felt slighted by the rules that were in place and decided to voice their concern – this led to other groups to form which felt similar or wanted to compete against another group’s intentions. Wright described this production of interest groups as a “wavelike formation” with groups forming when they are disturbed by economic, social, political or technological change, otherwise known as the disturbance theory.

Today lobbying groups are not seen as these tough groups who fight for the rights of a particular sector of people or jobs, but as groups who are biased and use their positionship to affect advocacy and issues while leaving the ‘little guys’ out of the discourse. This idea seems to apply mostly to large corporations or large interest groups who have wide reaching appeal across the nation, such as the National Rifle Association or the American Civil Liberties Union. However, Wright’s argument and description of the “free rider” program is a good place to base a counter-argument to those who hold the previously stated opinions of lobbying groups. Lobbying groups were once started and maintained by people who wanted a say in the government and people actually participated and helped their special interest group make a difference. Today a lot of lobbying groups deal with free riders who benefit from the work of the lobbying groups without putting in any physical effort, monetary support, or membership contribution.

The people complain of lobbyists fighting for companies to slight individuals when they are in fact benefitting from these fights, such as is with the makeup lobbying group our speaker discussed with the class earlier. Those who use makeup or any of those SPF related products have benefitted from the work of that group and its supporters without putting in any effort besides to criticize special interests. Obviously, it is not always the case that a lobbying cause will benefit the ‘little people’; they may in fact sometimes be harmful to individuals or counteractive to another group’s efforts. However, it is important to note as John M. de Figueiredo and Brian Kelleher Richter have put forth in their analysis, “Advancing Empirical Research on Lobbying,” not much is known on lobbying groups or their total impact and influence on the government; therefore, it is hard to issue accusations against lobbying groups or criticize their actions as if they are the sole arbiters of policy-making decisions.

By taking a step back and looking at lobbying groups as a whole instead of their specific flaws it is clear the point our speaker was trying to make. While one may not agree with what one specific group is lobbying for, it is highly likely that one would be able to find a counter-group that is supportive of one’s own values and ideology. For example, I might not agree with a group that lobbies against candy because of its sugar content, but it is highly likely that I will be able to find a different lobbying group that is fighting for the candy-makers who know that sugar is one of the best parts of candy (this is all speculative of course and completely my own opinion). Despite a lack of research or thorough understanding of what lobbying groups do or how they do it, Americans are often found fighting against the interests who are fighting for them. I believe our anger and dislike towards lobbying groups should be directed elsewhere.

It is in this context of individuals misunderstanding the concept of lobbying and what it does to help individuals (a majority of the time) that I agree with our speaker’s comment. Everything we use or love or want has been lobbied for. That is a strong statement and a true statement. The Marvel mega-hit movies I love to watch have been lobbied for regarding property rights and copyright laws, and the Netflix that I love to binge every weekend has been lobbied for by activists who support streaming. As someone who is interning at a very similar firm to that of our speaker, I have seen firsthand how lobbying groups work to fight for special interests. One group that Venn founded and manages is ESCA, the Employee-Owned S-Corporations of America, a lobbying group that fights for small business owners. We hold conferences twice a year to bring in more members and petition Congressional staff to support bills that we have put forth in the House and the Senate. It is a full-fledged operation that will benefit not only our 200 company members, but the thousands of other small businesses out there, including my family’s own DJ business.

As a history and political science major I know why Americans are so critical of our government and any entity that seems to be supporting it or consorting with it (I’ll give you a hint to the event I’m referring to – flashlights and hotels were involved). However, this distrust has clouded our judgements and biased our opinions to the point where we don’t even try to understand what a lobbying group is and what it does for us. Our speaker and I both come from difficult and humbling backgrounds and I was quite inspired by his dedication and work ethic. I was not sure about my internship at first because I too was wary of lobbying firms, but working with and for such groups so closely I have realized the enormous potential benefits that they can provide to all of us.

So, as you read this remember, everything you use or love or want has been lobbied for, including this Blogger site and the laptop I typed it on.