Congress Finds Ways to Avoid Lobbyist Limits

From the New York Times courtesy of AlterNet:

In just the last two months, lawmakers invited lobbyists to help pay for a catalog of outings: lavish birthday parties in a lawmaker’s honor ($1,000 a lobbyist), martinis and margaritas at Washington restaurants (at least $1,000), a California wine-tasting tour (all donors welcome), hunting and fishing trips (typically $5,000), weekend golf tournaments ($2,500 and up), a Presidents’ Day weekend at Disney World ($5,000), parties in South Beach in Miami ($5,000), concerts by the Who or Bob Seger ($2,500 for two seats), and even Broadway shows like “Mary Poppins” and “The Drowsy Chaperone” (also $2,500 for two).

The lobbyists and their employers typically end up paying for the events, but within the new rules.

Instead of picking up the lawmaker’s tab, lobbyists pay a political fund-raising committee set up by the lawmaker. In turn, the committee pays the legislator’s way.

Lobbyists and fund-raisers say such trips are becoming increasingly popular, partly as a quirky consequence of the new ethics rules.

By barring lobbyists from mingling with a lawmaker or his staff for the cost of a steak dinner, the restrictions have stirred new demand for pricier tickets to social fund-raising events.

Lobbyists say that the rules might even increase the volume of contributions flowing to Congress from K Street, where many lobbying firms have their offices.

Click here for the rest.

Well, that lasted about five minutes.

To be fair, all the Democratic indignation about Congressional corruption really only lasted a month or so once they took the Hill. Nonetheless, this really pisses me off. I mean, I'm not surprised, but I thought these assholes would have the decency to wait at least six months, for appearance's sake, before they started feeding at the slop troughs like the pigs they are. And, given how quickly they've moved to start sucking back the cash, you just know they knew exactly what they were doing when they passed these new lobbying "reform" laws. That is, they've obviously crafted these loopholes both consciously and carefully. And liberals berate me for shunning the Democrats. Gimme a break. They're a bunch of fucking crooks, too.

Really, the only way out of this is to ban lobbying. Or mandate public financing for all campaigns. As if that's actually going to happen.

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