I am still mouth-agape as I peruse the comments following Rob Natelson’s post yesterday at Electric City Weblog, Using Your Money Against You. It brings out in the open one of the major defects in right wing thinking. It is a false dichotomy – there is us (dissipated citizenry), and them (government). Here’s Natelson:
The outrageous practice of using taxpayer money to lobby ought to be illegal in Montana, as it often is elsewhere. If public officials think a subject is so important they want to lobby on it, they should have to do what everyone else does – visit Helena at their own expense or take up a collection from like-minded people to finance the trip.
The dichotomy is further delineated in the comments. Gregg:
it frankly pisses me off that I have to take virtually a whole day off to go give my 10 minute blurb to a yawning committee, while the regulatory folks camp out with our legislators all day, propose language for the bills, and talk with them before and after hearings…all on our nickel. It’s supposed to be government for the people, not government for the bureaucrats.
Gregg, independent citizen-lobbyist. Gregg’s elected local government representatives: Bureaucrats.
A commenter, Ken Thorton, introduces the 800 pound gorilla
… that would be the special interest, industrial and the like private lobbyists.
Enter Dave Budge, Natelson sympathizer in this thread and candidate extraordinaire for the disjointed train of thought award:
Limit lobbyists … which part of the 1st Amendment do you what to throw out next?
Got that? Private industry lobbying is a protected first amendment right. Lobbying by elected officials is “using your money against you.”
Budge further adds
There’s no reason that citizens of any given municipality can’t band together to form a lobbying arm to go vent their spleens. But I don’t think you can ask anyone else to pay for it since lobbying our representatives locally can be done with a phone call or a letter…
This is right wing thought on parade, replete with disjointed suppositions and cognitive dissonance. Citizens of any given municipality have already banded together to form a lobbying arm. It’s called “local government.” For so long as those governments are elected by a majority of the citizenry, what they and their appointees and hires are doing in lobbying the legislature is called “representative government”. Corporate lobbyists are, or should be known as “special interests.-
Piece of Mindful 
For so long as those governments are elected by a majority of the citizenry, what they and their appointees and hires are doing in lobbying the legislature is called “representative government”.
There’s a theoretical pureness here we don’t achieve in practice. Government agencies become interested minorities and push for their interests independent of the common good. For ex., child protective services is pretty good at bringing forth heart rending testimony at the legislature to keep their funding coming, but many people and communities have been needlessly terrorized by the Gestapo wannabes that that agency attracts. It is the wrong type of feedback mechanism when gov’t lobbies for laws.
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It is indeed theoretical pureness not achieved in practice. It’s a human system, far better than anything devised yet. I’ll take it over any alternative. Local government is closer to the people, and by far the best expression of democratic rule in our society. Lobby away!
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“Lobby away!”
Not the best encouraging words for local government.
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