It’s not the criminal stuff that’s so appalling: it’s what counts as legal.
It’s not the hidden stuff that’s so awful: it’s what’s done, unabasedly, in public.
Tom Edsall reviews how the Republican Revolution of 1994 led to a lobbyist takeover of official Washington.
It’s not the criminal stuff that’s so appalling: it’s what counts as legal.
It’s not the hidden stuff that’s so awful: it’s what’s done, unabashedly, in public.
Lobbyists now serve as campaign chairs and consultants for the very members whose votes their clients’ money is intended to buy. Stuff that so embarrassed Lloyd Bentsen when he got caught doing it twenty years ago is now par for the course.
Footnote: If you doubted that the Democratic national campaign of 2004 was incompetently run, consider that corporate lobbyists “held all the top positions at the 2004 GOP convention in New York” and yet you never heard about it in the course of the campaign.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman