Top 66 Quotes About Lobbying
#1. In reality, everybody in Congress is a stand-in for some kind of lobbyist. In many cases it's difficult to tell whether it's the companies that are lobbying the legislators or whether it's the other way around.
Matt Taibbi
#2. Librarians who are arguing and lobbying for clever e-book lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending the library-as-warehouse concept, as opposed to fighting for the future, which is librarian as producer, concierge, connector, teacher, and impresario.
Seth Godin
#3. Big business, for all its lobbying, is often put in line by investigative reporting, public scandals and multi-million-dollar judgments in court against those who put products on the market that are dangerous to their buyers.
Stanley Crouch
#4. (According to The New York Times, "the top 20 service contractors have spent nearly $300 million since 2000 on lobbying and have donated $23 million to political campaigns." The Bush administration, in turn, increased the amount spent on contractors by roughly $200 billion between 2000 and 2006.)
Naomi Klein
#5. After all, Wall Street is clearly the most powerful lobbying force on Capitol Hill. From 1998 through 2008, the financial sector spent over $5 billion in lobbying and campaign contributions to deregulate Wall Street.
Bernie Sanders
#6. A civilian-based diplomacy supports noncommercial, nonprofit, and publicly-subsidized media to counteract the corporate-controlled, for-profit, private media that dominate political discourse; and works to place media control, ownership, and lobbying at the center of public policy debate.
Nancy Snow
#7. There is talk that badminton may not make it as a sport in the 2020 Olympics. We must bear in mind that other sports are strongly lobbying to be included.
Taufik Hidayat
#8. Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the 'environmentalist' view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view.
Edward O. Wilson
#9. the healthcare industry spends four times as much on lobbying as the number two Beltway spender, the much-feared military-industrial complex?
Steven Brill
#10. Lobbying is not a bad thing. I'm not trying to say that we shouldn't have lobbyists or we shouldn't have lobbying to petition our government. It's in the Constitution, and it's something that should be honorable and good.
Jack Abramoff
#11. We believe an international women's movement needs to focus less on holding conventions or lobbying for new laws, and more time in places like rural Zimbabwe, listening to communities and helping them get their girls into school.
Nicholas D. Kristof
#12. The banks lobbied Washington so they could write the rules that got us into this crisis. They then lobbied Washington to get the money to bail them out. And then they are lobbying Washington to write the rules so they can get us into the next crisis. It's perfect circularity.
Elizabeth Warren
#13. I want to make it clear that the lobbying sector does an important job. It is very useful to the government to hear the views of a broad range of groups to make sure we get the best.
Andrew Lansley
#14. The Grocery Manufacturers Association is behind the bills which have been trying to pre-empt states' labeling laws in the Senate. And they have a lot of money and power in Washington. So it's a classic David versus Goliath story, where corporate lobbying outweighs consumers' rights.
Zoe Lister-Jones
#15. Our criteria is that it's okay to invest in companies so long as they stop lobbying in Washington, stop exploring for new hydrocarbons, and sit down with every one else to plan to keep 80 percent of the reserves in the ground.
Bill McKibben
#16. For years all I seemed to be doing was lobbying politicians and others to persuade them that European culture needed movies, and that we had to protect it.
Wim Wenders
#17. Wall Street banks have the right to express their views to lawmakers and regulators through lobbying, but the law is clear: If they want to influence lawmakers, they must disclose their lobbying expenditures.
Elizabeth Warren
#18. Cable companies aren't bad because they're parts of unwieldy media conglomerates. They're bad because they're monopolies (even where they are no longer legally exclusive) and because the government policies that made them monopolies rewarded lobbying over customer service.
Virginia Postrel
#19. The financial elite already have the politicians in their pockets, as a result of their lobbying.
Kenneth Eade
#20. Let's talk about why, in the 1990s, Wall Street got deregulated. Did it have anything to do with the fact that Wall Street provided - spent billions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions?Well, some people might think, yeah, that had some influence.
Bernie Sanders
#21. In trying to get votes for the Superconducting Super Collider, I was very much involved in lobbying members of Congress, testifying to them, bothering them, and I never heard any of them talk about postmodernism or social constructivism. You have to be very learned to be that wrong.
Steven Weinberg
#22. As long as we, in the United States, continue to insist that our politicians have to spend all of their time raising millions of dollars for television ads, it will be corrupt. If we leave it up to the politicians to clean up lobbying and finance reform, nothing is going to change.
Kevin Spacey
#23. I don't want to put words in Geithner's mouth, but I think he is generally against the revolving door of government officials taking jobs with companies that they have overseen or in roles that involve lobbying. At minimum, I'm pretty sure he felt that way about himself.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
#24. When the desirable jobs are spending other people's money, reporting on spending other people's money and lobbying to spend other people's money then you know that the society is f***ed.
Tim Worstall
#25. There are good people in the lobbying industry. Lobbyists can serve a very useful purpose.
Kevin Spacey
#26. You read constantly that banks are lobbying regulators and elected officials as if this is inappropriate. We don't look at it that way.
Jamie Dimon
#27. Not complaining. I'm lobbying. It's this whole other word.>
Kevin Hearne
#28. I think that kind of urgency is what makes this stage of the climate movement really different from what it was even a few years ago when it was much more of the professionalized NGOs lobbying behind closed doors and maybe having a march now and then.
Avi Lewis
#29. I think Matt Yglesias is wrong to declare that the world of 'This Town' is dying, unless he thinks publicly financed elections, strict lobbying bans and Scandinavian-style wealth distribution are imminent.
Alex Pareene
#30. Lobbying is a legitimate profession ... Many congressional spouses act as lobbyists.
Patricia Schroeder
#31. The truth is, the 'Fortune' 500 prefer lobbying to campaigning.
Bradley A. Smith
#32. Every single dollar spent lobbying a legislator on behalf of oil and gas is a toxic dollar that undermines public health and safety laws that protect Americans. That's contamination of the political system.
Josh Fox
#33. There is no lobbying interest on behalf of a low-paid worker. Nobody. Nobody represents them, yet somebody obviously represents Wal-Mart in Washington and McDonald's in Washington.
Leo Hindery
#34. I was set free because the negotiations were successful, because there were people lobbying for my freedom, and because hundreds of thousands took to the streets in Rome for my freedom.
Giuliana Sgrena
#35. I did this within a philosophical framework, and a moral and legal framework. And I have been turned into a cartoon of the greatest villain in the history of lobbying.
Jack Abramoff
#36. Our Keystone legislation received strong bipartisan support in the Senate. Although it didn't receive the 60 votes necessary for passage, 56 senators - a majority - voted in favor of the bill. Despite President Obama's actively lobbying against the bill, we still won the support of 11 Democrats.
John Hoeven
#37. As a lobbyist, I thought it only natural and right that my clients should reward those members who saved them such substantial sums with generous contributions. This quid pro quo became one of hallmarks of our lobbying efforts.
Jack Abramoff
#38. The money needed to run for office, the money spent on lobbying by special interests, the ever-increasing economic disparity, and the well-funded legislative decisions, all favor corporate interests over the people.
Neil Young
#39. The primary role of professional societies is the lobbying of the government for special advantage
Richard Lindzen
#40. Access is vital in lobbying. If you can't get in your door, you can't make your case.
Jack Abramoff
#41. Every time the DSM prepares for a new edition, there are countless groups lobbying to get their particular mental illness recognized by the diagnostic manual. Surely, this is a social and cultural phenomenon.
Siri Hustvedt
#42. Family law is institutionally anti-male. I've been lobbying MPs, and I'm not going to give up campaigning for equality until I get equality.
Louis De Bernieres
#43. It's being reported that Google spent over $5 million on lobbying just during the first quarter of this year. You'd think Google wouldn't really need to lobby politicians. All they have to say is, 'We have your search history. Do what we tell you.'
Jimmy Fallon
#44. I don't find myself lobbying for projects. Filmmakers almost always come to me.
Carter Burwell
#45. Money has transformed every watchdog, every independent authority. Medical doctors are increasingly gulled by the lobbying of pharmaceutical salesmen.
Thomas Frank
#46. I run a taxpayer group - the most powerful guy in D.C., nonsense. OK? There are buildings with thousands of people in them, all lobbying for more spending and higher levels of spending and more government commitments. And there are a handful - a handful of groups that fight for less spending.
Grover Norquist
#47. In the process of ego, in the process of lobbying and in the process of just criticising for stake of criticism or in the process of politicising, don't commit national crime. Don't prevent exploration in the country. Let us move ahead more aggressively; it is in the best interest of the country.
Veerappa Moily
#48. Lobbying is the activity of attempting to influence legislation by privately influencing the legislators.
Ayn Rand
#49. Fashion and public relations share a charter to turn life to their own advantage, to make malleable and commercially useful the naked human perception. Both interests consider life too small, dull, and colorless to get itself sufficiently noticed without the lobbying efforts of professionals.
Kennedy Fraser
#50. Real lobbying reform must end the practice of corporate lobbyists writing our laws.
Marty Meehan
#51. I don't believe in lobbying only progressives and liberal members of Congress. I don't believe in doing interviews only with those who share my views. I want to reach a wider audience.
Bianca Jagger
#52. Positive market incentives operating in the public interest are too few and far between, and are also up against a seemingly never-ending expansion of perverse incentives and lobbying.
Mo Ibrahim
#53. I've considered lobbying the medical field to rename rheumatoid arthritis something sexier, younger, and more exotic. Something like "The Midnight Death," or "Impending Vampirism." Or perhaps to name it after someone famous. Like "Lou Gehrig's disease, part two: THE RECKONING.
Jenny Lawson
#54. Certainly, my advice is that communicating, lobbying, fundraising and engaging the public in policy and politics is far more exciting and inexpensive via the Internet. Old guard organizations like Common Cause had to evolve to embrace this new environment.
Chellie Pingree
#55. I think doctors care very deeply about their patients, but when they organize into the AMA, their responsibility is to the welfare of doctors, and quite often, these lobbying groups are the only ones that are heard in the state capitols and in the capitol of our country.
Jimmy Carter
#56. I find it extremely ironic that Bush says that personal opinion should not be a tool in the interpretation of the Constitution, when he's the one who's lobbying for a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. If that doesn't stem from personal opinion, I don't know what does.
Jessi Klein
#57. Government breeds more government, and a lobbying infrastructure to defend itself.
George F. Will
#58. Medical marijuana users are now lobbying for the right to carry firearms. Because no one is a better shot than a stoned old man with glaucoma.
Conan O'Brien
#59. Politics colours everything, and anyone who wants change is necessarily political. As an environmental campaigner more or less since I left school in the early '90s, I have always been involved in lobbying, campaigning and pushing for changes.
Zac Goldsmith
#60. It may not be long before Corporate Corruption is made legal and renamed a Lobbying Fee.
Anonymous
#61. Since I'm a fan of collections and anthologies, believe that the best writing often shines in shards and galloping stretches, I never find myself lobbying for a writer I enjoy reading regularly to hole up in Heidegger's hut for four or five years to bring forth a mountain.
James Wolcott
#63. Under a system in which no single question is submitted to the electorate for direct decision, an ardent minority for or against a particular measure may often count for more than an apathetic majority.
Patrick, Baron Devlin
#64. These were lobbyists - many of them compensated quite handsomely not to react as human beings.
Ron Suskind
#65. Weber,... argues that... personal bias should not preclude the scientific ascertainment of objective historical facts.
Max Weber
#66. Those who do not know the plans of competitors cannot prepare alliances. Those who do not know the lay of the land cannot maneuver their forces. Those who do not use local guides cannot take advantage of the ground.
Sun Tzu
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