All we are saying is give freedom a chance

There are certain types of people who lay the blame for their dissatisfaction at the way government operates on lobbying.  They don't generally make any distinctions between the broad term "lobbying" and the various kinds of lobbying that occur in Washington and state capitals.

That's sloppy thinking and an excuse for leftists and certain types of populists to lump various businesses and various industries into some kind of monolith called "corporate America," which, in their minds, runs roughshod over some kind of mythical "common person."

Which is not to deny that certain companies and industries do indeed have a revolving-door / in-each-others'-back-pockets relationship with various agencies and departments of the government's executive branch, and certain committees of Congress.  Why that is so, however, is because particular circumstances provoke behaviors that are entirely predictable to the most casual observer of human nature.

I'm thinking here of two main types of catalysts for cronyism-type lobbying behavior:

1.) The lure of special advantage that can be bought for a campaign contribution, and

2.) The perfectly natural response of an association of firms in a particular industry to the likelihood that their ability to operate and thrive is going to be hemmed in by new laws or regulations.

Both motivations have been on display throughout Kathleen Sibelius's tenure at HHS:

The revolving door always spun freely at Sebelius’s HHS, in almost comically perfect ways.

HHS’s top food cop is Michael Taylor, the former chief lobbyist for Monsanto.

After Obamacare passed, Sebelius hired Liz Fowler to help put it into effect. Fowler was a revolving-door veteran who had alternated between the K Street-friendly office of Sen. Max Baucus and running the lobbying shop at insurance giant Wellpoint. Today, Fowler runs the lobby shop for pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson.

William Schultz, a top HHS lawyer hired by Sebelius, also came from K Street. Steering clear of Obama’s “lobbyist bans,” Schultz deregistered as a lobbyist in September 2008, and days later donated to Obama’s campaign — while keeping at least some of his corporate clients until he joined HHS as deputy general counsel.

Schultz’s biggest client in his lobbying days was Barr Laboratories, maker of Plan B, the “morning-after pill.” After Obamacare passed, Sebelius and Schultz’s HHS construed the Obamacare provision on “women’s preventive health” as a requirement that employers cover 100 percent of the cost of all birth control, including Plan B. Sebelius promoted Schultz to general counsel in 2012 as that office took up cases defending the contraception mandate from religious-liberty lawsuits.

To recap: a Monsanto lobbyist to regulate food, an insurance and drug lobbyist to implement Obamacare and a Plan B lobbyist to help mandate coverage of Plan B.

Sebelius was a model of Obamanomics: carrying plenty of sticks to drive industry where she wanted it to go and bushels of carrots to reward the compliant businesses.

So cozy relationships between government and business are undeniably real, but the problem isn't with anything inherent in the nature of a corporation of any type.  The problem is with a government that has metastasized beyond how it was Constitutionally designed.

This gets back to the two-levels-of-leftism observation I make with some frequency here at LITD.  The obvious question is how one is going to stop this phenomenon, given the personal relationships that are formed at the nation's prestigious law schools, business schools and behemoth civic institutions.  It's a lot easier to grant a favor to someone with the anticipation that you'll be able to call it in at some point if your relationship goes back to your formative years.  But to the ground-level environmentalist or feminist it looks like the Washington champions for his or her cause are merely getting righteous results.  Such people dismiss as unseemly cynicism any suggestion that their heroes are actually preoccupied with perpetuating their power.  That reality goes far to explain Harry  Reid's connection to the recently concluded cattle-ranching standoff in Nevada, a connection involving a Chinese solar panel company.

But to say that lobbying per se, or "big money" in campaign activity needs to be curtailed is to miss the point, which is that extra-Constitutional government distorts economic activity which would otherwise proceed in a natural fashion.

Petitioning the government for a redress of grievances is a concept with roots extending at least as far back as the Magna Carta.    What is required to keep that from turning into a gimme-fest for all comers is a government peopled by those committed to strict Constitutional limits on their functions.  In short, people of integrity.

This is, of course, why the Tea Party movement arose.  The Left can concoct all kinds of demographic caricatures about those involved in it, but they can't with any legitimacy accuse it of being a mouthpiece, either disingenuous or overt, for any kind of special interest.  Despite their attempts to do so with their demonization of the Koch brothers, the facts are clearly not on their side.

Our message is this:  You can, and ought to, lobby government to stay out of private-realm activity - keep the playing field level, if you will - but special goodies, whether you're a union or a corporation or a trade association, are a temptation you must not succumb to, nor ask anyone in government to succumb to.

Another point I make frequently is that freedom is so much simpler than statism.  If you read the full account of something like the cronyism at HHS or the EPA, or even the Defense Department, the maze of acronyms, relationships, communications and arcane regulations will make your eyes glaze over.  By contrast, people transacting when buyer and seller agree on a price of a good or service, while government tends to basics like defending our borders and enforcing contracts, is easy to understand.

That's all those of us who call ourselves conservatives are trying to say about the relationship between the state and the individual.  You want a bunch with no hidden agenda, we're it.