Lobbyist: A Professional Pain in the Ass

Introduction
To be a professional lobbyist, one need be comfortable with bothering people, nagging them, threatening them (non-violent threats, of course) and deceiving them into your way of thinking. And the people you do this too are not nobodies, they are the elected men and women of this nation. If you have ever written a letter to your congressman, asking him to rethink an issue, then you are a lobbyist. The difference between me and a letter-writer is that a special interest group pays me to go and speak with policy makers and push their agenda.

Job Function
There is a lot of talk these days against special interest groups, the news is always blaming them for past cigarette legislation, laws about abortion, all sorts of stuff: they are right to blame special interest groups for such things, it was they who pushed ideas and regulations onto your elected government, but the special interests groups have been demonized unfairly: the NAACP, Amnesty International, AARP, NRA, Greenpeace, all these and many more are special interests groups, and no matter where you stand on the issues, you will find that many of them represent you. These organizations pay people to push their agendas, that is, lobbyists. I have worked with organizations who I supported and ones who I did not. It didn’t bother me either way, I did good work for each of them, but if you are an idealist, this might not do it for you. The problem here is that it is the organizations that are up to something nefarious that pay the most money: the people trying to get seatbelts on school busses don’t have any money to give you, but R.J. Reynolds has more then enough to pay you handsomely. Lifestyle
Hope you like Washington D.C.

Additional Information
As a lobbyist you can have more influence on this world then even the congressmen and senators you’re paid to talk too. It’s up to you whether you want that influence to be good or bad, or, you could be like me, and not give a damn either way.