such was the case last month when over the course of a week or so - totally by happenstance - a friend suggested that I read Beltway Bacchanal in the March edition of Harper's Magazine at about the same time that I read a piece in The New York Times about the lobbying reforms pushed through in Louisiana by its new Republican governer, Bobby Jindal and a post on TheHill.com concerning the former lobbyists who work as consultants to the Barack Obama campaign.  My friend was horrified by the story in Harper's but out of all my reading the sentence that hit home for me was the comment by State Representative Charmaine L. Marchand of the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans lamenting the new $50 limit on meal tabs that could be picked up by lobbyists; according to Ms. Marchand that figure would cause her and her buddies in the state house to have to sup at Taco Bell.  Well, let me be the first to come down on the side of the Bell.  As someone who spent a year or so dining on a couple of greenbacks a day, I can tell you that some fine meals can be had off their dollar menu - particularly if you can catch the seven layer nacho on special.

Truth be told though were I a constituent of Ms. Marchand I wouldn't care if she dined nightly at Antoine's if the results of those meals showed up somewhere other than the waistlines of those who ate them.  My problem with lobbying is not so much that it goes on but that the American public gets so damn little out of the process.  And while I respect Governor Jindal's promising first steps at reforming the Lousiana State House I am reminded of the line about how putting fences around people just teaches them how to jump fences.  Lobbyists are a lot like investment bankers, they are pretty much always a couple of steps ahead of regulation. 

Take for instance, Senator Obama and his ban on receiving PAC money and donations from federal lobbyists (he does take money from state lobbyists since he says that he holds no sway over issues at the state level which depending upon your point of view is either naive or disingenuous); nor would an Obama presidency allow former lobbyists to work in areas for which they previously lobbied.  Those who might work in an Obama White House would also be forbidden from then lobbying that same WH after leaving it.  Still, Senator Obama's campaign has an abundance of advisors - both paid and unpaid - who are former lobbyists or lobbyists on leave (would that acronym be "lol"?)  Just my personal opinion but a lobbyist who becomes a close personal friend of the candidate or who chooses to take personal time and become a part of the campaign wields more power than a registered lobbyist whose comings and goings with the candidate are a matter of record and probably less personal.  This is not to say that Senator Clinton and Senator McCain don't also have these sorts of relationships; it is to say, however, that lobbyists on leave are just lobbyists who learned to jump fences.

What I as a citizen want is not so much lobbying reform as some lobbies that work for me.  How about lobbies for universal health insurance lobby or senior citizens drug assistance that aren't funded by insurance companies or big pharma?  How about a lobby to bail out the American school system along the lines that Bear Stearns was bailed out?  What say we have an infrastructure lobby and a lobby for encouraging business to return to the main streets of small town America?  And if you lobby for one of these interests and actually accomplish something then dinner at Taco Bell is on me and you don't even have to eat off the dollar menu.