John Edwards, Lobbyists, and the Environment
As the race for the presidency tightens and we near the finish, we start to learn a lot about not just the issues of each candidate, but the background of their reasoning and important, personal issues that they feel are most important to the country. Enters John Edwards.
John Edwards’ biggest issue is pork barrel spending, earmarks, and Lobbyist control of our government. He has never taken money from a Washington Lobbyist his entire career. What is a lobbyist? In a summarization, a lobbyists is a paid official of a corporation to lobby for laws and regulations in favor of his corporation. What is the problem with lobbyists? Basically, they can disregard the public welfare in order to look out for the special interests of his corporation. Think of oil companies, insurance companies, drug companies, etc. We will go more in-depth about lobbyists in a future post.
Sure, Obama hasn’t taken money from lobbyists this entire election campaign either, but John Edwards is making it a central issue to his campaign, most likely to try and derail Hillary Clinton, who is an advocate of lobbyists and vouched to continue to receive money from them.
Why is this an issue of the environment and energy policy? Basically, the more power the oil companies and automobile companies have in Washington, the more pressure they will put on elected officials whom they donated money to to support bills and laws that would not place pressure on their companies. For instance, do you think an elected official who received money from oil companies would pass laws that would increase MPG for cars or increase spending on renewable resources? In a perfect world, the donations they received would not effect their decision, but in reality, it does.
For your viewing pleasure, I have attached a few videos of John Edwards and Hillary Clinton on their opinions of lobbyists in Washington.