Are you proposing eliminating all lobbying?
No, we are not proposing eliminating all lobbying. Lobbying is an important part of the political process. We are specifically targeting corporate lobbying primarily because corporate lobbying is arguably the worst form of lobbying, and corporations should not be treated as if they are entitled to have the same access to influence the political process as 'real' people do. Corporations are not people. They are nothing more than a legal fiction required to create the legal entity necessary to conduct business.
You will never see a person called IBM standing in line behind you at the polls to cast his vote. Yet people that own corporations like IBM and massive corporate behemoths like it use the wealth and power of their corporate entities to gain totally unfair advantage over the rest of us. Because they have finagled "human rights protections" for their corporations, the people that own the most powerful corporations render the democratic process null and void because money usually determines what will and won't happen, not our votes.
Bottom line is, our democratic process, our votes have no power so long as "money" equals free speech, and corporations are allowed to bullhorn over our voices with all their money. An artificial entity such as a corporation that has no right to vote should have no right to lobby or directly interfere with our government and democratic process.
There will always be lobbying in the political process. The problems arise when lobbying groups get so huge and powerful that they can silence any voices that oppose them and even drive good people out of office for daring to challenge them (The Israel Lobby comes immediately to mind). There are plenty of lobbying groups that represent real people that have grown so large they can also cause tremendous harm to our Republic.
But the main premise of this project is we have to start somewhere if we are going to turn things around. We can't solve every single problem all at once. One of the biggest lobbying problems is corporate lobbying at this point and it's something we can actually solve fairly easily. Once we solve that one, we can move onto setting up some rules for what massive lobbying groups can and can't do in order to keep the playing field as level as possible.
Our position is we must start with the first step, then the second step, then before you know it, we've moved 10,000 steps down the road towards the kind of world we all would prefer, mainly one that's not dominated by selfish, maniacal control freaks that would simply love to return the world to a feudal system where they lord it over all mankind.
