Washington’s “Insider’s Insider,” and Why You Don’t Matter.

Obviously, this is Omaha’s young professionals’ radio show’s website.  We like to write about Omaha and the cool goings-on here.

However, I saw an article today in the Washington Post that quite literally makes me physically ill.

As the crew’s resident classic liberal/libertarian, there are some things that are going on in this country–specifically, in Washington D.C.–that I flat do not understand how they do not make my fellow citizen’s blood boil quite as much as mine does when I see stories like the one from the Washington Post’s living section about Heather Podesta–Washington’s “Insider’s Insider”–and the life that she leads by helping corporations and special interests run our country.

Everyone knows that lobbyists are major players in Washington, D.C.  They’re also players in Lincoln, NE.  Where there is power, they are there.  That’s part of the deal.  Inherently, lobbying is not an evil practice.  In many points of our country’s history, it was a crucial element of how events turned the way they did–one could certainly dub the Federalist Papers as lobbying.

But this is not what I am talking about.  Lobbying is no longer the art of bringing the concerns of the people to members of Congress.  Lobbying is big business, and is not concerned with you or I.

Which brings us to the Post’s story about Mrs. Podesta.  Here are some of the low-lights:

–In a glum economy, the lobbying business feels kind of bubbly. Every new Obama proposal comes with acres of fine print for corporate powers, interests groups and lobbyists to haggle over, profitably. Three gargantuan legislative challenges — health care, the environment, the economy — crisscrossing at once on Capitol Hill. Major health-care interests alone are spending $1.4 million this year lobbying Congress . . . per day, according to Common Cause, a government watchdog group. A lobbyist’s delight created, ironically, by the let’s-solve-all-our-problems-RIGHT-NOW approach of a president who pooh-poohed the excesses of lobbyists.

First of all, I am pleasantly surprised that this article mentions President Obama’s stance on lobbyists during the campaign.  I will tell you, that was probably the single-biggest reason I voted for the man.  Lobbyists–who were vilified during the campaign by both Obama and John McCain–have apparently done such an abrupt 180 in D.C. that they get enormous articles in the Post calling them the “it girl,” and proclaiming the summer of 2009 as “The Summer of the Lobbyist.”

Great.  Then of course is the seemingly throw-away line about the “acres of fine print for corporate powers, interest groups, and lobbyists to haggle over, profitably.”  I think that Republicans have successfully run the term “pork barrel spending” so far into the ground that people just assume it is a redundant talking point that people like Sean Hannity get all red-faced about–which is true.  However, that doesn’t make it any less upsetting.

Put it this way:  if you took all the money that the government has spent on all of their “stimulus” programs, we could have paid off every mortgage in the United States.  Every.  One.  But I guess that type of stimulus is too direct–how would multi-billion corporations get theirs?

Here’s some more:

“This is a very good time to be a Democratic lobbyist . . . it’s incredibly exciting to be able to engage with Democrats and really see things happen,” Podesta says one afternoon at her office in one of those cool, restored red-brick buildings on E Street. “It’s always a good time to be Heather Podesta.”

I don’t even really know how to react to the third-person–besides throwing up in my mouth, that is.  Note the arrogance (in case I had to point that out).

Now this is where the small bit of puke in the back of your throat should become a full-on projectile vom.  And, please–this is not a partisan attack from my end.  If you changed the names in the upcoming excerpt from “Bill Clinton” to “George Bush,” I would be equally upset about this.  On to the disturbance:

Podesta is right there in the eddy, an It Girl in a new generation of young, highly connected, built-for-the-Obama-era lobbyists. She gets an undeniable boost from a famous name — she is the sister-in-law of John Podesta, the insider’s insider who was Bill Clinton’s White House chief of staff and Obama’s transition director, and the wife of über-lobbyist Tony Podesta. Heather and Tony run his-and-hers lobbying shops. His grew a staggering 57 percent in the first six months of this year compared with the same period the year before, taking in $11.8 million, fourth-highest among major lobbying firms. (Full disclosure: Tony Podesta has long represented The Washington Post, which paid him $10,000 in 2009 and $80,000 the year before, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.) Her six-person shop grew even faster, rocketing 65 percent to $3.4 million.

There are so many troubling items from this paragraph, I wouldn’t even know where to start.  The thing that sticks out right off hand, however, is how the writer puts this out with such breathless enthusiasm and Gatsby-like admiration from afar.  I suppose it’s not surprising that the Post pays her husband an obnoxious amount of money.*

*Joe Posnanski tribute rip-off:  Which leads to this question:  what does a newspaper need to be giving money to lobbyists for, anyway?  How can you be the people’s watchdog when you’re trying to buy influence in the government just like the people you’re supposed to be “watching” for us?  /end rant

Then there is, of course, the actual content of this paragraph.  Think about it:  just two lobbying firms–one of which employs just 6 people–boast revenues of over $15 MILLION so far THIS YEAR.  Not to mention enough incest to make the biggest Tennessee fan proud.

Haven’t had enough?  OK, let’s continue:

At last year’s Democratic convention, Podesta wore a scarlet L to razz Obama for talking so much about curbing lobbyist enthusiasm. She rejected about a dozen mock-ups before settling on a Gothic-style letter, which became such a popular giveaway that she blew through 100 of them.

“Everybody was talking about it at the convention,” says Podesta pal  [Patrick] Leahy, the Senate Judiciary chairman, who says Heather is invariably “the most knowledgeable person in the room because she’s done her homework.”

You hear that, suckers?  Turns out all that campaign rhetoric was a big insider joke.  Ha ha, eat it, little people!  ”You just had to be there, everybody was talking about it.”  Additionally:  great to hear that the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee–one of the most powerful–is a “pal” of this lobbyist.  I’m sure there’s no conflict of interest there.

And finally:  the coup de grace…

There’s so much work, in fact, that certain painful sacrifices are required. The couple used to escape to the beloved retreat they own in Venice 10 or 12 times a year, but “now we only maybe get there six times a year,” Heather Podesta says. Leaving Washington doesn’t always really mean leaving Washington. In Venice they’ve hosted, among others, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, though she was a mere governor back then, and hung with, by Podesta’s count, something like 20 members of Congress (Nevada Rep. Shelley Berkley, New York Rep. Eliot Engel, even Teddy Kennedy).

Well isn’t that a shame.  You only get to go to your Venice “retreat” 6 times a year.*

*JoePos rip-off again:  This is a serious question:  is this writer being sarcastic?  Can one possibly write that a “painful sacrifice” would be defined as only going to your (I am sure) enormous house in Venice “only” 6 times a year?  This writer had to have been giggling while they wrote it, right?  Right?  *crickets*  Ugg.

That said, the fact that they “name names” here is pretty stunning.  I’m glad ol’ “Teddy” got to make it out to Venice for what I am sure were incredibly professional information sessions where our elected representatives were able to better inform themselves on what their constituents in their home states were hoping to get…

I can’t even keep up with the sarcasm here.  It is just gut-wrenching read stuff like this.

Yet at the same time, curiously fascinating.  What exactly is the point of this article?  Did the Post really think this was a “Living” piece that no one would notice?  Because this is an awfully damning article for a lot of politicians, and most importantly, Mrs. Podesta herself.  She comes off as nothing less than a vapid, power-hungry scenestress (word?  Meh, I don’t really care, I’m going with it) who knows that she is helping enormous companies and interest groups literally purchase editing power in the writing of some of the biggest and most encompassing bills in the history of the United States–without a care in the world how it effects it’s citizens:

“Are you with us?” she always wants to know, on behalf of her clients who get the benefit of working with a lobbyist who also happens to have raised $2.4 million in the last cycle alone for various candidates and Democratic election committees.

Energy business to conduct? The Podestas hosted a fundraiser in June for Rep. Henry Waxman of California, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Money matters? Fundraiser back in April for Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Health care? Fundraiser in June for Reid.

That’s how it works, kids.  And that is why I named this post as I did.  Unless you’re incredibly wealthy or have access to unlimited company wealth, you essentially don’t matter.

I also know that this is not ground-breaking news nor opinion.  But I have never read such a disgusting tribute to such a disgusting person.  We’ll let Mrs. Podesta drive that home with one more quote:

” ‘There are going to be people who hate you without knowing you,’ ” she remembers her new husband telling her. ” ‘And there are going to be others who are loyal to you without knowing you.’ I thought that was a lot cooler.”

Must be.