Need a Job? DC Lobbyists are a Growth Industry

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

In these times of record unemployment, there are some sectors that CAN”T hire em fast enough!  There are hearts and minds to be won — and YOU just may have the skills to “get er done!”

Just be ready to check your squeamish morality at the door — afterall DC doesn’t run on good intentions. It’s more a city of players. Players who know how to twist arms, take names.

Players who know how make back room deals.

Here are some of those Booming sub-sectors looking for warm bodies:

The Next 100 Years: Finance Lobbyists on the Front Line

Kyle Stock  November 04, 2009

As finance lobbyists gird for one of their biggest battles, their ranks are growing thin. Slightly fewer than 2,600 people are now making the case for U.S. banks, insurers and investment shops — 300 fewer than last year.

So what does the job entail? Despite what Hollywood might have you believe, there is very little time spent in swanky steakhouses and cigar bars. Whispered deals and backroom horse-trading are rare as well.

Basically, it’s all Blackberry, all the time.

…

The daily tally: more than 1,000 incoming emails.

“I would say the worst part of the job is the hours, but I don’t really mind,” Talbott said. “It’s never a day. It’s never over.”

In the past 10 years, the so-called FIRE lobby — finance, insurance and real estate — has upped its lobbying spend by 8.3% a year on average and added 1,100 jobs. It has spent $3.81 billion to influence policy over that 10-year period, more than any other business sector.

Still, 2009 will likely be the third most expensive year in history for finance lobbying with a projected $414 million spent and, like the rest of Wall Street, there are pockets of growth.

Hedge funds have been particularly aggressive in Washington this year, as a bevy of bills were filed that aim to change the way that they operate.

http://www.fins.com/Finance/Ar…

Gee Wiz — those, Hedge Funds just aren’t getting the attention they’ve paid for — No wonder they’re gearing up, to bring home that Wall Street Bacon, while no one else has been looking. If you’re wanting to start to pay attention you can Use these resources to explore different business schools and graduate programs to your advantage, and bring home your own Wall Street Bacon.

No worries though, this Game has been going on a long time, and they KNOW HOW to get Results, when push come to shove:

The Road to Riches Is Called K Street

Lobbying Firms Hire More, Pay More, Charge More to Influence Government

Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, Washington Post – June 22, 2005

“There’s unlimited business out there for us,” said Robert L. Livingston, a Republican former chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and now president of a thriving six-year-old lobbying firm. “Companies need lobbying help.”

Lobbying firms can’t hire people fast enough. Starting salaries have risen to about $300,000 a year for the best-connected aides eager to “move downtown” from Capitol Hill or the Bush administration. Once considered a distasteful post-government vocation, big-bucks lobbying is luring nearly half of all lawmakers who return to the private sector when they leave Congress, according to a forthcoming study by Public Citizen’s Congress Watch.

…

“People in industry are willing to invest money because they see opportunities here,” said Patrick J. Griffin, who was President Bill Clinton’s top lobbyist and is now in private practice. “They see that they can win things, that there’s something to be gained. Washington has become a profit center.”

Take the example of Hewlett-Packard Co. The California computer maker nearly doubled its budget for contract lobbyists to $734,000 last year and added the elite lobbying firm of Quinn Gillespie & Associates LLC. Its goal was to pass Republican-backed legislation that would allow the company to bring back to the United States at a dramatically lowered tax rate as much as $14.5 billion in profit from foreign subsidiaries.

The extra lobbying paid off. The legislation was approved and Hewlett-Packard will save millions of dollars in taxes.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

Not a bad investment for HP, eh?    No wonder those Lobbyists make so much, in salary!

Someone needs to represent the Corporations — Afterall “Corporations are People too!”

Sadly, it’s true. The biologic People need to move over, and let the “Corporate People” have their oh-so-important concerns “aired”.  They’ve earned it.

Well if you can stomach that seedy political reality of K Street, you could make big bucks too. You know, help to make all those Compromises, palatable.

Indeed, Lobbying pays well enough, that many have checked their Idealistic Ethics at the Door:

Top 50 Compensated Individual Lobbyists for 2009

Seriously though, there are some Lobbyists, that represent the “good guys” — like the Sierra Club, and the Workers Unions, and Free Health Care Clinics.

But funny how they have a hard time getting their Names into those DC Appointment Books — afterall it’s a Jungle out there!

Day in the Life of Lobbyist  Jamee Greer — Grass Roots Lobbyist

Sadly too, this may ultimately be the only route for Real Change left — that us Bloggers, all have to move to DC, and ALL become Lobbyists!

and literally “storm the DC gates” … (?) … Perhaps.

It pays well enough, if you can check your Principles with your Luggage, and then in a long-term storage unit, with the rest of your life …

Then again, how’s that any different than any other “Business Career”, in these United States of Multi-National America,  these days?

Another day at the Office, for Lobby America

by jamess  — Jul 11, 2009

Answer:  Difference? Not so much.