His career has periodically mixed politics with academics, so it's no surprise that Newt Gingrich is now giving official Washington a lesson on the absurd weakness of our lobbying laws.
A report in Wednesday's editions of the New York Times details how the former House speaker has earned a handsome living in recent years by calling himself a "consultant" while working as a lobbyist and evading the lobbying laws. It all appears to be perfectly legal.
A Gingrich-led company, the "Center for Health Transformation" charges health care companies up to $200,000 annually for "top-tier" memberships, the Times reported. Then the center uses Gingrich's name and reputation to attract elected officials to seminars and other meetings where they meet the former speaker and listen to sales pitches from the center's corporate clients.
Gingrich and the center have been particularly active in promoting electronic storage of health records; Gingrich even boasted in 2005 that the center was joining a pair of prominent Democrats -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rep. Patrick Kennedy -- in "launching a bill" to promote such record-keeping.
This is exactly what lobbyists do of course; but none of it is lobbying, Gingrich's lawyer assures the Times. Indeed, says attorney Randy Evans, Gingrich and the center developed "specific protocols and procedures" so that their activities would not meet the legal definition of lobbying.
No wonder so many Americans -- liberal, moderate and conservative -- are fed up with the ways of Washington.
We have laws requiring lobbyists to register and regulating their activities so that citizens can keep an eye on who is trying to influence our elected officials and how much is being spent in the effort. Gingrich is part of a lobbying industry that prefers to work in the shadows. He isn't the first former member of Congress to use his reputation to help corporate clients connect with and push their products to elected officials. That he and others are able to continue these activities, and get away with it, is a disgrace.
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I don't know if you monitor your posts here,
But what about increasing Congress to the 1911 ratios of Congressperson to Population?
We fixed the number of reps at 435 in 1911 and kept on adding people.
Every person added since from the 110,000,000 back then makes a Congressperson's influence fade for the 310,000,000 Americans we have today.
That is roughly 710,000 people per Congressperson.
Help me change one law written in 1929 to get our representation back.
Citizens are allowed to lobby thier reps in DC. Its a constutional right.
But PAID lobbying and "consulting" MUST be outlawed.
WTH?
It's all about O. I hope America has the nuggets to admit the worst of the worst currently resides on Penn Ave and the common sense to roll him to the curb nxt November.
I find it quite funny that you consider our current president the worst of the worst...
I have been watching Newt since just after his initial rise to power before he became Speaker.
I respect his knowledge and intellect, but his intellectual dishonesty trumps both of them.
Newt is not a force for the betterment of America, but he easily could be if that was his goal.
Newt is a force for the political assault on America by the Economic Elites.
As Frank Rich so aptly put it:
"The other side has no interest in striking grand bargains or even small ones.
It wants not so much to reform government, a worthy goal, as to auction off its parts and distribute the proceeds to its corporate backers.
It’s a revolution beyond the one even Goldwater or Reagan imagined."
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Newt, is not an Expert/Consultant on anything, he is a well-heeled influence-peddler
NEWT CLAIMS TO BE A HISTORIAN, - I agree with that claim
Was Newt an illegal unregistered Lobbyist? Probably not by court-of-law standards
When he was censured by the House, utlimately he was 'just-about' determined to have successfully skirted the law, BUT, he certainly lied to the ethics committee while under oath
Is his Own,
Cable Network.
That's All.
Not exactly what the Founding Fathers thought about the task and purpose of the POTUS.