>Doug my website source,
>http://www.citizen.org/tobacco, gives $43 million in
>lobbying in the first six months of this year; in
>addition to the now well-developed skew in campaign
>contributions. I think there is more to this than you
>allow.
It also says that's compared to $15m last year. The industry's back is to the wall - what do you expect?
And how does this compare to other interests? I don't see this in the report. But the Center for Public Integrity estimates that the Mexican government spent $30 million lobbying for NAFTA. In 1993 and 1994, the medical industry spent $100 million lobbying against national health insurance (again, according to the Center for Public Integrity). And here's what the Center for Responsive Politics reports for all of 1997 <http://www.crp.org/lobbyists/industry.htm>:
1997 LOBBYING COSTS BY INDUSTRY
Agriculture $ 81.6
of which: tobacco 38.2 Communications/Electronics 150.4 Construction 16.6 Defense 49.6 Energy & Natural Resources 137.4 Finance, Insurance & Real Est 177.1 Health 158.6 Lawyers & Lobbyists 12.7 Transportation 112.6 Misc Business 157.5 Labor 19.9 Ideological/Single-Issue 73.0 Other 66.2
-------- total $1,213.2
Tobacco, then, accounted for 3% of the total. Pikers next to FIRE - the insurance industry spent almost twice as much as the merchants of tubular death.
>Moreover, the big democratic recipients of tobacco
>money were southerners, so you total figures do not
>reflect an even bigger skew when the regional factor is
>weighed. While it is as a general rule prudent for
>capital to "buy both sides" it is nonetheless
>indicative of big movements in the way thigns work when
>money starts pouring into one party only.
An interest that concentrates its resources on one party in one region - which probably would have voted its way anyway - can hardly be said to be changing many minds.
Doug