Mr. Farlunde... you, uh, said something on the phone about a a lobbyist.

In particular, your value as a lobbyist seems to depend very highly on whom you worked with in the past. Igan and Mishra find spending an extra dollar is almost twice as effective in switching a legislator s position if the lobbyist is connected to the legislator compared to the case where the lobbyist is unconnected.

Jack Valenti, who was the head lobbyist for the Motion Picture Association of America, once likened the ferocious video cassette recorder to Jack the Ripper and poor, helpless Hollywood to a woman at home alone.

Exercising a louder voice in politics at home and abroad could mean reduced uncertainty for Chinese exporters. Consider the strategy of Lenovo, China s largest computer manufacturer it has hired a lobbyist in Washington D.C., reportedly the first Chinese company to do so.

Scripted by the oil industry, even members of his own party referred to an earlier energy bill as one that left no lobbyist behind. While praising the virtues of the free market, Bush has been only too willing to give huge handouts to the energy industry, even as the country faces soaring deficits.

If you had caught me straight out of college in the halls of the Vermont State House where I was a lobbyist in training and asked me what I was going to do with my life, I would have told you that I'd just passed the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi, the Chinese equivalency exam, and I was going to go study law in Beijing, and I was going to improve U.S. China relations through top down policy changes and judicial system reforms.