PSoTD

From Spinwatch:

Several states, responding to the federal scandals as well as their own statehouse imbroglios, have already adopted more sweeping gift and travel bans, broader measures to end the central role of lobbyists or government contractors in financing campaigns and new public campaign financing intended to reduce lawmakers’ dependence on big donors.

To enforce their rules, about half the states have also created independent ethics watchdogs, outside the control of the lawmakers they police — something federal lawmakers have so far resisted. House Democrats recently said they would create a panel to study the idea.

John Hurson, a former member of the Maryland General Assembly and president of the National Council of State Legislatures, remembers marveling at the goings-on just a few miles away in the United States Capitol. He was barred from letting a lobbyist buy him a cup of coffee under rules enforced by the Maryland Ethics Commission. Meanwhile, congressmen were flying across the country for golf trips with lobbyists and enlisting them as major fund-raisers for their re-election campaigns. "It was amusing in a sad kind of way,” said Mr. Hurson, who now works as a Washington lobbyist himself, for a cosmetics industry trade group. “At the state level in Maryland a lobbyist can’t even have his name on a campaign flier. And at the federal level some of these guys are basically running campaigns."

At some point, there has to be responsibility for personal ethics. The idea that Hurson can tut-tut the federal lobbying activities while he's a state legislator, and then turn around and become part of the process at the federal level, speaks volumes. If you really think a profession has gone awry, why would you then enter it? Is money the ONLY DRIVING FACTOR with these people?

I believe there's plenty of room for focused "ethics" legislation, but the fact that it takes government regulation to provide the standards of what is ethical for both legislators and lobbyists is a sad vignette on how gross our culture has become. How can we expect these folks to legislate right and wrong for our society when they need government to tell them what is ethical in determing that legislation?