Influence-Peddling

John Stossel on Townhall.com on the rhetoric against "special interests" and "corporate lobbyists" in Washington (also applicable to Harrisburg):

None of the reforms gets near root of the problem. The root is government power. When government is free to meddle in every corner of our lives and regulate the economy through taxes, regulation and subsidies, then "special interests" have every incentive to work on the
politicians to preserve their turf or gain an advantage.

A tax, regulation or subsidy can make the difference between an industry's success and
failure. If the government were not giving preferential tax treatment to ethanol, the corn farmers and ethanol processors would have to find something else to do because their product can't compete against regular gasoline on a level playing field. ...

The irony is that the "good government" types favor big government, so they undermine their own efforts to eliminate corruption. ...

There is one way to rid the political system of this sort of corruption: severely restrict government power as the founders intended. Only when we eliminate the state's ability to meddle in business will business will stop meddling in government.