•January 15, 2020•
By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

Remember as a teen when you devised a strategy to convince your old man to let you have the family car to go on a date Saturday night? You we’re lobbying, trying to get what you wanted. We’re all lobbyists.
In big cities, state capitols, and D.C., groups you and I belong to pay money to specialists (lobbyists) to push for what they want. Society looks down on lobbyists, as likely corrupt somehow. It isn’t the lobbying that is corrupt; it’s the money that is a commodity used by groups and their lobbyists that can be corrupting. The temptation of money can induce people to trade something, possibly even a vote, for money. Money is power and, as Lord Acton famously suggested, power ultimately corrupts.
At present in Illinois, the federal government is investigating a number of Illinois politicians for possibly making unearned personal gain at public expense. The focus is on public electric utility ComEd. House Speaker Mike Madigan held the giant electric utility in a political vice grip at a period the company was desperate to save its nuclear plants and increase consumer rates.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.