McG of H asked:

What's the definition of "a lobbyist"? If you write a letter to a politician about some political issue, that is lobbying. So does that make you "a lobbyist"? Or do you have to be paid for it as a living?

Writing a letter or calling on one's own behalf is not lobbying, at least as used in this connection. In any case, even if you call such action "lobbying", it's okay, and protected by the Constitution.

I believe the kind of lobbyist we're talking about here is the individual who represents someone else (individual or organization), usually for pay but not always. Such paid lobbyists quite commonly are lawyers, and they represent clients in a professional capacity.

Lobbyists can be extremely helpful to legislators and/or regulators, by providing bodies of information they or their clients have access to. The flip side of this is, of course, since they represent interested parties they tend to provide data with a slant favorable to the client. Because such "information services" to a legislator can be helpful, it tends to help the lobbyist gain greater access to influential ears than you or I might have. This is all legal, so far as it goes.

But when the issue to be influenced has large financial consequences there's often a lot of pressure for lobbyists to push the envelope, so to speak, possibly getting into impermissible political pressures which come close to or equal extortion, the supplying of outright false information, the provision of "favors" to legislators which may be difficult to distinguish from bribery, and of course outright bribery.

There are regulations that require lobbyists to register as such, depending on such things as number of contacts, hours/days spent, and compensation received. I'm not sure how those apply to volunteer lobbyists who may represent an organization they belong to. By and large, such volunteers are less likely to have the big war chests in hand that the professionals so often do (and thus may have less power to do harm), but volunteers can be effective with a legislator because they often are the legislator's constituents.

Please excuse me if I've expatiated too much on the obvious.

Dave Oesterreich