Something in the Air

You know something isn't right when I find myself agreeing with John Hood two times in so many days. Last night Anglico linked to and quoted John Hood saying this:

"Hackney is a liberal who most conservatives will disagree with, but he's also a smart and fair-minded legislator who conservatives can work with," Hood said. "Under Hackney, the House will be a place of deliberation again, which it should be."

I have no problem with this comment. Being called fair-minded isn't the worst thing in the world.

The second incident occurred this morning in an article in The Charlotte Observer about how Dems have now decided to utilize the loophole that the Republican women broke in a while back. You know the loophole I'm talking about - the one that allows politicians to receive money from lobbyists afterall. Yeah, that one. We all knew it wouldn't be long before Dems decided to join Republicans in exploiting it.

Can you blame them? Why should the Republicans get all the good money? I mean, they are the party out of power in this state. If lobbyists are willing to buy donate to them, then they certainly should be more than generous with the party that is in power, right?

Seriously, it would be ethical stupid, moronic, imbicilic for Dems to decline lobbyist donations. Why should we let Republicans line their war chests while we do all the work running this state? I mean, it's laughable, right?

The Observer has this about and from Hood:

John Hood, whose John Locke Foundation was part of the same coalition, said he was always dissatisfied with the ban. Instead, he would like to see a dollar cap on what lobbyists can give.

"This is good evidence of the fact that the bill was sprawling. It involved a lot of different issues. Parts of it were written quickly or rewritten quickly," Hood said. "This is an area that needs to be clarified."

Clarified, absolutely. It needs to be changed as soon as possible. Until then, we need to keep this as public and transparant as we can. We need to keep a running list of which lobbyists pony up to the PACs, groups and parties and which candidates receive lobbyist contributions via the PACs, groups and their respective parties.