Most Americans loathe “lobbyists,” and most Americans think “bi-partisanship” sounds like a good, moderate idea representing compromise and common ground for the public good. So a surprise “bi-partisan alliance” between US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and US Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), with the proclaimed goal of passing a bill to ban politicians from working as “lobbyists” — maybe for life, maybe just for some long period — after leaving Congress was bound to get some good press.

It’s a bad idea. It’s an unconstitutional idea. And it’s yet more evidence that “bi-partisanship” is almost always less about the common good than about the one value that America’s two largest political parties share: The desire to have the heavy hand of government make everyone else do things their way.

What’s a “lobbyist?” Someone who “lobbies.” That is, someone who attempts to influence public policy.

If you call your district’s US Representative or your state’s US Senator to ask for a yes or no vote on a bill, you’re lobbying that official.

If you write a letter to the editor hoping to bring public pressure on government officials on an issue you care about, that’s lobbying too.

Suppose you make a sign with a slogan on it and join a crowd in front of a public building to have that sign read by the media and, hopefully, by politicians with the power to act on it? Yep, lobbying.

It’s lobbying if you do it on your own. It’s lobbying if you do it as an activist with a grassroots group. And it’s lobbying if you’re paid to do it by a corporation, a theoretically “independent” policy institute, or a foreign government.

What’s the problem with banning former members of Congress from “lobbying?” Try this on for size:

“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

That’s most of the First Amendment to the US Constitution. It clearly protects your phone calls, your letters to the editor, and your public protest outings in one fell swoop. It includes no exceptions for former members of Congress, or for people who are paid to speak, write, or protest.

Yes, powerful entities with lots of money like to hire former members of Congress to lobby on their behalf.

Yes, there’s a “revolving door” between Congress, the federal bureaucracy, and those lobbying jobs that lends itself to corruption and sweetheart dealing.

Yes, that’s a problem.

No, a ban on those practices isn’t the solution. It’s unconstitutional, it won’t solve the problem, and a threat to the rights of one American — even a former member of Congress — is a threat to the rights of all Americans.

The only practical, constitutional, and moral way to reduce the influence of powerful lobbies over Congress is to give Congress less  power over the things those lobbies care about — a prospect sure to elicit “bi-partisan” horror among politicians.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “The First Amendment Protects Ex-Politicians, Too,” by Thomas L. Knapp, River Cities’ Reader,(Iowa), 05/31/19
• “The First Amendment protects ex-politicians, too,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Richmond, North Carolina Observer, 05/31/19
• “The First Amendment Protects Ex-Politicians Too,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 06/01/19
• “1st Amendment protects lobbyists,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Wilson, North Carolina Times, 06/04/19
• “The First Amendment Protects Ex-Politicians Too,” by Thomas L. Knapp, CounterPunch, 06/06/19
• “The First Amendment Protects Ex-Politicians Too,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 06/06/19
• “The First Amendment protects ex-politicians too,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Fayette, West Virginia Tribune, 06/13/19
• “The First Amendment protects ex-politicians too,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Montgomery, West Virginia Herald, 06/14/19

“We didn’t ‘spy’ on anyone’s campaign,” writes former FBI director James Comey in a recent Washington Post op-ed.

“We asked a federal judge for permission to surveil” former Donald Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, but that’s not “spying.”

Before that (unmentioned in the op-ed), we infiltrated an informant into the campaign to gather information on its operations, but that’s not “spying.”

What a strange allergic reaction from Comey, and others associated with US intelligence and counterintelligence operations, to US Attorney General William Barr’s simple statement before the US Senate: “Spying on a campaign is a big deal … I think spying did occur. The question is whether it was adequately predicated.”

Comey insists that the spying was indeed “adequately predicated,” and that for some reason this makes it not spying.

It was spying.

You know, the same activity for which 98-year-old Patricia Warner, who infiltrated Nazi circles in Spain during World War Two, just received the Congressional Gold Medal.

The same activity for which dozens of CIA assets have received the Intelligence Star medal, and for which 113 of them have their names inscribed on that agency’s “Memorial Wall.”

The same activity on which the US government spends untold billions per year, assuring us that it is not just good and moral and justifiable, but absolutely necessary to the defense of the United States.

Comey’s trying to have it both ways here.

On one hand, he justifies the spying based on claims that “Russia engaged in a massive effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election,” and that “we learned that one of Trump’s foreign policy advisers knew about the Russian effort seven weeks before we did.”

He defends the cloak-and dagger approach of the FBI’s espionage (“the practice of spying or using spies”) operation on the Trump campaign, saying that “if there was nothing to it, we didn’t want to smear Americans. If there was something to it, we didn’t want to let corrupt Americans know we were onto them. So, we kept it secret.”

On the other hand, he claims it wasn’t “spying” because … well, just because. “Non-fringe” media, he says doesn’t spend much time on this “conspiracy theory” because it’s just so wacky.

Comey’s sophistry doesn’t even rise to the level of Nixon Logic: “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” His formulation is “if the FBI did it for a good reason, that means the FBI didn’t do it.”

The important question here is not whether the FBI spied on the Trump campaign. It did. Period.

The important question is why Comey doesn’t want to discuss, or even acknowledge, that fact.

The answer to that question is that discussing and acknowledging the irrefutable fact that the FBI spied on the Trump campaign leads into other discussions he finds even less desirable, such as whether the spying was legal — “adequately predicated” — and whether it was politically motivated (in a word, an attempted “coup”).

Why doesn’t Comey want those discussions? That question pretty much answers itself.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “‘Spying’: Comey Doth Protest Too Much,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 05/29/19
• “‘Spying’: Comey Doth Protest Too Much,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Antiwar.com, 05/30/19
• “‘Spying’ | Comey Doth Protest Too Much,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 06/01/19
• “‘Spying’: : Comey Doth Protest Too Much,” by Thomas L. Knapp, CounterPunch, 06/03/19
• “Regarding ‘spying,’ former director Comey doth protest too much,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Claremont, New Hampshire Eagle Times, 06/05/19

On May 15, US president Donald Trump issued an “Executive Order on Securing the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain.”

Pursuant to that order, a number of firms in the US (including Google, Qualcomm, and Intel) and abroad (including Panasonic and Arm) have reduced or even entirely cut their ties with Chinese firm Huawei.

Beneath the risible national security claims used to justify it, Trump’s order is just another exercise in economic protectionism. He thinks he’s securing America’s position as the world’s leader in the tech sector. In reality, he’s demolishing that position.

Huawei is just one company, but it’s a big one. It sells its products and services in more than 170 countries and to 45 of the world’s 50 largest telecom operators. One third of the world’s population uses its networks.

Trump isn’t just cutting Huawei out of the US. He’s also cutting American companies out of lucrative relationships with Huawei.

Huawei will soon lose access to Google’s Android operating system. It’s already been working on its own in-house replacement for some time. It probably also has contingency plans for replacing the Intel, Qualcomm, and Arm chips in its phones with chips produced in China — perhaps by Huawei itself.

Nothing Trump does can likely put Huawei out of business. He can temporarily hurt it, but he can’t permanently kill it. The most momentous effect of his order is to put Huawei  on notice that it must not, under any circumstances, ever again find itself at the mercy of US suppliers and of the US government’s good will.

If Trump “wins” his trade wars, will Huawei go back to using the US suppliers it was just cut off from? That’s very unlikely.  Once bitten, twice shy.

Other global tech companies and other governments are watching, and unless they’re stupid they’re drawing the same conclusions.  If it can happen to Huawei, it can happen to them. No matter the immediate outcome, Trump’s stunt has done irreparable long-term damage to global trust in America’s tech giants.

As for those American companies, if they’re smart they’re already looking into what it will take to move their executive functions, and as much of their operations as possible, offshore, for the same reasons. They’re in business to make money, not to serve the whims of economically illiterates like Donald Trump.

The Trump trade bubble is bursting. The fallout isn’t pretty. And it’s going to get worse.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “La guerra comercial y el daño al liderazgo tecnológico de EE.UU.” by Thomas L. Knapp, La Tribuna Hispana USA, 05/29/19
• “Trump’s Trade War Has Probably Permanently Damaged America’s Tech Leadership Position,” by Thomas L. Knapp, River Cities’ Reader (Iowa), 05/28/19
• “Trump’s Trade War Has Probably Permanently Damaged America’s Tech Leadership Position,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 05/28/19
• “Trump’s Trade War,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Dhaka, Bangladesh New Nation [web and print], 05/31/19
• “Trump’s trade war has probably permanently damaged America’s tech leadership position,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Palm Beach, Florida Post, 05/30/19
• “U.S. tech position damaged,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Greenville, North Carolina Reflector [web and print], 06/06/19
• “Trump’s trade war has probably permanently damaged America’s tech leadership position,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Montgomery, West Virginia Herald, 06/06/19