It’s been said, nothing is harder to kill than a government program. What about the will of a Hollywood producer grasping for his first Oscar?
Nicholas Chartiers, producer of “Best Picture”-winning The Hurt Locker, was banned from attending the Oscars for lobbying the Academy’s judges. Apparently, Chartiers’ peddling was part of a larger special interest problem. The USA Today reports, “By opening the field to 10, the academy unleashed twice as many lobbyists needing half as many votes to win. It has turned the race vitriolic.”
Hollywood closely resembles Washington: the budget is growing and with it, the number of lobbyists. As Politico recently reported, lobbyists had a record year in 2009:
Washington’s influence industry is on track to shatter last year’s record $3.3 billion spent to lobby Congress and the rest of the federal government — and that’s with a down economy and about 1,500 fewer registered lobbyists in town, according to data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics.
“Lobbyists love it … when you’ve got an activist agenda like this, and you’ve got serious problems like this, and people want to do something about it,” said James Thurber, director of American University’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies. “It is the most active time that I have ever seen in the advocacy business — from 1973 on.”
Just as the Academy created entrenched interests by dangling the Best Picture reward in front of more films, Washington has created new classes of entrenched interests lobbying hard to reap the rewards of unprecedented government spending.
When there’s more up for grabs, more people want it.
