IF IT WEREN'T FOR CLIENTS AND THE INTERNET, LOBBYING WOULD BE FUN

Been getting stopped several times a day lately at the Capitol by people complaining that there has been little new content -- "posting" is the technical blogger jargon -- in the past week or so.

Folks, if you are THAT desperate for mindless entertainment, buy a pet monkey.

Billy Clyde started this deal for his own amusement. If you want to join in, well, the more the merrier. But with all due respect to my friends -- and I consider everyone a friend -- GET. OFF. MY. ASS.

Sorry for that nasty outburst. My bad. Let's talk a little about the Texas Legislature, the world's greatest deliberative democratic institution and currently the leading source of deforestation on the planet.

The week leading up to the 60th day of the session always puts me in a foul mood. I know it's sort of a fake deadline, but BC likes to play along ... because he's a stickler for the rules. If the posted speed is 65, I drive 64. Just to be on the safe side. No one can accuse me of being an anarchist.

When we get close to the 60th day, people are scurrying around like a rattler with its head cut off. Paper is flying. Thanks to these Internet Web Machines that are downright ubiquitous these days, everyone from the assistant volleyball coach in Willis to the paranoid banking mogul in El Paso can read these newly filed bills. They find one they hate (read: don't understand) and immediately phone their elected officials in Austin and want to give the REALLY LONG version of why some obscure piece of legislation that won't even be referred for a week or two has already cost them their retirement and killed their pets and is responsible for the drought. Can a locus infestation of Biblical proportion be far behind?

Typical conservation:

HYPERVENTILATING CONSTITUENT: Representative Smedley, why would you do this to me?

HOUSE MEMBER SMEDLEY: What did I do to you?

HC: House Bill 4938. Don't be coy with me! You wrote it, and I take personal offense.

HMS: I've never written a bill before. What does it do?

HC: The actual legislation PURPORTS to regulate pesticides at Texas wineries. But that part in SECTION 17, amending Article 2183(c)(A)(3), will shut down the proposed new exit that would feed into the property I inherited from my Uncle Ernie -- may he rest in peace -- and would kill my plans to build that that convenience store/pool hall/bait and tackle shop that I've dreamed about since I was a tyke. You know that.

HMS: Have I met you?

HC: Not formally. But quit trying to dodge the issue like all you Austin politicians do.

You get the point.

Now paid advocates -- who, contrary to public belief, are also human being persons -- face the same kind of nonsense. A presumably sophisticated client can turn into a flaming moron when he is permitted to read bills. Which, I may add, he has no business doing unless his lobbyist sends it to him.

Here's how it works. The client is in a foul mood because he had a flat tire on the way to work and a thunderstorm cancelled his golf game and the attractive young secretary who he just hired and who can't type, make a copy, send a fax or master the primitive six-line phone system is menstruating heavily. So, bored, he gets on the Information Superhighway and starts reading bills. It takes a while, but he finds one egregious enough -- in his own bird brain -- for him to phone up his asleep-at-the-switch lobbyist.

The client rants and raves and curses and complains and repeats himself over and over and invokes patriotic stuff and then finally, after about an hour, give you the bottom line: If the Legislature requires Texas-based third party administrators for off-shore reinsurance companies to be free of murder convictions, then the state's economy will be RUINED.

"I've suspected they would pull this power play one day," the client says. "All the high-paying TPA jobs will move to the Cayman Islands and the Texas economy will collapse."

The paid advocate -- who's been staring out the window and subconsciously calculating the number of sidewalk pedestrians carrying Starbucks cups (about half) and hasn't listened to anything this guy has said whatsoever-- suddenly hears this part and has a revelation:

Wonder what it takes to get a third party administrator license in the Cayman Islands? Cuz it sounds like a good gig to me.