Dealers have disproportionate influence on the political process because they contribute aggressively to political campaigns.
Thanks for that fine report, Robert. Of course it contains no surprises. Nevertheless, the troubling anecdote still elicited a little laughter. I ran for state representative last year against an incumbent whose campaign was heavily financed by special interest groups. Folks were amazed that I somehow managed to garner 41% of the vote.
At the same time I was taking a 90-hour course to reinstate my expired real estate license. Even though I once owned my own firm, I still have to work for someone else for two years before I can reestablish my own business. The 90-hour course requirement was a recent doubling of the number of hours. I told the instructor that I doubted that the public was demanding more course work and a two-year wait period for a former managing broker to reopen his company. The instructor, a realtor himself, nodded in quiet agreement when I suggested that these requirements were entirely due to a lobby of Illinois realtors seeking to reduce competition who coerced the legislature into passing the related laws. I’m on friendly terms with my opponent who of course is my representative. He is a former lobbyist. When I asked him what could be done about circumventing some of the new laws for entry into the real estate business, he responded that the “industry” could not be fought.
I have a 78-year-old physicist cousin who lives in Virginia near Washington, DC. He is a retired former head of the science division of the defunct Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. Supposedly it was disbanded as a cost cutting measure. In reality, the COTA disapproved of too many pork barrel projects desired by congressmen. Yesterday I informed my cousin of the decision by the Virginia DMV to disapprove a dealership license for Tesla. Here is his response.
[FONT=&]"There are two Virginias -- Northern Virginia (Arlington, Fairfax and maybe Loudon and Prince William Counties) and the rest of Virginia. We, in the North, would welcome a Tesla operation, with cars, touch screens or ESP. The rest of Virginia still has to get into the 20th Century, and hasn't figured out that we're already in the 21st. We love coal, oil and tobacco."
"The Richmond legislature has imposed all kinds of constraints on us -- local government often needs downstate permission to do something. Now and then Arlington County Board members go off on a tangent, but it's usually harmless, except for annoying our Statewide legislators. Ahh, politics. I'm both sorry you lost and not sorry you lost. There's some real meanness underneath sometimes. [/FONT]"