No explanation is offered for why spending on lobbyists more than doubled between 20.
Nobody argues that perhaps congressional aides or interns ought to be doing the research instead of paid lobbyists. He only had the misfortune of being caught. According to the film, Abramoff just did was everyone else was doing. Mass murderers and psychopaths provide us with bad examples that we can point out to our kids so they'll know what not to become. The Mafia fills in the gaps that the police force can't, and it meets a market demand among consumers of illegal goods. Otherwise it wouldn't be there, right? Whores make the streets safe for our wives and children. If something exists in a society, it's there for a good reason. That explanation comes straight out of a now unfashionable school of sociological thought called functionalism.
They give legislators information about subjects the legislators need to know something about in order to do their jobs. I mean, right at the beginning, after we see Kevin Spacey (superb) talking to himself in a mirror, we hear his explanation of why lobbyists exist. I had a difficult time dealing with this movie, partly because the entire system of lobbying is so despicable in itself, and partly because the writer has done his best to show Jack Abramoff as a fundamentally nice guy who just overreached a little and got caught.
