Lobbying and tricks and traps in increasingly complex legislation

Steven Brill, "The Best Laws Money Can Buy" On lobbyists and their power.

Brill writes for Time magazine. His comments were very balanced.

There was a great deal of discussion of the huge size and comlexity of recent legislation. Brill noted that (some government agency, I've forgotten which, back in 1930s?) was created by legislation covering 8 pages; he compared it to current legislation that sprawls over 2000 pages of dense and complex clauses and protections of this or that special interest.

Perhaps the most important observation Brill made, toward the end of the interview, was that the act that created the department of homeland security, which was Joe Lieberman's project, even if he stood aside to let another put his fingerprints on it, is NOT a new legislative initiative but a cobbling together of existing criminal statutes, under one central and comprehensive authority.

Jews, of course, excel at this sort of talmudic, pilpul discourse; Elizabeth Warren calls the deliberate complexification of contract terms, "tricks and traps." Perhaps it is not a specifically or exclusively Jewish practice, but it's difficult to avoid the recognition that Jews are at the forefront of lobbying on recent key legislation -- bank bailout, finance reform, homeland security, patriot act, wiretap, health care, and also that Jews and Israel are prominent stakeholders in the industries favored to benefit from the "tricks and traps" built into these talmudic laws.

Counterpoint: Ariely's discussion and the thesis of his book, "Irrational," and the reality of Jews' deep understanding of how to twist human psychological responses.