USA Today says yes and Brad Smith says no.  In my forthcoming article in the Stanford Law Review, “Lobbying, Rent Seeking, and the Constitution, I argue that we should not demonize lobbyists as inherently corrupt.  Instead, we should recognize the skew to our economic system caused by lobbyists.  I also take on the claim, made by Smith in his oped, that the solution to the problem of lobbyist-facilitated rent-seeking is to shrink the size of government.  My claim is that even shrinking the size of government significantly would not do away with the problem.