Reading that transcript actually left me thinking the system worked okay in this particular case, even though it led to a bad (in my opinion) policy outcome. Th

Reading that transcript actually left me thinking the system worked okay in this particular case, even though it led to a bad (in my opinion) policy outcome. The money bought access, not results: in the end, the legislators who voted against largely it did so because of personal belief the policy was bad or because of political pressure from an important campaign group (+), not because of money from Intuit (and it didn't take too much in absolute terms---$140K at full price---to equalize the lobbying power of a single-person pet project with that of a multibillion-dollar company with a strong vested interest in seeing the legislation defeated). (+): I'm not personally a Grover Norquist fan, but he's influential because a lot of Americans really don't like taxes, and the argument that people will be more opposed to taxes if they're more burdensome does seem internally consistent.