The Department of Agriculture is adding Greek yogurt to the subsidized school lunch program after Chobani, a company that makes Greek yogurt, hired lobbyists to make its case for inclusion. The Hill newspaper has the story (which I saw thanks to the astute Walter Olson). The Hill puts the lobbying expenditure at $80,000 so far this year, but that understates the expenditure; Senate lobbying records show Chobani has been paying Cornerstone Government Affairs $40,000 a quarter for four consecutive quarters, for a total of $160,000. The Cornerstone team, in turn, includes former staffers of both the agriculture department and the House and Senate agriculture committees.
A nice little case study of how Washington works. The regulation (a federal role in deciding what food the schools serve) and the spending (the school lunch subsidy) translates into lobbying fees that enrich the former staffers who did the regulating and spending. Not to be overly economically deterministic or cynical about it, but it's such a common pattern that at a certain point one would have to be naive to ignore it.
