One of the rights embodied in the First Amendment is the right to talk to legislators. These days, some groups spend a lot of money to talk to legislators and this has sent the liberal left into a frenzy.

Liberals’ solution to the perceived problem of spending vast amounts to lobby government is to limit citizens’ ability to speak to their legislators. Here’s a thought: Instead of stomping all over a citizen’s First Amendment rights, perhaps a better approach would be to remove the reason to spend so much money to talk to legislators — the massive amount of other people’s money the political class can arbitrarily hand out to powerful and well-connected special interest groups.

Taking money out of the hands of the political class and putting it back into the pockets of the people who earned it would not just leave money in the productive sector of the free market; it would remove the incentive for special interests to spend vast amounts of money to procure government favors.

The ethanol tax credit is a good example of this double-edged waste of resources. When the global warming Armageddon myth was in full swing, ethanol, a gasoline additive made mainly from corn, was widely viewed as a good way to lower carbon dioxide emissions.