In the United States organized political lobbying does more harm than good.

I admit before this debate I was not familiar with PF style, so I had googled it to get a better understanding. After studying up on it I feel confident in saying my opponent is wrong if he thinks cross examination is not a part of it. As far as presenting ‘cases' the only reason my opponent thinks I have not given one is because there is only one case he is even listening for. I presented a case just fine and have continued to throughout this debate; My case's being that my opponent does not have a voice that can be represented and indecently under that same cynical case follows that most of America does not. My case also has included the high measurement of good that comes out of total reduction of harm and even providing the opportunity for good. Those two cases are not a cross examination of anything he has said. The rest of what I have said can be called cross-examination, but some CX is necessary in all debates just to keep the debate from deteriorating into ‘talking past each other'. There is nothing wrong with rebuttal being present in my argument and I believe when you include CX in your argument it shows respect for the one you are debating for what they have to say because if you have been paying attention and have considered what they have said enough to give responses that demand to know the context of the opponents statement to even understand the response, then you are showing respect instead of passing their statements off as ‘just their opinion' before moving on. When you fail to include CX in your responses in a debate you are in essence leaving your opponents stance unaddressed that's in conflict with yours, showing yours is all that you concern yourself with. It is a way of calling your opponents very thoughts (and by proxy their soul) garbage because it's just their garbage ‘two-cents' to you. It is for these reasons I consider part of an unwritten and perhaps until now unspoken, code of respect among those who have chosen to practice the art debate, to always include some form of CX in response in debates. Politicians sometimes give their stump speeches in the same room and call it ‘debating' and label themselves ‘brave' for being ‘unafraid to face opposition'. But there is nothing to fear when concerning our pursuit of truth. Make no mistake they are not debating but ‘talking past each other' when they do this and it is a horrible tragedy that such ‘debating' has become associated with PF style debating, or even debating at all. Before moving on to addressing any remaining cases or rebuttals that are unaddressed in this debate I would like to make one thing clear. I have not agreed that Lobbying is ‘evil' nor have I agreed that it is ‘corrupt'. I believe that I have gone more than out of my way to make my point on that clear but I shall try one more time for my opponent's sake. I have only agreed that Lobbying ‘can be used' to do evil, and that it ‘can be used' by the ‘corrupt' to accomplish ‘corrupt' things. To drive this point home I added that even the Bible ‘can be used' for those same ends, even though I am as God fearing and bible believing as it gets. My opponent brushed that particular comment off by opponent who's profile claims to be Christian as well by saying ‘Im pretty sure the bible doesnt corupt the government and "do more harm than good" and i really don't understand how he can say the bible can be used corruptly!'. This leads me to conclude that he believes if something can be used corruptly or for ‘evil' then that thing itself is ‘evil' or ‘corrupt'. He certainly didn't acknowledge that good things can be used for evil corrupt purposes, witch was my point. It seems my opponent has never defended his being a Christian against an atheist before as it doesn't take long before they bring up things like ‘the crusades' and the ‘Spanish inquisition'. During the Civil War verses out of the bible would be used to justify things like slavery, calling black skin color ‘the mark of Cain' or part of the curse Noah put on Ham and all of his descendants. Corrupt teaching like that ended up coming out of Bible verses like the story of Ham and Cain, but this should be taken as evidence that the bible is corrupt or evil, only that an evil corrupt person can use the bible for those corrupt purposes. In the Scriptures themselves it provides an example of Satan himself using Bible verses (Psalm 91) when tempting Jesus in the wilderness. So, its pretty clear that if even the ‘Good Book' can be used for evil, then the mere use of a practice or item for evil ends doesn't make the practice or item evil, it could even be true that a practice or item be overall good and evil still find away to use it. It is this way with ‘Structured attempts to sway the decisions of ones political leaders.' Overall, the freedom we have from its existence makes it a good thing but it can be used by the evil and corrupt for corrupt and evil things. This is part of why it is rather useless to just defend and attack the examples of good and bad lobbying. Its ultimately not relevant data when we want to get to the truth of the matter. They are so many laws and bills that go by in a year as our leaders do what it takes to run this country, that we could never hope to know about them all so that we can count the good and bad and see witch list is bigger. The ones that are made famous by the media are usually the most shocking as the media has learned ‘shocking' sells really well so naturally the ones we ever bother to dig up may seem to have more bad examples than good. But the sheer mass of the ones we don't know about are such a large fraction of the bills and laws and general business efforts of our lobbyist can easily have more good examples among those even if stacked against all the commonly known examples lobbying. Our search for truth in this matter should not be decided by a contest of who among two individuals can look up more examples of lobbying that fits there side, because we should expectedly be always left with the doubt ‘maybe if I had just looked up a bit more…' if we did go about this debate that way. What we can get to the bottom of with what we know though is the perception of what a blessing it is that the bad is only as bad as it is thanks to the fact that we have the freedom to make organized attempts to sway our political representatives. To truly justify saying something ‘does more harm than good' means that that something makes us worse off with it than we would be without. Taking account of what could be happening but is not is just as important as considering what is being ‘caused' by an action when considering the net value. Take for example founding out the economic net gain from installing a small wind turbine outside your home. You do not just way the value of how much installation cost, or maintenance over time, and put it against the savings; you also consider how much your capital you spent on the installation could have made you just sitting in savings account at the bank. My opponent say's he agrees that he's voice is represented at the same time as business owners but suggest that his voice is represented less somehow. This is simply not possible, either your voice is represented or it is not. Now, he may be trying to compromised representation of his voice and Business owners voices by saying there's is ‘represented more' and if he is, I think I have shown by now why that is the preferred outcome, more good than harm. If one is accomplished enough to own a business they have earned their voice gaining more respect than the average citizen, especially in bills on the economy, as they personally oversee that infrastructure. It seems my argument runs just a little bit over 8000 charcters and I do not know what to cut. Since it is not much I will post the rest in the comment section.