A re-run of legislation that failed in 2011, the Small Brewer Reinvestment and Expanding Workforce Act (Small BREW Act), has now been reintroduced in the House, with bi-partisan sponsorship from Representatives Jim Gerlach (R-Pa.) and Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.)

The Act would slash by half, from $7.00 to $3.50, the excise tax paid by brewers per barrel for their first 60,000 barrels of beer.  The tax on barrels produced beyond 60,000 would be cut from $18.00 to $16.00.  The Brewer’s Association, a trade group for the 2,500 small to mid-size domestic brewers, is lobbying in favor of the Act, which it computes would save their tier of the brew business approximately 60 million dollars. Money that the Association says these “mom-and-pop” breweries would turn around and roll into business stabilization and job creation.

But the beer industry is not monolithic, and the proposed legislation has drawn out fermenting antagonisms between “craft” beer makers and the giant, multi-brand breweries. At issue is the transformational effect that micro or craft-brewing is having on American beer consumption.  In 2007 small breweries had revenues of $5.7 billion.  By 2012 that number had risen to $12 billion, with a 17 percent rise in sales.  In contrast, non-craft beer consumption went up by no more than one percent.

Not surprisingly, large breweries, feeling this erosion in their market share, have responded with a pugnacious P.R. effort to kill the bill.  At the forefront is the Beer Institute, a trade group for “non-craft” producers such as Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors–companies far too large to benefit from the proposed changes in tax rates—which is actively lobbying against the legislation, depicting the Act as divisive and unfair.

How will it all fall out?  The precedent FDR set during the Depression, when he ended Prohibition in order to tax alcohol and reaped new windfalls for the government, has only become more entrenched in this age of recession-era shortfalls.  Given the monumental reluctance of government to cut tax revenues on “lifestyle” products, passage of the Small BREW Act is unlikely.  In other words, you can’t untap the revenue keg.  Legislation tracker GovTrack is so frosty on the future of the Act, it prognosticates its chance of passage at a mere two percent.

And so some liquid courage may be in order for the dejected crafters of artisanal brews.  Fortunately for them the bar is always open.

News that Wal-Mart has spent 25 million dollars over the past four years lobbying for greater access to Indian markets has exploded into controversy, as lawmakers and social activists in that country express fears over the role that the megastore will play in the growth of the world’s third fastest emerging economy.   Pressed by opposition forces, the Indian government has now appointed a retired judge to investigate Wal-Mart’s business practices in India, with a specific focus on whether Wal-Mart’s lobbying violated India’s forty-plus year ban on paid corporate advocacy.

The rub is that all of Wal-Mart’s lobbying has occurred in Washington, not New Dehli, with no breach in American lobbying laws and, after careful vetting by the State Department, no violation of Indian rules, either.

Nevertheless, such assurances have done little to quiet the uneasy, paranoid belief among Indian social activists and opposition politicians that the supermarket giant, abetted by a cabal of foreign lobbyists, is secretly crafting deals with members of the ruling alliance, the UPA, that will catastrophically upend India’s retail economy.

The controversy has not diverted Wal-Mart in its march to become a market player in India.  Records show the company spent 1.48 million in the fourth quarter of 2012 lobbying on issues that include enhanced access to Indian markets.

While this story says much about the unflattering distortions that define lobbying as a concept, it says even more about the anxieties over opportunity and development in India. As the economy surges, and foreign companies such as Wal-Mart enter the marketplace, ordinary Indians see opportunities opening up before them. Yet they remain fearful, and for cause, that the old forces of nepotism and corruption which have long strangled opportunity will reassert themselves, denying people the fruits of this transformative moment.   In their eyes lobbying is a part of this old way of doing things, just another word for backroom deal making by shady elites.

Lobbyists must pay heed.  They need to loudly reject this misinformed caricature of their profession, and better enunciate their role as avatars of a new order: transparent actors promoting open economies that prize debate and exchange, and not minions of outdated regimes. They must sell their advocacy as a force for global economic progress.  Events in India demonstrate the vital need for some P.R. exorcism to cleanse the reputation of the trade.

At a moment when reported lobbying spending in Washington has slowed, the national panic over cybersecurity has turned into a multi-million dollar jackpot issue for K Street. In recent months hackers have gone after high value targets, setting off cyber-emergencies with attacks on telecommunication providers, major news outlets like the New York Times and even, more perilously, the Fed. With public and private interests scrambling to meet threats that have the potential to paralyze the nation, the kind of legislation Rockefeller has been pushing, combining public-private intelligence sharing with new Federal guidelines to combat cybercrime and cyber-espionage, has gained traction. The result: ten years ago cybersecurity barely registered as a factor in D.C., with only four firms lobbying in that area. By 2011 1,500 companies were advocating on the issue.

Last month Senate Democrats reintroduced a bill, the Cybersecurity and American Cyber Competitveness Act, S. 21, that had failed in the last Congress. Fronted by Sen. Rockefeller, the bill draws up voluntary guidelines for heightening cybersecurity protocols among businesses involved in what are deemed to be national and economic security activities such as banking, defense and utilities. Rockefeller’s bill never made it out of the last Congress because of opposition from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. What scared the Chamber and its member businesses was the prospect that cybersecurity protocol upgrades would come down from Washington as high cost mandates. Indeed the most stringent legislation bandied about in Washington last year would have forced companies to spend almost fifty billion dollars on enhanced software security, a nearly nine-fold increase from current out-lays on anti-hacking firewalls.

Rockefeller’s bill, with its renewed emphasis on voluntary compliance and “partnered” data sharing on cyber threats, appears to have resolved many concerns among business leaders about keeping down costs while protecting proprietary systems, and its prospects for passage in this Congress are somewhat improved, if by no means assured.

Not surprisingly, tech companies that stand to benefit financially from building the technology to implement cybersecurity upgrades are fielding their own bench of lobbyists—and their message is more mandates, more reform. Among these heavy hitters are software giants Cisco and Oracle. Google is also out there, employing eight lobbyists to advocate for the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), a bill that would pull down legal barriers that prevent companies from sharing information about cyber threats. Other supporters of CISPA include IBM, Verizon, Microsoft and Facebook. Like the Rockefeller bill, CISPA is taking heat from cyber-privacy advocates, who have launched activist campaigns on the web highlighting what they see as government overreach, and corporate irresponsibility with their users’ personal data.

In a recent speech the out going Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, tore into Congress over its failure to pass any meaningful cybersecurity legislation. Cyber crime, Panetta reiterated, is well on its way to becoming the national security nightmare of the 21st century. But for all of the alarms sound by Rockefeller and others there is no guarantee that, in the absence of 9/11 type incident, the public cares enough about cyber issues to force a divided Congress to negotiate a comprehensive bill. It is just too soon to tell whether Rockefeller’s bill has assuaged business anxieties enough to be in the running. For lobbyists, on the other hand, the force and intensity of this debate, and the deep-pocket power of the major players, has produced just the kind of push and pull that keeps K street humming.

Responding to new legislation drafted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ) that would vigorously regulate the “laptop casino” by supporting online poker while banning other online games of chance, Statehouse legislators, lottery directors, and their lobbyists, have descended on Washington to demand that the States continue to be allowed to deal out their own rules for Internet wagering.

For years opponents of gambling have grumbled about the explosion in online gaming. A recent Merrill-Lynch analysis envisions that by 2015 worldwide profits from Internet gambling will surpass 150 billion dollars. For these critics gambling has become a globe straddling one-armed bandit promoting fraud, money laundering and consumer abuse.

But to recession strapped States it has proved to be a jackpot. In 2006 Congress passed legislation that, coupled with the 1961 Wire Act, created a powerful set of rules around online gaming. In 2011 the Justice Department dramatically re interpreted the purview of the Wire Act, easing restrictions. Across the country Statehouse leaders seized upon this roll back in regulation as a dynamic opportunity to license new online games and pad their budgets with the resulting tax revenue.

Politicians in 10 states have already moved forward with bills that permit online gaming, or formed committees to explore its feasibility. Illinois and Georgia are further ahead, selling lottery tickets over the Internet. Delaware, where seven percent of the state budget is juiced from gaming sources, the state’s fourth largest revenue stream, is preparing to implement legislation that permits, in addition to its lottery, online games such as poker, blackjack and roulette.

Senator Jon Kyl has long been a flat-out opponent of gambling. Next month Kyl is set to retire from the Senate, and his looming departure has prompted gaming opponents to bring forward in the Senate the “Internet Gambling Prohibition, Poker Consumer Protection and Strengthening UIGEA Act of 2012,” otherwise known as the “Poker Bill.” In addition to paring back online action to poker alone, the bill would Federalize regulation through the Department of Commerce, a move that proponents of the bill see as a remedy to the chaos of fifty states operating by fifty different sets of rules. It would also have the none too subtle effect of funneling back to Washington taxes and fees raised on Internet gaming.

Kyl’s co-sponsor on the bill, Senator Harry Reid, representing Nevada’s casino interests, has a manifestly different agenda. One of the major proponents of the new legislation is the powerful American Gaming Association, national advocates for casino operators. Online gaming has made deep cuts into casino profits, to the extent that Senator Reid has described unregulated online poker “as the most important issue facing Nevada since Yucca Mountain,” referring to a radioactive materials storage site in his state that has sparked years of controversy.

As States push back against Reid-Kyl’s Poker Bill, they are aided by an array of lobbyists, acting for lottery operators, and powerful advocacy groups like the National Conference of State Legislators. Closing ranks with them, somewhat improbably, are Christian conservative opponents of any form of gambling, who see the Reid-Kyl bill as a massive expansion of Internet gaming through its continued legalization of online poker. As if this wasn’t tough enough, concerns about the constitutionality of the bill are now being raised. And, of course, there is the fact, not missed by politicians, that while unpalatable to some, Internet gaming is a hugely popular pastime.

Time is running out for Kyl and Reid to get the fix in. Against the clock, and with such a firewall of opposition, a betting man would say that in this deal the gamblers are the odds-on favorite to beat the house. Or, in this case, the Senate.

Implemented as part of an omnibus farm bill in 1981, the USDA’s “Sugar Program” maintains stringent price and import controls over the sweet commodity.   Advocates of the program, led by the trade group American Sugar Alliance (ASA), which represents sugar growers and processors, argue that without strict regulatory oversight the American food market would be flooded by imported sucrose, imperiling American farmers while creating an unstable dependency on foreign producers.

Additionally the ASA notes that critics of the Sugar Program, such as candy manufacturers, already enjoy massive profitability.  Profits on the sale of chocolates over the Halloween period are estimated to be 1.5. billion dollars in the U.S. alone.    This is a theme picked up by health and nutrition advocates who argue that with sky rocketing rates of childhood obesity and diabetes Congress should not be focused on inflating the coffers of candy companies by making their products any cheaper.

Candyland has its own trade groups, among these the National Confectioners Association (NCA), whose membership includes industry giants like Mars Incorporated.  Manufacturer of M&Ms, Snickers, Skittles, and just about every other treat that fills the pumpkin bucket, Mars has already dropped 1,360,000 on lobbying in 2012, much of that driven to unwinding the Sugar Program.  The NCA’s advocacy appears to be slowly winning the argument, most vitally by bringing around more and more Democrats to the idea.   Providing a lobbying assist to the NCA and its member companies are conservative pressure groups like U.S. Chamber of Congress and the Club for Growth.

This advocacy has moved the needle.  When renewal of the Sugar Program came up in the Senate in 2001 its opponents mustered a modest 21 votes.  This year a bipartisan amendment to the 2012 Senate Farm Bill that would have finished off the program, sponsored by Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa), failed by the much narrower margin of 50-46.   With such a tight vote in the Democratic controlled Senate, the NCA and its allies are optimistic about the prospect for reform when the Republican controlled House moves on similar legislation this fall.  Indeed if Republicans do sweep November’s election then 2013 might be the year that Congress finally finds its sweet tooth for the candy industry.

Driverless car development is no longer the fantasy mind freak of a tech geek blogger. Audi, BMW, Ford, General Motors, Volkswagen and Volvo are testing or developing these vehicles. Google is road testing Toyotas and an Audi. To industry proponents of automated driving, robotic cars succeed not only because they remove human error from the road, the number one source of all accidents, but because their streamlined operation minimizes traffic chaos and improves fuel efficiency.

Science is one thing. Selling politicians and regulators that the future is now raises its own monumental speed bumps. As one of California’s marquee brands, Google has been a lobbying presence in Sacramento for years. The company enlarged its footprint during the 2008 gubernatorial election, when it dropped $25,900 into the campaign coffers of both Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman.

Brown has proved a solid ally of Google, and since his inauguration the company has built up its presence in Sacramento. To promote its robotic car the company secured the services of Jonathan Ross, a lobbyist with the firm of KP Public Affairs. Ross was paid $140,000 and doggedly lobbied the State House, the California Highway Patrol and the Department of Motor Vehicles. In addition between 2009-10 the company contributed $64,000 to more than thirty legislators in the Senate and Assembly.

Google backed this political campaign with a PR operation that pushed back against the public scare factor over unguided tons of metal zipping around California’s towns. In one memorable Google ad an elderly blind man is robotically driven to the take-out window of fast food restaurant for an order of tacos.

There are critics. The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers has raised common sense concerns over safety and liability issues. The public interest advocates at Consumer Watchdog have also challenged approval for road testing of the cars, citing worries about the intrusiveness of Google into the privacy of drivers.

When the “Google Car” bill finally came up for a vote in Sacramento it blew through both chambers of the state house, 37-0 in the Senate and 74-2 in the House, landslide margins that surprised even the bill’s most fervent backers. This Tuesday Governor Brown signed off on the legislation in a ceremony at Google headquarters, which requires the California DMV to adopt state-wide safety and performance standards for robotic vehicles by January 1, 2015.

Google has won similar approval for testing in Nevada and Florida, and continues to lobby nationally for the driverless car, spending almost 9 million promoting this and other matters at the Federal level in the first months of 2012.

But for some politicians, however right the science, there may persist issues of design. Crowned with an obtrusive array of sensors across its roofline, the Google car as it currently rolls leaves no space for a dog carrier.

Driverless car development is no longer the fantasy mind freak of a tech geek blogger. Audi, BMW, Ford, General Motors, Volkswagen and Volvo are testing or developing these vehicles. Google is road testing Toyotas and an Audi. To industry proponents of automated driving, robotic cars succeed not only because they remove human error from the road, the number one source of all accidents, but because their streamlined operation minimizes traffic chaos and improves fuel efficiency.

Science is one thing. Selling politicians and regulators that the future is now raises its own monumental speed bumps. As one of California’s marquee brands, Google has been a lobbying presence in Sacramento for years. The company enlarged its footprint during the 2008 gubernatorial election, when it dropped $25,900 into the campaign coffers of both Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman.

Brown has proved a solid ally of Google, and since his inauguration the company has built up its presence in Sacramento. To promote its robotic car the company secured the services of Jonathan Ross, a lobbyist with the firm of KP Public Affairs. Ross was paid $140,000 and doggedly lobbied the State House, the California Highway Patrol and the Department of Motor Vehicles. In addition between 2009-10 the company contributed $64,000 to more than thirty legislators in the Senate and Assembly.

Google backed this political campaign with a PR operation that pushed back against the public scare factor over unguided tons of metal zipping around California’s towns. In one memorable Google ad an elderly blind man is robotically driven to the take-out window of fast food restaurant for an order of tacos.

There are critics. The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers has raised common sense concerns over safety and liability issues. The public interest advocates at Consumer Watchdog have also challenged approval for road testing of the cars, citing worries about the intrusiveness of Google into the privacy of drivers.

When the “Google Car” bill finally came up for a vote in Sacramento it blew through both chambers of the state house, 37-0 in the Senate and 74-2 in the House, landslide margins that surprised even the bill’s most fervent backers. This Tuesday Governor Brown signed off on the legislation in a ceremony at Google headquarters, which requires the California DMV to adopt state-wide safety and performance standards for robotic vehicles by January 1, 2015.

Google has won similar approval for testing in Nevada and Florida, and continues to lobby nationally for the driverless car, spending almost 9 million promoting this and other matters at the Federal level in the first months of 2012.

But for some politicians, however right the science, there may persist issues of design. Crowned with an obtrusive array of sensors across its roofline, the Google car as it currently rolls leaves no space for a dog carrier.

In 2009 the FDA put in place new restraints on tobacco sales.  These restrictions, however, were not extended to premium cigars.  Now high profile health advocates, including the American Medical Association and the American Cancer Society, are urging the FDA to go after all tobacco products.  The effect of this enhanced regulation would require cigars to be branded with the same health warnings as cigarettes, and it would place aggressive limitations on marketing and mail order sales.

Catching a whiff of these changes, John Anderson, a cigar shop proprietor in Washington, partnered with lobbyists from K & L Gates to devise legislation that would carve out an exemption in the FDA rules for the premium cigar trade.   Shopping the bill around Capitol Hill, its sponsors found that the rolled leaf has plenty of fans in Congress.

Even in a period of national neuroticism on health and safety issues, cigars remain a staple item on the hustings.  A recent study by the New York Public Research Group found that politicians in the Empire State have dropped almost 50,000 dollars on cigars since 2008, with most of the cigars used as fundraising swag.  While Republican lawmakers indulged more avidly than did their Democratic counterparts, the New York study found that lefties also like to light up.

This bi-partisanship of the big smoke is evident in Washington–with its myriad of cigar clubs, bars and lounges—and in the efforts of the unusual array of Republicans and Democrats who are sponsoring the Traditional Cigar Manufacturing and Small Business Jobs Preservation Act (HR 1639).  The legislation, modeled on the bill drawn up by Anderson and the lobbyists from K & L Gates, and buttressed by a concurrent legislation in the Senate (S. 1461), would carve out exemptions for premium cigar sales in the event of new FDA regulations.   According to Cigar Rights of America, an industry trade association, the legislation has 219 co-sponsors in the House and 13 in the Senate, which include caucus headliners like Pete Sessions (R-Texas) and Steve Israel (D-NY).

As the naming of the bill makes bullhorn-clear, the crux of the argument here is jobs.   While cigar industry lobbyists like to argue that their products pose less of a health risk than other tobacco products, and are not attractive to minors, the Cigar Act really is pitched at protecting the employment of the 85,000 people who work in cigar stores in the U.S.   In a period of sluggish employment data any appeal to job creating or saving is clearly a winning narrative, and it is likely that, at least in the short run, high end cigars will continue to enjoy their status as a softly regulated luxury item.   That said, not all cigars are created equal.  Down market brands, such as the venerable Swisher Sweets, have been written out of the Cigar Act, and remain vulnerable to any new FDA laws.   Woe to those that buy their smokes at truck stops.

To ease the beyond-complicated purchase of Nexen, CNOOC has contracted with top tier firms Hill & Knowlton and Wexler and Walker Public Policy Associates for P.R. and lobbying.  Hill & Knowlton is also working the Canadian end of the review and acquisition process.

CNOOC’s bid for Nexen is most ambitious foray China has made into the North American oil market.   In purchasing Nexen, CNOOC would not only stake a significant presence on Canadian oil sands, but also position itself, through Nexen’s holdings in the Gulf of Mexico, to develop resources off the American shoreline.

To proponents of the CNOOC deal it is a textbook example of how openness in North American markets continues to make the continent a vibrant investment destination.  Furthermore, advocates of the deal are also selling the message that the Chinese tiger is not going back into the cage.  It would be folly to tie the hands of business in hyper-regulation as China goes on an energy binge, thereby preventing Western economies from scoring on its explosive growth.

These arguments are not bending every will.  The deal is now taking hits in Ottawa and Washington, and in the U.S. this antagonism is robustly bi-partisan.   In heated statements to the press, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) has torn apart the Nexen deal, citing CNOONC’s ownership by the Chinese state as sufficient reason, in the interests of national security, to prevent it from doing business in the Gulf.

From across the aisle Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has been equally disparaging.  In a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner Schumer demanded that the government play “hardball” on the CNOOC deal, tying it up until there are guarantees that the Chinese government reciprocates by allowing American businesses greater access to Chinese firms and markets.  The Treasury Department is responsible for reviewing the purchase of American assets by foreign companies.

Since the economic meltdown of four years ago China has pushed out of the third world into western markets, scooping up bargains.  The emergence of China as a driver in western economies risks political uproar, as demonstrated with the CNOOC deal.   But in the aftermath of the Unocal debacle China has come to see the importance of tying business strategies to sophisticated messaging.  Through the retention of well-established and deeply connected lobbying firms like Hill & Knowlton that is clearly lesson learned.   The Nexen deal is not a singular event.  In the coming years China will enlarge its North American business footprint, as political obstacles erode over time, which will create positive opportunities for lobbyists to help China partner its economic clout with western markets and western democratic institutions.

These leaders-turned-lobbyists won’t take much of a trimming if countries like Eritrea and Uzbekistan are cut out of their portfolios by Wolf’s legislation.   That said, the anguish will be audible if major players like China, Saudi Arabia and Burma, all of which are cited as countries of “particular concern” by the State Department, remain on Wolf’s black list.  While hard numbers are impossible to fix, some have estimated that Saudi Arabia has pumped roughly 100 million advocacy dollars into Washington since 2000.  That isn’t all.  As currently written, Wolf’s bill extends the ten year ban to state-owned companies too, scores of which have high profiles in Washington.  For retired public officials with foreign policy resumes, Wolf’s ban would mean a serious check on their ability to parlay big wheel government work into private sector paydays.

In interviews Rep. Wolf has identified religious persecution as the prime mover of his conscience on this legislation.  This emphasis distinguishes Wolf’s effort from earlier measures proposed to raise a wall between K Street and politically unsavory countries, the bulk of which have focused on broad human rights abuses and were generated by liberals.  In recent years the persecution of Christian worshippers and activists in the Middle East and Asia has become a topic of passionate concern among American evangelicals and their D.C. advocates.   By focusing on religious repression, and more particularly the suffering of Christians in countries like China, Wolf has framed the issue from the right.  If liberal human rights watchers and conservative religious freedom advocates can unite behind Wolf’s bill as it travels out of House, the prospect for passage of some version of the legislation is above the mean.

There would be real fallout if this came to pass, hitting some major D.C. lobbying shops.  But lobbyists should be consoled by the fact it could have been a lot worse.  Which foreign countries were on the no-lobby list when Wolf first introduced his legislation?  Everyone of them but the USA.

The SCA, a 501(c)(4), is the lobbying arm of a consortium of eleven atheist or humanist groups, which in the ten years of its existence it has targeted the role of religion in the political sphere while promoting Federal policies that act “without reference to supernatural forces.” Small in size and modestly budgeted, the SCA has nonetheless attracted a top-line board of advisors, including the eminent British scientist Richard Dawkins, the acclaimed novelist Salman Rushdie and the one-time Saturday Night Live comedian Julia Sweeney. Until his death last year, the writer and commentator Christopher Hitchens also served on the SCA’s advisory board.

While the SCA’s posture on the Hill has been aggressive, staking out stringently secular positions on foreign aid, healthcare and marriage equality, its presence has been effectively neutralized by the massive faith-based interest groups that drive much of Washington’s legislative agenda. Even on symbolic issues the SCA has had little or no impact. Federal support continues to flow to the Boy Scouts, which the SCA criticizes as “religiously-biased,” and school children still repeat the words “Under God” while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Only one member of Congress, Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA), is an out of the closet atheist, and he didn’t profess his secularism until 2007.

Stymied at the national level the SCA has now shifted its gaze to state and local issues. Under the leadership of a new Executive Director, Edwina Rogers, a Republican political operative with ties to both Bush administrations, the SCA has launched an ambitious five-stage plan to open local SCA chapters in every state, plus Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. The first wave of this roll-out is timed to run to the end of June 2012, with the final stages culminating in August 2012. Two states, Alabama and Arizona, already have active SCA offices.

The local issues the SCA is moving on run the political table. In California they are challenging the daily prayer said in the State Assembly, while in Virginia they are protesting a law that shields religious-affiliated adoption agencies from having to place children with gay couples. In New Hampshire it is mobilizing opposition to a health care exemption that would allow religious institutions to opt-out of providing contraceptive coverage to their employees.

Operating in the most religious country in the first world, the SCA’s agenda would appear to be in need of last rites. But recent polling by the prestigious Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life suggests a nation less homogenous on faith issues, and more open to secular perspectives. For example, the Pew study revealed that even in the red state of Georgia nearly a third of the population downplays the significance of religion in their lives. Indeed, the SCA cites other polling that indicates as many as 40 million Americans do not identify with any religion. With numbers like these to bolster its outreach, and with an ambitious shift in strategy, the SCA may emerge as a more effective player in American lobbying, offering new opportunities to political consultants sympathetic to its humanist platform. Of course, given the vastly powerful religious groups that would oppose its every move, some might say the SCA doesn’t have a prayer of a chance of succeeding. Then again, they wouldn’t say they need one.