What we actually are angry about is the presence of money in politics. American political campaigns burn money like nothing else, which is akin to being in a government meeting where everyone is shouting over one another, like to the point where people are bringing in loudspeakers and megaphones. If that example were a real situation, it would be entirely legal to go and have police officers take away the megaphones, and tell people to quiet down and take their turn.

But because money is involved, SCOTUS says that, no, shouting over everyone else with a big pile of cash is TOTALLY protected speech. Any money at all that is to effect political speech is inherently protected. And so we have campaign seasons that burn billions of dollars, and people who are basically not listened to, because all the anti-bribery law that was supposed to stop the election fundraising arms race got thrown out over a decade ago.

[0] A citizen-led plan to reactivate Salt Lake City's historic train station and reroute our regional rail service over to it.

[1] Laws that would make it easier to purchase repair parts for broken electronics and prohibit the use of digital locks to prevent the repair of said electronics.

a) trade organizations (we're all the onion farmers in Nebraska and want to make sure the Nebraska legislature doesn't pass laws that negatively impact us and promote laws that help us)

and

b) activist organizations (we're a coalition of organizations that protect water usage in the Mississippi delta and want to pass laws that promote conservation in those states)

Those groups often choose to retain professional lobbyists but will also send groups of interested parties to lobby who are not professional lobbyists.

Do you also ban trade organizations and activist organizations in this case? Do you carve out exceptions for them and just ban the "freelance" lobbyists? Most lobbying is meeting with legislators and talking with them about issues, educating them. How do you ban that without making legislators effectively useless (or if you're cynical, even more useless)?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with lobbying, it is an essential part of the government and can not be legislated away, without crippling the entire country.