Genentech Puts Words In the Mouths of Congress Members 229
theodp writes "In the official record of the historic House debate on overhauling health care, the speeches of many lawmakers echo with remarkable similarities. Often, that was no accident. Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech. E-mail obtained by the NY Times shows that lobbyists drafted one statement for Democrats and another for Republicans. Genentech, a subsidiary of Swiss drug giant Roche, estimates that 42 House members picked up some of its talking points — 22 Republicans and 20 Democrats, an unusual bipartisan coup for lobbyists. ... The statements were not intended to change the bill, which was not open for much amendment during the debate. They were meant to show bipartisan support for certain provisions, even though the vote on passage generally followed party lines. ... Asked about the Congressional statements, a lobbyist close to Genentech said: 'This happens all the time. There was nothing nefarious about it.'"
Re:Yay lobbyist-speak (Score:3, Informative)
"The entire point of republican democracy, as opposed to direct democracy, is that making representation a full-time job allows our representatives to put the time and effort into being informed about the issues."
It's called a representative democracy, not a republican democracy. I know many monarchies who have a representative democratic system.
It's the other way around... (Score:3, Informative)
Shouldn't this headline actually read, "42 House members plagiarize report by Genetech". Isn't the reality that these politicians had no opinions, or at least lacked the will to find and articulate one, and instead opted to copy someone else. Not that it makes the whole situation any less shameful.
Re:Hahahahahaha! (Score:2, Informative)
Yo, faggot, of course you can theoretically buy some shares in many of these major corporations. Go talk to a stockbroker who can arrange it.
But there are a few things to keep in mind:
1) You'll typically need to buy these shares in bundles of 5000 or more. Depending on the stock involved, you can be looking into paying $25000 to $250000 per bundle. That's well outside what most Americans can afford, especially given that they likely won't receive dividends, and if they do, it's often on the order of a few cents per share.
2) Even if you can afford to buy millions of shares, you'll usually never be able to buy enough to have any real say in the operations of the corporation, let alone any degree of control.
3) Some corporations aren't public, or have very restrictive rules in place regarding the transfer of shares. So you may not even be able to buy in in the first place.
You'll probably think that mutual funds are the answer to these problems, but in reality they aren't. You still won't directly own any shares in the corporations that control you, you'll still never own enough to have any appreciable control of your own, and even in the long term you likely won't make anything beyond a token return on your holdings.
We need another party (Score:5, Informative)
You got that right! (Score:3, Informative)
In an interview, Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, said: “I regret that the language was the same. I did not know it was.” He said he got his statement from his staff and “did not know where they got the information from.”
So, this guy gets paid at least $174,000 per year [about.com] plus all those awesome perks and retirement plans that none of us peons could ever get, and he can't do his own homework?!
What does this guy do all day?
Re:Nixon (Score:3, Informative)
politicised as thing have become you must think Bush thought of it, but was told the Military would not obey
So you are explicitly saying that Bush wanted to militarily take over the country? You have absolutely no evidence for this, and present none other than "things have become politicized." In four years things are still going to be politicized; will you be afraid then that the president will try to take over the country militarily?
Conspiracy theories such as these are popular among those who have a better idea of how Hollywood works than how reality works. You believe an idea for which there is no evidence, you present no evidence, and yet you still believe it. This is called FAITH. Now, I think you are probably well educated, so this is a good example of how easy it is to fall into a trap when you start basing your views on assumptions and not on evidence. Science calls for evidence in everything. Lets get back to science.
Re:Puppets! (Score:1, Informative)
Which is exactly why the government should be as small and weak as possible.
We're turning into a nanny state where the government controls everybody. That's why corporations are trying so hard to lobby politicians - because if they can control the politicians, they can control us. We have detailed rules and regulations covering everything we do, and we're at the point where nobody seems to care if we create even more.
There will always be somebody trying to control people. That means as long as the government controls the people, there will always be somebody trying to control the government. The only way around it is to decrease the size of the government, take away its power, and stop being controlled by it.
Re:Yay lobbyist-speak (Score:5, Informative)
You wouldn't believe how many educated people I talked to were certain that president Bush would call martial law and cancel the election before Obama could be voted in (thus becoming emperor). You may have been one of them.
I guess you can call me "one of them". Although, I never thought it was a certainty, just a possibility.
During the congressional debates on the bank bailout bill, Representative Brad Sherman related that members of congress were told that martial law would be declared if the bailout bill was not passed. [youtube.com] The damage-control story after Rep. Sherman's revelation was that "martial law" was a metaphorical phrase amongst congresspeople meaning that the House leadership would ram through legislation in spite of the concerns of the larger body. Problem is, the phrase has never been used to mean that.
Or at least, I have never encountered a historically documented use of that phrase. Maybe you know of one?
After Bush got out of office, we find out that the Bush administration wanted to use the military to arrest terror suspects inside of the United States. [huffingtonpost.com]So yeah, it seemed like a real possibility, and after the fact, we find out that they were up to shenanigans like this. I don't think the people who suspected this were so paranoid.
The problem is a good portion of the US has trouble figuring out how to distinguish good information from bad information.
I suppose you have a universally valid method for doing so?
Re:Puppets! (Score:3, Informative)
It is unfortunate, but the only way to keep the politicians from doing what you don't want them to do is by having an active populace.
A couple thoughts here.
It has been argued quite well and by people much more knowledgeable than I that corruption increases with the size of government, and that an active and attentive population is needed even with small government, and at increasing levels of citizen attention and effort (as well as taxes) as government size increases, until a tipping point is reached where the government seizes and holds all power.
Historically, there has never been a government without corruption and the only proven-successful strategy is to attempt to keep governments' power and reach to a minimum so that the temptation/rewards in corruption are far, far smaller than the risks and to minimize any damage possible. By keeping government small and more local in nature, and thus a distributed system, it eliminates the possibility of corruption taking over the system through a single point of failure.
So, it's simple really; citizens must choose between the size of their government and the amount of corruption, taxation, and loss-of-freedom they are willing to accept against their willingness to pay attention to, pay for, and participate in, governing. The argument for smaller government is apparent from this view in that loss of individual freedom, corruption, and taxation are smaller factors, thus reducing the amount of attention & resources citizens must expend to keep government under control and maintain an acceptable level of freedom and costs in taxation and regulation.
Strat