OT: Health Care Debate Framed by Lobbyists

Greg G · 2009-11-15T10:55:12+00:00

From the "evil left wing" New York Times:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In House, Many Spoke With One Voice: Lobbyists? In the official record of the historic House debate on overhaulinghealth care, the speeches of many lawmakers echo with similarities.Often, that was no accident. Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in wholeor in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of theworld?s largest biotechnology companies. E-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that the lobbyistsdrafted one statement for Democrats and another for Republicans. The lobbyists, employed by Genentech and by two Washington law firms,were remarkably successful in getting the statements printed in theCongressional Record under the names of different members of Congress.Genentech, a subsidiary of the Swiss drug giant Roche, estimates that42 House members picked up some of its talking points: 22 Republicansand 20 Democrats, an unusual bipartisan coup for lobbyists. ....The e-mail messages and their attached documents indicate that thestatements were based on information supplied by Genentech employeesto one of its lobbyists, Matthew L. Berzok, a lawyer at Ryan,MacKinnon, Vasapoli & Berzok who is identified as the "author" of thedocuments. The statements were disseminated by lobbyists at a big lawfirm, Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal."....-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- tell me anything useful is ever going to occur in this country aslong as K-Street stands...Greg G.