BraceLand

I just finished writing my statement of purpose for my grad school applications on the need for transparency paired with  robust, public-interest media in order to counteract corruption in the policymaking process.  Almost as soon as I’d hit save and finally, after weeks of agonizing revisions, put the piece to rest I opened the New York Times to find this article about lobbyists’ influence over the congressional statements on health care reform.  The most galling part of the article was not that congresspeople submitted statements for the congressional record that had been drafted by lobbyists.  The most galling part was that seemingly no one on Capitol Hill seemed to think there is anything wrong with it.  They’re even going on record!

In a written addendum in the Congressional Record, Mr. Hare said the bill would also create high-paying jobs. Timothy Schlittner, a spokesman for Mr. Hare, said: “That part of his statement was drafted for us by Roche pharmaceutical company. It is something he agrees with.”

and

[Congressman] Brady’s chief of staff, Stanley V. White, said he had received the draft statement from a lobbyist for Genentech’s parent company, Roche.

“We were approached by the lobbyist, who asked if we would be willing to enter a statement in the Congressional Record,” Mr. White said. “I asked him for a draft. I tweaked a couple of words. There’s not much reason to reinvent the wheel on a Congressional Record entry.”

Larry Lessig has made waves recently, arguing that transparency in itself isn’t necessarily good for democracy.  If citizens are exposed to the rampant corruption intrinsic in the system they may just give up hope and disengage from the process altogether.  There’ll be no shock value, as there clearly isn’t in Washington these days, judging by the reaction of the members of congress and their staffs.  I agree with Lessig, which is why I declare in my statement of purpose (is that like a mission statement?) that we need to match transparency with real journalism (not punditism) and media literacy training so that citizens have avenues to feed back into the process.

For now, I’ll just give props to the New York Times for actually doing some reporting that holds decision makers accountable.   Now if they just didn’t have that whole “profit” thing to worry about….