Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: Re: you should be outraged that a few members [I know I am djf]
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 20:05:06 -0400
X-Sender: jcp () mail jcphome com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0.1 Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 16:41:14 -0700 To: farber () cis upenn edu From: "Joseph C. Pistritto" <jcp () jcphome com> Subject: Re: IP: you should be outraged that a few members [I know I am djf] I addition to being outraged, its important to note this form of attack is almost impossible to defend against because there's so little visiblity beforehand. One of the *least* transparent parts of our government is the conference committee process. I certainly know I never heard about it in civics class... I dont know how long the conference to floor-vote interval was on this bill, but a casual reading of the Thomas system records on another bill I was involved with shows about 36 hours from conference report to the full House till passage by BOTH houses. Not a lot of time to influence the process. This is one reason people have lobbyists ON the Hill. To catch things like this in flight (or in the decision process leading up to conference) and influence them on the spot. Given the fact that stuff like this tends to happen at end-of-session, when everyone is distracted (especially this year, with both Clinton and the budget late in the session) I kind of suspect a bumper-crop this year of this stuff. Lobbyists *know* when this stuff is likely, thats what they're paid for... Like i say, this process is pretty un-transparent. One might even say opaque. Best regards, -jcp-
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- IP: Re: you should be outraged that a few members [I know I am djf] Dave Farber (Oct 13)