Lawyers, Guns, and Money

Declan McCullagh declan at well.com
Sat Aug 25 20:36:39 PDT 2001


On Sat, Aug 25, 2001 at 06:49:21PM -0700, Tim May wrote:
> Washington _does_ listen to other than lawyers. The examples I gave 
> showed this to be true in the past, and almost certainly still true. 
> (And the SDI arguments were in many cases made by scientists, e.g., 
> Teller, Lowell Wood, etc.)

Right, though I see that being the case less so nowadays. The reasons
for this are many, and probably complicated, including the growth of
the federal government, the subcommittee structure divvying up power
in Congress, the rise of the permanent federal bureaucracy, and perhaps
most important, the stunning growth in nonprofit/advocacy groups.

Still, Congress and the agencies will invite stellar technologists and
researchers and scientists to testify on occasion. A handful of
congresscritters may even listen. But the rest will vote the way their
parties/backers/constituents tell them to. I recall there's only one
scientist out of 535 members of Congress, at least last I checked.

-Declan





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