New American Foundation announced a new program that “will create a pipeline of technologists into Congressional offices to improve policymaking.”
Love the “to improve policymaking” line. Good stuff. But, gee, that looks an awful lot like hard-wiring (Silicon Valley) lobbyists directly into Capitol Hill. And, that doesn’t seem quite right.
Imagine if a company like Comcast did that? Oh, boy. That would raise a stink, don’t you think?
Anyway, in a statement, NAF noted:
The Open Technology Institute at New America (OTI) is excited to announce the launch of TechCongress, a new nonpartisan fellowship program that will place technologists in Congressional offices to inject greater technical expertise into the policymaking process. Led by Travis Moore, a former legislative and operations director in the office of former Rep. Henry Waxman, TechCongress is expected to begin placing fellows on the Hill in early 2016. TechCongress is the first of several new projects coming from OTI that are aimed at bridging the divide between the tech and policy communities… (Emphasis added)
The program will be initially funded by Reid Hoffman, a billionaire entrepreneur who co-founded LinkedIn. Hoffman is also a political activist of sorts, having co-founded the FWD.us PAC with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. And, he’s also given $150,000 to Larry Lessig’s (pro-Net Neutrality, anti-First Amendment, etc.) MayDayPAC.
Not satisfied with all its policy wins of late, Silicon Valley hard-wires its lobbyists into Capitol Hill to improve its odds (and further hoodwink Americans).
NAF is a well known progressive, pro-Google (funded) lobbying, er, advocacy shop in DC. In fact, its current chairman is Google’s Eric Schmidt.
Think those technologists / lobbyists are going to give the straight stuff on Net Neutrality, or privacy regulation, or search neutrality, or ad blocking, or Wi-spying, or…
…you get the idea.
Leave it to the Left to skirt the very campaign finance laws and First Amendment restrictions it has shackled the rest of us with. “Do as I say, not as I do, plebs.”
But, you know, it’s A-OK because their message is on the side of our “better angels.”
Yeah, sure it is.
#hypocrisy
