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Is Open Government Anti-Corporate?

Started by TLF · 11 months ago

Via Ellen Miller, I came to a post on techPresident lamenting corporations’ use of their customer databases to lobby Congress. Zephyr Teachout received an email from United Airlines asking her to go to a petition site which asked her to contact her member of Congress about oil specula ... Continue reading »

3 comments

  • MikeT

    12 months ago


    I don’t think this is the unfortunate story Teachout believes it to be. More important than the fact that a corporation is using information at its disposal to advance its public policy agenda is the fact that the corporation feels obligated to communicate with Congress through the intermediary of its customers (and presumably shareholders). That’s a move in the direction of openness and democracy.


    It'd be even better if this were the only way for an incorporated entity to communicate with Congress. Corporations of any sort, from unions, to non-profits, to companies, should have no legal right to lobby Congress.
    reply
  • Jim Harper

    12 months ago

    I appreciate the good-government sentiment, MikeT, and the even-handedness, but the cure for bad speech is more speech, not repression.

    A corporation is just an assemblage of people, and if that assemblage wants to address the government about certain things, I don't see how stopping it from doing so is consistent with the premises of our free society.
    reply
  • Gary McGath

    12 months ago

    That sounds like spam to me. It will do what spam always does: make a lot of people mad and get a very tiny number of positive responses.
    reply

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