The High Cost of Lobbyists

UPI reports:

...When fear of anthrax was at its peak, shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, scientists at the Institute of Medicine called for a vaccine that was effective in 30 days, had few side effects and a long shelf life, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.

VaxGen Inc. of San Francisco was preparing just such a vaccine, and even won an
$877.5 million contract, but its product never made it into the stockpile because of lobbying by the old vaccine's producer, Emergent BioSolutions Inc. of Rockville, Md., the Times said.

Emergent, which relied on its anthrax vaccine to remain solvent, hired 50 lobbyists, turning the tables quickly on VaxGen. Stricter testing requirements were imposed, and Congress overruled the advice of scientific advisers who recommended the company be paid partially in advance to finalize the vaccine, the newspaper said.

As a result, six years later, the stockpile is filled with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the Emergent vaccine, the Times reported,
and Emergent continues to win new federal contracts.

Emergent's Board of Directors includes Joe Allbaugh and Jerome Hauer.

The cost of politicians

Martin Hutchinson has an excellent essay up on Asia Times Online - The cost of politicians:

...One of the great ironies of the American Revolution is that the colonists, who rebelled against British-imposed taxes lower than those of the mother country, were in reality living in the lowest tax polity in the history of civilized mankind. Needless to say, once the United States had achieved independence, the taxation on its people was never as low again, even though for the country's first century and a half most US governments pursued admirably frugal policies.

....Finally the third area, economically counterproductive decisions made in pursuit of non-economic goals. Try World War I for a start, on the parts of both Britain and the United States. Neither had anything to gain economically or even politically from participation in the war, yet in both cases political blundering in pursuit of no well-established principle caused untold economic as well as personal harm. Similarly, the 2003 invasion of Iraq had no clear economic justification - if it was undertaken to keep oil prices down, then why are they running at four times their level when the operation was undertaken?

...The solutions are difficult, but the problem is there and appears to be getting worse. The number of lobbyists in Washington has doubled since 2000 and the annual number of Congressional spending earmarks has multiplied by 10 since 1994. As we turn our jaded attention once again to the political process and the selection of a government for 2009-13, it is worth remembering: There must be a better way."