Help Conyers Stand Up To His Special Interests

While I am thrilled with the election victories progressives achieved in November, I am starting to see troubling signs that special interests are increasingly calling the shots. Take a seemingly incomprehensible bill sponsored by John Conyers, a heroic congressman who for years called out the Bush administration for the lies that led to war & the war crimes it perpetrated. As I've become more politically educated and informed, I've consistently found John Conyers fighting the good fight, exposing corruption and looking out for my interests.

The bill, H.R.801 , carries the deceptive title of Fair Copyright in Research Works Act. What it does is effectively double tax Americans who wish to access information that they have already paid to have produced.

Imagine you hire a scientist to come up with a new technology to increase your company's productivity. You give them money, and they give you information. Now, imagine the scientist charges you a fee for the privelege of reading the report you hired him to produce. Would you be upset with this arrangement? This is exactly what John Conyers is trying to push thru Congress. The bill would essentially allow publishers to charge for access to tax-funded research.

Why is John Conyers pushing this legislation? A great article on the Huffington Post follows the money to find out.

...sponsors of this bill -- led by Rep. John Conyers -- received twice as much money from the publishing industry as those on the relevant committee who are not sponsors.

The lesson to be learned here is that just because the party in power is generally one you might prefer, you cannot simply assume everything is now going to be all rainbows and unicorns in Washington. In fact, progressives should be even more vigilent now, keeping corruption and special interests in check, to ensure Americans do not lose confidence in our hard fought victories. Change Congress is a campaign to force congress to commit to real campaign finance reform:

Reforming the system will never be Congress’s first priority until a grassroots movement gives politicians a choice: You can have our money or special interest money, but not both. Now is the time to push for this change, and that’s why the donor strike is important. Please sign on the right.

All citizens, democrats and republicans, progressives and conservatives, should find this a worthwhile goal.