Shocking Consultations!

The Tennessean has broken a shocking new story!

“Vaccine industry officials helped shape legislation behind the scenes that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist secretly amended into a bill to shield them from lawsuits, according to e-mails obtained by a public advocacy group.

E-mails and documents written by a trade group for the vaccine-makers show the organization met privately with Frist’s staff and the White House about measures that would give the industry protection from lawsuits filed by people hurt by the vaccines.

…In another e-mail, Boyer described a meeting in which a deputy of Bush strategist Karl Rove said it was “important to the President that a bill move this year,” and said “they had invited industry to discuss what they understood to be a few key remaining points” of contention.

“The intimacy of this, we think, is quite unusual,” said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, about the relationship between the organization’s lobbyists, Frist and the Bush administration. “We think it is an interesting case study of how the inside operation works in Washington.””

Gasp! You mean that Bill Frist actually met with someone in an industry that was affected by lawsuits and asked them for their opinion, before working on legislation designed to shield them from those lawsuits?

It’s outrageous! Why, the next thing you know we’ll have Democrats meeting with environmentalist groups before they craft legislation designed to deal with the environment! We could even have liberals consulting teacher’s unions about education related bills! No wonder the libs over at Think Progress & Just A Bumb In The Beltway are so incensed by this article!

Can our Democracy continue to survive if we actually have lawmakers actually consulting with the people who are effected by their legislation? Only time will tell!

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