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To: Ian@SI who wrote (19363)	9/4/1998 2:27:00 PM
From: BillyG	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25960

Congress overrode Clinton's veto........... Politics for Sale April 30, 1998 By Richard L. Brandt A problem exists in the U.S. political system; it involves the popular business tactic of buying off politicians, wrapping them in a blanket of special interests and stuffing them into the back pockets of megacorporations. Specifically, we don't do enough of this--at least not in the tech business. I'm all for a representative democracy in which politicians cater to the population's needs rather than to those of special interests. And there is a way for voters to get their elected representatives' attention: vote. But the businesses that are determining the economic future of this country have another way to get politicians' attention: Pay for it. Most technology companies have, to date, thought that was beneath them. They're wrong. Like it or not, campaign contributions and lobbying are the oil on which the political machine runs, and if technology businesses don't contribute, the machine is likely to run in the wrong direction. I believe Silicon Valley has been more influential in Washington, D.C., than most people (including Valley executives) acknowledge. There's a simple reason for this: Believe it or not, most politicians--with a few high-profile exceptions--are not stupid. They know how important the technology sector is to the economy. That's how the semiconductor industry got Washington to back protectionist measures against Japan in the 1980s. It's why Congress mustered enough votes to override President Clinton's wrongheaded veto of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Hell, it's why the Department of Justice's Joel Klein is investigating the crap out of Microsoft Corp. But most of the tech community's efforts on this front have been extraordinarily haphazard. They also haven't represented a good cross section of technology business executives. The best way to educate the Beltway is for a diverse group of business interests to throw some money into the loop and, like preachers at a soup kitchen, force the people with their hands out to listen to a little sermon. There are signs of progress. John Doerr's TechNet, Silicon Valley's lobbying organization, has gotten some attention in the nation's capital, and companies such as Microsoft and Netscape Communications Corp. have started making contributions. Rep. Billy Tauzin, who represents Louisiana's third district and describes himself as "your Cajun ambassador to Congress," may not seem like the most obvious supporter of the computer business, but he was at Netscape headquarters one afternoon in April, meeting the press. And he was hitting every hot button that gets the Valley buzzing: Preventing high-profile attorney Bill Lerach from greasing the skids for more shareholder suits, eliminating the idiotic attempts to cripple encryption technology, keeping the government out of Internet domain naming, pushing forward high-definition digital TV, promoting the Internet Tax Freedom Act and eliminating the Federal Communications Commission and telco monopolies. Why is Tauzin so well-informed? Because as chairman of the influential House Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade and Consumer Protection, TechNet has wooed him. The organization sponsored a fund-raising dinner for Tauzin later that evening, attended by Microsoft COO Bob Herbold and Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale. So how does Tauzin handle the most contentious issue between those two executives and continue to collect money from both? Like a consummate politician. He insists that monopoly control is the one area in high tech where it's appropriate for the U.S. government to get involved. But, he says, he hasn't yet determined whether Microsoft's behavior has been improper. He'd like to see enough DoJ scrutiny to keep Microsoft in line without specific action. This example illustrates the power of money. If enough tech businesses with diverse views contribute sufficient greenbacks, the politicians will begin to understand the issues, give balance to the polemical issues and promote those issues on which most businesses agree. There are worse special-interest groups for Washington to pay attention to. If you don't get involved, they will. Richard L. Brandt is editor in chief of UPSIDE. upside.com