Politics and Lobby talking in one voice

Yesterday the New York Times published a devastating article demonstrating what happens when politicians are getting too close to an industrial lobby :

In the official record of the historic House debate on overhauling health care, the speeches of many lawmakers echo with similarities. Often, that was no accident.

Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies. E-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that the lobbyists drafted one statement for Democrats and another for Republicans.

Read the whole article on the NYT-site : In House, Many Spoke With One Voice: Lobbyists’

Taking the above into account, it makes you wonder what the effect is of all the money Exxon spent on lobbyism during the past years.