“Elsevier and its senior executives last year made 31 contributions to House members totaling $29,500. Twelve contributions totaling $8,500 went to Maloney; Issa received two for a total of $2,000.”

Congress-people are cheap whores. For $8,500 and $2,000 dollars, they gladly screw Americas.

Are you people completely ignorant of history?  The
prisoners must pay for their own maintenance.  This is
merely the company store policy writ scholarly.

Elsevier publishes some of the most expensive journals on the planet. The “added value” includes mostly expensive glossy paper and corporate greed. You should check their subscription prices. They are astronomical.

Why does that scumbag Issa need contributions from anyone?  He’s a damn
millionaire for chrissakes!  Use your own money you miserable dirtbag! 
Millionaires do not represent the people!!! Only fools think they do.

NASA has been doing this practically since its inception. Who paid for all those nice pictures of the earth and other bodies in space? We did. I remember when I bought a poster of an earth from space picture at Cape Kennedy in Florida in 1988 NASA for $8 (there is no way the poster paper and printing the picture on it cost NASA more than 50 cents!).  Since the internet made downloading available, things have improved somewhat but they STILL want to charge you for some types of photos. That’s wrong.

And as to government research which has any practical or economic value, isn’t it AMAZING that those “self made entrepreneurs”, those “free market” lovers and disdainers of all “socialist giveaways”  ALWAYS can, with sufficient digging into their past, be found to have gotten a hold of a patent or a process developed with tax payer dollars. It’s been an ongoing scam for over 100 YEARS!

Do you know how this works? An industrialist has an idea but doesn’t have the capital to find out if it will work or how to make it work. He is well connected because he comes from a rich family. He gets the U.S. government to fund the research through his friendly senator or congressperson and the very same crooked representative makes sure the patent (after millions or billions of your dollars are spent) gets “offloaded” to “private enterprise” (for a song) as a “government efficiency measure”.

The USA is a place where the capital for capitalism mostly comes from socialising the cost of research to the people. And that was BEFORE the financial nightmare got going where socialising losses got into the act.

Issa should be in jail with all the other crooks from congress.

“A Scientific American blog said it amounts to paying twice”

Scientific American runs climate denier articles.

There are plenty of good sources of scientific info for the layman. There aren’t really any secrets being kept except somewhat in regards to military. There was a discussion recently about whether info about a highly contagious form of bird flu that was developed in a lab should be available. Lets not go all tinfoil hat, please.

Formerly the Government financed a great deal of research, mostly in public universities, the results were publicly known and were used commonly and privately.  This was when wealth was taxed, yet wealth’s benefit was great.

As wealth was more upwardly concentrated and “freed” from the burden of taxation, wealth made donations to (bought) universities and were rewarded with complete control of results, or the results that were desired.  Publicly funded research can easily be cut, as the private sector does everything more efficiently in results and costs, along with unnecessary public expenditures like education, arts, health care, etc. etc. 

In a consumer driven economic system, based upon the concept that everything imaginable is a commodity and its price is in the control of speculators, this can’t be a surprise.

In a rapidly declining “educated” population, this policy to charge for access is largely flawed.  A deminimus fee of $1-$3 would not be out of line but the numbers being thrown about seem too high.

AS economies become knowledge based financial hindrence to access to knowledge is society’s own downfall.

Pretty soon the ten commandments will require a fee.  How does that work?

Want to know how to use a screwdriver or turn on a lawnmower: “That’ll be $35!”

How reasonab;e scientists can make a reasonable case for withholding information gained from research from immediate, free and open release to the public is weird! WikiLeaks to the rescue!
Free Bradley Manning and Julian Assange!

There seems to be some sort of jihad to keep the public
in the dark on all, or any, issue which the public
should know about and which the paying public has a
right to know about.

A ‘secret’ government will result in the rule of law
being replaced by the rule of men - which will result
in tyranny.