Open Access Needs Better 'Government Relations'

"Apparently, the Open Access movement is falling behind and needs better 'Government Relations'. Today, everyone has their "Vice President for Government Relations" or some other office like that: Universities (e.g., University of Colorado, UM, Rice, the UC system, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, Washington State, University of Minnesota, Columbia, Carnegie Mellon, only to name a few), professors (via AAUP) and of course, the scholarly publishing industry, for example Elsevier's Angelika Lex, "Vice President for Academic and Government Relations"....These past few days, we've seen a rare glimpse into how these publishers secure their profits. Not only do they invest in full-time employees whose sole purpose it is to lobby governments into preventing Open Access. They also buy access to elected members of parliaments....Given this continuity in their efforts to block Open Access, it is not entirely unrealistic to expect the industry to oppose OA on multiple levels at the same time and wage war by attacking OA in a two-pronged approach on two fronts simultaneously: both by supporting RWA and by providing many industry-friendly answers to the OSTP RFIs. Given the attention RWA has gotten, maybe we will be able to block this legislation, but have enough of OA supporters sent in their answers to the OSTP RFIs? ..."