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By Susan Zakin
by Juan Cole
$35.00
$35
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epSos.de (CC BY 2.0)
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The results are conclusive. Of more than 4,000 peer reviewed papers published over a period of 20 years, 97.1 percent agree that climate change is man-made.
Posted on May 16, 2013
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AP/Mel Evans
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By Chris Hedges — The for-profit prison industry, which is expanding across the nation, has blunted prison reform, stymied repeal of our draconian drug laws and successfully lobbied for harsher and harsher detention policies. Mass incarceration is increasingly about corporate profit, not justice.
Posted on Feb 17, 2013
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LaDawna's pics (CC BY 2.0)
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By Alexander Reed Kelly — Mindful of the bewildering complexity of the issues they report, the best journalists are also teachers who patiently explain the deep meanings and consequences of their findings in language literate audiences can understand. With the Affordable Care Act going into full effect in less than a year, a detailed lesson on how it will impact many Americans’ finances is urgent.
Posted on Feb 9, 2013
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jontintinjordan (CC BY 2.0)
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According to figures reported under the Lobbying Disclosure Act, money spent to influence politicians decreased in 2011 and 2012. So did the total number of registered lobbyists. Does that mean the business is on the decline?
Posted on Feb 5, 2013
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By Robert Reich — America’s children seem to be shortchanged on almost every issue we face as a society. Not only are we failing to protect them from deranged people wielding semiautomatic guns, but we’re also not protecting them from poverty.
Posted on Dec 18, 2012
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By David Sirota — There are two types of money that corrupt our politics. After a national election that cost more than $2 billion, most of us know about the blatant kind.
Posted on Nov 9, 2012
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A look at the day’s political happenings, including a 10-year-old’s impassioned plea to the New York City Council and a new poll shows Romney has a likability problem.
Posted on Jul 26, 2012
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The titans of the Web—Facebook, Google, eBay and Amazon—have joined forces to make their voices heard in Washington, forming a powerful lobbying group called the Internet Association.
Posted on Jul 26, 2012
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A look at the day’s political happenings, including the controversy over an alleged Romney campaign remark and Herman Cain comes to Mitt’s defense on tax returns.
Posted on Jul 25, 2012
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blakespot (CC BY 2.0)
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Doctors, drugmakers, regulators and lobbyists pushed high doses of medications that may have been ineffective or at times even lethal on millions of anemic patients over two decades, making upward of $8 billion a year for two companies. “How did this happen?” asks Peter Whoriskey of The Washington Post.
Posted on Jul 20, 2012
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As infographics go, this one, based on data from the Center for Responsive Politics, is poster-sized. But then that’s the whole point. See how the typical household income stacks up against the cost of Kate Middleton’s wedding dress.
Posted on Nov 21, 2011
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YouTube / RonPaul2008dotcom
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With the simple dictum “don’t be evil” as its motto, the Internet software giant Google—which ranked as the third-highest lobbying spender in the tech industry in 2010—wages an aggressive image and relations campaign with an international public, and its strategy is evolving. (more)
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Flickr / Nick Humphries
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Fearing reduced chances for re-election by a public angry about mass unemployment, President Obama walked away from a nationwide plan to strengthen air quality standards after business interests lobbied aggressively in opposition. (more)
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AP / Vahid Salemi
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Like a piece of Swiss cheese, U.S. sanction policy is riddled with holes, according to reports. A former Treasury official claims licenses to trade with blacklisted countries such as Iran have been doled out to the tune of billions of dollars in profits, all at the behest of lobbying groups.
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Flickr / Richard Loyal French (CC-BY-ND)
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A 10-year study of the influence business finds that the billions of dollars ($3.5 billion in 2009 alone, according to the Center for Responsive Politics) thrown at elected officials add up to a whole lot of nothing—that is, the influential spend a lot of time, energy and cash stalemating each other and keeping things the way they are.
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Flickr / kevindooley (CC-BY)
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The Supreme Court has pretty much decided the National Rifle Association’s main issue, but the pressure group, which has managed to make a plaything of Congress, shows no signs of disarming or disbanding. Instead, the gun lobby has set its sights on health care, Elena Kagan and other matters of state.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By Chris Hedges — A close reading of the new health care legislation, which will conveniently take effect in 2014 after the next presidential election, is deeply depressing.
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By Ruth Marcus — “You don’t have to drink. You just have to pay.” Has there ever been a better summary of how Washington works—and the need for campaign finance reform—than this line from a 2007 e-mail?
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By Joe Conason — Discredited as the financial powers are, their wealth alone continues to provide them with wildly disproportionate influence over the political process.
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By Eugene Robinson — Perhaps Obama could have scored more popularity points if he had ordered a few financiers to be led out of the Cooper Union auditorium in handcuffs.
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AP / Carolyn Kaster
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By Chris Hedges — Ralph Nader’s descent from being one of the most respected and powerful men in the country to being a pariah illustrates the totality of the corporate coup.
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Wikimedia Commons / United States Senate
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More legal and political fallout is on the way for Sen. John Ensign as a result of his affair with a former aide’s wife. The New York Times reported Wednesday that new e-mail evidence has emerged suggesting the Nevada senator knew he was trying to help said aide, Douglas Hampton, land lobbying work after Ensign’s relationship with Hampton’s wife, Cynthia, was over.
Posted on Mar 10, 2010
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AP / Jason Reed, pool
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Rep. Dennis Kucinich tells us why he isn’t buckling under pressure to vote for the president’s health care reform bill: “Every plan that’s put forth by our government ends up benefiting the health insurance industry.”
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AP / Jason Reed, pool
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Rep. Dennis Kucinich tells us why he isn’t buckling under pressure to vote for the president’s health care reform bill (“Every plan that’s put forth by our government ends up benefiting the health insurance industry”).
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By Marcus Stern, ProPublica —
A transfer of billions of dollars in federal aid from public projects in Puerto Rico to one of the world’s largest liquor conglomerates over the next 30 years continues to move forward without any objection from Congress.
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Flickr.com / HSeverson
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With six lobbyists for every congressperson and $380 million spent on lobbying in recent months, the health care industry has pulled out all the stops in battling against any reform to the nation’s health insurance system, no matter how watered down it might be.
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Flickr / Paul Keleher
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President Obama and most Democrats see a government-run health plan that competes with private insurers as vital to real health care reform, but a veto- and filibuster-proof majority just ain’t what it used to be. In the face of a massive lobbying effort, the White House has indicated a willingness to shelve the public option.
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Background: Flickr / Tracy O
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For a mere $250,000, lobbyists and captains of industry were invited to “an off-the-record dinner and discussion at the home of [Washington Post] CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth.” Invitees were promised unfettered access to the paper’s reporters as well as “key Obama administration and congressional leaders.”
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guardian.co.uk
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If a movie written about Facebook by Aaron Sorkin wasn’t enough, the fast-growing social networking site is in the midst of hiring lobbyists in both Washington and Brussels to push for easing privacy regulations, no matter how well-meaning those restrictions may be, “that would keep people from the beneficial sharing of information.”
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Collage from Fox and James Montgomery Flagg
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Health care reform is shaping up as astronomically expensive, but that’s only if private insurers and Big Pharma get their way, writes Clinton-era Labor Secretary Robert Reich. Without competition from the government—a public option—the health care industry will continue to gouge and Americans will still be in the weeds, a trillion dollars poorer.
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AP photo / Brennan Linsley, pool
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By Robert Scheer — The Bush-Obama strategy of throwing trillions at the banks to solve the mortgage crisis is a huge bust. The financial moguls, while tickled pink to have $1.25 trillion in toxic assets covered by the feds, along with hundreds of billions in direct handouts, are not using that money to turn around the free fall in housing foreclosures.
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By Amy Goodman — As the Obama administration pushes for a vote on health care reform before Congress recesses in August, has health industry money too thoroughly polluted the process for anything good to come of it?
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By David Sirota — In the last decade, the financial industry’s $5 billion investment in campaign contributions and lobbyists resulted in deregulation and boatloads of free money. By Bloomberg News’ account, $12.8 trillion worth of taxpayer loans, grants and guarantees—all to Wall Street.
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Flickr / debaird
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Nearly a quarter of the members of the House of Representatives find themselves embroiled in a lobbying scandal, with Rep. John Murtha at the center. One hundred four representatives earmarked more than $300 million in just one bill, allegedly in exchange for campaign contributions from a lobbying firm founded by a former Murtha protégé.
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nation.co.ke
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Without skipping a beat, once-troubled financial entities are continuing to spend big to lobby Congress as they pocket billions in TARP bailout money. The lobbying is defended by the bail-outted firms as a “transparent and effective way” to be heard on policy issues.
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Flickr / No. Nein
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President Obama says “[t]ransparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones” of his administration. To that end, he will toughen lobbying restrictions and require all federal agencies to give high priority to Freedom of Information Act requests. The president also announced a pay freeze for about 100 of his highest-paid aides.
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Flickr / Jeff Kubina
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It’s hard to get cell reception in an out-of-the-way place like Sedona, Ariz., but it helps if you sit on the Senate committee that oversees the telecommunications industry. The Washington Post has learned that AT&T and Verizon, both of which have lobbying ties to the McCain campaign, provided cell towers for the McCains’ ranch at no charge to the couple.
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collage: DoD / Flickr (Marcn)
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The answer is William Timmons, a lobbyist tapped by McCain to head his transition team. Timmons was connected to a lobbying effort on behalf of the Hussein regime, though he has denied any wrongdoing.
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David Axelrod and Rick Davis of the Obama and McCain campaigns, respectively, dispensed with the niceties on “Fox News Sunday.”
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A lobbying powerhouse with an emphatically pro-Republican political action committee is pounding Democratic Senate candidates for supporting legislation that would make it easier for workers to unionize. The ads portray Al Franken in Minnesota and Tom Allen of Maine as backing Big Brother-style surveillance of American workers.
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composite: latimes.com and Flickr / Robert Scoble
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Steve Schmidt is widely credited with re-energizing the McCain campaign with his tough and often deceptive style, but his latest is a bit much, even for a Karl Rove protégé. During a conference call with reporters, Schmidt accused The New York Times of being “a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day impugns the McCain campaign.”
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By David Sirota — In the imminent confrontation over the Employee Free Choice Act, an almost embarrassingly modest proposal, corporations are actually billing themselves as the underdog—the poor, overmatched peasant David against the Philistine monster Goliath.
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Congressional Quarterly investigates John McCain’s curious decision to pollute his maverick image by hiring a bunch of lobbyists to run his campaign. The list includes “campaign manager Rick Davis, senior adviser Charlie Black, deputy campaign manager Christian Ferry, congressional liaison John Green, senior policy adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer” and neocon chicken hawk Randy Scheunemann.
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By Marie Cocco — Congress is known for leaving business unfinished, but rarely is a task left undone for more than four decades.
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AP photo / Jeff Chiu
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It’s just too bad that the only Americans apparently qualified to advise John McCain on how to deal with the world are those hopelessly corrupted by hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent payments from foreign countries, such as beleaguered Georgia. Good thing that guys like Randy Scheunemann (above, left), whose two-man lobbying firm took in a cool million from Georgia since 2004, have a superhuman ability to separate their analysis from any financial considerations.
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Truthdigger of the Week: Sen. Angus King
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