LATEST POSTS
This morning, the New York Times broke the news that Joe Ricketts, the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade, is planning to unleash a race-baiting advertising assault against President Obama late in the campaign. Rickets, who used his Super PAC to fund an upset victory in Nebraska’s Senate election this week, intends to finance the anti-Obama [...]
Read More →As voters continue to rebuke status quo incumbents and corrupt politicians, yet another upset election could be on the horizon. Congressman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) is facing a Democratic primary challenge from Beto O’Rourke, a businessman and former member of the El Paso City Council. Reyes, a ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, is known for [...]
Read More →After risking their lives abroad, American veterans are returning home to a new set of dangers. For-profit college companies are increasingly targeting veterans and their education benefits as a source for easy profits. The companies have a record of fraud, from deceptive recruiting practices to extremely high drop-out and default rates. Unlike tradition private or [...]
Read More →In March, Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) led members from both parties in introducing legislation to delay the implementation of the Volcker Rule, a new regulation to limit risky trading by big banks. He was joined by Pat Toomey (R-PA), one of the biggest proponents of financial deregulation in the Senate. The legislation may come back [...]
Read More →On Saturday, Republic Report’s Zaid Jilani reported that the National Association of Charter School Authorizers was one of the many covert members of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the controversial front group that helps lobbyists ghostwrite state law. As Jilani noted, NACSA is funded in large part by taxpayer dollars: NACSA is financed in part [...]
Read More →This morning Thomas Edsall has a piece in the New York Times exploring the “corporatization of K Street” by big lobbying conglomerates. Few have noticed, but multinational lobbying firms have bought up many of the largest names in lobbying over the past few years. One firm in particular, the London-based WPP Group, owns dozens of [...]
Read More →As Stephen Colbert rightfully pointed out earlier this week, a 501(c) organizations — which he termed “Spooky PACs” — operate like Super PACs, except that they are completely secret organizations that do no reveal any of their donors. Like Super PACs, 501(c) groups can raise unlimited corporate and union donations, and can spend that cash [...]
Read More →Will 2012 be the year of voter revolt against corruption? As almost the entire world continues to struggle with a seemingly endless recession, the public has turned to government for answers. In nation after nation, public officials have been slow to respond, or in many cases, too close to the wealthy interests to provide meaningful [...]
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