Who did Pete Hoekstra influence peddle on behalf of? We may never know.

Last night, former congressman Pete Hoekstra won the Michigan GOP Senate primary, securing his spot as the party’s nominee. He will be competing the Senate seat this November.

In between his stint as a congressman and this current race, Hoekstra raked in nearly half a million dollars as “a senior adviser with Dickstein Shapiro LLP, a legal and lobbying firm.” In this role, Hoekstra all but certainly helped the firm’s corporate clients advance their government agendas. But because he spent less than twenty percent of his time on lobbying, he had no obligation to officially register as a lobbyist. Thus any advocacy work he did on behalf of the firm’s clients — which include for-profit colleges, drugmakers, and others is completely confidential and does not have to be made public.

As the Huffington Post noted last June, Hoekstra repeatedly voted against measures that would’ve toughened lobbying laws. And now, fresh off of making $473,286 from his job at a lobbying firm, he is vying to be the next Senator from Michigan. Will he as a Senator  be doing the bidding of the very same clients his firm took on? It’s impossible for us to tell, because the government’s transparency laws are so weak. That’s American government in the 21st century.

Earlier this year, a subsidiary of Wal-Mart — which is a Chamber member —  in Mexico was caught bribing officials, funneling millions of dollars through that country. Now, another Chamber member, Pfizer, has been fined for its role in foreign bribery:

As promised, the US Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Pfizer with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act after findings various subsidiaries bribed doctors and other health care professionals employed by foreign governments in order to win business. [...] The SEC alleges that Pfizer employees and agents in Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Italy, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Serbia made improper payments to foreign officials to obtain regulatory and formulary approvals, sales and increased prescriptions for its medicines. And they tried to conceal the bribes by improperly recording payments in accouting records as legitimate expenses for promotional activities, marketing, training, travel and entertainment, clinical trials, freight, conferences, and advertising, according to an SEC statement

At the same time, the SEC separately charged Wyeth, which Pfizer purchased three years ago, with its own FCPA violations. Pfizer and Wyeth agreed to separate settlements in which they will pay more than $45 million combined to settle the charges. And in what the SEC called a parallel action, the US Department of Justice says Pfizer HCP Corporation agreed to pay another $15 million penalty to resolve an investigation of FCPA violations.

John Katzman wants to figure out how to make as much money off your kids' education as possible.

Reuters has the scoop on an event that took place earlier this week where nearly a hundred education profiteers — ranging from executives at testing companies to private equity moguls eager to invest in education technology — met at a swanky Manhattan club to cheer on the privatization of the U.S. education system:

The investors gathered in a tony private club in Manhattan were eager to hear about the next big thing, and education consultant Rob Lytle was happy to oblige. Think about the upcoming rollout of new national academic standards for public schools, he urged the crowd. If they’re as rigorous as advertised, a huge number of schools will suddenly look really bad, their students testing way behind in reading and math. They’ll want help, quick. And private, for-profit vendors selling lesson plans, educational software and student assessments will be right there to provide it.

Reuters goes on to note that education has become a huge business in just the past seven years. In “the venture capital world, transactions in the K-12 education sector soared to a record $389 million last year, up from $13 million in 2005.”

The policies that have allowed for these education profiteers to get involved with the system have been pushed by politicians from both parties, and many of them — such as the aggressive expansion of charter schools and high-stakes testing — have been endorsed both by President Obama and Mitt Romney, although Romney appears to be much more supportive of outright privatization.

Many of the privatization architects who attended the Manhattan confab are also political donors. According to Federal Election Commission data, Lytle was a Romney donor in 2007, giving $500. Meanwhile, Princeton Review and 2Tor’s John Katzman has spread thousands of dollars over numerous politicians from both major political parties, giving $4,800 to Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) while also donating tens of thousands to Sens. Harry Reid (D-NV), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Sam Brownback (R-KS), and others over the past decade.

Katzman has been particularly insistent in his desire to see large chunks of the education system privatized. At the event, he apparently “urged investors to look for companies developing software that can replace teachers for segments of the school day” — a convenient way for schools to do away with a number of their teachers altogether.

If politicians take his advice, it will no doubt be thanks at least in part to cash he and other education privatizers are dumping into the political system.

Jon Bumstead

In Michigan, State Rep. Jon Bumstead (R) introduced a bill that would send the state back down the path of prison privatization. House Bill 1574 would re-open a private youth prison that was operated by GEO Group (then Wackenhut) that was shut down in 2005 and allow it to house adult inmates. The bill would once again give GEO the right to operate the prison.

This proposal has faced fierce protests from civil liberties and civil rights groups, which note that the prison was one of the most expensive to operate in the state when it was previously operated by GEO, and that it was also notorious for abuse of prisoners.

One thing that has not been significantly highlighted in the renewed debateover the bill is what factor other than sincere belief in the merits of private prisons may have motivated Bumstead. Nine days before he introduced the bill, he received a $500 contribution from Cloid Shuler, a GEO Group executive based in Florida. This makes Shuler tied with one other individual as Bumstead’s top individual donor, giving about 2 percent of his total campaign funds in this election cycle. Bumstead was recently asked about the contribution from Shuler. He replied, “they could have come to a fundraiser, I don’t know.” Considering that Shuler lives 1400 miles away, it would’ve been a long trip.

Although the bill has stalled in the legislature, Bumstead stands by it. He will, however, be facing a primary challenge on August 7th, where he will no doubt be using GEO Group’s money to try to keep himself in office.

A path forward for stopping corporate influence in elections?

As the campaign against the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has shown, sometimes the best way to tackle corporate influence in our politics is to name and shame corporations that are secretly financing front groups to manipulate our democracy. Dozens of corporations have left ALEC thanks to this tactic.

On a recent national call with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), leading campaign finance reformer Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) endorsed a version of this tactic to tackle dark money in our elections. He referenced the anti-Apartheid movement, which called for divestment from funds that supported South Africa, and suggested this tactic be adapted to target corporations manipulating the political process with their dollars:

WHITEHOUSE: I think we can work this a little bit the way we worked the Apartheid issue years ago, in which states began to say, ‘Look, we’re just not going to invest our money in countries that invest in South Africa and the support of Apartheid’ in the same way state treasurers and pension funds and investor groups across the country could say, ‘We’re just not going to put our money into companies that support this kind of dark money secret influence. If they need to get their work done this way, they’re probably up to no good, and we’re not going to put public money behind them.’”

A portrait of Gore Vidal

Earlier this week, celebrated author, playwright, and activist Gore Vidal passed away. “Mr Vidal was, at the end of his life, an Augustan figure who believed himself to be the last of a breed, and he was probably right,” editorialized the New York Times upon his death.

In 2000, Vidal authored the foreword to Money and Politics, a Boston Review New Democracy Forum published in book form by Beacon Press. This is what the legendary author noted about the cost of elections at that time:

Some nuts and bolts. Of the billions now spent each election cycle, most is donated in checks exceeding $1,000. But less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the general population make individual contributions at this rate. And among group contributors, better than 90 percent comes from corporations, which duly record their political investment as a tax-deductible “cost of doing business.” These happy few are prepared to pay a high and rising price for the privilege of controlling our government. In the 1998 election cycle, the average winning House candidate cost the owners about $900,000, the average winning Senate candidate a bit over $6 million. Multiply both figures by two if you want the cost of dislodging an incumbent from office—in a system where, last time around, over 97 percent were reelected. To finance a race in big media markets like New York or California, it’s a bit more expensive: as of election day 1998, something like $36 million and $21 million respectively.

 Although the heart of man is made to reconcile the most glaring contradictions” (Hume again), now let us use our heads and deal appropriately, as they say in Washington, with a corporate ruling class that has hijacked the nation, and in so doing eliminate at least one glaring contradiction: that ours is a government of, by, and for the many when it is so notoriously the exclusive preserve of the few.

Kaplan CEO Andrew S. Rosen

Some Members of Congress are stepping up to increase oversight over the for-profit college industry, which is heavily subsidized by taxpayers but which continues to abuse our veterans and other students.

As a part of this effort, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) sought to report about the salaries of top executives at these companies. Keep in mind that more than 86 percent of the funds for 30 major for-profit colleges studied by Congress come from taxpayers. So that means that these execs are essentially living large on the public dole.

One major company, Kaplan, which is owned by the Washington Post, refused to respond. Here’s the explanation for why:

As a wholly owned subsidiary of the Washington Post Company, Kaplan is not required to disclose its executive pay to the SEC. Citing this rationale, Kaplan refused to comply with Ranking Member Cummings’ request for information.

We know from a new report by Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) that Kaplan in 2010 received 85.89 percent of its revenue from U.S. Department of Education grants and loans ($1.46 billion out of $1.7 billion) — one of the highest percentages of any school.  We also know that Kaplan is one of the top ten recipients of additional federal college aid through the Post 9/11 GI Bill. Total federal aid could be as more than 90 percent of Kaplan revenue.

And we know that Kaplan’s previous CEO, Jonathan Grayer, received a $76 million compensation package when he resigned in November 2008.

But if taxpayers want to know what Kaplan’s current CEO, Andrew Rosen, is making — essentially, what is being done with their tax dollars — they’re out of luck.  That’s a particularly egregious situation when you consider that — even though most of the Post Company’s revenues in recent years have come from Kaplan — somewhere inside that company is still housed a newspaper, one with a long tradition of standing up for disclosure and accountability.