Two years ago, the state of Massachusetts banned these gifts to doctors and imposed penalties of up to $5,000 for violations. Unfortunately, Massachusetts lawmakers recently voted to soften this gift ban, with the support of Governor Deval Patrick (D-MA), who this past weekend signed a budget which would allow, for example, the drug industry to buy modest meals for doctors.

While the state’s lawmakers moved to weaken the ban, one group that fought the changes was the American Medical Student Association (AMSA). AMSA has launched the PharmFree campaign to, among other things, attack conflicts of interest between doctors and the drug industry. AMSA students protested the change in Massachusetts law:

The budget plan has drawn criticism from more than 100 medical students, residents, and physicians, who signed a petition to Patrick June 18 to preserve the state’s existing ban on gifts from makers of pharmaceuticals and medical devices. In an accompanying letter, David Tian, a medical student at Harvard University, and Reshma Ramachandran, a Brown University medical student, expressed concern that “the trust at the heart of the doctor-patient relationship is being eroded by the perception that doctors are ‘on the take’ from industry.” [...] “We just don’t want doctors to receive what are effectively bribes from companies,” said Tian in an interview.

The defeat in Massachusetts is a bad sign for democracy, but the protests of AMSA show that the next generation of doctors is aggressively challenging the influence of the drug industry.

Now, the Warehouse Workers United, which represents the workers who were spied on, has announced that it will be filing charges with the National Labor Relations Board, which prohibits spying on workers, against both Wal-Mart and Mercury. The group is also asking Wal-Mart to fire Mercury:

“If Walmart truly is concerned about integrity it will fire Mercury Public Affairs after learning its senior associate lied about her identity,” said Guadalupe Palma, a campaign director for Warehouse Workers United, an organization committed to improving warehousing jobs in Southern California.  “We are asking that Walmart to drop this firm and deal honestly with workers and the people of Los Angeles.”

We asked United Republic members to petition the court to overturn the Citizens United decision and stand with the American people, not Big Money. Over 20,000 members signed our petition of support, and we received 1,700 comments from Americans of every political stripe in support of McCain and Whitehouse’s effort.

Yesterday, we delivered these petitions and comments to the Supreme Court:

Nathan Sproul

Republic Report has covered how political money can corrupt government by influencing the actions of elected representatives. But professional hacks can also disrupt democracy by interfering with the voting process itself.

Late last year, Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign began paying Nathan Sproul, a political consultant with a long history of destroying Democratic voter registration forms and manipulating ballot initiatives. Sproul, who changed his firm’s name from Sproul and Associates to Lincoln Strategies, has received over $70,000 from Romney’s campaign. Much of the campaign coverage has focused on the rhetoric of surrogates and the role of high-priced television advertisements. But if Sproul continues to play a role in the campaign, and if his previous work is any guide, his firm may have an impact on key swing states.

ThinkProgress covered Sproul and his work for the coal industry. The post, which is partially reprinted below, goes through his greatest hits, including evidence that his firm systematically suppressed Democratic overs on behalf of the Bush-Cheney 2004 presidential team and deceiving voters during registration drives in 2006:

- In Oregon and Nevada, Lincoln Strategies — then known as Sproul and Associates — was investigated for destroying Democratic voter registration forms. The Bush-Cheney 2004 presidential campaign paid Sproul $7.4 million for campaign work. [CNN, 10/14/04; KGW News, 10/13/04; East Valley Tribune, 09/07/06]

- In Nevada, people who registered as Democrats with Lincoln Strategies — then known as Sproul and Associates — found their names absent from the voter registration rolls. [Reno Gazette-Journal, 10/29/04]

- During the 2006 midterm elections, Wal-Mart banned Lincoln Strategies for partisan voter registration efforts in Tennessee. The Republican National Committee had hired the firm. [Associated Press, 08/24/06]

- In Arizona, Lincoln Strategies employed a variety of deceptive tactics — including systematically lying about the bill — to push a ballot initiative to eviscerate the state’s clean elections law. [Salon, 10/21/04]

- Lincoln Strategies, then employed by the Republican Party, was behind efforts to place Ralph Nader on the ballot in states such as Arizona. [American Prospect, 06/25/04]

Though Romney and his allies have decried supposed voter fraud by his opponents, they don’t have any evidence that people are illegally voting. Most accusations of Democratic voter fraud center on registration forms filled out by fake people — usually because signature gatherers are paid per-form — but these accusations do not include examples of these fake people actually attempting to vote. On the other hand, when a person goes to vote and learns their voter registration form was never turned in, they are denied their rights. Former Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT), during a hearing on voter fraud observed, “so the difference between ACORN and Sproul is that ACORN doesn’t throw away or change registration documents after they have been filled out.”

Republic Report reviewed disclosures from the Federal Elections Commission. Sproul’s Lincoln Strategy Group has received about $71,391 in payments for “field consulting” and “rent & utilities” by the Romney for President Inc. committee from November 30th through March 2nd of this year.

Lincoln Strategy Group did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Cord Sterling, a lobbyist for a group representing defense contractors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin, speaks at a Tea Party-style event against cuts to wasteful defense spending.

Military industry lobbyists are using the Tea Party as props to fight back against defense cuts. Companies that benefit from tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, many of which are for unnecessary and wasteful programs, are attempting to co-opt political support as they desperately try to maintain their pork barrel contracts.

Take, for example, the “Coalition for the Common Defense,” an ad hoc project launched last fall to develop “grass-roots lobbying” to prevent “automatic budget cuts known as sequestration that will slash defense spending by as much as $600 billion over 10 years,” according to Roll Call.

The Coalition for the Common Defense has made a special effort manipulate the Tea Party to defend defense industry pork. The group claims that most Tea Party members agree with the arguments by defense contractors, that any defense cuts are dangerous for national security. The group has invited local Tea Party leaders to speak against the cuts, and lists a number of Tea Party organizations for outreach. The website even depicts pictures of Revolutionary War-era patriots throwing tea from ships in the Boston Harbor.

Republic Report took a look at who’s behind the campaign, and unsurprisingly, K Street lobbyists with weapons-maker clients and military industry companies are playing a pivotal role:

– Cord Sterling is the vice president for legislative affairs at the Aerospace Industry Association, a lobbying group that represents Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Honeywell, L-3 Communications, and other defense industry corporations. He has participated in events for the Coalition for the Common Defense, thanking the group for helping stave off the looming defense cuts. The Aerospace Industry Association spent $2,181,383 lobbying the federal government last year.

– The campaign is managed by the Center for Security Policy, a think tank that is governed by a board of directors with deep ties to the defense industry. Board member Lt. Col. Marlin L. Hefti (Ret.) is a vice president at Van Scoyoc Associates, a lobbying firm that represents over two dozen defense company clients, including Lockheed Martin and Humvee manufacturer, the Renco Group. Board members J.P. London and Bruce J. Brotman are executives with other defense companies.

Will the defense company lobbyists prevail? GOP leaders in Congress have offered bills to cancel all of the defense cuts and instead impose larger reductions for other parts of government.

We hope no Tea Party members will be fooled by the campaign. Despite the polling released by the Coalition for a Common Defense, many vocal Tea Party leaders have expressed support for reducing the size of military spending along with shrinking the entire government. It also seems doubtful that the original Boston Tea Party activists would support billion dollar contracts with Boeing with cost-overruns of over 177,000 percent for spare parts. The patriots of the American war for independence raged against the British crown for forcing colonists to bear the costs of the Seven Years War with the French. Why protect Boeing’s pork?

SumOfUs.org launched a petition to support the shareholders’ demands. The petition reached 75,000 signatures, and will be presented next week at the shareholder meeting.

“Americans are fed up with large corporations thinking they can buy our elections,” said Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, founder and executive director of SumOfUs.org, the group running the petition, “especially when you consider that Bank of America needed our dollars to stay afloat after helping crash the economy, we are especially angry that they would donate to Super PACs that aim to elect people who will put Wall Street before Main Street.”

Indeed, Bank of America, which has received billions of dollarsin taxpayer funds as a part of federal bailouts, has been a huge political spender, donating $1,699,946 so far this year to federal political candidates. It is also no doubt giving money to advocacy groups like the Chamber of Commerce, but it’s difficult to decipher exactly how much it is donating.

If you want transparency in government and don't want Big Business netting all your tax dollars, you should oppose ALEC.

The corporate-funded front group the American Legislation Exchange Council (ALEC) is panicking. After a dozen corporations and major foundations have left the group in recent days, ALEC is making a concerted effort to reach out to right-wing bloggers to come to its defense.

But conservatives should not be fooled. While ALEC does promote some conservative causes, it primarily exists to serve its corporate donors. It is not of the right, left, or center — it stands for an America where Big Business can, literally, write our laws. Here’s a rundown of four reasons why conservatives should oppose ALEC:

1. Its Collusion With The Drug Industry And Big Government Costs Americans $8 Billion A Year: Truly conservative, free-market oriented groups like the Cato Institute have long-advocated for allowing drug reimportation into the United States, which could save taxpayers and consumers $80 billion over ten years. After all, it’s un-conservative for the government to tell you you cannot buy prescription drugs from Canada or any other country. But ALEC opposes drug re-importation, and backs up using the power of the federal government to erect a protectionist barrier that makes American prescription drugs artificially more expensive. Why? Because ALEC is financed by the pharmaceutical industry.

2. It Wants State Legislatures To Dictate Laws To Local Governments: One of the organizing principles behind modern conservatism is that local governments and communities should have the final say over their own lives. But ALEC doesn’t believe that localities should get to use their taxpayer dollars in ways that they see fit. When Atlanta, Georgia, decided that it would raise the wages of the workers it was hiring with its city money, the state legislature passed a law to ban the city from using its own tax dollars to pay living wages to contractors. That law was based off of an ALEC model bill. ALEC also worked to undermine municipalities that decided to create their own municipal broadband systems by getting state legislators to pass onerous restrictions on cities.  While some may debate the wisdom of policies like a living wage and municipal broadband, it is decidedly un-conservative for a state legislature to not allow local governments to debate these issues and decide for themselves whether they want to enact these laws.

3. ALEC Supports Obama’s Extensive Federal Involvement In Our Schools: ALEC says it stands for “limited government,” but it discards this conservative principle when it comes to aspects of our nation’s schools. In ALEC’s 17th edition of its “Report Card On American Education,” it gushes praise on President Obama’s “Race To The Top” (RTTT)  program, which uses billions of dollars of taxpayer money to incentivize local school districts to structure their schools the way that the federal government wants them to. The conservative Heartland Institute has blasted Race To The Top for coercing school districts into adopting “administration-favored policies.” ALEC, however, called RTTT a “sweeping, symbolic victory for reforms across the country.” ALEC has in the past taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from powerful pro-RTTT foundations like the Gates Foundation (which recently withdrew its support).

4. Because Transparency Is A Conservative Value: ALEC avoids ever registering itself as a lobbying group, and yet it hosts fancy events where lawmakers meet in private with corporate lobbyists to craft legislation out of the public eye. My colleague Lee Fang was kicked out of one of these meetings, and even lawmakers have been ejected. Although ALEC passes off corporate-written model bills to legislators, it does not openly brand the legislation it gets passed into law. The only way for the general public to really know that a bill introduced into a legislature is definitely from ALEC is when, like in Florida, a legislator accidentally leaves the organization’s mission statement on an introduced bill. The Founding Fathers believed in transparency and an open debate, but ALEC doesn’t.

There are certainly areas of agreement between conservatives and ALEC’s policy agenda. But the group is fundamentally not about political ideology. It exists to do the bidding of its donors, especially Big Business, which, like in the case of prescription drugs, sometimes demands the protection of Big Government to harm American consumers. Conservatives should be wary of this organization and the outreach it is conducting to them. ALEC is not on your side.

In the peach state, battling the corporate assault on the first amendment is uniting tea partiers and occupiers.

As we reported earlier this month, Waffle House executive and Georgia state senator Don Balfour is pushing a bill, SB469, that would prohibit picketing outside private residences, a law that would’ve put the Founding Fathers themselves in jail. The law is being pushed with the help of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce and Corporate America, and is primarily targeted at labor unions.

One group that has protested the bill is Occupy Atlanta, which has held large rallies at the state capitol. After Republic Report made the connection to Waffle House, Atlanta Jobs With Justice leafleted at Waffle Houses across the state to fight back against this corporate assault on free speech. Watch one of Jobs With Justice’s activists explain the leafletting campaign:

“Labor unions have First Amendment rights just like Tea Parties,” Dooley told Salon. “I don’t see how you can say it’s OK for one group to go and protest in front of CNN but a labor union can’t.”

The alliance between occupiers, tea partiers, and union members in Georgia against this corporate assault on the First Amendment is a promising sign that Americans of all ideologies are waking up and fighting back against the capture of our democracy by monied interests.

Cato has a long history of fierce libertarian beliefs, widening the debate in Washington on everything from civil liberties to the drug war to the economy. But Charles and David Koch have recently sought to, in the words of Cato president Ed Crane, “transform Cato from an independent, nonpartisan research organization into a political entity that might better support [Charles Koch’s] partisan agenda.”

Most protesters cited their concerns over corporate control of Washington as a primary reason for attending. “Washington, D.C.’s think tanks are increasingly becoming ‘do tanks’ — meaning they are becoming advocates on behalf of their corporate and political donors rather than avenues for independent analysis and research,” said protest organizer and my Republic Report colleague Zaid Jilani. “Whether or not you agree with Cato’s views, people should be concerned about big money buying organizations and dominating public debate.”

Charles Koch, worth $22 billion dollars, is attempting to a hostile takeover of the Cato Institute by appointing a small army of Koch Industries lobbyists to the Cato board, while also filing a lawsuit to seize control of the Institute’s shares. That’s why we protested at the Koch Industries lobbying office. As we’ve reported, Koch has an agenda that is anything but libertarian: the petrochemical-political empire has supported anti-gay, pro-war, and crony capitalist politicians, and the company takes advantage of special government carve-outs, everything from military contracts to eminent domain.

The fight to #SaveCato is garnering some bipartisan support. Anti-tax, anti-war, and pro-civil liberties Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO) tweeted yesterday with the SaveCato hashtag.