Momentum continues to grow in the state of Georgia, as both tea partiers and progressives are pushing hard to enact a lobbyist gift cap that would cap lobbyist gifts to lawmakers at $100.
Recently, Rep. Don Parsons (R) called the cap “silly,” and refused to sign on to a pledge to push for such a reform. Parsons has good reason to find this reform silly — it would cut off a major gravy train for him.
According to records released by the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission, Parsons has received hundreds of dollars in …
Tomorrow is Independence Day, the holiday where Americans celebrate declaring independence from the British Empire. And the joy of hot dogs and fireworks.
But Independence Day shouldn’t just be a day where we’re all glad we drive on the right side of the road and perplexingly still don’t use the metric system. It’s also a holiday where we should reflect on the roots of the American idea that the Founding Fathers fought for.
For example, everyone knows that the Founders revolted against their British rulers to make America an independent country, and that one of the starting points for this revolution was …
Republic Report has broken a series of stories this month showing that a surprising number of high level congressional staffers either maintain a financial relationship with a lobbying firm, or were paid six-figure bonuses by lobbying firms shortly before becoming staffers last year. We’ve reported on Senator Marco Rubio’s chief of staff, Speaker John Boehner’s policy director, and Thomas MacKenzie, a former Northrop Grumman lobbyist who was paid nearly $500,000 in bonus pay just before being tapped by the House Armed Services Committee as a senior staff member.
As other media outlets take interest in the story, it …
Earlier this year, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) introduced the Foreign Lobbying Reform Act, which would prohibit federal government officials such as Members of Congress from lobbying for foreign governments until ten years after they have left office. ”I am very serious about this,” said Wolf at the time. “It is not put in for just discussion purposes.”
Wolf has made good on his words as yesterday the ban was inserted into the markup of a 2013 Financial Services spending bill in the House of Representatives. “For those who hold such prominent positions in government service, we must set a high …
An OpenSecrets investigation revealed that non-profits, which don’t have to disclose their donors, have become the real heavyweights in the 2012 election cycle, outspending their Super-PAC counterparts 3 to 2 on political expenditures. Ninety percent of these shadowy groups never reveal their donors.
The Obama administration has made positive steps towards calling for disclosure of secretive nonprofits that are now spending incredible amounts on political ads. Of course, much more could be done. The Obama administration has allowed a significant executive order, which would clean up much of the mess, to languish without action.
An alphabet soup of regulators are …
Can Congress effectively police itself and stop corruption? We visited the Senate Ethics Office, and found a pretty blatant example of how lawmakers exploit a loophole in a rule designed ostensibly to stop revolving door bribery.
In 2007, in the wake of the Jack Abramoff scandal, in which it became obvious that many lawmakers and staff sold favors in exchange for high paying jobs on K Street, Congress passed sweeping ethics rules. Republic Report has detailed how this revolving dynamic still exists, with many members of Congress doling out benefits to specific companies, only to take jobs at those same …
Ryan Lizza’s much buzzed about recent piece in The New Yorker investigates what Barack Obama might focus on in a second term. Obama could focus on immigration reform, on clean energy and the environment, on shoring up healthcare reform to future attacks from Republicans, on foreign policy. These are all issues that candidate Obama promised to work on in the 2008 election.
But Lizza’s article doesn’t mention another one of Obama’s big 2008 promises. Here he is in 2008, promising to work on getting big money out of politics:
Let me be clear — this isn’t just about ending the …
The Center for International Policy released a new report this month focusing on the nuke lobby — the coalition of defense contractors and former government officials who continue to push for costly Cold War-style nuclear stockpile and delivery systems.
Interestingly, the report references a statement by the late Senator William Proxmire, Democrat of Wisconsin, from 1969 about the revolving door of the military-industrial complex:
The easy movement of high ranking military officers into jobs with major defense contractors and the reverse movement of top executives in major defense contractors into high Pentagon jobs is solid evidence of the military industrial-complex in operation. It …
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