(Cross-posted from The Nation)
The Washington Free Beacon, a new website on the right, has a particular fascination with promoting weapon sales to Taiwan. In addition to daily hits on the Obama administration and Democrats, the Free Beacon has multiple posts calling for more F-16 fighter jet sales to the island nation, and has branded skeptics of militarization as “pro-China” activists.
The site, however, fails to disclose the fact that its sponsor is a lobbyist for a firm dedicated to helping Taiwan advance its policy agenda.
Michael Goldfarb, a former Republican staffer and writer, founded the Free Beacon with “several million dollars” in January of …
According to Crossroads GPS, politicians who supported President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the economic stimulus program, were “cheerleader[s] for massive spending.” Crossroads GPS, the anonymously funded Republican attack ad group, launched a new ad earlier this week accusing Democratic candidates of supporting a stimulus that “failed miserably.” The ad, which is targeting U.S. Senate candidate Tim Kaine (D-VA) and potentially others, cost $2.5 million.
The ad suggests the stimulus was spent carelessly; the narrator claims the money was “wasted money studying ants in Africa.” Just three years ago, the shoe was on …
The Countrywide VIP scandal has rocked Capitol Hill. Initial reports showed that Senators Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Chris Dodd (D-CT) were the most high profile politicians to accept special cut-rate mortgages from the troubled subprime lender. Now, it has become clear that dozens of lawmakersand high-ranking officials were recipients of these bribes.
The scandal has been centered on the efforts by now-disgraced Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo, who courted the influence of lawmakers using these preferential loan deals. In most cases, Countrywide waived fees and provided reduced interest rates and “no doc” mortgages to powerful senators and congressman. Mozilo, however, has …
The New York Times recently ran a very important story showing that opponents of health reform, mostly industry-funded groups, overwhelmed the airwaves with negative advertising against the law. The reported numbers, $235 million against health reform versus $69 for it, only show part of the picture, since the Times decided to quantify only the money spent after the bill passed in late March, 2010.
The real amount spent spreading misinformation about the law, however, is much higher. And quantifying the money is critical in understanding at least part of the reason why public opinion soured so quickly on a law that …
The everyday corruption of our government by Big Money has real consequences for Americans, many of whom are struggling to feed their families.
Take the farm bill that Congress spent time working on this week. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) introduced an amendment to restore $4.5 billion in funding for the food stamp program, which assists some of the poorest Americans, by cutting “guaranteed profit for crop insurance companies from 14 to 12 percent and by lowering payments for crop insurers from $1.3 billion to $825 million.”
Her amendment, which would help poor Americans at the expense of corp insurers, was defeated …
On Wednesday, the Bipartisan Policy Center held a forum on the “Vanishing Moderate Democrat.” To demonstrate this supposed phenomenon, it hosted various self-styled “moderate” Democrats as panelists. But besides this supposed centrist ideology, these panelists all shared one other attribute — they all became corporate lobbyists after leaving Congress.
Here’s a list of the panelists followed by the corporate lobbying and advocacy positions they took up after leaving Congress:
- Former Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR): Lincoln is a “Special Policy Advisor” at Alston and Bird LLP and has helped the corporate lobby the National Federation of Independent Business to …
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