At the core of the controversy over “pink slime” is a story about corporate corruption. Pink slime is a popular name for a filler substance created by combining various beef trimmings and connective tissue that is treated by ammonia before being ground up and added to real beef. The recent news coverage has people wondering:
Continue Reading >>>

Bob Byrd is New Jersey’s “top lobbyist,” according to Content Delaware’s John Taylor, which recently interviewed Byrd for its conversational series. Byrd is the CEO of The Byrd Group, a lobbying firm that has worked for the banking industry and the education privatization movement, among other interests. At one point, Taylor pointed out many of
Continue Reading >>>

Corporate money is already financing the constant stream of political advertising in the campaign this year, but a great deal of it is undisclosed. The Citizens United Supreme Court decision opened the gates for corporations to spend directly on American elections. Now, Republic Report can offer the first look at which major corporations are fueling perhaps
Continue Reading >>>

Investing is a time-honored American tradition. Millions of Americans have some sort of investment, and the stock market is an honored cultural institution. But investing your money in a publicly traded company isn’t the only way to make a buck. Let’s say you’re a powerful industry that wants to make a lot of money with an
Continue Reading >>>

Last month, the Koch Brothers ramped up their efforts to take control of the right-libertarian Cato Institute. Cato has long been a beacon of independent thought, not tied to one political party or another. The Kochs are apparently trying to push the think tank in a more blatantly pro-corporate direction. Last week, we talked to
Continue Reading >>>

What do Germany, Colombia, Ireland, Mexico, Georgia, Indonesia, Macedonia, and Serbia have in common? According to the nonprofit global governance watchdog Global Integrity, they all beat out the United States on regulating money in politics. The United States tied with Tajikistan scoring 29 out of a 100-point scale measuring the effectiveness of legislation regulating individual
Continue Reading >>>

President Obama ran for office on a pledge to refuse donations from lobbyists and to clean up the outside industry money that continually pollutes American elections. Obama’s recent decision to embrace Super PACs undercuts both promises. That is because Super PACs can collect unlimited corporate and lobbyist contributions. And donations to Obama’s preferred Super PAC,
Continue Reading >>>

A brand-new report from the National Center for Education Statistics confirms once again that for-profit colleges are failing to help many of their students.  These schools, many marked by deceptive recruiting, low-quality programs, and sky-high prices, have 13 percent of U.S. students but nearly 50 percent of student loan defaults.  The for-profit college industry gets most of its
Continue Reading >>>