Mitt Romney has just released his plan for educating America’s young people, and it’s wholly consistent with his overall philosophy: Allow money to dominate politics, and everything will work out great. Except that, when it comes to policies on college education, we tried that approach under George W. Bush, and it was a disaster for
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(No offense, Mississippi.) Last week, Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to let stand a decision by the Montana Supreme Court, American Tradition Partnership vs. Bullock, upholding the state’s ban on outside election spending by corporations. The anti-environmental group American Tradition Partnership contends that
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A Simple Government. To our surprise, the former Arkansas governor quoted a statistic produced by the Republic Report on how members of Congress enrich themselves by becoming lobbyists. In March, we took a look at the salaries of members of Congress who have retired and become lobbyists, and found that on average, they increased their
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EdWeek reports that presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney has named the members of his K-12 Education Committee for his campaign: Serving as Rommey’s K-12 committee co-chairs will be Nina S. Rees, a former assistant deputy secretary for innovation and improvement at the U.S. Department of Education and currently the senior vice president for strategic
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Brian Moran, the chairman of the Virginia Democratic Party, has been taking heat over the fact that he also serves as a lobbyist for the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities (APSCU), a trade group representing for-profit colleges. APSCU is engaged in an ongoing battle against President Obama’s efforts to hold its member schools accountable
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Porter Novelli, a public relations and lobbying firm, was awarded a $20 million contract from the Obama administration to promote health reform. “The campaign will inform the American people about the many preventive benefits now available to those with Medicare, Medicaid, and private health insurance as a result of the Affordable Care Act,” a representative
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Late last year, the Montana high court, citing the state’s long history of corporate money corrupting politics, defied the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and continued enforcing the state’s 100-year old law banning corporate involvement in state elections. The Supreme Court has blocked the Montana court’s decision pending on its own determination as to
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The Senate Banking Committee is responding to outrage over the news that J.P. Morgan lost some $3 billion in customer money because of a risky trading strategy. The committee is preparing for two hearings with regulators, and Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD), chair of the committee, is hoping that Jamie Dimon will testify in the near
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