The Philadelphia Inquirer has a great article up which delves into the lobbying cash special interests are using to influence public policy in that city. Big Soda leads the lobbying pack, spending $238,921 in the quarter, six times the amount spent by the next competitor. Interestingly, the article notes that cable giant Comcast spent $32,985 lobbying
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For-profit college companies have been investigated for predatory business practices, providing worthless degrees with high levels of debt, and systematically deceiving tens of thousands of students. Yet these businesses continue to enjoy over $30 billion a year in taxpayer support, thanks to their elaborate use of lobbyists and political consultants. One of the leaders of
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The Wisconsin gubernatorial recall election is coming down to the wire as embattled incumbent Republican Governor Scott Walker’s campaign is outspending Democratic challenger Tom Barrett’s campaign 10-to-1. 62 percent of Walker’s campaign funds are coming from out of state, much of it from corporate executives that likely want to see labor unions dealt a punishing
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Lobbyists, hoping to persuade lawmakers and their staffs on any number of important issues, breeze in and out of the halls of the Capitol every day. But a growing trend that has alarmed ethics experts is the extent to which influence peddlers have burrowed into government to take jobs that place them in positions of
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Yesterday, House Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee released a trove of documents that detail how the drug industry — through its powerful trade association PhRMA — was able to win all sorts of concessions in President Obama’s health care law. The documents show how top White House officials bargained away policies to
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On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice asked officials in Florida to suspend the controversial voter purge conducted by Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) administration, citing possible violations of voting rights law. Florida officials had been purging a list of suspected non-citizen voters, estimated at one point to include at least 180,000 people, despite evidence that
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Earlier this week, the Huffington Post’s Peter Stone, along with Politico, reported on coordinated efforts by a cabal of outside money groups to spend upwards of $1 billion this year to oust President Obama and congressional Democrats. The money — organized by Karl Rove, the Koch brother’s network of billionaires, and the U.S. Chamber of
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Right now, private organizations insist on charging U.S. citizens hundreds of dollars simply to read a copy of standards they issue, standards that regulate things like gas pipeline safety, crane usage, and toy making — even though citizens are required to obey those standards, because the government has incorporated them into federal regulations.  This adds
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