Today, the House of Representatives is expected to vote on House Resolution 568. At first glance, the bill seems to be fairly routine, in that it says it is to express “the sense of the House of Representatives regarding the importance of preventing the Government of Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability.” But dig a
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By now, most Americans realize that Big Money is a powerful force in American politics. Members of Congress often shy away from regulating an industry that showers them with campaign donations. Members will rush to vote for massive subsidies and giveaways to big donors. One senator who has been mostly unmoved by the presence of this
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Bad actors in the for-profit education industry — leading for-profit colleges, private charter schools, and other education profiteers — are accelerating a profitable scam: online education. As my colleague Lee Fang documented in a cover story for The Nation last year, these “online learning” companies have infiltrated American schools, extracting millions of dollars for software
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In March, Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) led members from both parties in introducing legislation to delay the implementation of the Volcker Rule, a new regulation to limit risky trading by big banks. He was joined by Pat Toomey (R-PA), one of the biggest proponents of financial deregulation in the Senate. The legislation may come back
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Nearly half of all Americans will be obese by 2030, researchers reported at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Weight of the Nation conference in Washington earlier this month. 42 percent of us are projected to be obese, placing a huge strain on our already compromised health care system. Brian Fung at The Atlantic points
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On Saturday, Republic Report’s Zaid Jilani reported that the National Association of Charter School Authorizers was one of the many covert members of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the controversial front group that helps lobbyists ghostwrite state law. As Jilani noted, NACSA is funded in large part by taxpayer dollars: NACSA is financed in part
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This morning Thomas Edsall has a piece in the New York Times exploring the “corporatization of K Street” by big lobbying conglomerates. Few have noticed, but multinational lobbying firms have bought up many of the largest names in lobbying over the past few years. One firm in particular, the London-based WPP Group, owns dozens of
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Americans everywhere are waking up to the corrupting influence of Big Money on our democratic form of government. Activists are holding rallies, signing petitions, getting city resolutions passed against Citizens United, and taking part in other activities designed to push for major reforms to our system. But that’s not the only way Americans are challenging
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