Today, President Obama signed the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act into law, which overwhelmingly passed both houses of Congress. The law takes aim at insider trading within Congress, which was exposed in a blockbuster 60 Minutes report late last year. “The powerful shouldn’t get to create one set of rules for themselves and another set
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The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is the most powerful corporate front group you’ve never heard of. The organization, funded mostly by large corporations, writes model legislation and then sends these bills to state legislators across the country. It has successfully passed scores of laws on various issues. It was even behind pushing the law that
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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
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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
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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
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One of Big Money’s last targets for privatization is America’s public schools. Using a variety of policy schemes ranging from school vouchers to for-profit charter schools, the education privatization movement seeks to take over America’s largely public K-12 education system and put it in the hands of some of the very same people who caused
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It’s important to know about lawmakers’ conflicts of interest. For example, if they are for building expensive fighter jets produced by Boeing while at the same time owning Boeing stock, the public should know about this financial incentive. But many states currently lack strong disclosure laws that make it easy for the public to learn
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Republic Report was one of the first outlets to tell you about a dangerous bill in Georgia being pushed by a Waffle House executive and the Georgia Chamber of Commerce that would’ve outlawed picketing outside of private residences — a law that would’ve put the Founding Fathers themselves in jail. After we filed our report,
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