The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is one of the most powerful corporate front groups in the country, working to pass its Big Business-written bills in state legislatures across the country. What is less known about ALEC is that it also has a federal government agenda, including advocating for lower corporate taxes and supporting dirty
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One of the ways that Big Money works to take control of the country’s political system is by enlisting former legislators to become lobbyists. These lobbyists, having passed through the “revolving door,” have wide access to their former colleagues in addition to the financial resources that lobbying firms command. While there are some laws regulating
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The pharmaceutical industry utilizes its immense lobbying operation to win various protections and subsidies from the federal government. One of these protections is a federal prohibition on allowing Americans to freely buy pharmaceuticals re-imported from countries like Canada, where drugs are much cheaper. Thanks to this protectionist barrier, the pharmaceutical industry  effectively stifles competition, which helps
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This morning the Heritage Foundation’s investigative reporters, Rob Bluey and Lachlan Markay, published an interesting article alleging that the Obama administration allocated federal dollars in a way so as to “buy” the votes of Congressional legislators on certain key pieces of legislation. The authors focus on the discretionary budgets of various federal agencies, which can
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 The Courier Journal reports today about the huge amounts of money that a drug industry group is spending to fight regulation of certain cold and allergy medications in the state of Kentucky. For years, public health advocates have pushed for tougher regulation of these medications because they are commonly used to produce methamphetamine. Kentucky Senate Majority Leader
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 Today, televangelist and long time right-wing icon Pat Robertson addressed the banking crisis on his television show, The 700 Club. Referencing how Iceland dealt with its own economic crisis — it jailed many of the bankers who broke laws and deceived the nation’s people — Robertson praised the European nation and said that we need
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Late last year, Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) — Chairman of Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands of the Natural Resources Committee — raised eyebrows when he began aggressively advocating for mining on and selling off public lands. He even told ThinkProgress reporters that he favored mining in an area around the Grand Canyon
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Earlier this week, bloggers at ThinkProgress and De Smog Blog obtained leaked documents detailing the fundraising plan of the Heartland Institute think tank, which says its “mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems.” The documents, among other things, lay out complicated plans to court corporate donors and to
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