As Republic Report reported last week, there are a number of high-profile American politicos — including former directors of the CIA and FBI, presidential candidates, and mayors of major American cities — who have taken up the cause of de-listing the  Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) from the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The Department of
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Casual bribery goes on almost every day in the nation’s capital. One way special interests game the system is by heavily recruiting members of Congress to leave public service and instead serve powerful corporations as lobbyists. Congressman Scott Rigell (R-VA), a freshman lawmaker, talked about this issue at a town hall last week. Rigell received
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For-profit colleges like ITT, DeVry, Kaplan, and the Art Institutes — sometimes called subprime schools because they leave many students deep in debt while taking billions of dollars from taxpayers — continue an expensive lobbying push to influence Congress and avoid accountability. Republic Report has received a 2011 draft strategy memo by the biggest for-profit college
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How do you turn toxic sludge — including medical, industrial and human waste — into compost used for home gardening? Well, if you’re a large corporation, you hire a small army of lobbyists and public relations experts to pressure government regulators and aggressively fool the public. The Center for Media and Democracy’s Sara Jerving reports:
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The Salt Lake Tribune today published a piece about Utah’s weak ethics laws surrounding the revolving door — where state lawmakers leave the legislature to become lobbyists. The paper notes that the state officially requires lawmakers to wait one calendar year before becoming lobbyists. However, there is a loophole that allows these legislators to lobby
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Two weeks ago, America’s subprime schools — the for-profit college industry, many of whose members rip students off and demand that Uncle Sam pick up the tab for their shoddy education — held a conference in Washington, D.C. We were there. The association for these schools, America’s Private Sector Colleges and Universities (APSCU), brought in elite
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Today, Republic Report announced that we are asking all 34 retiring members of Congress to make a simple, common sense commitment: “I will disclose any negotiations or offers for jobs on the front page of my congressional website.”  This afternoon we are delivering letters to all 34 congressional offices seeking this commitment. We want you
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Yesterday I listened over the web to two CEOs of for-profit education companies make presentations at an investor conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. Neither man had anything to say about the overwhelming evidence that for-profit schools have engaged in waste, fraud, and abuse with federal tax dollars.  Instead, both touted their companies, and one announced a startling
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