One of the best ways for special interests to influence our lawmakers is to hire former government staffers to get the insider access needed to win legislation and regulation. By passing through the “revolving door,” these staffers are generously rewarded for winning over government favors for private clients, often clients who seek to distort public
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The Obama campaign just released a campaign commercial talking about how Mitt Romney, while working at Bain Capital, oversaw the outsourcing of Americans jobs to China and Mexico. The ad calls Romney a “corporate raider” for his role at Bain (watch it to the left). The media has picked up the Obama campaign’s attack on
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Reporting campaign finance can be difficult because much of the action is obscured. Journalists have to rely on fairly unreliable government disclosure websites, many of which only report certain types of spending on an almost arbitrary schedule. To find the true number of television ads purchased in an election, one must literally visit every network
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This post originally appeared on The Huffington Post. In the post-Citizens United era, wealthy individuals and corporations think democracy is a trophy they can buy, stuff and mount on their parlor walls. But Americans scored a solid victory against big money in April when the Federal Communications Commission decided to require television broadcasters to post data online about
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Fox News has taken flak for airing a four-minute political attack ad against President Obama during its regular programming this week. The ad wasn’t purchased by any outside group; it was simply produced by the network and aired as part of regular Fox News content. Though the network has tried to deflect criticism for the
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Big Money corrupts our political system with its campaign contributions, public relations campaigns, insider access, and other means of drowning out the voices of ordinary people.The media is supposed to be our democracy’s guardian against this onslaught of money. But last week Fox Business abdicated its responsibility to cut through the lies of Big Money. It featured
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Rupert Murdoch is “not a fit person” to run an international company, according to a report by a British parliamentary committee looking into phone hacking and other alleged abuses at News Corp. Critics have targeted British politicians including Prime Minster David Cameron for their ties to News Corp and its executives. But News Corp’s political
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My colleague David Halperin reported last week that the for-profit college division of the Washington Post Company’s Kaplan subsidiary was a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) for one year, ending in August 2011. He makes the case that we shouldn’t be surprised that for-profit colleges, which receive the large  majority of their
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