On Wednesday, the Bipartisan Policy Center held a forum on the “Vanishing Moderate Democrat.” To demonstrate this supposed phenomenon, it hosted various self-styled “moderate” Democrats as panelists. But besides this supposed centrist ideology, these panelists all shared one other attribute — they all became corporate lobbyists after leaving Congress. Here’s a list of the panelists
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We were the first news site to  report last week that Wal-Mart had hired Mercury Public Affairs, an elite public relations and lobbying firm, to fight against warehouse workers in Los Angeles. A Mercury staffer was caught spying on the workers, and was apparently let go after a media firestorm. Now, the Warehouse Workers United, which
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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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Earlier this year, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) introduced the Foreign Lobbying Reform Act, which would prohibit federal government officials such as Members of Congress from lobbying for foreign governments until ten years after they have left office.  “I am very serious about this,” said Wolf at the time. “It is not put in for just
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We’ve just received word that Dell has dropped its membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a powerful corporate front group that passes off corporate-written bills to state legislatures. Here’s a statement from Dell: Dell makes it a practice to review our memberships each year. We reviewed the value of our participation in the
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America’s embrace of alcohol prohibition from 1920-1933 generally ranks among the biggest mistakes in public policy in the 20th century. It was a period that resulted in a profound loss of personal liberty that gave rise to criminal syndicates that often used violence to control the black market of liquor sales. But if you ask
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She promised a bang, but delivered a whimper. Republic Report was the first to report that Michelle Rhee, the hard-charging former chancellor of the District of Columbia public schools, would be addressing the Las Vegas annual convention of APSCU, the largest trade association for the controversial for-profit college industry. Not everyone is a fan of Rhee’s
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Why would a leader with a good reputation affiliate himself with an industry that has a bad reputation?  If you’ve visited this website before, you might suspect that money is involved. And you’d be right. On May 29, the New York Times published an editorial calling for government action to address spiraling college debt. The Times
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