John Lovell is a lobbyist who makes a lot of money from making sure you can’t smoke a joint. That’s his job. He’s a lobbyist for the police associations in Sacramento, and he is a driving force behind grabbing Federal dollars to shut down the California marijuana industry. I’ll get to the evidence on this
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This post is the second in a series. Yesterday, Republic Report’s Suzanne Merkelson reported on how members of Congress travel to Israel largely on AIPAC’s dime, thus viewing the Israel-Palestine conflict from a one-sided perspective. Few members have visited the area on behalf of J Street, a pro-two state solution organization that brings politicians in
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As we head into an election year, we’re going to increasingly hear that Democrats and Republicans fight like cats and dogs, that there is a civil war in Washington. This describes the state of play on some issues, but on others there is bipartisan agreement to do the wrong thing: Both parties do what the money
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Last month, a cache of internal fundraising documents revealed that the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank, operated essentially as a pay-to-play front for polluters. The Heartland Institute has played a major role over the years in shaping the debate over climate change, aggressively arguing that greenhouse gases do no contribute to the warming of
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 The controversial Keystone XL Pipeline has been a flashpoint for debates between environmentalists and oil advocates. But for the company trying to build the pipeline — TransCanada — the issue has always been one of business. Thus the company has spent enormous amounts of money lobbying state and federal lawmakers to approve the pipeline. Nebraska’s Omaha World-Herald
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**Republic Report’s Zaid Jilani has organized a protest on March 13th outside of the Koch Industries lobbying office in Washington, D.C. to oppose the hostile takeover of the Cato Institute. See this Facebook page for details.** The petrochemical billionaires David and Charles Koch are attempting a hostile takeover of the Cato Institute, one of the
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Over the weekend, the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) hosted its 2012 annual policy conference in Washington, D.C. The conference, which advocated the organization’s hawkish views on the Middle East conflict, drew 13,000 attendees, including hundreds of members of Congress, President Obama, and Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney. In 2001, AIPAC was named the fourth most powerful
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One of the many ways Big Money runs Washington is by enlisting former legislators to become lobbyists. These former lawmakers have a high level of access that affords their clients expansive influence. The Center for Responsive Politics and Remapping Debate have teamed up on a joint project to identify the new jobs of members of Congress
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