You can tell NC House Republican leaders what you think of their budget proposal before it gets a final vote this week and goes to the state Senate. The House budget fires tens of thousands of workers, crowds our schools and health centers, and at the same time protects tax loopholes for big-money donors worth more [...]
As the price of gas moves toward $4 a gallon and oil company profits soar, US House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) declared that Big Oil should pay its fair share of taxes and the industry’s lucrative federal subsidiaries should be reviewed. That was Monday of this week. By Thursday, he was in retreat and echoing [...]
The Charlotte and Raleigh McClatchy newspapers have a story today about the new voter suppression bill in the General Assembly, featured in our April 21 Link of the Day: S-657. You can read the lame reasoning of the Art Pope-funded legislators who are the bill’s chief sponsors. Saving tax money can’t be a justification for [...]
Former Sen. Alan Simpson, a conservative Republican from Wyoming, uses a supply-and-demand market analysis to dissect why governance in Washington is broken. It’s broken because the campaign finance system is a private monopoly controlled by wealthy special interests. Everything favors their private agenda, not the public interest, and as a result the nation is going [...]
The Sunlight Foundation provides a valuable overview of President Obama's draft executive order that would require federal contractors to disclose their direct and indirect political spending. Indirect means donations made to other groups (like 527 committees, trade groups or c-4 organizations) with “the intention or reasonable expectation” that the money would be used for independent [...]
A trio of state Senators introduced a bill this week that hits each of the goals of the Art Pope-Civitas-Americans for Prosperity agenda for voting: Senate Bill 657 would kill pre-registration for teenagers, repeal Same Day Registration, cut down the days and hours for in-person Early Voting, cripple out-of-precinct provisional voting, but allow organized campaigns [...]
A year after the Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, Congress has not passed any major law to prevent another disaster. Why? “The opposition to new legislation that requires stricter oversight largely stems from the anti-regulatory zeal of conservative lawmakers and from the influence of the oil industry, say congressional staffers from both [...]
Blue Cross of NC is the main backer of a bill to create the health insurance exchange in North Carolina that will help implement the national health reform law. The intent of an independent exchange is to give more people access to insurance coverage, boost competition and lower premium costs, somewhat akin to Travelocity for [...]
E. J. Dionne reminds the wealthy elite that it is in their long-term interest, and a well-established American tradition, to temper greed with civic responsibility. “The influence of the ruling class comes from its position in the economy and its ability to pay for the politicians’ campaigns. . . . I am not using the [...]
With Tax Day 2011 almost here, Public Campaign has released a report called “The Artful Dodgers” about 12 well-known corporations that have spent $1 billion on lobbying and campaign donations to reduce their tax bills to nearly nothing. In several case (e.g., Exxon, Bank of America, Boeing and CitiGroup), the corporations paid ZERO taxes and [...]