A significant number of legislators in Raleigh seem determined to help big political donors gut regulations and overturn state laws that protect consumers, public health and the environment. The poor state of accessible campaign finance data makes it difficult to track the pay-to-play culture, but Democracy North Carolina has highlighted the undue influence in several [...]
Context is always important. These two columns in national publications provide valuable context and important insights into what are the reasonable limits of a code of ethical conduct for Supreme Court justices and what are unreasonable restrictions on voting. The column about voting includes the conservative Cato Institute’s worry that the misplaced drumbeat for a [...]
The Independent Weekly this week features a blockbuster series of investigative stories about the Art Pope empire. One big shocker: Pope failed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes on his foundation’s earnings for YEARS, eventually begging the IRS for forgiveness with various lame excuses. So Pope turns out to be a miserly [...]
The evidence of inappropriate behavior is mounting: Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas not only attended an expense-paid strategy retreat with the Koch brothers and their corporate friends before the Citizens United ruling; it turns out that back in 1991 Citizens United spent $100,000 to support Thomas’ nomination to the Supreme Court. As [...]
For Release Wednesday, March 2, 2011 Contact: Bob Hall, 919-489-1931 Bill Sponsor Received $22,500 in 2010 As the legislature debates a controversial bill to allow construction of “terminal groins” along North Carolina’s beaches, a new study reveals that the bill’s chief sponsor and other state lawmakers have received $2 million in campaign donations from a [...]
You can listen to two 10-minute segments of a secretly taped conversation in which Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker gushes about his bust-the-union strategies with a prankster playing the role of David Koch, the billionaire patron of Americans for Prosperity and numerous politicians. Walker describes various plans to trick and pressure Democrats; he encourages Koch to [...]
A shocking investigative report in Rolling Stone answers the question, “Why aren’t the Wall Street swindlers who brought down the world’s economy in jail?” Answer: They’re protected by the completely corrupt relationship between the crooks and the cops. They’re getting away with the biggest theft in world history because of the political payoffs, revolving door [...]
With the blessing of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, the US Chamber of Commerce has become even more aggressive in spending corporate money on political ads to tilt elections in its favor. Now it turns out the Chamber hired a group of reconnaissance experts to develop a plan to spy on and disrupt its [...]
Robert Lee Caldwell of Morganton was indicted on Tuesday in connection with Bev Perdue’s 2008 gubernatorial campaign . The prosecutor, Colon Willoughby, said there’s no evidence suggesting that Perdue or her staff knew that Caldwell used an illegal contribution to pay for a campaign air flight. However, he also said, “I would not be surprised [...]
Three Democratic state Senate candidates (Don Davis, Margaret Dickson and Joe Sam Queen) are suing the NC Republican Party and their opponents in the 2010 election because allegedly (1) the party improperly used a media discount available to candidates to pay for multiple broadcast advertisements, and (2) the party violated the Stand By Your Ad [...]