Despite promises of cleaning up what it called a “pay-to-play culture in Raleigh,” the new leadership in the General Assembly has done nothing to strengthen ethics or campaign finance laws. It hasn’t even enacted stronger disclosure laws to help the public’s right to know how money flows through the political system. Instead, as the Independent Weekly [...]
A new report by the National Institute on Money in State Politics examines the money behind the telecommunications industry’s recent success in passing legislation to restrict local governments from building broadband networks that hooked local businesses and residents to the Internet, even in areas long ignored by the private providers. According to the report, “The [...]
Last week brought a flurry of reporting about the moral decay of America's economic and political culture; the politics of greed is at the heart of the problem and the right target for the Occupy Movement and others. Somewhere in the 1980s, thanks to leadership at the top ranks of business and government, the transition accelerated [...]
The Center for Responsive Politics follows the “Shadow Money Trail” through the annual reports of foundations and business associations in order to uncover some of the millions spent by the Koch-Pope-Americans for Prosperity network for political advertising – but the source of most of the money remains hidden. What can be done? Even New Bern’s [...]
Advocates for requiring photo ID checks at the polls may delight in a news story breaking in Statesville, where a city council member is charged with voter fraud along with his sister and two of her family members. But all these voters cast ballots in their own names; requiring them to flash a photo document with [...]
House Speaker Thom Tillis left out loads of information about his donors when he filed his campaign disclosure report for the last half of 2011. He got called out by Democracy NC and others; he said he’d fix the report and file an amendment. Well, the new report is in and there are still lots [...]
A quick look from the news: Here are two examples of splendid editorials from North Carolina papers – one from the Charlotte Observer about good ways to hold Super PACs accountable for their wacko ads, and one from the Winston-Salem Journal about the bad ways Speaker Thom Tillis’ behaves as a leader in government. And [...]
Here’s a sobering statistic from a Washington Post report: “Four years ago, just 6 percent of campaign advertising in the GOP primaries amounted to attacks on other Republicans; in this election, that figure has shot up to more than 50 percent, according to an analysis of advertising trends.” Most of the money for the negative ads [...]
The NC General Assembly came back to town today, as demonstrators protested the leadership’s lousy record of out-of-control mischief and “madness against schools,” “madness against workers,” “madness against voting rights,” “madness for fracking,” etc. The Associated Press provides a good overview, and News 14 has this video of the demonstration. Protestors later went inside the [...]
The New Mexico legislature just passed a resolution calling on Congress to initiate a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. A blog entry from John Nichols of The Nation describes the significance of this action and how it fits into other efforts for an amendment and the larger outcry against corporate [...]