The problem with politics in America boils down to this: General Electric piled up $14 billion in profits last year and paid ZERO in income taxes; GE’s chief executive Jeffrey Immelt, who coordinated the massive political effort to win those tax breaks, received millions in salary and an appointment by Barack Obama to head up [...]
Noted constitutional law professor Richard Hazen (host of Election Law Blog) has written an essay for Slate that probes the rationale behind US Supreme Court rulings on cases involving political spending and contributions. The Court should protect the First Amendment “free speech” rights of individuals to support candidates, but it also must protect a free [...]
The US Supreme Court will hear arguments on Monday about the constitutionality of the matching (or rescue) funds provision in Arizona’s public financing program. We have a similar provision in our North Carolina programs, so the ultimate decision (expected in late summer) will affect us, too. The Brennan Center has an overview of the issues [...]
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 [...]
Thanks to the leadership of Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the sustained agitation of citizen activists, there are now positive signs that the New York legislature could adopt a public financing program for state elections during this legislative cycle. The program will likely follow the model used in New York City elections, where small-dollar donations raised [...]
Here’s a sobering essay from Forbes magazine (“the capitalist tool”) about a two-pronged plan by the super-rich in the U.S. to gain even more political clout and wealth at the expense of the middle and working classes. Business publications (like Business Week and Fortune) are so much more straightforward in explaining how capitalism works than [...]
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 [...]
Here’s a nifty video that makes sense of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision – and explains the need for a Constitutional amendment to clarify that corporations don’t have “free speech” rights as “people” to spend unlimited money buying elections. There are a number of other links from the site for Free Speech for People, [...]
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 [...]
Democracy North Carolina weighs in on the controversial proposal to build special jetties or “terminal groins” near coastal inlets: Our media release today documents the millions of campaign dollars given by vacation homeowners advocating for the groins, and we caution legislators, especially those who say they’re against pay-to-play politics, please evaluate this legislation based on [...]