Back in the mid-1990s, when oil companies were whining about cheap prices and low profits, Congress decided to waive the federal royalties to encourage new wells in the Gulf of Mexico. Now that oil profits are soaring and prices have jumped from under $12 to over $100 a barrel, do you think the oil companies [...]
Soon after donating $100,000 to Obama's 2013 inaugural committee, the Southern Company announced it was “newly optimistic” about prospects for gaining an $8.3 billion loan guarantee from the federal government for building a new nuclear power plant. Is a quid pro quo involved here, asks Public Citizen. Answer: “We need more information to answer that [...]
Greenpeace looked at the campaign money Duke Energy and Progress Energy have donated to the legislative sponsors of the bill to immediately replace all the members of the Utilities Commission and several other regulatory boards with GOP appointee. Seven of the 12 sponsors and co-sponsors received a total of $147,000 from the two utilities in [...]
WRAL-TV has created a searchable database of the major stockholdings listed by NC legislators and other state officials on their ethics disclosure forms. For example, eight legislators disclosed owning at least $10,000 worth of stock in Duke Energy or Progress Energy – although the amounts may be much higher, and smaller amounts held by others [...]
After a review of the changing landscape in the NC General Assembly, reporter Jordan Green of YES! Weekly provides an in-depth analysis of the NC Republican House Campaign Committee. According to its plan of organization, it is responsible for “recruiting candidates and raising funds for use in electing Republicans to the North Carolina House.” Donations [...]
Here's a very real example of how BIG MONEY twists policy priorities and hurts average North Carolinians. In the 1990s, NC legislators gave businesses huge tax cuts that eliminated the "surplus" in NC's unemployment insurance trust fund. Then, as the Great Recession got worse, NC legislators decided to borrow money from the federal government to [...]
From Robert Reich's blog on Sunday: Exactly a century ago, on February 3, 1913, the 16th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, authorizing a federal income tax. Congress turned it into a graduated tax, based on “capacity to pay.” . . . The 1880s and 1890s had been the Gilded Age, the time of robber [...]
Regardless of how you felt about who won the White House or State House, record levels of Big Money and new restrictions on voting played a bigger role in the 2012 election than you might imagine, according to this sweeping essay in The American Prospect magazine. As you might expect, North Carolina takes center stage [...]
On the eve of tomorrow’s General Assembly session, you’d like to see your legislators in meetings with their constituents, discussing their concerns about what state government should do. Well, that’s not exactly what you get in today’s General Assembly, where many seats cost more than $250,000 to win and money is always on the mind. [...]
A new report from Demos and U.S. PIRG gives us an insight into the post-Citizens United campaign financing system in the U.S. It’s a sad view. According to the report, 2012 marked the first ever billion-dollar presidential campaign. With Super PACs pouring an unprecedented amount of money into campaigns, this should hardly come as a [...]