Something that easily folds into your pocket, that’s smaller than an envelope, that’s widely available but in scarce supply, that gets your attention – that’s what overcame reams of scientific data and stopped the oceans from rising. An astonishing miracle. We witnessed it here in North Carolina, and now a little noticed blog has tracked [...]
The Nation magazine has the definitive article about the impact of Citizens United on US elections – including the gusher flow of Middle East oil money through trade groups green-lighted by the Supreme Court’s political decision. The article is by Lee Fang, the writer who broke the story about the cabal of millionaires recruited to [...]
The Center for Public Integrity has a useful new report about the role of outside money in the North Carolina governor’s contest. It picks up on a theme raised by Democracy North Carolina in a formal complaint to the State Board of Elections in 2008 – namely, that national Republican and Democratic groups were pumping [...]
Labor Day brings a special report from the NC Justice Center entitled The State of Working North Carolina, 2012. The executive summary explains: “North Carolina working families lost financial ground and experienced diminished opportunities through the decade of the 2000s due to several economic trends, including a dramatic increase in income inequality and the decline of [...]
You expect judges to follow the rules, especially when it comes to public accountability. Unfortunately, it looks like NC Supreme Court Justice Paul Newby selected a campaign treasurer who is having a hard time abiding by simple campaign finance disclosure regulations. For months, the State Board of Elections has struggled to get the Newby campaign [...]
Despite the flood of self-serving money swamping the 2012 elections, better souls are not giving up: They're taking the long view, looking for an alternative to elections as auctions among billionaires. One component of any long-term strategy involves creating new streams of clean money for campaign financing. Even if a constitutional amendment reversed the worst of [...]
It looks like Speaker Thom Tillis’ squeeze on lobbyists and PACs (described in the LOD two days ago) is working very well. Thanks to his aggressive approach, Tillis is on track to break all records for raising big money from special-interest groups, according to research released today by Democracy North Carolina. Senate President Pro Tem [...]
Despite campaign promises to stamp out “pay to play” politics in Raleigh, House Speaker Thom Tillis is in the middle of what can only be called a shakedown of lobbyists for campaign cash. His political director sent an email to many lobbyists with a clear message: get your PAC to send us a check by [...]
The NC General Assembly created a new commission to develop the rules for how hydraulic drilling of natural gas (fracking) can proceed in North Carolina and it gave most the seats to the mining and energy industry. That’s bad enough, but it turns out Speaker Thom Tillis filled a seat reserved for an environmentalist with [...]
Mother Jones magazine has boiled the history of political money deals in the United States into a clever annotated timeline and a highly readable article, starring a host of shady characters in “a dramatic battle between the forces of reform and influence that goes back more than 250 years before the birth of the super-PAC."