So who do you want your Insurance Commissioner listening to when it comes time to regulate insurance rates? The public or the insurance companies? If the private companies supply the bulk of the commissioner’s campaign money, you can bet they’ll have an insider’s advantage. That’s one powerful reason why we need the Voter-Owned Elections program [...]
Here’s a story that deserves more attention: NC House Rules Co-chair Stephen LaRoque (R-Kinston) loaned his for-profit management company $200,000 from a non-profit organization that he set up to channel federal small-business loans to high risk ventures in rural North Carolina – and then he refused to disclose this insider dealing on the non-profit’s report [...]
Public Campaign has a good bi-partisan campaign that challenges members of the debt reduction Super Committee to stop raising money while they are choosing whose ox will be gored by possible spending cuts or tax increases. The nonprofit has calculated that each of the 12 Members has so much money already stockpiled that they can [...]
Here are recent links for those of you interested in the money behind the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for President, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and the favors he’s done for his big donors. As with other candidates, his new Super PAC could dwarf what he raises himself for the nomination. The Washington Post weighs [...]
Rotten news and better news from the NC General Assembly: The bad news is that a bunch of NC lobbyists are giving up to $2,500 each for a state legislator’s campaign fundraising event. That’s especially odd because North Carolina law specifically prohibits a lobbyist from giving state legislators campaign donations. It doesn’t matter if the [...]
The video by Brave New Films about the Wake schools controversy is creating it own tussle. The video says Americans for Prosperity, led nationally by the billionaire Koch brothers, spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to promote resegregation and elect a conservative school board in 2009. Dallas Woodhouse, head of the NC chapter of Americans [...]
California Republican US Rep. Darrell Issa is a . . . , Issa is a, is a . . . what? At the moment, he’s the heavyweight chair of a key Congressional committee with a mission to gut regulations that big businesses don’t like, even though they may benefit consumers. News stories keep revealing Issa’s [...]
The political system is so blatantly tilted to help the super-rich and powerful that even they are embarrassed. They know it’s wrong, and it's great when they speak out and call for change. In a singularly important op-ed, Warren Buffett, the second richest man in the US, is lambasting Congressional leaders for not making the [...]
The so-called Super Congress – the six Democrats and six Republicans charged with coming up with a plan to reduce the deficit by more than $1 trillion – all come “with a history of political patrons and connections with special interests,” according to their portraits painted by the Center for Public Integrity's iWatch News. The Associated Press [...]
Practical lobbyists in Washington are telling their clients to open their checkbooks because their ox may be gored by the Super 12 – the yet-to-be-named bipartisan committee of US Senators and Representatives who will recommend where to make additional budget cuts of at least $1.2 trillion. One lobbyist said he’s writing 12 big checks to [...]