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."
Here’s another report about the tiny number of über-fat cats bankrolling the Super PACs. The Washington Post reports: “Just 47 people account for more than half (57.1 percent) of the $230 million raised by super PACs from individual donors, according to the study by U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) and Demos, two liberal research and [...]
Here are two NC stories of groups setting out to exert power – one taking the hard road of community organizing and grassroots democracy, the other using their big-money connections to buy an election. The first story describes how and why Stokes County neighbors came together to wage an impressive campaign against the prospect of [...]
Students at the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication have created an interactive flow chart of the money in NC political campaigns with annotated descriptions of key terms. Visualize rivers of money. They’ve also just posted a series of articles about NC campaign finances on their WhichWayNC website and blog. Did you know that [...]
Remember the mega-millions poured into making the healthcare debate in Congress so sickening? Well, the lobbying surrounding the 2012 Farm Bill has even more big-money spending from outfits that will make you gag. According to Think Progress, the new Farm Bill “would, among other things, deprive millions of Americans of food stamps, gut food safety [...]
The Citizens United decision allowed corporations to use money from their treasuries for candidate advocacy, not direct donations to candidates. Some argue the decision has not released a torrent of political spending by corporations, thinking narrowly of the Fortune 500. But they overlook the new use of corporate nonprofits (particularly secretive c-4s) as front groups [...]
The NC General Assembly adjourned today and the impact of its final decisions will reverberate for years to come – from a conniving vote that legalizes fracking and energy exploration, to the disgraceful deal-making that sold out students, the Racial Justice Act and victims of sterilization, to a last-minute change in the final state budget that [...]