Since George W. Bush took office, commercial banks have more than doubled their annual federal lobbying budgets, to great effect. In addition to securing a nearly industry-wide bailout in the wake of a financial crisis spurred by their own risky investments, banking lobbyists notched many successes in More…
That’s the question being asked by some government watchdogs in the wake of Rep. Charlie Rangel’s admonishment by the House Ethics Committee yesterday.
The New York Democrat, the panel concluded, had violated congressional lobbying rules when he was flown to Caribbean business conferences in recent years at More…
If you were wondering what security and investment firms spent $93 million lobbying about last year, look no further than today’s New York Times, in which Tara Siegel Bernard reveals that they are lobbying for the right to give you bad financial advice as More…
Bloomberg takes a hard look at the lobbying fight over financial regulatory overhaul and concludes that despite last week’s passage of a financial regulatory overhaul package by the House, the banks won — simply by not losing as badly as they once thought they might. Their aggressive lobbying More…
Today’s loophole alert regarding financial reform comes from The Wall Street Journal, which points out that USAA, an insurer that serves military families, quietly won an exemption from tougher provisions proposed as part of a massive regulatory overhaul bill. And that’s not to mention General Electric Co. and Pitney More…
Following up on President Obama’s Transparency Memoranda signed on his first day in office, the White House today issued two new documents pledging openness: An “open government directive” instructing the heads of federal departments and agencies to take specific actions to open their operations to More…
The finance industry, seeming to forget that it was responsible for the economic turmoil that’s pushed unemployment above 10 percent, is lobbying furiously (and successfully) against Democratic legislation designed to protect consumers and prevent a similar episode in the future.
Yesterday, industry representatives held More…
WorldNetDaily has the exclusive: Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has joined five Republican members of Congress in demanding an investigation of the Council on American-Islamic Relation’s lobbying activities, to determine whether it should lose its non-profit status. Read Coburn’s letter after the jump.
The push is on to dilute the climate change bills moving through Congress, and it’s not coming only from conservatives. Mother Jones’ Kate Sheppard reports today that 14 Senate Democrats are urging their leadership to amend the proposal to grant more free polluting permits to the coal-burning utilities More…
The collision between environmental protection and coal extraction is nothing new to the Appalachian states, which are home to some of the largest coal deposits in the world. But in the middle of an unemployment crisis — and with a new administration showing signs of cracking down harshly More…
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