Free Republic

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama is considering giving a speech in January to the Chamber of Commerce, a major business lobby, as part of a new outreach to corporations, a White House official said on Saturday. The White House and the chamber have tussled repeatedly during the first two years of Obama's administration over policies that the group has portrayed as unfriendly to business. After the November 2 congressional elections, which handed Republicans control of the House of Representatives and shrank Democrats' majority in the Senate, Obama said he had to do a better job of making sure the...

Blaming congressional inaction, the nation's largest doctors' lobby is urging lawmakers this month to block a steep cut scheduled to hit Medicare doctors at the start of December. The American Medical Association (AMA) is warning that a failure to prevent the cut would be "a catastrophe for seniors" because many doctors would stop seeing Medicare patients altogether. Physicians are facing a 23 percent cut on Dec. 1, and an additional 1.9 percent cut is scheduled for Jan. 1. "This is not about doctors," AMA President Cecil Wilson told reporters on a press call Monday. "It's about access to care for...

Today, Bard shows, the Arab lobby's goals include feeding America's oil addiction, obtaining more sophisticated weaponry, and weakening our alliance with a democratic Israel. [...] The most powerful member of the Arab lobby is Saudi Arabia, which has a nearly eighty-year relationship with the United States. From the earliest days, when American companies first discovered oil in the Arabian Peninsula, the Saudis have used a variety of tactics, including threats and bribes, to coerce U.S. policy makers to ignore their human rights abuses, support of terrorism, and opposition to American interests. Today, Bard shows, the Arab lobby's goals include feeding...

Success or failure for a political lobbyist often comes down to access; without easy access to legislators, it is naturally much harder to apply the pressure to drive legislation in the desired direction. But lobbyists in Austin, Texas, may soon begin applying a variation on Chairman Mao’s saying, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” — albeit not in the way the Marxist dictator had in mind. The possible trend toward lobbyists “packing heat” may come about due to an aspect of Texas’ laws regulating concealed handgun licenses (CHL). Over 402,000 Texans have been issued a CHL,...

President Barack Obama’s political director failed to disclose that he was slated to receive a nearly $40,000 payout from a large labor union while he was working in the White House. Patrick Gaspard, who served as the political director for the Service Employees International Union local 1199, received $37,071.46 in “carried over leave and vacation” from the union in 2009, but he did not disclose the agreement to receive the payment on his financial disclosure forms filed with the White House. . .

Also sanctions a call to "Throw the Jews in the ovens"Jeremiah Wright's dislike for "them Jews" and Israel is well known, and perhaps Barack Obama--who belonged to Wright's racist church for more than 20 years--shares this dislike as shown by the fact that his campaign staff officially sanctioned the phrase "Israel lobby" as code for "Jewish lobby." From My.BarackObama.com, Hi [EMK], Thank you so much for your involvement in the My.BarackObama online community. Your voice is valued here; however, we were forced to remove your recent blog post that referred to the “Jewish lobby.” Please use the more specific and...

Daley’s vehement opposition to private handgun ownership exemplifies the demagoguery which the entire gun prohibition movement embraces in its campaign of public disarmament. The people have wised up. As a result, anti-gun groups have lost so much momentum that they have been unable to push their agenda even with a Congress controlled by the far left fringe of the Democrat party, and with an anti-gun president in the White House. Americans are not as gullible as the gun prohibition lobby thought. The public has seen restrictive gun laws fail. Gun-free zones haven’t stopped shootings at schools or shopping malls. Gun...

J Street has launched a campaign in support of Washington's firm stance on Israel's latest approved building plan in East Jerusalem, the dovish U.S. pro-Israel lobby announced on Tuesday. Israel's announcement of plans to build 1,600 housing units in East Jerusalem strained ties with the U.S., which has said it regarded last week's decision - made public while Vice President Joe Biden was in Israel - as an insult. Recent U.S.-Israel tensions were used by "hawkish pro-Israel activists," according to the announcement posted on J Street's website, "to attack the Obama Administration over Israel, urging the Administration to slow down...

For years the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) has been rallying members to attend its annual Lobby Day at the Virginia General Assembly on Martin Luther King Day. In one respect this year is no different in that the League's Lobby Day is scheduled to start at 9AM on Monday, January 18, 2010 (Martin Luther King day). But in another respect 2010 is different - following impressive victories by pro-gun candidates for the House of Delegates, Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General, VCDL's 2010 VCDL Lobby Day theme is "Transforming Gun Rights in Virginia." And the group is expecting results....

On Sunday evening at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in downtown Washington, D.C., J-Street opened its first ever-national policy conference. Officially founded over a year ago, the self-proclaimed "pro-Israel, pro-peace" lobby was birthed amid controversy. While J-Street positioned itself as the voice of mainstream American Jewish opinion on Israel, critics (myself included) argued it was a left-wing front far from the mainstream.

Hello to all, Thursday, Sept. 17, the MassLPA will be hosting a celebration of the constitution and all of our liberties at Nurse's hall on Beacon hill. The event will start with a flag raising ceremony and the "Pledge of Allegience"at 9:00AM. Starting at 10:00AM there will be speakers, most are members of the LPA, some will be semi-celebrity (politicians). There will be members of the Western Mass 912 project in attendance and some will be speaking. After the speaking event we will have a coffee hour and then move on to lobbying efforts. This should be a wonderful celebration...

It isn’t just U.S. companies or groups that push for their causes on Capitol Hill. Thousands of times each year, lobbyists for foreign governments and other overseas organizations reach out to members of Congress and other U.S. leaders to make their case on issues important to them.But counting up those thousands of contacts hasn’t been easy. Records detailing what foreign entities are lobbying, who they’re contacting and why are filed on paper forms, sometimes in handwriting that’s little more than a scrawl. After prodding from open-government groups, the Department of Justice put scanned copies of the forms on its Web...

General Motors reduced its lobbying spending in the second quarter by only 1.4% compared to the first quarter, even though the second quarter saw the company go bankrupt, be taken over by the government, and announce it was cancelling its outside lobbying contracts. In April, May, and June, GM spent $2,760,000 on lobbying according to its Q2 lobbying filing, compared to $2,800,000 in the first quarter.

Financial lobby gears up effort against Obama planBy Silla Brush Posted: 07/02/09 12:35 PM [ET] A coalition of financial services interests is in the process of organizing a major lobbying campaign against the Obama administration's plan for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. The plans are not yet final, but among the groups and firms in the discussion are the American Financial Services Association, Financial Services Roundtable, Mortgage Bankers Association and Community Bankers Association, according to two industry sources familiar with the plans. The budget could be as high as several millions of dollars to organize grassroots opposition to the plan,...

Unless you've taken a very long Memorial Day vacation, you've no doubt heard the big news. President Obama has picked an anti-gun radical to replace Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court. Obama's pick is Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who is currently on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second District. There she has racked up an anti-Second Amendment record and has displayed contempt for the rule of law under the Constitution. The Heller decision put the Supreme Court in support of the Constitutional protection of the individual right to keep and bear arms. Sotomayor, a politically correct lover of...

Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM • THE BLOG Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 1:03 pm Update on Lobbyist Contacts Regarding the Recovery Act In the spirit of transparency, Norm Eisen, special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform, asked us to pass along this update on the President’s restrictions on lobbyist contacts regarding the Recovery Act. President Obama has made historic commitments to putting the public interest first and to cracking down on special interests and, in particular, lobbying abuses. To accomplish that, he has put forward the toughest rules in history closing...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California's Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, CEOs and celebrity doctors took up U.S. President Barack Obama's campaign for healthcare reform on Monday, saying millions of Americans need help.

The corn-ethanol industry, which wouldn't exist without government intervention, his hired former General turned influence-peddler Wes Clark to lobby for an increase in the proportion of corn ethanol in motor fuel, from 10% to 15%. Corn ethanol is at best fuel-INefficient, raising the cost of driving needlessly, and at worst, it will damage your vehicle. And you get to pay for it!

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's appointment as head of a U.S. intelligence council has been identified by the Center for Security Policy as a member of the 'Iran lobby'. Also, government sources said Charles Freeman, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia and appointed to head the National Intelligence Council, has expressed anti-Semitic views in government meetings. At one meeting, the sources said, Freeman turned to Jewish staffers of Congress and questioned their loyalty to the United States. A report by the Center for Security Policy identified Freeman as a member of the so-called Iran lobby, which has been pressing...

WASHINGTON – Lawyers hired by mortgage finance giant Freddie Mac are quietly investigating the firm's own $2 million lobbying campaign, The Associated Press has learned. The lobbying effort helped quash proposed new regulations on the company before the housing market collapsed. It was not immediately clear how much Freddie Mac is spending to investigate its own conduct or whether it is spending any federal bailout money on the internal probe. The firm was placed under U.S. government control due to its massive investment losses. One of Washington's leading law firms, Covington & Burling LLP, has spent more than a month...