Free Republic

Now that election 2010 is over, let’s go back over to OpenSecrets and look at which evil corporations stole our democracy and bought Congress for the Republicans — the RepubliCorp! First suspect: the military-industrial complex! •Defense Contractors: 55% Democrat, 44% Republican ($18 million) Oh, really? Well, then, it must have been Wall Street! That’s it: Wall Street bought Congress for the GOP! •Securities & Investment: 53% Democrat, 46% Republican ($8.2 million) Oh. Well, even if Wall Street as a whole preferred Democrats, it must have been the real bad guys, those risky Hedge funds and exotic investors… •Hedge Funds: 53%...

From CNN: Sen. John McCain is widely ahead of his two primary challengers, according to a new poll.A Behavior Research Center survey released Thursday indicates that 64 percent of likely Arizona Republican primary voters support McCain, with19 percent backing former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, five percent supporting Jim Deakin, a Tea Party activist, and 12 percent undecided. The primary is scheduled for August 24. Why such a gap? "The simple reality is that McCain took his (Hayworth's) border and SB 1070 issue away from him, and then nailed him on ethics issues pertaining to being a lobbyist and so on," said...

Remember how President Obama promised Lobbyists wouldn’t be running his administration? With more than 1,000 lobbyists coming through the front door of the White House for meetings inside, Laura Ingraham reports on Fox News today that many meetings with lobbyists are simply taking place across the street at the local Caribou Coffee shop! Ingraham says in order to make it look like...

I sometimes worry that there might be some naive entrepreneur out there who takes at face value this talk on “green energy” being the next boom — a businessman who doesn’t understand that the only way to make money from wind, solar, biofuels, and the like is through government favors. In case such a misguided soul exists, lobbying firm Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber, Schrek have launched a public-service campaign to set them right: Well, I guess it’s not technically a PSA, but it is good for this K Street lobbying firm to remind the business world that the green-energy game is...

John Podesta of the Center for American Progress is nearly scripting the White House’s BP response, according to Jonathan Weisman at the Wall Street Journal in a blog post picked up by Drudge. But Weisman leaves out a key detail: Podesta’s brother is a BP lobbyist. Tony and John Podesta cofounded the Podesta Group, a K Street lobbying firm. Now BP is a client, and Tony is one of the lobbyists on the account, according to the firm’s latest lobbying filings.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A Washington hedge fund lobbying group has given names and contact information about its members to Congressional investigators, the Wall Street journal reported in its online edition on Monday. The Managed Funds Association turned over the information about more than 2,600 members on May 13 under threat of subpoena from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the Journal said, citing a letter the hedge-fund lobbying group sent to members.

Washington -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi laid down the law this year: To prevent the appearance of Congress doing unethical favors for big campaign contributors, she told Democrats they could no longer steer federal money directly to corporations. The only "earmarks" members could seek in spending bills would be for nonprofits... But not everyone is obeying Pelosi’s tough talk... U.S. Reps. Dan Maffei and Michael Arcuri have found a way to work around the new orders: Simply pass the federal money to not-for-profit organizations and let them forward it to corporations.... Maffei and Arcuri accepted campaign contributions from the same...

Complete and utter hypocrite: President Obama has been happy to beat up on Wall Street "fat cats," but tonight he'll be even happier to take their money. The President is slated to headline a superswank, $50,000-per-couple fund-raiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee at Manhattan's gilded St. Regis hotel on Fifth Ave. The high-dollar affair will feature fine French food, a bevy of Wall Street titans and 23 Congress members - including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). [snip] The man's hypocrisy knows no bounds. I firmly believe in capitalism and disagree with Obama's vilification of Wall Street. The government and...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Democratic Party's 2010 congressional election campaign is looking to an elite group of lobbyists for bundled political contributions worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to a study released on Monday. The study by the non-partisan watchdog Center for Public Integrity found that four of the five biggest bundlers of campaign contributions among lobbyists were Democrats who raised a combined $1 million for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee alone. Other beneficiaries were the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and New York Senator Charles Schumer, the study showed. Bundlers,...

I am in an argument with someone & wondering if anyone knows who the major lobbyists were for and against HRC. Thanks in advance

Ladies and gentlemen of the Legislature, kindly get a grip. Sen. John Coghill and some of his legislative colleagues want to raise the limit of what lobbyists can spend on lawmakers' meals without reporting it. He wants to raise the limit from $15 to $50. Why? Well, it seems that good meals cost more than $15 in Juneau and other parts of the state. And if a lawmaker should go to lunch with a lobbyist and order something that costs $17.50, that lobbyist has to report the meal and who it was for.

A record $3.47 billion was spent on federal lobbyists in 2009, according to a new study by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Ergo, fair now to say that Wall Street and K Street had a bull year, while Main Street suffered in recession. The lobbyist boon times were tied to the legislative debates of the day: health care reform, financial reform and energy policy.

Billy Tauzin, the former Louisiana congressman, is resigning as president of the drug industry trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America amid internal disputes over its pact with the White House to trade political support for favorable terms in the proposed health care overhaul. As the industry’s top lobbyist, Mr. Tauzin brokered the deal with the White House and Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate finance committee, last summer to limit the drug industry’s total costs under the proposed health care overhaul to $80 billion over 10 years.

Another mismatch between Obama's rhetoric and reality!Remember this? We face a deficit of trust -– deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works that have been growing for years. To close that credibility gap we have to take action on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue -- to end the outsized influence of lobbyists; to do our work openly... That's why we've excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs, or seats on federal boards and commissions. --Barack Hussein Obama State of the Union address If Obama really "excluded" lobbyists then why are there so many working in his Administration? Timothy Carney at the...

With big changes to the nation’s food safety system looming in 2010, the FDA made a strange move earlier this week when it appointed former Monsanto lobbyist Michael Taylor to lead the agency’s fight against contaminated peanut butter and lethal lettuce. Taylor was named to the new post of deputy commissioner for food. Taylor, who has circled three times between government and industry, isn’t the sort of person you’d expect to see issuing orders in the Obama FDA. The last time he was at the FDA, the agency created several policies on genetically modified foods that no one would ever...

Some lobbyists are getting worried in Massachusetts with Martha Coakley getting beat by Scott Brown so what do they do? They do a fundraiser: With Democrat Martha Coakley in trouble in the Massachusetts special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat, Democrats could lose vote No. 60 for President Obama’s health-care bill. In response, an army of lobbyists for drug companies, health insurance companies, and hospitals has teamed up to throw a high-dollar Capitol Hill fundraiser for Coakley next Tuesday night. Of the 22 names on the host committee–meaning they raised $10,000 or more for Coakley–17 are federally registered lobbyists, 15...

<p>In its new "A Fistful of Dollars" report, the International Monetary Fund concludes that the riskiest mortgage lenders were also the most active lobbyists in Washington.</p> <p>IMF researchers found that during 2000 to 2007, lenders lobbying more intensively on mortgage-related legislation — such as consumer protection laws and securitization — made more hazardous mortgage loans than those who lobbied less.</p>

While much of K Street has seen a dip during the recession, Tony Podesta has managed to buck the trend. His firm, the Podesta Group, has earned more in lobbying fees in nine months than it did in all of 2008, has nearly doubled its staff and is expanding its office space by one floor. It helps that Podesta is arguably the most recognizable Democratic name on the Washington lobbying scene. Podesta is modest about his success. In an interview with The Hill, he called lobbying “a people business” and credited his success to his staff, listing off a bipartisan...

Top aides to President Barack Obama have met early and often with lobbyists, Democratic political strategists and other interests with a stake in the administration's national health care overhaul, White House visitor records obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press show. The AP in early August asked the White House to produce records identifying communications that top Obama aides -- including chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, senior advisers David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett and Pete Rouse, and 18 others -- had with outside interests on health care. The AP in late September narrowed its request to White House visitor records for those...

President Obama has always made a pretty big deal about not working with “lobbyists”. Registered lobbyists can’t get stimulus money, can’t be White House advisors and are not allowed access to meetings and summits. So how does one get around that? It’s simple; you just don’t register as a lobbyist. That’s what Andy Stern did and it may come back to bite him.