Timothy P. Carney

Liberals and cable news

The Drudge Report typically posts evening cable news ratings. Here are today's: FOXNEWS HANNITY/PALIN 4,200,000 FOXNEWS O'REILLY 3,868,000 FOXNEWS BECK 2,512,000 FOXNEWS GRETA 2,383,000 FOXNEWS BAIER 2,235,000 FOXNEWS SHEP 1,980,000 MSNBC OLBERMANN 1,041,000 CNNHN GRACE 1,036,000 MSNBC MADDOW 957,000 CNN KING 835,000 MSNBC HARDBALL 625,000 CNN COOPER 611,000 That's a pretty striking pattern, even adjusting for the Palin effect. Not only are the FOX guys on top, but the more conservative FOX guys (Hannity, O'Reilly, Beck) are higher than than the moderate FOX guys. The disparities are huge. So why can't liberals have that sort of success on cable television. This is obviously a huge...

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Timothy P. Carney: No neutrality in Google-funded net neutrality studies

President Obama's Federal Communications Commission commissioned a taxpayer-funded "independent" study of broadband policy from an institution funded by Microsoft and Google. These two companies have lobbied for and stand to profit from the policies advanced by the study and by the White House. Obama's FCC announced in July it had chosen Harvard University's Berman Center for Internet and Society to "conduct an independent expert review of existing literature and studies about broadband deployment and usage throughout the world." The study, led by professor Yochai Benkler, has provided fodder for advocates of net neutrality regulations, such as the Obama...

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'Confused populists' and the Business-vs-Government myth

Blogger and Crunchy-Con author Rod Dreher is reading Sarah Palin's going rogue, and he makes a good point: She's a conflicted populist, and doesn't understand that. It's simply bizarre how she can write with passion about how badly Exxon screwed over the people of Alaska in the Exxon Valdez incident, and how the cozy relationship between Alaska's government and the oil industry worked against the interests of ordinary hardworking people ... and yet repeat shopworn GOP nostrums like this one: In national politics, some feel that big Business is always opposed to the Little Guy. Some people seem to think a profit motive is inherently greedy and evil, and that what's good for business is...

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Politco's hack job on the Catholic Church

A lot of defenders of legal abortion are taking shots at the Catholic Church for speaking out against taxpayer funding of abortion, but one recent anti-Church dart came from a news article at Politico that was so slanted in its presentation and vitriolic in its tone you would probably think it was an opinion piece if you didn't know better. The article, by David Rogers, deserves a smackdown. Thankfully, Mollie Hemingway provides such downward smacking at Get Religion....

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Pelosi's former top aide joins anti-Google lobbying push

Few companies are as cozy with the Obama White House as Google is. Google and Obama are on the same side of the Net Neutrality debate, Schmidt has met with President Obama multiple times, and for the Obama campaign, Schmidt was an informal advisor, a donor, and a fundraiser. So when software maker Rosetta Stone picked a fight with Google, it was asking for trouble. At heart is Google AdWords product. If I ran a gutter cleaning business, I might buy the adwords "gutter cleaner" and "clogged gutters" from Google. This means that when someone searched those terms, along the right side of the page, text ads for my business would pop up. Apparently, competitors were...

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Subsidies on trial in Caribbean rum rumble

If you drink Captain Morgan rum, you probably don't care where it came from. But to the governments of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands -- and to the top-shelf K Street lobbyists they have hired in recent months -- where to distill Captain Morgan is a billion-dollar question. Diageo is a multinational liquor giant that hires a Puerto Rican distillery to make Captain Morgan rum. Puerto Rico's next-door neighbor, the U.S. Virgin Islands, however, is trying to lure the Captain away with a raft of subsidies. The special arrangement these two territories have with the U.S. government ropes Washington into their cutthroat competition for more booze business -- which means more K Street...

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Tom Carper's old chief of staff now a lobbyist for nation's largest health insurer

Now that health-care reform has moved to the Senate, Senator Tom Carper is one of the central players: he sits on the Finance Committee's subcommittee for health, and he has positioned himself as a dealmaker on the government option in health insurance, which is the most contentious item in the whole reform package, and the item that poses the most threat to insurers. That may be why WellPoint, the nation's largest health insurer, has retained Carper's former chief of staff to lobby on health-care reform. Jonathon Jones became Carper's chief of staff just a few weeks after Carper came to Washington in 2001, and served in that role until the end of 2006. With his boss reelected, and now...

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Timothy P. Carney: Feeling pushed, the Catholic Church pushes back

Typically averse to direct involvement in the political fray, the Catholic Church in the United States now finds itself fighting in Washington's policy trenches both on Capitol Hill and at City Hall. While speaking out publicly on moral issues that intersect with politics is standard for priests and Catholic institutions in America, engaging forcefully in the political scrum -- talking tough to the D.C. Council on gay marriage and directly petitioning members of Congress on abortion funding -- represents a pugnacity atypical of the American Church. While Catholic teaching has been consistently clear that abortion is "gravely contrary to the moral law," and priests and bishops...

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Timothy P. Carney: A mining giant in bed with Boxer, Kerry

When a mainstream publication reports on "strange bedfellows" supporting a government regulation, you can be sure that the tryst in question is between some sort of liberal "public interest" group and a company standing to get rich off the proposed regulation -- probably at the expense of consumers, taxpayers, and small business. Rio Tinto is a leading mining company, which is probably why the Economist reported the company's support for a cap-and-trade scheme on climate change in a piece titled "Strange Bedfellows." As the U.S. Senate has taken up the climate legislation sponsored by Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and John Kerry, D-Mass., Rio Tinto has taken to Capitol Hill to rally...

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On which side of 'reform' is health industry money?

I'm a big fan of the Center for Responsive Politics and their website, OpenSecrets.org. It's the most comprehensive source for campaign cash and lobbying information, and I find myself constantly citing it. But once in a while, in their special analyses, I think they ask the wrong question. Today, there is a prime example of this on their site. First, on health-care reform, OpenSecrets carries the headline, "Opponents of House Health Reform Bill Received 15 Percent More in Health Industry Contributions Than Supporters." This nicely fits the Obama narrative that well-funded special interests are trying to undermine "reform." But look at what numbers CRP crunched:...

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Timothy P. Carney: Pfizer deserts its monument to corporate welfare

Susette Kelo's little, pink house in New London, Conn. -- like the houses of all her neighbors -- is now a pile of rubble, overgrown with weeds. But Pfizer, the company that called for the demolition in order to build a new research and development plant, announced Monday it is packing up and leaving town in order to cut costs after its merger with fellow drug-giant Wyeth. New London now has a wasteland where a neighborhood once stood, and no jobs or business to show for it. It's another travesty of central planning. In the late 1990s, New London's politicians were desperate to fix up their aging and ailing town. The city revved up a private, non-profit entity called the New London...

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The FedEx-vs-UPS lobbying knife-fight

Reason TV's Nick Gillespie weighs in on the UPS-vs-FedEx lobbying knife fight with this entertaining white-board video. "The move to screw over FedEx and its customers is contemptible, but it does make a sick sort of business sense: Why not use legislation to win what you can in the marketplace? And it tells us who the real villain is here: a federal government that is big enough and powerful enough to absolutely, positively guarantee that it can crush any business overnight." I wrote about this skirmish back in June, with a similar moral of the story: Is it fair for FedEx and UPS to play by different rules? Is it fair to change the rules on FedEx in the middle of the game?...

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Obama, health-care 'reform,' and industry

I haven't had a chance to write a column lately on health-care reform, but I wanted to point readers to two mainstream pieces that deal with the industry's role in the debate. First, the New York Times had a news analysis Sunday titled "Medical Industry Grumbles, but It Stands to Gain." The heart of the piece is this graph: “All industries stand to gain from this legislation,” Steven D. Findlay, senior health policy analyst with Consumers Union in Washington, said in an interview. “They’re going to continue to fight their narrow issues and get the best that they can get. But all of them are aware they stand to gain significant new business and new...

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The Left's culture war, and big government as a weapon

A handful of stories today reflect an important truth about the culture wars in today's politics: Often the Left -- not the religious Right -- is the aggressor. The advocates of gay marriage and defenders of abortion are often the ones "imposing their values" on those who disagree. Some current case studies: 1) Montgomery County's war on crisis-pregnancy centers that don't abort From Marta Mossburg's column in today's Examiner: Montgomery County Councilwoman Duchy Trachtenberg introduced legislation to require crisis pregnancy centers that don't offer abortions to inform clients they must go elsewhere for medical advice and should consult with a medical provider before...

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Pfizer abandons site of infamous Kelo eminent domain taking

The private homes that New London, Conn., took away from Suzette Kelo and her neighbors have been torn down. Their former site is a wasteland of fields of weeds, a monument to the power of eminent domain. But now Pfizer, the drug company whose neighboring research facility had been the original cause of the homes' seizure, has just announced that it is closing up shop in New London. To lure those jobs to New London a decade ago, the local government promised to demolish the older residential neighborhood adjacent to the land Pfizer was buying for next-to-nothing. Suzette Kelo fought the taking to the Supreme Court, and lost. Five justices found this redevelopment met the constitutional...

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Timothy P. Carney: McDonnell should let the market, not developers, guide transportation policy

Virginia Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell's transportation plan reflects some constructive original thinking, alongside some stale prejudices. But the highlight of the plan is his description of forthcoming high-occupancy toll lanes on the Beltway: "Few charging mechanisms are fairer - if you don't use it, you don't pay." If McDonnell made this the mantra for all of his transportation initiatives, Virginia and the region would be well served. To the extent Virginia -- and particularly Northern Virginia -- needs more and bigger roads, those benefiting from the roads should pay for them. Instead, McDonnell is willing to offload some of the cost to the sales tax and income taxes - meaning all...

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Abortion, 'moderates,' and the Dougherty Doctrine on the morning after

Right before the 2006 election, America's Future Foundation (of whose board I am an officer) held a roundtable on why the GOP was about to get its head handed to it on a platter. The room was filled with social conservatives, libertarians, neocons, economic conservatives, and all the various species on the right. As the night wore on, Michael Brendan Dougherty noticed a trend, which he put to print in the Washington Monthly: At the end of the day, the arguments all seem to boil down to something similar: If it were more like me, the Republican Party would be better off. It’s failing because it’s like you. I dubbed this observation the Dougherty Doctrine, and I think...

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Obama's revolving door always open to Podestas

White House visitor logs, dumped at 4:30 last Friday -- a time when they'd get little notice over the Halloween weekend -- provide striking insights into how President Obama, despite his anti-lobbyist rhetoric, works closely with the K Street players who represent the industry giants that he's subsidizing and regulating. Lobbyist Tony Podesta and his lobbyist wife, Heather Podesta, separately visited the White House eight times in Obama's first six months, according to the White House data dump. On 17 occasions, Obama's White House welcomed Tony's brother John, who co-founded the Podesta Group lobbying firm with Tony. The Podestas are precisely the sort of wealthy, well-connected,...

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Abortion, spiritual conversions, and stimulus money

Passing around the pro-life Twittersphere today is this local news story from Texas, about a director of a local Planned Parenthood branch who underwent what she calls "a spiritual conversion," resigned her job, and joined the local pro-life operation in town. The video is at the bottom of this post. It's an intriguing story in itself, but it has a broader implication because of what spurred the conversion on abortion: she watched the ultra-sound of an unborn baby being aborted. This anecdote affirms a belief held by most of the pro-lifers I talk with: technology is making it increasingly clear that a fetus is a person, which is making it harder for people to find abortion...

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Isn't this Standard Operating Procedure for subsidy suckling companies?

Here's an intriguing story from Capitol Hill: A corporate lobbyist told Rep. Devin Nunes that a local company would move out of the congressman’s district unless the Visalia Republican supported an earmarked funding request, Nunes said today. Nunes lodged a complaint against the lobbyist with the House ethics panel. Now, the previously secret complaint, filed more than a year ago, has become public amid broader revelations about an ongoing lobbying investigation. Lobbyist Don Fleming formerly worked for the firm PMA, which is under scrutiny for allegedly trading campaign contributions for congressional support. What most piques my interest about this complaint by Nunes is that...

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The House's trillion-dollar heath-care bill

If you're interested in the health-care reform bills on Capitol Hill -- particularly if the deficits, spending, and other numbers float your boat -- follow Philip Klein at the American Spectator. Klein yesterday pointed out that the House health-care bill comes in under a trillion dollars only when you ask "what will it add to the deficit over ten years?" If you ask "how much does it spend over the next ten years?" you get $1.1 trilion. The difference is made up by tax hikes. The House bill, like the Senate Finance bill, also backloads the costs, meaning the 20-year costs will be much more than twice the ten-year costs -- it's a budget trick to game the Congressiona...

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Coziness between regulators and business laid bare

In my mind, the only extraordinary about this story, exposed by the Project on Government Oversight, is that we found out about it: recently departed Commissioner Jeffrey Merrifield disregarded advice from the NRC’s General Counsel and voted on two matters that “could have potentially” financially benefited three companies—Shaw Group, Westinghouse, and General Electric—during the time he was directly involved in employment negotiations with those companies. The IG investigation found that in the two months before accepting a job created for him at the Shaw Group, Commissioner Merrifield voted both to approve China’s purchase of AP 1000 reactors (in...

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Timothy P. Carney: How Steve Shannon's friends profit from your tax dollars

If a politician wants to win over The Washington Post's editors, his surest bet is to call for higher taxes. Similarly, if a Virginia politician wants to woo the cadre of politically active developers in the D.C. suburbs, he also needs to back higher taxes and policies that funnel those taxes to private developers. This is one way Stephen Shannon, the Democratic nominee for Virginia attorney general, has made friends around the Beltway. While Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican candidate in the race, was endorsed by the commonwealth's Fraternal Order of Police, Shannon has pocketed the endorsement of the Post and the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce. Read the Post endorsement, and you...

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Will there be enough corn? Ethanol disaster continues

Ethanol is the quintessential Big Idea from Big Government. It helps the farmers, helps the drivers, frees us from Arab Oil, stops global warming, reduces pollution, we're told. So Washington has subsidized it, mandated it, and protected it from foreign competition. States have all piled on their own subsidies and mandates. Then the problems started to surface: spikes in crop prices, costs to ranchers, higher gas prices, environmental damage, and more. In a trade journal called Pork, I just came across this interesting tidbit: With growing questions about the potential deterioration of the late crop, there are corresponding questions whether corn supplies will meet all of the estimated...

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'The Republican Party on one side, entrenched big-business interests on the other.'

My friend Peter Suderman has an incisive and clear piece up at Newsweek right now on the relationship between the GOP and Big Business as industry increasingly tacks towards Big Government. I encourage everyone to read it (and not merely because it cites me): On cap-and-trade, the stimulus, the bank and auto bailouts, and financial regulation, Republicans face, or have faced, substantial opposition from parts of the corporate community. Much of what's happening can be traced to the party's current identity crisis: without strong leadership to hold together various representatives, interests, and constituents, personal squabbles that might otherwise have been quelled are allowed to fester....

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How Google, Amazon profit from net neutrality

Liberals love a good fight against powerful corporate interests, and they're spoiling for a punch-up to defend President Obama's push for "net neutrality" regulations on how phone and cable companies deliver and charge for Web data. For the Obama-allied Center for American Progress, and for liberal MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, net neutrality is a way to protect consumers from telecoms, pitting Obama against bought-and-paid-for Republicans. In truth, the net neutrality fight is between the telecoms and the giant content providers such as Google and Amazon, which heavily funded Obama's campaign. The networks in this case want the freedom to change their business model as the...

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How to make money in the wind industry

Wind Capital Group, a Missouri-based enterprise, just signed on the dotted line to create the largest wind-farm in Missouri. I learned about this deal through T Boone Pickens on Twitter. My first thought when I read the T Boone tweet was "I wonder which politically-connected bigwig is behind the Wind Capital Group. The first sentence of this story gave the answer: Wind Capital Group, led by President Tom Carnahan, said Monday it has closed on financing for Missouri’s largest wind energy development. [emphasis added] If that name sounds familiar, that's because Tom's father was the governor of Missouri, his mother was a U.S. Senator from Missouri, his brother Russ is a U.S....

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Obama, Big Business, Lobbyists, and the media perception

A Fortune piece over the weekend discusses the closeness of the Obama administration and Google, and how many Obama policies would profit the software giant. But the article presents this closeness as an anomaly. Check the lead: No one can accuse President Barack Obama of cozying up to corporate America. From his denunciations of Wall Street greed to his critiques of the auto manufacturers, Obama and his team have done little to disguise their mistrust of big business -- except when it comes to one very large, very influential technology company. [h/t Timothy Lee.] This in-an-interesting-twist or strange bedfellows theme shows up so much in coverage of Obama and business, you would...

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Timothy P. Carney: Will Congress cover for a drug-maker's billion-dollar mistake?

Amid President Obama's push to trim government and private-sector spending on health care, one drug maker is lobbying hard to extend the patent protection of a costly drug - an extension that could cost taxpayers and patients $1 billion. The Medicines Company makes Angiomax, an anti-coagulant drug that helps prevent a second heart attack. In early 2001, after the Food and Drug Administration approved Angiomax, MDCO applied for a standard extension to its patent -- an extension that would have been approved, except the company's lawyers filed the application 61 days after the FDA's approval, missing the statutory deadline by one day. As a result, Angiomax's patent protection is set to...

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Obama's 'National Resource Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Elders'

This just came out to the HHS press list: DATE: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 FOR RELEASE: Immediately Contact: AoA Press Office (202) 357-3507 HHS to Create a National Resource Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Elders HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today announced plans to establish the nation's first national resource center to assist communities across the country in their efforts to provide services and supports for older lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals. Experts estimate that as many as 1.5 to 4 million LGBT individuals are age 60 and older. Agencies that provide services to older individuals may be unfamiliar or uncomfortable with the...

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Exxon edges out General Electric for Q3 lobbying crown

Exxon Mobil spent $7.16 million on lobbying in July, August, and September of this year, just edging out second-quarter lobbying king General Electric ($6.94 million) as the company spending the most on 3rd quarter lobbying. The single biggest Q3 lobbying entity was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which shelled out a record $34.7 million, more than any entity has ever spent. Here are the top ten lobbying entities for the quarter: - U.S Chamber of Commerce: $34.69 million - American Beverage Association: $7.33 million - Exxon Mobil: $7.16 million - General Electric: $6.94 million - Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America: $6.79 million -...

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Soda tax spurs lobbying explosion

The American Beverage Association spent $7.33 million on lobbying last quarter, according to a new filing, more than the group had spent in 2001 through 2008 combined. Representing soda makers, the lobby ramped up its spending in reaction to proposals for a "fat tax" or "soda tax" to finance health-care reform....

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Obama is good for K Street

From lobbying firm K&L Gates: Washington, D.C.— Law firm K&L Gates LLP has launched a Global Government Solutions initiative to assist clients in managing the threats and opportunities presented by government authorities around the world. “The economic crisis has transformed the relationship between business and government,” said Peter J. Kalis, K&L Gates Chairman and Global Managing Partner. “Governments around the world are stimulating their economies, reforming areas such as health care, financial services, taxation, and employment, and attempting to prevent future crises through aggressive new regulations and enforcement actions. In the current...

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The Chamber fights Obama's regulatory robbery

Barack Obama's White House has declared war on the largest lobbying organization in the country, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It figures to be a tough fight. Obama has had a good deal of success winning the support of individual companies by pushing regulations that would cement their market share and increase their profits. But the chamber represents a wide variety of businesses spread across the economic spectrum. As a group, they would suffer along with the whole economy under the weight of Obama's restrictions, mandates, and taxes. The White House and liberal groups have leaned on the chamber's members in retaliation for the lobby's opposition to current health care overhaul bills...

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After TARP, Morgan Stanley gets back in the influence game

Morgan Stanley's political action committee resumed donations in the third quarter of this year after the New York-based investment bank paid back its U.S. taxpayer rescue funds, Federal Election Commission records show. The PAC had ceased making campaign contributions until Morgan Stanley repaid $10 billion in June under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. After making no donations during the first six months of this year, Morgan Stanley gave $157,500 between July 1 and Sept. 30, including $120,000 in September. The investment bank made $374,000 in political contributions during the first nine months of 2007; its donation total for the comparable period this year represents a 58...

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Chamber of Commerce quintuples quarterly lobbying spending -- breaking all lobbying records

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent $34.6 million on lobbying in the third quarter -- the largest quarterly lobbying tab ever -- according to it's lobbying report released today. Tuesday is the deadline for all lobbying entities to file their third quarter reports, and the Chamber's report came in this morning and is available online. The Chamber is consistently the most prolific lobbying entity in the country, but it's quarterly tab tends to be much lower than the $34.6 million posted last quarter -- more than twice the Chamber's lobbying bill for the entire first half of the year, and more than 50 percent higher than the third quarter of 2008. I reviewed all lobbying filings at the...

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$30k donor to Obama Victory Fund arrested for insider trading

From Clusterstock: Prosecutors and the FBI have announced that they have filed charges against several people involved with the Galleon Group hedge fund, including founder Raj Rajaratnam. Galleon is a major hedge hund player known for its investment in technology stocks. Most notably, the government is filing criminal charges related to insider trading in a number of securities going back to 2006. So this is much more than a standard SEC civil charge. So, I looked up Rajaratnam's campaign contributions, and found, among others, this $30,800 donation in August 2008 to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee that divided the proceeds between the Obama campaign and the DNC...

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Obama [Hearts] Big Pharma

Remember this rhetoric from candidate Obama? The reason that we're not getting things done is not because we don't have good plans or good policy prescriptions. The reason is because it's not our agenda that's being moved forward in Washington—it’s the agenda of the oil companies, the insurance companies, the drug companies, the special interests who dominate on a day-to-day basis in terms of legislative activity. [emphasis added] And this ad: Well, President Obama hasn't quite governed as the scourge of the drug companies. The latest evidence is this Politico story At a meeting last April with corporate lobbyists, aides to President Barack Obama and Sen. Max Baucus...

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Timothy P. Carney: Tough talk at HMOs will give way to corporatism

If Democrats really want to stick it to the health insurers, now is their chance. Odds are, however, Congress will follow President Obama's pattern of talking tough, but then pushing policies that enrich the companies at the expense of consumers and taxpayers. America's Health Insurance Plans, the health insurers' lobby, invoked the ire of the White House and congressional Democrats Monday by distributing a report arguing that the health care overhaul before Sen. Max Baucus' Senate Finance Committee would double health care premiums for the average American. Democrats responded with a volley of vitriol and pledges of retribution. Liberal congressmen have used AHIP's critique of the...

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Eliot Spitzer, the Chamber of Commerce, and 'libertarian'

Eliot Spitzer, who lost his job as governor of New York because he cheated on his wife with a high-priced prostitute, has a column in Slate, despite not providing any new facts, original thoughts, or compelling arguments (you see, you can criticize Spitzer now without fear of the State coming after you). In this week's column, attacking the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Spitzer makes this claim, "The chamber remains an unabashed voice for the libertarian worldview that caused the most catastrophic economic meltdown since the Great Depression.' Let's set aside arguments about the meltdown and concentrate on Spitzer's claim that the "chamber remains an unabashed voice for the...

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The Post sees only lobbyists on one side of reform

Barack Obama's favorite former Republican officials--Bob Dole, Bill Frist, Tommy Thompson, and Louis Sullivan--all support "health-care reform" and are also all in the pay of health-care companies that stand to profit from Obama's "reform." I found this interesting enough to write two columns about it (here and here). The Washington Post, on the other hand, has had covered these pro-ObamaCare Republicans while maintaining a blackout on their financial stake in "reform." Meanwhile, "reform" opponents get their conflicts of interest published on the Post's pages. Let's start with Dole's endorsement of ObamaCare: The Post ran an AP piece on Dole's...

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Pro-Obamacare Republicans in the pay of the health industry

As the White House dismissed the insurance lobby's critiques of the Senate health care bill as self-serving corporate disinformation, President Obama used his weekly radio address to laud four former Republican officials for supporting the push for "reform." But Obama failed to mention that these pro-"reform" Republicans -- whom he lauded for "ris[ing] above the politics of the moment" -- are all in the pay of the health care industry and could personally profit from "reform." Former Republican Health and Human Services Secretaries Louis Sullivan and Tommy Thompson, along with former Senate Majority Leaders Bill Frist (a doctor) and Bob Dole,...

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Republicans for health-care 'reform' typically are in the pay of the industry

The top two items right now on Jake Tapper's political blog at ABC News are about Republicans backing Max Baucus's health-care bill. Tapper reports on Bush 41's HHS Secretary Louis Sullivan, who is backing the Baucus bill. Tapper also provides an update on Bob Dole's support for some sort of "reform" bill, and the political fallout. Of Sullivan, Tapper writes, "What was interesting was that the former HHS Secretary doing the urging is a Republican." Dole, of course, has been showered with praise for being a "bipartisan" statesman. But Tapper omits the fact that both of these Republicans are now in the pay of the health-care industry. Dole is a lobbyist at...

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The insurers' odd play

The health insurers may not have intended to make such a splash in its criticism of the Baucus bill today. For months, America's Health Insurance Plans, the HMO lobby, has carefully supported the vague notion of "reform" while pushing hard for its favored policies and gently critiquing those proposals that would hurt the industry. In basic terms, AHIP has called for the individual mandate and subsidies, while opposing Medicare cuts and a government option. But it's been something of a soft sell. In part, Obama--on the advice of pollsters--has shown willingness to use the insurers as the whipping boy, and if Pelosi and Obama wanted to spend the effort, they could make people...

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Obamanomics: Pro-business, not pro-free market

The Hoover Institute's Peter Schweitzer has a good post in USA Today on the theme I've been covering: how Barack Obama's policies help the biggest businesses at the detriment of the free market--which means at the detriment of the economy, small business, taxpayers, and consumers: President Obama's proposed reform of Wall Street calls for creating a list of large financial firms ("Tier 1 financial holding companies") that will be officially designated as "too big to fail." They will, in short, be guaranteed rescue by taxpayers if they get into financial difficulty. This will be disastrous because it will encourage further speculation and saddle taxpayers with the cost...

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Timothy P. Carney: Dole, a health-sector lobbyist, gets the statesman treatment

In August, a Republican majority-leader-turned-lobbyist took to the public with his health-care message, and he was derided as a paid shill. In October, a different Republican majority-leader-turned-lobbyist went public with his health-care message, and he was hailed as a bipartisan statesman. The difference? The former--Dick Armey of Texas--was opposing President Obama's push for new health-care mandates, regulations, taxes, and spending programs. The latter--Bob Dole of Kansas--supported this "reform." But here's another difference that makes the disparate treatment that much more undeserved: Armey's much-maligned opposition to health-care "reform" put him at odds with the...

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Goldman Sachs, Obama, Geithner, and 'special interests'

The cynics, and the lobbyists, and the special interests who've turned our government into a game only they can afford to play. They write the checks and you get stuck with the bills, they get the access while you get to write a letter; they think they own this government, but we're here today to take it back. The time for that politics is over. It's time to turn the page. That line from candidate Obama is worth recalling in light of an interesting AP story today about Treasury Secretary and Bailoutmeister Tim Geithner, headlined, "Mr. Geithner, Wall Street is on line 1 (again)": They are a small cadre of businessmen who have known and worked with Geithner for years, whose...

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Growing awareness of 'corporate communism'

NBC's Dylan Ratigan posts at The Business Insider about what he calls "corporate communism." today we find ourselves as a country in two distinctly different categories: those who are forced to compete tooth and nail each day to provide value to society in return for income for ourselves and our families and those who would instead use our lawmaking apparatus to help themselves to our tax money and/or to protect themselves from true competition. Increasingly, media folks are noticing the Big Business-Big Government nexus, which suggests that maybe soon, we'll drop the myth that free-market policies are corporate favors. If you want to see "corporate communism" in...

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The revolving door spins out a new John Warner

Former Sen. John Warner, R-Va., is lobbying on behalf of foreign and U.S. satellite operators to loosen U.S. export controls aimed at preventing the Chinese military from copying American technology and potentially using it to make weapons. Warner, as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, supported strict controls on the export of satellite technology, and he criticized "people in the corporate boardrooms" who pushed for export liberalization to the detriment of national security. Today, he headlines the K Street push on behalf of companies eyeing the lower satellite-launch costs China offers. Colorado-based Echostar, Canada's Telesat, Luxembourg's SES, and Bermuda-based...

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No verdict after first day of deliberations in trial of Abramoff colleague

I was just told by the U.S. District Court that the jury has gone home for the night without reporting a verdict on the eight criminal charges against former lobbyist Kevin Ring, who worked for Sen. John Ashcroft and Rep. John Doolittle before cashing out to K Street. Ring, only the second person in the Abramoff case not to enter a plea, is charged with wire fraud and consipiracy in relation to his gifts of tickets and meals to Capitol Hill staff and administration officials. The best accounts of this case are at National Journal's "Under the Influence" blog, and at the Anti-Corruption Republican blog. I wrote about the trial last week....

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Timothy P. Carney: Nike's green lobbying: Corporate responsibility or regulatory robbery?

Nike has relinquished its spot on the board of directors of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to protest the Chamber's opposition to federal climate-change regulations. The shoemaker is lobbying hard for a cap-and-trade scheme to curb greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. Why is Nike joining the parade of Fortune 500 companies backing climate legislation? More than most companies, Nike seems to be acting from true conviction on this issue. The company put it this way in a recent report: "We believe climate change is a risk to our business and that creative approaches to tackling our footprint will enable our growth." This is a standard explanation from corporations lobbying for...

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Government Electric update: jet engines and smart meters

General Electric is the beneficiary of a provision on green jet engines in the Senate climate bill, according to author and activist investor Steve Milloy. Milloy writes: Sen. Barbara Boxer’s climate bill set to be released today contains a provision that will compensate General Electric quite nicely for its lobbying and media efforts promoting climate legislation. Section 821(c) requires that, by December 12, 2012, the EPA set standards for greenhouse gas emissions from “new aircraft and new engines used in new aircraft.” General Electric is the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial and military jet engines, a business worth about $12 billion in annual...

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Lobbying can be sordid, but it's not a crime

The U.S. government says Kevin Ring, onetime colleague of jailed influence peddler Jack Abramoff, was a crooked lobbyist who should go to jail for wooing lawmakers and their staff. But absent any evidence of a specific illegal act of corruption, prosecutors have been forced to try Ring for simply being a lobbyist. Ring, no doubt, played a crooked game, and he was paid well for playing it ruthlessly. He showered lawmakers and their staffs with concert and basketball tickets and other gifts, then got what he wanted from those same public officials. The government argues this makes Ring a "corruptor." The government's presumption is that Congress was not already corrupt, or at...

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The Obama revolving door spins

Oscar Ramirez may be the first Obama administration alumnus to hit K Street, newly public lobbying filings show. Ramirez was a special assistant to Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis from January through June. In June, he joined the Podesta Group, a lobbying firm co-founded by John Podesta, who was Barack Obama's transition director. Ramirez is representing Credit Suisse on financial reform, and is also lobbying on behalf of H&R Block, as well as two other clients. Last year, Ramirez served a brief stint as Solis's congressional chief of staff, and he also served as the policy director for Obama's Virginia campaign. Obama's ethics executive order from January would appear to prohibit...

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Chamber of Commerce losing friends by opposing cap-and-trade

I've been critical of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the past for its support of big government. The nation's top lobby group considers Rep. Ron Paul of Texas the worst House Republican and Sen. Jim DeMint the worst Senate Republican, according to its voting scorecard. The Chamber was a leading lobbyist for the Wall Street bailouts, the stimulus, and Cash for Clunkers. But, despite all the possibilities for climate profiteering, the Chamber has stood firm against cap-and-trade. And now it is paying the price. The New York Times reports today: Exelon, a power company that operates the country’s largest fleet of nuclear reactors, announced today that it would withdraw from the...

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Timothy P. Carney: Paul Kirk, senator from Pharma

If a health-care overhaul clears the U.S. Senate this year, the key vote may be a former drug industry lobbyist who has helped raise millions of dollars from drug companies and insurers. Paul Kirk, chosen by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick to fill the seat of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy until a special election in January, will be the 60th Democratic senator, and he looks like a reliable vote for President Barack Obama's push to overhaul the health-care sector. Kirk could deliver the 60th vote on health care--crucial to break a potential Republican filibuster--which would be fitting for a "reform" effort that will enrich the drug industry and could provide a boon for private...

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How a power giant profits from greenhouse regs

No electricity source emits as much greenhouse gas as coal, and no power company uses as much coal as American Electric Power. So why is AEP lobbying for the climate-change legislation restricting greenhouse emissions? AEP emphatically endorsed the American Clean Energy and Security Act last week in a public letter signed by Michael Morris, its chairman, chief executive officer, and president. In its second-quarter lobbying report, AEP wrote that it was "for and against various provisions, generally in favor." The bill in question -- also called by its initials, ACES, or by its House sponsors, Waxman-Markey -- places a national cap on greenhouse-gas emissions from many...

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Cap-and-trade: Who gets rich

Whenever government gets bigger, I always say, somebody is getting rich. Cap-and-trade schemes to combat global warming are no exception to this rule. Americans for Prosperity has just released a handy guide [pdf] to who's profiting from this green push. "In the contentious debate over cap-and-trade," the authors write, "everyone can agree on one thing: consumers will pay, companies will benefit." I recommend this paper for anyone following the cap-and-trade debate, which, as I've argued in a few places (here, here, here, here, and elsewhere) is a corporate welfare boondoggle....

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Timothy P. Carney: ACORN and wealthy developers vs. hipsters and firemen

BROOKLYN, N.Y. - Wealthy and well-connected developer Bruce Ratner wants to bulldoze an old neighborhood in Brooklyn and turn it into high-rise apartment buildings and a basketball arena for the New Jersey Nets. Many locals, including the hipsters who live in Park Slope and the firemen who work at FDNY Squad No. 1, don't want this steel hulk named Atlantic Yards casting a shadow over their neighborhood and filling their streets with traffic. Ratner is white, is wealthy and has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to politicians. But his allies say they're working for the less fortunate who need "Change," fighting against privileged whites who want "resegregation." "If this thing...

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Obama helps strengthen General Electric-Putin ties

Reuters reports an interesting nugget in the wake of President Barack Obama's decision to grant Vladimir Putin his wish and kill the Eastern European missile shield: Shortly after the pullback on the shield programme was announced, Russia's government said Prime Minister Vladimir Putin would meet several U.S. executives on Friday from firms including General Electric, Morgan Stanley as well as TPG, one of the world's largest private equity firms General Electric may be the company with the closest ties to the Obama administration (if not, GE is second only to Goldman Sachs), and here we see the company benefiting from an abrupt foreign policy change made by President Obama. But GE...

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Video: Obama on Kanye West

Oddly, Politico has pulled down the video of Obama calling Kanye West "a jackass." The President, after the fact, tried to declare that comment off the record, and by now it's out there. So, because you can't find it at Politico anymore, here (via Mediaite) it is at the Washington...

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Liberal WaPo blogger gives argument against minimum wage?

Ezra Klein at the Washington Post today argues against a federal policy setting minimum compensation for workers: That will create an incentive to do one of two things: Don't hire low-income workers (hire a teenager looking for a job rather than a single mother, or hire a housewife looking for a second job rather than an unemployed breadwinner), or hire illegal immigrants. Klein is addressing not minimum wage laws, but a Max Baucus proposal Klein calls "possibly the worst [policy] in the world." Baucus has proposed a "free rider" provision in his health-care overhaul bill. The bill penalizes employers who don't give low-income workers health insurance and thus stick...

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Tire tariffs show another cost of cap and trade: Free trade

Climate change legislation will impose many costs on U.S. families. Now you can add more expensive tires to the list. Congressional leaders and the White House have cut many deals to win backers for the push to curb greenhouse gas emissions, and President Obama's imposition of tariffs on Chinese-made tires looks like the latest sweetener in this great honey pot of a proposal. But it's also the latest hit to the wallet of the American consumer, who will now pay more for his tires. Obama has invoked Section 421 of U.S. trade law -- a flexible rule allowing the president to impose tariffs on specific imports if a "surge" in those imports has created a "market...

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David Shuster and me

For your viewing pleasure, here's the clip of me on David Shuster's show on MSNBC yesterday. I got to meet my liberal counterpart, Tim Fernholz of the American Prospect, in the green room. He seemed like a good...

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From the bayou to K Street by way of Congress

Born June 14, 1943, in Chackbay, La., a backwater bayou town. Elected state representative in 1972, his first foray into elected politics. Elected to Congress as a Democrat in a special election on May 17, 1980, after Rep. David Treen became governor. Co-founded the Blue Dog Coalition of conservative Democrats in January 1995 after the Republican takeover of the House. Switched to the GOP in August 1995 amid considering a run for the Senate. Named deputy majority whip in September 1995, becoming the first person to serve in the leadership of both parties. Elected chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce after the 2000 election. Helped pass the Medicare...

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Billy Tauzin: K Street's Drug Kingpin

The drug industry's top lobbyist has a history of fighting and winning -- whatever team he's on Billy Tauzin is a good ally, until he isn't. The Louisiana Democrat-turned-Republican, congressman-turned-lobbyist and, apparently, White House partner-turned-snitch has a way of making things work out well for him, even if that means leaving a string of jilted ex-partners behind. A reliable workhorse and a hail-fellow partner according to those who served with him on Capitol Hill, Tauzin has never let old bonds get in the way of new alliances when it is in his interests. This summer and fall, as the drug industry's top lobbyist, Tauzin is once more in the center of the fray. He finds...

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Revolving door or God's gift?

To paint himself as a reformer during the 2008 Democratic primary, Barack Obama ran a television ad attacking the incestuous relationship between K Street and Capitol Hill. The 30-second spot lambasting "the same old game-playing in Washington" was titled "Billy." As in Billy Tauzin. "The pharmaceutical industry," Obama says in the ad, "wrote into the prescription drug plan that Medicare could not negotiate with drug companies. You know what? The chairman of the committee who pushed the law through went to work for the pharmaceutical industry making $2 million a year. Imagine that." The facts fit into a perfect story line of Washington corruption: Tauzin shepherded through Congress...

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Timothy P. Carney: Obama offers the insurers their Holy Grail

President Barack Obama held out for more than 20 months, but on Wednesday night, the health insurance companies finally got to him. "Unless everybody does their part," Obama told the joint session of Congress, "many of the insurance reforms we seek, especially requiring insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions, just can't be achieved. That's why under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance." Obama's choice of words in the House chamber Wednesday night, "unless everybody does their part," echoed his inaugural address, which called for a renewed "spirit of service," and "a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every...

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Obama transfers Van Jones to Center for American Progress [updated]: or maybe not]

[updated, 2:30 pm, Politico reports that CAP denies that they are hiring Van Jones.] It didn’t take long for the former White House “green jobs czar” to find himself a gig after resigning under pressure for past racially inflammatory comments, radical associations, and erstwhile support for a conspiracy theory that holds the American government was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The New York Daily News reported that Jones had been hired by the Center for American Progress, the liberal think tank led by Obama transition team boss John Podesta. CAP is famously close to the Obama White House and the Obama campaign, and the two have traded plenty of staff already. I...

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American Capitalism

Yuval Levin, a former White House staffer and a scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, has launched a quarterly print journal titled National Affairs. While not the most original title for a journal, I would argue, the debut issues promises an excellent contribution to the conversation. My Examiner colleague Michael Barone has a piece in the issue (you need to subscribe to get his), as does Leon Kass. Closest to my heart, though, is a piece by U. of Chicago professor Luigi Zingales, titled "Capitalism After the Crisis." An important passage as we look forward: In most of the world, the best way to make money is not to come up with brilliant ideas and work hard at...

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Matt Yglesias, for one, welcomes our new HMO overlords

As a clear sign that the administration is ready to cave to the insurance industry, check out the recent apologia for industry profits at the Center for American Progress, which is intimately allied with the Obama White House. Liberal blogger Matt Yglesias writes about Max Baucus's emerging health-care proposal: This Baucusverse is, I would say, better for me than the current reality. It’s also better for CareFirst. CareFirst is basically getting a new customer. So good for them. But I’m also getting a new health insurer, so good for me. Increasingly, we're seeing liberal health-care "reformers" lining up behind this Baucus plan, which is written, in effect, by...

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Obama shadow boxes with 'enemies' of health plan

Emmanuel Goldstein was the enemy of the state in George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four," and the target of the "Two Minutes Hate," in which the citizens of Oceania -- at the cue of Big Brother -- would rage at those undermining the state and the party. Within the novel, it's never clear if Goldstein is real or a fabricated whipping boy for party officials and angry citizens. Unlike Big Brother, President Obama hasn't even deigned to give us a name for the enemy of "reform." He uses only ominous, vague epithets: "Opponents of health insurance reform," "well-financed forces" and "those who are profiting from the status quo." So...

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Ethical troubles atop Mount Obama?

Yes, there is a Mount Obama. Antigua has renamed it's highest point--formerly Boggy Peak--after the President of the United States. But public records reveal a little ethical murkiness surrounding this renaming. No, Obama's not involved, but Rep. Yvette Clark, D-N.Y., is. Rep. Clark visited Mt. Obama in early August, with this reported purpose: "Emancipation day celebration including the renaming of the island's highest point Mt. Obama; Rep. Clarke addressed the gathering and participated in the ribbon-cutting and renaming ceremony." Who paid for the travel? New York-based publicity firm PM Group. PM Group's clients include the nation of Antigua and Barbuda. Congressmen and...

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Consumer safety zeal

One problem President Obama is facing with his push for a government option in health insurance and new insurance mandates and regulations is the public apprehension about government meddling in our personal affairs. On that score, his Consumer Product Safety Commission isn't doing him any favors with it's new intitiative, "Resale Roundup," which can come across as a sting operation on yard-sales; “Those who re-sell recalled children’s products are not only breaking the law, they are putting children’s lives at risk,” said CPSC Chairman Inez Tenenbaum. “Resale stores should make safety their business and check for recalled products and hazards to...

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Timothy P. Carney: Mattel exempted from toy safety law it helped write

If you're looking for a sure bet, find a New York Times editorial praising some new federal regulation, and wager that this new law will yield harmful unintended consequences while protecting the biggest businesses in the effected industry. This week's case-in-point is the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA). Praised by the Times editorial page in 2008 as an "important bill" for "dramatically improv[ing] the way government protects consumers." The law has since proven a scourge on small business, independent craftsmen, and second-hand stores, but also a boon to toy giant Mattel, whose leaded toys sparked the scare and whose lobbying push shaped the law. Under CPSIA,...

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How a congressman brings business to K Street

Now that Disney has bought Marvel comics, it is reaching out for another partner: the federal government. Next week Congress may pass the Travel Promotion Act, derided by its critics as bailout for the tourism industry. But the real lesson of this government expansion is about K Street's growth into all sectors of the economy. The Travel Promotion Act would create a new government agency and a new quasi-government agency charged with luring foreigners to see America, funded by a tax on every foreigner who visits America. Skeptical Capitol Hill staffers call the bill a "bailout for Harry Reid." Reid, in re-election trouble, may be hoping government advertising for the Las...

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Timothy P. Carney: How GE's green lobbying is killing U.S. factory jobs

WINCHESTER, VA--“Government did us in,” says Dwayne Madigan, whose job will terminate when General Electric closes its factory next July. Madigan makes a product that will soon be illegal to sell in the U.S. - a regular incandescent bulb. Two years ago, his employer, GE, lobbied in favor of the law that will outlaw the bulbs. Madigan’s colleagues, waiting for their evening shift to begin, all know that GE is replacing the incandescents for now with compact fluorescents bulbs, which GE manufactures in China. Last month, GE announced it will close the Winchester Bulb Plant 80 miles west of D.C. As a result, 200 men and women will lose their jobs. GE is also...

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Leaked e-mail shows how GE puts the government to work for GE

"The intersection between GE's interests and government action is clearer than ever," General Electric Vice Chairman John G. Rice wrote in an Aug. 19 e-mail to colleagues. Rice was calling on his co-workers to join the General Electric Political Action Committee. "GEPAC is an important tool that enables GE employees to collectively help support candidates who share the values and goals of GE." The full letter suggests that "share the values and goals of GE" really means "support policies that profit the company." Steve Milloy, a pro-free market investor at the Free Enterprise Action Fund, obtained this e-mail and says it reveals General Electric...

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Matthew Cooper's misleading attack on the late Bob Novak

Now, I don't agree with the notion that one should never speak ill of the recently deceased. Sure, there's no reason to bad-mouth the kid next door who died of cancer, even if he was a bully, but if a public figure passes away, balancing the paeans with critical material is valid. And Bob Novak, my boss for nearly five years, was not only a public figure, he was intentional stirrer of strife. It's fitting to debate his legacy. Some critiques I've read of him this week were legitimate contributions to the discussion. But if you wait until a man dies to badmouth him in print, and then attack him through name-calling and deceptive omission--well, that's not quite gentlemanly. I'm talking,...

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Timothy P. Carney: Health-care reform's hidden gift to the HMOs

Did you know that, if your job-based HMO wrongly denies you coverage for a medical treatment, and that denial leads to your injury or death, federal law may protect that insurer from paying any damages to you or your family? Did you know that the House Democrats' health-care "reform" bill would cement this extraordinary legal immunity for the health insurance companies? Despite the crusading anti-HMO rhetoric coming from the White House and some congressional Democrats this summer, the "reform" bills currently on Capitol Hill include many gifts to health insurers: The bills would all subsidize private insurance and mandate that individuals carry insurance; some also...

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Timothy P. Carney: Robert Novak, combative conservative journalist, dead at 78

Robert D. Novak, who began covering Washington during the Eisenhower administration and later achieved fame as a columnist and television commentator, died Tuesday after a year-long battle with cancer. He was 78. A nationally syndicated columnist for 45 years, Novak wrote "Inside Report" -- a reported column on the inner workings of Washington policy and politics -- with Rowland Evans six days a week from 1963 until Evans' retirement in 1993. For 15 years, Novak continued to write the column three times a week until a brain tumor forced his retirement in July 2008. Cable television made Novak's a familiar face nationwide. An early star at the nascent CNN in 1980, Novak was a...

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Novak’s public service: Exposing the power game

Bob Novak wrote columns because it was the only vocation he ever had. Though he never would have called his work “public service” — he laughed at the idea — he undoubtedly served his country by exposing the machinations of power and showing how government actually operated. Novak’s reporting unearthed how politicians often answer to well-connected lobbyists and serve their own interests rather than the needs of the country. This was an education for me and for his readers. With his columns, Novak helped foster a salutary skepticism of government and reinforced the distrust of power that lies at the core of American liberty. Much of Novak’s work...

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Timothy P. Carney: Novak's public service: Exposing the power game

Bob Novak wrote columns because it was the only vocation he ever had. Though he never would have called his work "public service" -- he laughed at the idea -- he undoubtedly served his country by exposing the machinations of power, and showing how government actually operated. Novak's reporting unearthed how politicians often answer to well-connected lobbyists and serve their own interests rather than the needs of the country. This was an education for me and for his readers. With his columns, Novak helped foster a salutary skepticism of government and reinforced the distrust of power that lies at the core of American liberty. Much of Novak's work involved tracking political...

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Columnist Robert D. Novak dies after battle with cancer

Robert D. Novak, who began covering Washington during the Eisenhower administration and later achieved fame as a columnist and television commentator, died in his home Tuesday morning after a year-long battle with cancer. He was 78. A nationally syndicated columnist for 45 years, Novak wrote “Inside Report”—a reported column on the inner workings of Washington policy and politics—with Rowland Evans six days a week from 1963 until Evans’ retirement in 1993. For 15 years, Novak continued the column—thrice weekly—until a brain tumor forced his retirement in July 2008. Cable television made Novak’s a familiar face nationwide. An early star at...

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Timothy P. Carney: Down with the health insurers

Dear conservatives: Health insurance companies are not your friends. Keep opposing a new government-run insurer, a single-payer plan, and new regulations on the HMOs. But grant that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is correct on this: Insurance companies are villains. Insurance companies lobby for big-government regulations, subsidies, mandates, and tax-code distortions that funnel them money, keep out competition, and stultify innovation. These policies preserve the employer-based health-care system that mocks the idea of free-market competition. Then they cry "unfair competition" when government threatens to encroach on their government-protected monopolies. But they're not...

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Dems kicking Wall Street out of the climate racket?

A Bloomberg piece today highlights a Democratic proposal to shove aside one of the biggest champions of a cap-and-trade scheme on global warming--Wall Street: At least nine members of the majority party say speculation by Wall Street banks may cause excessive price swings in the cap-and-trade system of pollution allowances at the center of President Barack Obama’s plan to curb global warming. The senators say they may limit participation to polluters needing permits, ban derivatives or impose stricter regulations than exist in today’s energy markets. Goldman Sachs, Obama's top corporate source of campaign funds, has been a lead lobbyist for carbon caps. Can Democrats really...

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The problem of nationalization: Government vouches for Government Motors' dubious mileage claims

General Motors has unveiled its plug-in hybrid electric car, the Chevy Volt, which runs on a battery charged at an outlet for about 40 miles, and then it runs on a regular petroleum-powered internal combustion engine. The official fuel efficiency as determined by the Environmental Protection Agency: 230 miles per gallon. How did they get this number? It's totally made up. If a Volt owner drives only to and from work each day, and it's a 10 mile commute each way, the car basically gets infinite MPG, because he would recharge the battery every night (probably burning coal, but that's a different story). But if someone looking at that 230 MPG number thought he could make this his only car,...

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Forget the talk: Insurers buy into Obamacare

Barack Obama last year received more campaign cash from health maintenance organizations than any politician before him ever did -- and it's not even close. Obama raised more than $1.4 million in 2008 from the employees and executives of "Health Services/HMOs" as the Center for Responsive Politics labels them -- or "villains" as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls them. That's more than the combined haul of every Republican nominee since Ronald Reagan left office. These numbers don't prove that Obama is owned by the health insurers. But they deflate the liberal claim that Republicans and "reform" protesters are shills for the industry. But the liberals and...

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Obama's boogey men -- the anti-"reform" special-interests

President Obama today assailed those who "create boogeymen out there that just aren't real." Then the president, after listing all his allies in reform -- drugmakers, the American Medical Association, AARP, and others -- immediately attacked the "special interests" who: use their influence. They use their political allies to scare and mislead the American people. They start running ads. This is what they always do.We can't let them do it again. Not this time. Not now. But which special interests, if it's not the drugmakers? The implication would be the heath insurers, who gave $1.4 million to Barack Obama in 2008, more than to any politician in the history of the...

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Motores del Gubierno: GM's $1.2B investment in Mexico

From Bloomberg: "General Motors Co. plans to invest $1.2 billion in Mexico this year to 2011, the nation’s Economy Ministry said today in an e-mailed statement." There are no more specifics yet, and I haven't gotten my hands on the emailed statement, but this certainly could be your tax dollars are creating jobs south of the border while GM lays off American workers. This gets us back to the problem of government ownership of companies. GM needs to seek profit, and offshoring U.S. jobs is a good way to cut costs. But this is taxpayer-subsidized offshoring. There are no good answers here, as with GM's lobbying and public relations spending. [update: here's a similar...

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The health insurers are not anti-"reform"

The most pervasive and most thoroughly false bit of disinformation circulating about health care "reform" legislation is the assertion that opponents of Democratic legislation are on the side of the drug maker and the health insurers. The truth is very far from that. Here's a briefing on the policy front: First, "pro-reform" doesn't mean anything. Currently, there are at least four different "reform" bills before the House and Senate, and they all share some common provisions and also have differences. They also all differ from what Barack Obama advocated on the campaign trail. In common, all the "reform" bills contain subsidies for people...

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Timothy P. Carney: Obama's pattern of intolerance towards dissent

Dissent, it turns out, is no longer patriotic. President Obama's White House and his Democratic National Committee (DNC) have unleashed an all-out assault on what they call "angry," "manufactured," and "lobbyist-funded" lies about health care reform. Look closely and you realize that's how they classify all dissent. Obama, when speaking at Notre Dame this spring amid protests from pro-lifers, said, "When we open up our hearts and our minds to those who may not think precisely like we do or believe precisely what we believe -- that's when we discover at least the possibility of common ground." But his record of dealing with actual dissent paints a...

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The DNC is "Lobbyist Funded"

Liberal blog firedoglake assailed "transparent lobbyist funded thuggery." Health Care for America Now warned its supporters about "the crazy, lobbyist-funded, insurance-industry-supported, potentially violent right wing." And the Center for American Progress reported about the efforts of "the lobbyist-funded Americans for Prosperity." So, those e-mails I'm getting, to go to other congressional districts, print out DNC-made signs, and support "reform," are those "lobbyist-funded" astroturfing efforts? The DNC and its House and Senate campaign committees have already received over $1.1 million from lobbyists this year, according to the...

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DNC's community organizing vs opponents' "angry" "clamoring"

I got the below email about an hour ago. Some ways in which it strikes me as fishy, so to speak: 1) This is not my congressional district. Rep. Kratovil is not my congressmen. Maybe the DNC doesn't know that, but they certainly don't ever say, "if Kratovil is your congressman, go to the townhall." They tell me to go. 2) "Our representatives are under attack by Washington insiders, insurance companies, and well-financed special interests." That's an interesting claim because Rep. Kratovil has received $5,000 from the political action committee of Wellpoint, one of the largest insurance companies. And, n general, the special interests are attacking in favor of...

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Industry health-care ad spending is mostly pro-"reform"

The Washington Post's health-care blogger Ezra Klein blogs about the chart at right, and concludes "Las Vegas leads, because Harry Reid is considered vulnerable, and if Republicans can scare the majority leader, they can limit his range of action." This is an odd claim that assumes that "health-care reform advertising" is anti-"reform" advertising backed by Republicans. Klein's assumption, though, is not borne out by the data further down the article that includes the chart: Of the $52 million spent so far, CMAG calculates that the largest share -- $23 million -- has come from groups advertising broadly in favor of overhauling the health-care system,...

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Obama "manufactures" support for health-care plans

The White House has dismissed the anger expressed about health-care legislation as "manufactured," because conservative groups have helped organize opponents to go to these meetings. I just received an email from Obama's campaign with this plea: That's why Organizing for America is putting together thousands of events this month where you can reach out to neighbors, show your support, and make certain your members of Congress know that you're counting on them to act. But these canvasses, town halls, and gatherings only make a difference if you turn up to knock on doors, share your views, and show your support. So here's what I need from you: Can you commit to join at least...

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Special interests cash in on clunker boondoggle

Automakers and car dealers aren’t the only ones profiting from the billion-dollar boondoggle called Cash for Clunkers. The program, which President Barack Obama wants to expand to $3 billion, benefits an interesting array of those “narrow interests” that Obama campaigned against, according to lobbying records. Cash for Clunkers, funded originally with $1 billion in taxpayer money, provides rebates of up to $4,500 to dealers selling new cars and accepting trade-ins with worse mileage, provided the dealer scraps the old car and destroys almost all of its parts. The idea: Help struggling car dealers and carmakers by subsidizing their sales, while helping the planet by...

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A pharma bailout? Lobbyist Gephardt says "reform" requires it

For health-care "reform" to work, lobbyist and former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt said yesterday, Congress needs to include a bailout for drugmakers. On Monday, speaking at a research facility of biotech giant Amgen, Gephardt suggested a pharma bailout as part of healthcare reform, judging by this article in the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal. Here are the relevant article excerpts: Translational research funding is key to wringing innovation and efficiency out of any health-care reform package, said former House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt, but something along the lines of a stop-gap loan program could help hundreds of biopharmaceutical companies stay...

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K Street Notes

* How has lobbying changed in the Age of Obama? Peter Suderman at Reason Magazine has a good take on lobbying aro, breaking down some data and concluding: I'm not exactly a fan of rent-seeking, but I hardly think businesses (or lobbyists) are particularly to blame for this sort of behavior. When the president and Congress decide it's time to rebuild the entire framework by which an industry does business, you can hardly expect them to sit idly by as their livelihoods are manhandled by the federal government. That's especially true when the plan is to turn more decision-making power over to the government: The more Washington stands to pick winners and losers in a particular sector of the...

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Timothy P. Carney: Big government gets in your food, hurts small farmers

Congress passed a strict “food safety” bill Thursday, to the joy of big food processors and the dismay of small, local farmers. President Barack Obama supports the legislation, continuing his pattern of backing big-government solutions that favor the very big businesses he claims to be curbing. Kellogg and the Grocery Manufacturers of America lobbied for this burdensome bill, while organic food advocates and fresh food enthusiasts — the folks most intimately concerned with food quality — have opposed it. This matches the history of food safety regulation. “We are now and always have been in favor of the extension of the inspection, also to the adoption of...

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Government Electric

General Electric may be the company most intimately connected to government. GE spent more on lobbying than any other company last quarter and over the past decade. The company's ecomagination and healthymagination tie it up with Obama's two biggest policy priorities--cap & trade and health-care overhaul. So, it's interesting to see this lead in a Bloomberg piece just now: General Electric Co. rose the most in three months after U.S. Representative Barney Frank said manufacturers that already own finance businesses should be allowed to keep the units under revised banking rules. And while I'm talking about GE, I just found this story from May: Obama's pick for Assistant Attorney...

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Corn is still king in the Senate

Senator Barack Obama was a fierce advocate of corn ethanol, but after winning Iowa, he has moderated his stance. In fact, he even nominated an ambassador to Brazil who doesn't support our tarrifs that keep out foreign ethanol. But that makes the nominee, Thomas Shannon, unpalatable to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, according to Congress Daily and Foreign Policy. In letters to Secretary Clinton and USTR Kirk, Grassley wrote: "A clear signal of the President's stance on this issue would decrease the possibility of confusion in America's heartland and in Brazil regarding the ethanol tariff if Mr. Shannon were confirmed as Ambassador to that country." If you want a primer on the...

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Americans still love the free market

Amid the storm of government control that is sweeping over our economy -- the housing bailouts, the Wall Street bailouts, the Detroit bailouts, the stimulus, cap-and-trade, health-care "reform," fuel-economy standards, banking regulations, and more -- it's easy to suspect that we're all Keynesians now, or all socialists now, or all corporatists now. But a recent Rasmussen poll suggests that Americans still think there's something noble about the free market and tawdry about cozying up to big government: Public opposition to the auto bailouts may translating into consumer buying decisions, with 46% of Americans now saying they are more likely to buy a car from Ford because it...

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How industry kidnapped Obama’s health ‘reform’

A liberal Democratic president with a supermajority in the U.S. Senate and a massive majority in the U.S. House is on the road to passing a health care “reform” bill shaped by health maintenance organizations, drugmakers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, funded in part by a middle-class tax hike. President Barack Obama, because he has invested so much political capital in passing “reform,” is in no position to back away. The health care industry, on the other hand, may like this package of subsidies, but it is also ready to walk away from the table if Congress passes a bill it doesn’t like. Three health care bills exist today: a House bill, a Senate Health...

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Republicans and Big Business

RNC Chairman Michael Steele talked to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review [via Michael Cannon of Cato] about Obama's health-industry proposals, and this is what the paper reported: Having Congress reshape health care puts "the wrong people at the table," Steele said. He said stake holders — "doctors, lawyers, health care employees, insurance companies" — should develop a solution and present it to Congress, rather than the other way around. First, this ignores the fact that the insurance companies and health-care employees are "at the table." Second, it displays the misguided and counterproductive fealty to Big Business that has wounded the GOP and...

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White House sued over meetings with health industry lobbyists

Beating up on Dick Cheney for his secretive energy task force was a set-piece of Obama's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Now, Obama may be working from the Cheney playbook. The L.A. Times reports: Invoking an argument used by President George W. Bush, the Obama administration has turned down a request from a watchdog group for a list of health industry executives who have visited the White House to discuss the massive healthcare overhaul. The group in question--Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington--had filed a FOIA request to get more information about these closed-door meetings, and the Secret Service has responded "no." CREW is now suing...

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When conservatives go gaga over Big Business

Politico carried an overhyped and underreported hit job last week on the American Conservative Union and its chairman, David Keene. Still, the article raised important questions about the conservative movement’s symbiotic relationship with Big Business. The story focused on two letters from ACU officials: One, from ACU fundraisers, asked FedEx for millions of dollars in exchange for a national grass-roots campaign supporting FedEx in its effort to ward off a UPS-supported bill that would saddle FedEx with the same labor laws as UPS. The second, a conservative coalition letter Keene signed the next day, chided FedEx for calling UPS’ ploy a “bailout.” Politico...

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General Electric is once again the lobbying champion

General Electric spent more on lobbying in this year's first quarter than any other company, newly filed federal lobbying reports show. The company shelled out $7.2 million for lobbyists in April, May, and June--that's $160,000 each day Congress was in session. The only other company to spend more than $6 million was Chevron, and GE almost equalled the Chamber of Commerce's lobbying budget. GE is perenially atop this list, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The company has spent $187 million on lobbying over the past decade, 44% more than runner-up Northrup Grumman. Why? Because no other company is so intimately tied up with government -- a dynamic that has only...

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GM is lobbying at 98.6% of its prior levels

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. A GM spokesman pointed out to me that the first quarter number already reflects some downsizing -- the company terminated four lobbying accounts at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009. GM terminated the rest of its contracts in early June, but still paid some of these firms the same...

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The rope the HMOs are selling

“The capitalists,” the apocryphal quotation goes, “will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” Vladimir Lenin, as far as we know, never actually said that, but it appears pretty close to the mantra of the gang currently in the White House. But, in the Obama era, the saying needs a few amendments. First, it’s the lobbyists, not the capitalists, actually selling the rope. And it’s not the current CEOs, but their employees and successors, who will be hanged. The first tweak matters because of what’s called the “principle/agent problem.” Imagine USACorp, which wants to be utterly left alone by government (these days, I...

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Liberals continue to contort themselves to justify mangled policy

Most hardcore liberals I have read and spoken to want a single-payer health plan. The most active liberal bloggers on this issue, however, repeat the mantra of not making the perfect the enemy of the good, and they seem ready to support almost whatever health-care "reform" comes out of Congress -- just as Obama is likely to sign whatever mangled beast Congress produces. My favorite example of this comes in a blog post today from Matt Yglesias, who works for the 501(c)4 arm of the White House, known as the Center for American Progress. In this post, he manages to blame conservatives for Democrats' embrace of crappy policy, and also mention, for the second time this week, that he...

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Regulate Me! Hedge fund edition

Last month, the New York Times ran this piece about the Managed Funds Association, launched by trader James Chanos: Hedge Funds Step Up Efforts to Avert Tougher Rules First hedge funds battled the markets. Now they are battling Washington. After a tumultuous run for many of these funds, this normally secretive corner of Wall Street is mobilizing its money and power to fend off tougher oversight, higher taxes and much greater transparency. If you read the rest of that article, neither that lead nor that headline make sense. That Times headline looks much sillier in light of yesterday's Reuters story: Famed hedge fund manager James Chanos, best known for his early spotting of Enron's...

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Harry and Louise are back -- but this time they're actually sponsored by Big Business

The drug industry, through the Pharmaceuticals Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) is bringing Harry & Louise back: Harry and Louise, the iconic middle class couple that helped to defeat the Clinton health care reform proposal, will be back on television – this time in support of health care reform. Harry and Louise will be featured in a multi-million dollar television ad campaign, which will start this weekend and run for at least three weeks. The ad will appear on national cable and network news programs as well as the Sunday talk shows. The ad campaign is the product of a collaboration between Families USA, the national organization for health care consumers,...

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Which lobbyists are Chris Dodd making cry?

Chris Dodd, apparently, is making lobbyists cry, because he's so, you know, mean to them. I wonder if that includes Dodd's former staff director, Richard Tarplin, who was chairman of the major lobbying firm Timmons & Co., before he left to start his own firm, catering to biotech and health care companies with issues before Dodd's Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee. Tarplin also represented Freddie Mac, whom Dodd protected from oversight. Is Dodd's former healthcare aide Debra Barrett, now a lobbyist for generic drug giant Teva pharmaceuticals, crying? How about Dodd's long-time chief of staff and presidential campaign manager Sheryl Cohen, a lobbyist at...

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Chrysler, GM lobby a shareholder — the feds

Chrysler and General Motors plan to keep lobbying the federal government, no matter that the feds are one of their biggest shareholders. Chrysler renewed its lobbying contracts with two high-priced firms last month, new federal filings show. The automaker says it has no intention of suspending or retrenching its lobbying effort. Meanwhile, General Motors, which has announced it will cancel all its outside lobbying contracts, is keeping its in-house lobbying operation running, maintaining its lobbying budget at perhaps 80 percent of its pre-bankruptcy level. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., has chastised these wards of the state for lobbying on the taxpayer dime. Specifically, he has...

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Democratic takeovers on the back of Republicans cashing out

In early 2008, Democrats scored three special election takeovers, winning the House seats left vacant by retiring Republicans Dennis Hastert (Ill.) and Richard Baker (La.), and Roger Wicker (Miss.). There was another common thread here: Hastert and Baker left to become lobbyists, and Wicker left his seat in order to fill the vacancy left open by Trent Lott's lobbying-induced early retirement. All three of those lawmakers called it quits before January 1, 2008, when the new lobbying restrictions went into effect, meaning they only have to wait one year--not two--to lobby their former colleagues (they already can lobby the other chamber and the federal agencies). Three Republicans cashed...

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Would you spend $1000 for Kennedy's new book?

Lyndon Johnson famously shook down companies and lobbyists to advertise on the radio station his wife owned, one of the many corrupt LBJ stories people tell with a chuckle these days. It was a great way to give undisclosed and unlimited contributions straight to the Johnson bank account -- far more useful than campaign contributions which are supposed to be spent on campaigning. Rather than selling access for campaign cash, Johnson appears to have been selling access to buy Lady Bird a new pair of shoes. Should we have the same concern about the $1,000 edition of Ted Kennedy's book? From the New York Times: At a time when publishers are scrambling to keep customers willing to pay $26...

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Corporate welfare and health-care 'reform'

Jonathan Cohn at the New Republic is getting excited that the Senate's health committee could pass a health care bill as early as today. In that light, and considering the deals with industry that Democrats have made to get this far, I recommend everyone read two blog posts from recent days. First, Tyler Cowen writes about the "market" prices of the various "reforms": who's paying whom what. And Will Wilkinson has a strong post titled "The Path to Corporate Welfare is Paved with Essential Legislation." In it he asks: When I talk to folks on the left, a lot of them really earnestly claim to deplore corporate welfare. But, when it came down to it, a lot of...

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'Strange bedfellows' watch: Fred Krupp, Environmental Defense Fund

My pet beat is covering the cooperation between big business and big government, a phenomenon much more common than many journalists seem to think and than many politicians care to admit. One of my hobbies, then, is collecting "strange bedfellow" remarks--when writers, businessmen, or politcians do notice big business lobbying for bigger government, they often accompany the observation with a declaration of "In an interesting twist..." or "strange bedfellows" or "an unusual alliance." Of course, a phenomenon should only be allowed to be "strange" or "unusual" so many times before it becomes commonplace. Somehow, though, Big...

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Chrysler hires a new lobbyist, and other notes from the lobby

Chrysler--part owned by the government--hired a new lobbying firm last month, a filing received today shows. It's Timmons & Company with lobbyists including Bill Timmons. The contract started June 11, a week after GM announced it was cancelling all of its outside lobbying contracts. So, you, the taxpayer, now have your own lobbyist--or something. [UPDATE: I should mention that yesterday, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner followed up on his push for an investigation into Chrysler's and GM's continued membership in the lobbying group, the U.S. Climate Action Partnership. I guess this lobbying filing from June answers Sensenbrenner's question on whether Chrysler is lobbying with taxpayer...

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Are insurers selling the rope by which they will hang--or the rope with which they'll choke the rest of us?

Kimberly Strassel has an important piece in the Wall Street Journal today, which in addition to cataloguing big business deals with Democrats in recent months reminds us of the true history of Harry & Louise and HillaryCare, as opposed to the conventional fiction. Strassel's conclusion, I think, is half right and half wrong: The question is just how long it is going to take for America's health-care CEOs to realize they are being taken for a ride, both by Congress and their own lobbyists. Americans are wary enough about ObamaCare to maybe appreciate some straight talk from corporate America. If only corporate America can find the smarts to give it. She's right, I think, that in the...

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Timothy P. Carney: Congress gives your money to T. Boone Pickens

T. Boone Pickens, like any good businessman, can read changing economic conditions. While he spent the 1980s as a “corporate raider” and oilman, in this age of Barack Obama and Henry Waxman, he has shifted his focus to lobbyists, feel-good green messages, and technology that depends on government subsidies. The result: Taxpayers will now be subsidizing T. Boone Pickens, a billionaire—and Republicans and Democrats in Congress tell you it’s for your own good. This week, three senators proposed special tax credits that will subsidize Pickens’ latest business venture, which he calls “the Pickens Plan.” Like his previous undertakings, Pickens has...

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Revolving Door: Harry Reid's $5 million man; and a Ted Stevens staffer cashes out

Two brief items from the revolving door between business and policy-making: 1) Legistorm--an excellent source for data on the salaries, personal finances, and travel of congressmen and staffers--has an interesting blog post up now on David B. Krone, a former vice president at Comcast and the National Cable Television Association. Krone earned $5 million last year, including $3 million in salary from Comcast, and then he left that gig to be a senior advisor to Harry Reid, the Senate's majority leader. 2) Margaret Sidney Ashworth, who was a top Senate Appropriations Committee staffer, has cashed out, becoming a defense lobbyist. This week, she registered the Ashworth Group and her first...

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The New Republic's Jonathan Chait hasn't been paying attention

After all the triumphal talk by Democrats and liberal bloggers about bringing industry on board with their "reform," (Yglesias, Emanuel, Klein, for a small sample) you would think liberal writers looking to attack conservatives would have to drop that hoary "our opponents are just shills for industry" line. But then you'd run into Jonathan Chait of the New Republic. Chait has an article dedicated to picking apart conservative and Republican arguments about health care, and he says these arguments usually rest on opposition to "big government." Then he rolls out the tired shill attack: But opposing "big government" can mean different things. Does...

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On big business and ObamaCare

I second Chris's recommendation to read the New York Times article today on industry's partnership with the White House on health care reform. The piece comes very close to explaining the landscape correctly, I think, but at least one part deserves immediate response. The article uncritically quotes W.H. Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel saying, "The very groups we have been talking to have been the most vocal opponents of health care reform; they are now becoming the vocal proponents for health care reform." This is misleading or dishonest. Is Rahm talking about Wal-Mart? Wal-Mart supported an employer mandate back in 2006. Is he talking about the health insurers or the drug...

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Schumer and the hedge fund lobbyists

Poking around the lobbying activity of hedge funds, I came across this N.Y. Times story from a month back (via Christopher Hayes at The Nation's felicitously named "Capitolism" blog). The Managed Funds Association, the lobbying group for hedge funds and private equity firms, has hired big K Street firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schrek, and one of the lobbyists on the account is Carmencita Whonder, a former top staffer to Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. Hayes has pointed to it as a "depressing example" of the power of "establishment social networks." Liberal newsletter writer Sam Pizzigati has this take on the Whonder story: "Whonder’s new clients are...

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The brawl that could sink health care reform

President Barack Obama's ambitious health care reform could be derailed by an abstruse lobbying battle between two key White House allies: the pharmaceutical industry and the senior citizens lobby. AARP has sided with generic drug makers against the name-brand giants on the backstage issue of biologic drugs. Biologics are prescription drugs more complex (and more expensive) than standard drugs, and they are generally derived from living matter. Examples are insulin and the anemia drug Epogen. The senior citizens lobby has privately threatened to withhold support for a broader health care reform bill if the legislation doesn't pave a clear and quick path for generic versions of...

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The right side of history ... and of the energy lobbyists, too

The Waxman-Markey climate-change bill that passed the House two weeks back had the strong backing of some major players in the energy industry. Duke Energy, AES, and General Electric are the leading proponents of a cap-and-trade scheme for greenhouse gas emissions, but power company Entergy has also long been a player in the greenhouse-gas allowance lobbying game. In 2008, Entergy petitioned the Supreme Court to declare CO2--the stuff you and I (and even Entergy's attorneys) exhale--a pollutant. The company is a leading nuclear power provider, and it also has already invested in carbon credits. A cap-and-trade scheme means profits for Entergy. Also, the bill contains a "Renewable...

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Kmiec--pro-life Catholic supporter of Obama--gets his reward

Professor Doug Kmiec, a prominent pro-life Catholic who endorsed Obama for President, has reaped his reward. Obama named him yesterday as ambassador to Malta, a small, Catholic, island nation in the Mediterranean. I interviewed Kmiec over breakfast at the Democratic National Convention, and he pointed out that while he finds Obama's position on abortion "morally unacceptable," John McCain's abortion plank went only as far as nominating judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade. "I’ve got an imperfect McCain and an imperfect Obama," Kmiec told me. On other issues--most notably war--Obama's positions have hewed more closely to Catholic teaching. My friend Josh...

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Post sets things right on "access" events

Regarding the Politico- and Drudge-induced furor about the Washington Post apparently selling lobbyists access to both reporters and Obama administration officials, the letter from Managing Editor Marcus Brauchli and this post by media columnist Howard Kurtz sets things straight. Looks like a pretty bad misstep by someone in the Post's corporate offices....

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Liberals cheer Wal-Mart's kneecapping of smaller competitors

Wal-Mart has joined forces with Team Obama behind a federal mandate that will squeeze smaller competitors, evoking applause and surprise from liberal bloggers, who declare change is in the air. But Wal-Mart's use of Big Government to gain competitive advantage is nothing new, nor is Big Business support for Democrats' health-care interventions. Rather than lending more credibility to Obama's health-care reform, Wal-Mart's endorsement ought to raise more skepticism. Wal-Mart, together with the Center for American Progress (CAP)--basically, the non-profit arm of the Obama White House--and a labor union, published a letter Tuesday supporting a federal mandate that businesses offer health...

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How to save newspapers: Turn them into lobbying pimps

I noticed recently that the Washington Post has unloaded its lobbyists. In December, they terminated their contract with Covington & Burling, and in January, they got rid of Tony Podesta's firm, and the Post closed its $10,000-a-month in-house lobbying shop. This lobbying was all for a "Shield Law" to protect reporters from being forced to disclose sources. Was the Post retrenching like most of us in the industry? Maybe the Post higher-ups missed rubbing elbows with lobbyists, or maybe the cost-cutting wasn't enough, judging by Mike Allen's report in today's Politico: For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post is offering lobbyists and association executives...

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On electric cars, Big Ideas, and unknown unkowns

Jay Yarow at The Business Insider's "Green Sheet" takes issue with my K Street column today, because I'm skeptical about the barrels-blazing federal government push for electric cars. Yarow defends plug-in cars with some decent points, and some points I find weaker: - "Sure, we get lots of energy from coal today, but tomorrow will be different." - "If CO2 is really a worry, a driver can buy some solar panels for their roof and power their plug-in that way." - "Bolivia's President, Evo Morales, says he's willing to work with foreign companies, but he wants Bolivia to retain 60% of the earnings from any lithium production in his nation....

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Are plug-in electric cars the new ethanol?

In the name of “clean energy,” Washington is subsidizing a switch from gasoline-powered cars to cars powered mostly by coal. In pursuit of “energy independence,” the feds may foster addiction to a fuel concentrated in a socialist-run South American country. Lobbying by automakers, chemical companies and coal-dependent power producers has yielded a slew of subsidies and mandates for electric cars. However promising a gasoline-free automobile may sound, anyone who followed the government’s mad rush to ethanol fuel in recent years has to worry about the clean promise of the electric car yielding dirty results. Ethanol — an alcohol fuel made from corn or...

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Matt Yglesias rewrites history to make Wal-Mart embrace of big government seem surprising

Wal-Mart has announced support for a federal mandate that employers provide some sort of health insurance for workers. Liberal blogger Matt Yglesias brags that his employer, the Center for American Progress, helped bring this about. Yglesias celebrates this as a sign of Obamian Change: The highly ideological behavior of the business community, and high degree of class solidarity exhibited by the executive class, has been a hugely important element of the story of American politics over the past thirty years or so. The willingness of much of the business community to break with Chamber ideology on Waxman-Markey and now on health care is an important sign of change in the air. This is, of...

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Obama continues to talk as if Waxman-Markey isn't about climate change

Just to follow up on my last post on how Obama excluded all mention of climate and greenhouse gases from his remarks on Waxman-Markey's House passage, I read the transcript of the President's weekly radio address. This time, he did--barely--mention climate change. Specifically, he touted the subsidies the bill could provide for farmers: "It gives rural communities and farmers the opportunity to participate in climate solutions and generate new income." And he said, "There is no longer a debate about whether carbon pollution is placing our planet in jeopardy. It’s happening." Dubbing the stuff we exhale "carbon pollution" isn't the clearest way to...

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Has the White House decided global warming is a losing issue?

Read the President's remarks Friday night after the House passed the measure most Capitol Hill staff and press referred to as the Waxman-Markey climate bill. You'll notice some words that the President never speaks: "climate," "warming," "greenhouse," "carbon," "cap-and-trade," or "emissions." If you went by President Obama's words alone, you would think this bill had nothing to do with capping greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to battle climate change. He has vague talk of praising "action" and "change" over "inaction" and the "status quo." He talks about "clean energy," and...

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Greenpeace opposes Waxman-Markey for favoring business over the planet

Greenpeace, calling the Waxman-Markey bill before the House today "a bill that chooses politics over science, elevates industry interests over national interest," has come out against the measure. It's been loaded up with giveaways such as free allowances to industry, and handouts to the farm lobby and Monsanto. So, while many media outlets think it's extraordinary to find the Sierra Club and Duke Energy on the same side (for the bill), it may be more remarkable to find Greenpeace and the Chamber of Commerce on the same side (against the bill)....

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Pelosi buys off agri-business to advance climate bill

What began as a liberal crusade to slow manmade global warming is increasingly becoming a porkfest for well-connected corporations. In order to get a vote today on greenhouse gas restrictions, House Democrats have bought off farm-state lawmakers with gifts to the farm lobby and the ethanol and agri-chemical industries--gifts that further undermine the legislation's purported environmental benefits. Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland, two of the environmentalists' corporate enemies, now stand to profit handsomely from the Waxman-Markey bill's cap-and-trade scheme aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the hope of slowing the shift in climate. Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn.,...

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Stimulating the top 2%

I haven't checked their methodology, but I'm not surprised by the numbers in this report from the American Small Business League: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 98% of all U.S. firms have less than 100 employees. Approximately 25 million firms fall into that category. These firms employ over 55% of the private sector workforce and are responsible for over 95% of all new jobs created in America. (www.asbl.com) The American Small Business League (ASBL) has found of the $2.7 trillion that has been allocated so far to stimulate the national economy, only $21 billion, or less than 1% of the funds have directly gone to small businesses. (http://tinyurl.com/mfzfp7) The remainder of the...

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Obama teams with Philip Morris to beat ‘tobacco industry’

President Barack Obama signed a bill Monday that the largest tobacco company in America had championed for years. Obama nevertheless claimed he had taken on Big Tobacco and won. As Obama signed the “Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act,” giving the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco, he proclaimed in the Rose Garden: “Today, despite decades of lobbying and advertising by the tobacco industry, we’ve passed a law to help protect the next generation of Americans from growing up with a deadly habit. …” But on Tuesday morning, the home page of Philip Morris, which controls a majority of the U.S. cigarette market,...

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The regulation-subsidy vicious circle

"If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it." That quotation, attributed to Ronald Reagan, has proven poignant in the new age of bailouts and Obama. A recent instance: fuel economy subsidies. Obama in May unilaterally hiked federal fuel economy standards, but he has tried to allay worries that this would kill automakers by pairing the increased regulation with subsidies. Today, the Energy Department announced $8 billion in loans to three automakers including Ford Motor. The AP reported today on Secretary Steven Chu's announcement: "These loans will help the auto industry meet and even exceed the president's tough fuel standards.....

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GE hires Linda Daschle as a lobbyist

General Electric, a top-20 source of funds for Obama in 2008, and owner of the Obama-friendly MSNBC, already has strong ties to Democrats, but the company has bolstered that relationship, according to recently filed federal lobbying registrations. GE's transportation business has hired as a lobbyist Linda Hall Daschle, wife of Tom Daschle, the former Senate Democratic Leader and Obama's first pick to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Mrs. Daschle will lobby on issues including Amtrak, high-speed rail, and freight rail, the lobbying form says. Obama has declared support for added federal funding for high-speed rail. GE is also a member of the U.S. Climate Action...

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Obama vs Reality on tobacco regulation

Today, President Obama signed the "Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act," and exclaimed that "today, despite decades of lobbying and advertising by the tobacco industry, we passed a law to help protect the next generation of Americans from growing up with a deadly habit that so many of our generation have lived with." This is supremely misleading, considering that the largest tobacco company in the country--controlling a majority of the U.S. cigarette market--has actively supported this bill for years. As a recent reference, here's a June 11 press release from Philip Morris's parent company, Altria: Altria Group statement released on June 11, 2009...

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Sensenbrenner calls the cops on GM and Chrysler's green lobbying

Today, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, wrote Atty. Gen. Eric Holder to ask if bailed-out, taxpayer-owned carmakers General Motors and Chrysler are breaking any laws by continuing to lobby the federal government while owned by the federal government, Sensenbrenner's office has told me. Specifically, Sensenbrenner singled out GM's and Chrysler's membership in the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of Fortune 500 companies and environmental non-profits dedicated to lobbying for federal restrictions on greenhouse gas--specifically, the sort of cap-and-trade scheme at the heart of the Waxman-Markey bill currently before the House. A...

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The Left watches as industry hijacks yet another "progressive reform"

It was hard-core anti-smoking groups hoping to drive cigarette companies out of business that started the push for federal regulation of tobacco. Now Philip Morris ended up writing the bill in a way that may drive smaller companies out of business, but preserves and likely the tobacco giant's dominance. It was Upton Sinclair's The Jungle that started a rallying cry for federal regulation of meat, but it was the meatpackers who wrote the legislation, again crushing competitors, bilking taxpayers, and helping the Bigs get Bigger through regulatory barriers to entry. It was greenies who started the push for regulation to curb greenhouse gases (GHGs), but it's Duke Energy, GE, and Goldman...

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"If She's from Big Business, How Can She Want More Government Like Us?"

Liberal health care writer Jonathan Cohn has a good piece in the new issue of The New Republic, and it's online now. It nicely recounts some history of the health insurance industry's role in the three biggest health-care policy debates of the last 16 years: 1993 HillaryCare, the late 1990s Patients Bill of Rights, and the current push for a federal overhaul of the industry. Cohn's article captures (without always fully sharing) the mistrust many liberals have when big business seems to be on their side. Cohn recalls his debate with top insurance lobbyist Karen Ignagni, and his thought at the time: My role, as the author of a new book critical of the insurance industry, was to remind...

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How healthcare regulation can help big business

One of the arguments for government-run health care is that our current system, in which most of us depend on our employer for health insurance, keeps you tied to your current job. Certainly, there would be some economic gains from a healthcare system that removed additional barriers to mobility, such as increased entrepreneurship, a more robust labor market. Another way to promote the same mobility: remove the government-created advantage employers have in health care--exactly what John McCain wanted to do, and exactly what caused Barack Obama to attack him for wanting to "shred the employer-based health-care system." McCain's health policy plan included repealing the special...

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Cheney coal plan gets $1B boost ... from Obama

Leading coal and electricity companies on Friday won a billion-dollar chunk of stimulus money from the Obama administration, highlighting once again how President Barack Obama’s anti-lobbyist and anti-big business rhetoric is divorced from his actions. Obama’s subsidy for a coal project called FutureGen shows the hollowness of a favorite primary-season attack: assailing Dick Cheney’s 2001 energy task force as the embodiment of the Bush administration’s coziness with big polluters. Just before the Montana primary, for instance, he put it this way: “Dick Cheney had an energy task force that came up with an energy policy that just served the interests of Big...

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The health care lobbyist in the White House--and the State House

Why is a lobbyist for for-profit hospitals, nursing homes, and other health-care companies going to the White House tomorrow to participate in a health-care forum chaired by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius? Because that lobbyist is also an elected member of the Maryland House of Delegates. In Annapolis, Heather Mizeur represents the people of downtown Silver Spring and Tacoma Park as a state delegate. She serves on the Health and Government Operations Committee as well as the health & human resources subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee. In D.C., though, Mizeur represents the nation's largest for-profit nursing home companies and a handful of other for-profit health-care...

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Charlie Rangel and the pharmaceuticals

When Ways & Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., releases his second-quarter fundraising figures, keep a close eye on his late June take from the pharmaceutical industry. Rangel this week made an interesting comment that could cause some worrying among drugmakers. From a Bloomberg story: “One thing that’s not off the table is you can pick up $37 billion knocking out the deduction for advertising” for prescription drugs, said Rangel, a New York Democrat. Lawmakers are seeking ways to help pay for a health-care overhaul. Rangel identified the proposal as one of a series of revenue-raising measures House lawmakers may include in broader health-care...

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On Durbin, bailouts, and Buffett

The Chicago Sun-Times has an interesting piece today on Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and how he cashed out $116,000 in stock during the financial collapse last fall. There's no reason to conclude Durbin did something inappropriate--sure, he cashed out just after his closed-door meeting with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, but it was also after the huge Sept. 15 drop in the stock market that followed Lehman's collapse. But the part of this story that piqued my interest was that Durbin shifted this money to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. The Sun-Times reports: "Altogether, Durbin sold investments worth $116,000 in September. By Oct. 2, he...

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Lobbying Up: Blackrock

Larry Fink, chief executive officer of asset management giant BlackRock, is investing in Washington. BlackRock began work after last fall's bailout as a manager of government assets acquired through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and the firm has signed a deal to buy Barclays’ asset-management business — an acquisition that would make BlackRock by far the world’s largest asset manager. With all this government-sensitive business going on, BlackRock has lobbied up. In April, BlackRock retained Quinn & Gillespie as its lobbying firm, with Clinton White House Counsel Jack Quinn and former top GOP Senate staffer David Hoppe on the account....

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Cap-and-Trade and U.S. Manufacturing

Big business support for cap-and-trade is the reason greenhouse gas emissions have a strong chance of becoming reality this year. The epicenter of big business pro-cap-and-trade lobbying is the U.S. Climate Action Partnership. I wrote a profile on USCAP here, and I have often suspected that what's going on there is a couple of savvy companies--who know how to profit from government action on climate change--pulling the wool over the eyes of other companies playing defense or looking for good public relations. I wrote so much about Pepsi last summer. These days, it's another USCAP member, Caterpillar, that looks like it might be in over its head. Caterpillar CEO Jim Owens said at a White...

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Connecticut Uses Lobbying to Muzzle Priests

The home page for the Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport, Conn., included a note last week exhorting Catholics to tell Gov. Jodi Rell, R, to repeal the death penalty. By the standards of Connecticut government officials, this was an illegal act of influence peddling in violation of the state's lobbying laws. As the Constitution State fights to exert more control over the Catholic Church there, lobbying laws are the state's latest weapon. Top officials at the Office of State Ethics have, according to sworn affidavits filed by the local bishop, informed the diocese that it violated state ethics laws and engaged in unauthorized lobbying by holding a statehouse rally and using its Web site to...

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The Marlboro Monopoly Act of 2009

The Senate yesterday defeated the only real obstacle to passing a bill regulating tobacco under the Food and Drug Administration. I've written for years (in 2006, in 2007 , in 2008, in 2009) about a fact that was long ignored: that Philip Morris supports this bill. Philip Morris' support of this bill should not be surprising: regulation always adds to overhead, disproportionately affecting smaller business; advertising restrictions kill start-up brands; he with the best lobbyists and lawyers (and most campaign contributions) usually works his way best through the rules and gets the most friendly details in the regulations. Indeed, when this bill passed, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) got...

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Connecticut uses lobbying laws to muzzle priests

The home page for the Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport, Conn., included a note last week exhorting Catholics to tell Gov. Jodi Rell, R, to repeal the death penalty. By the standards of Connecticut government officials, this was an illegal act of influence peddling in violation of the state’s lobbying laws. As the Constitution State fights to exert more control over the Catholic Church there, lobbying laws are the state’s latest weapon. Top officials at the Office of State Ethics have, according to sworn affidavits filed by the local bishop, informed the diocese that it violated state ethics laws and engaged in unauthorized lobbying by holding a statehouse rally and using its...

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Of politics and pistons: A near occasion of sin

Some common versions of the Act of Contrition that Catholics say at the end of confession include the line "I will avoid the near occasion of sin." The idea is that it is wrong to put yourself in a position rife with opportunities and temptations for wrongdoing. Evidence increasingly suggests that the Detroit bailout is just such an occasion of sin First, there's the eye-opener in today's Detroit Free Press, peering inside the Chrysler bailout, concluding, "Not since President Harry S. Truman seized the American steel industry in 1952 has America seen such a bold exercise of federal power over a vital organ of the U.S. economy." One highlight, a Chrysler executive...

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The problem of nationalization: Barney Frank pressures GM to keep warehouse open

Last month, as the federal takeover of Detroit was beginning to play out, I wrote "President Barack Obama’s auto industry policy promises to heighten the influence of lobbyists and to open the door to ethical transgressions and even outright corruption" and "Predictability, precedent and the rule of law have been replaced with the fiat of politicians." It's common sense that putting the government in charge of a company opens that company up to all sorts of politics. Today the Wall Street Journal editorial page reports that Rep. Barney Frank has successfully leaned on GM to keep open a warehouse it planned to close. The Journal frames the problem aptly: Mr....

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Lee Bollinger lobbying for federal aid for Columbia expansion

Columbia University President Lee Bollinger became a national figure when he invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at the university and then introduced him as "a cruel and petty dictator." More recently, Bollinger's plan to expand Columbia's campus has garnered local headlines, in part because New York City is using eminent domain to take the land from its current owners in order to give it to Columbia. Now the campus expansion has come to the federal level. Columbia U on April 17 hired a K Street lobbying firm, K&L Gates, to lobby for federal funding for the expansion....

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GM fires outside lobbyists, apparently cutting 17% of lobbying budget

My piece on GM's continuing to lobby got plenty of attention this morning (thanks to Drudge), but within the past hour, I've learned that GM is scrapping one portion of its lobbying operation. A GM spokesman wrote me this morning to inform me that things had changed since we last communicated, and that all outside lobbying contracts were cancelled yesterday afternoon. GM spent $500,000 on outside lobbyists last quarter, which amounts to 17% of its total lobbying budget. A K Street lobbyist who represented GM until yesterday told me that GM's in-house lobbying shop might shrink, too. I'm waiting on GM to get back to me on whether they will continue to spend more than $2 million per...

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Government Motors will still lobby government

UPDATE: Wednesday morning, 14 hours after this piece was posted online, a General Motors spokesman informed the Examiner that GM was canceling all of its contracts with outside lobbying firms. The company will maintain its in-house lobbying shop however. I will add further updates here throughout the day. General Motors will continue its multimillion-dollar lobbying operation in Washington, even after the federal government takes ownership of it. The automaker may even maintain its high-dollar lobbying contracts with some of the wealthiest and most influential K Street firms. “We believe we have an obligation to remain engaged at the federal and state levels,” General...

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Baucus's top staffer now GE's healthcare lobbyist

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., may be the most important single lawmaker when it comes to healthcare reform. He chairs the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over many aspects of health care reform, which President Obama is pushing for hard. This all makes it noteworthy that his former chief of staff, David Castagnetti, has been hired by GE Healthcare this Spring to lobby on "Health care reform issues ... including reimbursement for imaging services," according to a federal lobbying filing posted last week. Castagnetti is a partner with the firm Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti. To even things up, Colette Desmarais, the health policy advisor to top Finance Committee...

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“Subsidymagination:” GE’s regulatory robbery

Imagine a salesman comes to your door peddling composting barrels. You tell him that while composting would offer some benefits—good for the environment, free topsoil—you don’t think it’s worth the cost. He replies, “Oh, sir, but I’m afraid you don’t really have a choice. You see, the county government just passed a law requiring everyone to use a composting barrel. I should know—I’m also a lobbyist, and I helped write the law.” You’d call that a racket. On a far larger scale—peddling “greenhouse gas credits” and windmills instead of composting barrels—General Electric calls it “Ecomagination....

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AES and GE imitate Enron on coal and climate

A global power company that inherited some of Enron’s coal-fired power plants in Africa has also followed the late energy giant in the effort to profit from climate change legislation. Virginia-based AES Corp. has partnered with General Electric Co. in peddling greenhouse gas offsets while lobbying for policies to make those offsets valuable — the same buy-low, lobby-hard, sell-high strategy tried by Enron. AES simultaneous expansion of coal-fired power in Asia, South America and Africa, however, highlights how environmental regulations can yield profit without necessarily yielding environmental gains. Before it collapsed in late 2001, Enron was the leading corporate...

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Sotomayor and eminent domain

Few things make liberal court commentators more uneasy than the fact that in the extremely unpopular Kelo v. New London decision, the five most liberal judges were on the side of big business and the three conservative judges were on the side of the little guy. Indeed, Justice John Paul Stevens, arguably the most liberal of the nine, wrote the big-business-big-government decision. Well, Sotomayor's record also seems to come down on the side of the Bigs against landowners. Richard Epstein in Forbes describes one of her rulings: The case involved about as naked an abuse of government power as could be imagined. Bart Didden came up with an idea to build a pharmacy on land he owned in a...

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Budget office sees stimulus's gain as short term

The image at right [click here for a clearer image] is from the Congressional Budget Office. Note that it predicts a sharp economic turnaround very soon--at about the end of this year. Note also, that it predicts that the entirety of the stimulus's benefit will be felt between 2010 and 2012, with no benefit to the economy after 2012. Because the stimulus is about short-term gain, anyway, perhaps this is not damning, but I don't think a chart like this helps the White House justify the largest spending bill in history....

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What's (not) good for General Motors....

The Rasmussen poll Barone linked to yesterday also included some interesting policy questions. Now, policy polls often have limited utility because almost nobody being polled understands the issue as well as they would if they really had to act on it. But such polls can still reflect important facts about the mood and the direction of the country. My favorite fact in the latest Rasmussen survey was that "Just 18% of Americans think the United Auto Workers union and the federal government will do a good job running Chrysler and General Motors." This might just reflect that Americans still think business and government ought to be separate--plus a continuing low public trust in...

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Next in the pipeline: "A Green Bank"?

The Center for American Progress can fairly be considered a sister organization to the Obama White House. The group has never criticized Obama since he has taken office (to my knowledge, please correct me if I'm wrong), and its messaging seems to be very well harmonized with the White House's messaging. So, when CAP president John Podesta unrolls a novel idea, it makes sense to pay attention. Yesterday, Podesta and CAP rolled out the idea of a "Green Bank." In short, it would be an independent government agency whose sole role would be to finance clean energy or other green-type investments. The executive summary on CAP's website points out that all the subsidies for clean...

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Who benefits from federal fuel efficiency mandates?

When President Barack Obama brought American, European, and Japanese carmakers to the Rose Garden to announce his hike in fuel-efficiency regulations, he heralded it as “the harbinger of a change in the way business is done in Washington.” David McCurdy, president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said the policy “launches a new beginning, an era of cooperation.” In this case, at least, “cooperation” means businesses and politicians getting together to make us buy things we evidently weren’t willing to pay for. And the President’s fuel-efficiency mandates may not hurt struggling auto companies, because Obama’s...

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Cap-and-trade as corporate welfare

Republicans, reporters, and opponents of climate change regulation are increasingly tapping into a theme that is important policywise, economically, and possibly politically: the fact that a cap-and-trade scheme to curb greenhouse gasses amounts to corporate welfare for financial firms, technology companies, alernative energy companies, and in the case of Waxman-Markey also the big emitters themselves. A Politico cover story yesterday discussed a Republican strategy of assailing cap-and-trade as corporate welfare for big businesses "guilty of manipulating national climate policy to increase profits on the backs of consumers." The writers, with obvious skepticism, described this...

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The mysterious death of the chicken-fat car

As President Barack Obama unfurls his fuel-economy standards and Congress takes up global warming regulations, it’s useful to remember that what emerges from environmental policymaking is not necessarily what’s best for the planet, but instead what’s best for special interests. Consider the epic and somewhat bizarre struggle over clean fuels that ended last week. As usual, special interests were central to the drama. But the antagonists seemed right out of a Monty Python sendup of Washington politics: An oil company, hoping to profit from making trucks run on chicken fat, was thwarted by the soap industry’s lobby. The chicken-fat story is a cautionary tale about...

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The forbidden intervention: "We can't stop trade"

President Barack Obama has proposed and signed the largest spending in history (the stimulus), regulated the pay of banks, called for dramatic government intervention into our health care and energy sectors, proposed to raise taxes, created at least two new mortgage bailouts, and called for many other subsidies, regulations, and mandates. But when it comes to free trade, he and his Trade Representative have shot down the protectionists in his party with the terse dismissal: "We can’t stop trade.” That Obama line, relayed to our Susan Ferrichio by a Democratic source, combined with USTR Ron Kirk's recent declaration that Obama doesn't want to renegotiate NAFTA, deflates...

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Global warming bill becomes another Washington porkfest

Rather than stopping the rise of the oceans, President Barack Obama’s push for greenhouse gas regulations is turning into another all-you-can-eat porkfest. As Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., prepares to introduce a climate bill in the House Energy and Commerce Committee he chairs, big businesses and their well-connected lobbyists are lining up with the hope of getting rich off these regulations. An early winner looks to be the power companies, represented in Washington by the Edison Electric Institute. U.S. automakers, soon to be controlled in part by the labor unions who so generously fund the Democratic Party, are also among a handful of likely beneficiaries of this legislation....

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GOP budget bigwig Nussle enters the lobbying fray

Former Rep. Jim Nussle, R-Iowa, who also was director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, has entered the lobbying game. His consultancy, the Nussle Group, has registered its first lobbying deal, representing the Dubuque Area Chamber of Commerce on transportation funding. Nussle himself is not registered to lobby, but his former congressional Chief of Staff Christopher Bliley (also a former associate administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency) is the official lobbyist on the account....

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A new word for the Beltway lexicon: Subsidymagination

The early days of the Obama administration have seen a slew of subsidy programs, many of them with a green tint, and many of them benefitting General Electric. Climate change regulation enriches GE's greenhouse-gas-trading arm, windmill subsidies are GE subsidies, and Obama's beloved clean coal is a big GE priority. Author and activist Steve Milloy has coined a new term to describe GE's Obama-era business model: "SubsidyMagination." Milloy's post on another susbidy is worth reading: General Electric will receive $40 million in federal stimulus money and another $15 million in New York State grant money to build a $100 million locomotive-battery plant near Albany, NY, according...

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The alliance between Obama and big medicine

President Barack Obama declared Monday that the gathering of drug makers, health insurers, unions, hospitals and doctors at the White House was “so remarkable” because these diverse interests agreed on containing health care costs — a first step in his plan to remake the American health care system. The White House claim that the “medical-industrial complex” is on board with health care reform prompted disbelief in some quarters, rosy speculation in others. One Huffington Post writer accused the White House of naivety and “blind optimism” in trusting big business. Paul Krugman, the liberal columnist for the New York Times, offered this hopeful...

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Krugman lauds industry role in Obama's health policy

N.Y. Times columnist Paul Krugman got a phone call Saturday from the Obama administration informing him of what my column explained last month, that the "medical-industrial complex," as team Obama puts it, is supporting Obama's plan for health car reform. This is supposed to be a surprising alliance because 16 years ago health insurers helped sink HillaryCare, but also because big business is supposed to hate being regulated. That second reason ignores all facts, but the first one is worth considering. Why have insurers switched sides? Krugman gets the tip of the iceberg when he writes: What’s presumably going on here is that key interest groups have realized that health...

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Is GE dancing to the White House piper?

General Electric, more intimately tied in with government than nearly any other company, rolled out a new intiative this week, called "healthymagination." That odd name draws a parallel to GE's 2005 initiative "ecomagination." Like ecomagination, healthymagination held its launch event not at corporate headquarters in Greenwich, Conn., but here in D.C. The Beltway-centrism of these GE programs is telling. For ecomagination, it's obvious: the only way to make money off of solar and wind power--and especially off of greenhouse gas credits--is by also obtaining or preserving subsidies and regulations that create demand for such investments. The story may be similar for...

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The Big Business of Big Labor

Imagine if President George W. Bush used strong-arm tactics to bend the law to favor a politically connected company with $1.2 billion in assets, including a private golf course. What if that company’s political action committee had spent $13 million in the previous election, including more than $4 million to elect him? Barack Obama has done just that. The company is called the United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America International Union - or the UAW for short. Obama and the Democrats will employ euphemisms when discussing the President’s plan to circumvent bankruptcy law and hand majority ownership of Chrysler over to the UAW. They...

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Altria-vs-R.J. Reynolds fight goes to Senate

This week, Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., introduced the "Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act," a bill giving the Food and Drug Administration regulatory control over tobacco. The bill would restrict advertising, require testing of tobacco products, and impose other regulations. An important detail about this bill is left out of many stories covering it: Philip Morris supports the bill [pdf]. The reasons are many, and it is not just about "warding off stronger regulation" or "appeasing the Democrats." I wrote my column about this a month ago after the House passed it....

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UAW's only GOP Senate donation last cycle: Arlen Specter

President Obama wants to make the United Auto Workers union the 55 percent owner of Chrysler. In that light, it's worth looking at the UAW's political activity. As usual, in the 2008 election cycle the United Auto Workers' PAC gave 99% of its campaign contributions to Democrats. As I mention in my K Street column today, the PAC funded 42 Senate candidates, 41 of them Democrats. The other? Arlen Specter. From the Center for Responsive Politics' website OpenSecrets.org, here's some data on the UAW's PAC activity in 2008: * The PAC spent $ 13.1 million, making it the #14 PAC in the country, and placing it ahead of all business PACs except for the National Association of Realtors...

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Obama’s auto policy: All in the Democratic family

President Barack Obama’s auto industry policy promises to heighten the influence of lobbyists and to open the door to ethical transgressions and even outright corruption. By naming as car czar a financier who is also a Democratic fundraiser steeped in cozy business-government relationships, and by replacing the traditional bankruptcy procedures with the will of politicians, Obama has injected Detroit with all the elements of crony capitalism. Auto czar Steve Rattner, 56, a top Democratic fundraiser, is an old hand at leveraging political influence into profit, as shown by the business dealings of his hedge fund, Quadrangle Group. One Quadrangle client was New York City’s...

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Emanuel's benefactor at heart of Chrysler flap

When President Barack Obama announced Thursday that Chrysler was entering bankruptcy, he pointed the finger of blame at a few of Chrysler's bondholders for not agreeing to the government's out-of-court offer to erase some of Chrysler's debt. In particular, a group of investment firms and hedge funds decided to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout. They were hoping that everybody else would make sacrifices, and they would have to make none. A lawyer for the holdouts has fired back at the White House, as ABC's Jake Tapper and Clusterstock have detailed in blog posts over the past two days. The attorney claimed that the White House misrepresented the...

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Thank Bush, Santorum for Specter party switch

When the fox that has been living in your henhouse makes off with some hens, you don’t curse the fox. You ask who let the fox in. Republicans today should be angry not at Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., but at former President George W. Bush and former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa. Santorum, the pro-life Catholic leader in Washington at the time, spared no effort in 2004 saving Specter from a primary challenge by then-Rep. Pat Toomey. President Bush, similarly, went above and beyond the call of duty protecting Specter. Had either Santorum or Bush simply endorsed Specter and let him fend for himself, Toomey would have won the 2004 primary and been a slight favorite in that year’s...

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Former NRCC Chairman Reynolds Cashes Out to K Street

Former Rep. Tom Reynolds, R-N.Y., who served as chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, has entered the lobbying industry. Reynolds, who finished his final House term in January, has joined the firm Nixon Peabody as a “senior strategic policy advisor.” Nixon Peabody is beefing up its previously small lobbying presence, with Reynolds as a marquis name in the expansion. Reynolds served on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. Ethics laws prohibit Reynolds from lobbying the House before January 2011, but he can lobby the Senate, federal agencies, or state government. Reynolds is the third Upstate New York congressman to retire after the 2008 elections...

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Specter’s tipping point: A bad poll, DeMint’s backing Toomey?

Last Thursday night on the Senate floor, Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., told Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, then still a Republican, that DeMint would be supporting Specter’s rival, former Rep. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., in next year’s Senate Republican primary. DeMint says Specter “pretty much cut me off and said, ‘I’ve heard enough.’ ” DeMint wouldn’t speculate whether this conversation spurred Specter’s party switch, but it came within hours of a poll release showing Toomey winning among primary voters 51 percent to 30 percent. “We knew Pat was going to win the primary,” DeMint said in a Capitol Hill interview minutes after Specter...

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Why the insurers will win in Obama’s health reform

President Barack Obama and Sen. Ted Kennedy look likely to give the health insurance industry exactly what it wants on health care reform. This would be an ironic outcome, considering how activists on the Left have demonized the insurers, and how crucial health care reform is to liberals who care about policy. While Obama and congressional Democrats will claim the insurers’ victory as a win for the forces of equality and progress, the more hard-core Left — the progressives who formed much of Obama’s base — will swallow this as a bitter pill or even a deal with the devil. The industry will win because of its influence, but also because its proposed policies of...

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Former Barney Frank staffer now top Goldman Sachs lobbyist

Goldman Sachs' new top lobbyist was recently the top staffer to Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., on the House Financial Services Committee chaired by Frank. Michael Paese, a registered lobbyist for the Securities Industries and Financial Markets Association since he left Frank's committee in September, will join Goldman as director of government affairs, a role held last year by former Tom Daschle intimate, Mark Patterson, now the chief of staff at the Treasury Department. This is not Paese's first swing through the Wall Street-Congress revolving door: he previously worked at JP Morgan and Mercantile Bankshares, and in between served as senior minority counsel at the Financial Services...

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Did DeMint's endorsement of Toomey set off Specter?

Last Thursday night on the Senate floor, Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., told Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, then still a Republican, that DeMint would be supporting Specter’s rival, former Rep. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., in next year’s Senate Republican primary. DeMint says Specter “pretty much cut me off and said, ‘I’ve heard enough.’” DeMint wouldn’t speculate whether this conversation spurred Specter to switch parties, but the conversation came within hours of the release of a poll showing Toomey leading Specter among primary voters 51 percent to 30 percent. “We knew Pat was going to win the primary,” DeMint said in a Capitol Hill...

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Hollywood Protectionism on Trial in San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO—Hollywood’s big movie studios have succeeded in blocking software that would allow you to copy a movie onto your hard drive, but a court case beginning here today could overturn the restraining order, cracking the armor of an industry increasingly dependent on government protection. At issue is a $50 software program called RealDVD, which enables users to copy a movie from a DVD onto their hard drives, creating a backup copy in case you break or lose the disc, or allowing you to tuck your DVDs away in the attic as many folks already do with the CDs they’ve ripped onto their hard drives. The copy RealDVD places on the hard drive is encrypted, preventing it...

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Lobbying kings: Exxon, Chevron, Lockheed, Pfizer

Oil giant Exxon Mobil — the largest corporation in America — spent $9.32 million on lobbying in the first three months of 2009, more than any other company in the nation, according to recently released lobbying filings. Joining Exxon in the top four were competitor Chevron ($6.8 million), defense contractor Lockheed Martin ($6.35 million) and drug maker Pfizer ($6.14 million). About 100 companies and about 20 trade groups spent more than $1 million on lobbying in the first quarter, about the same as last year, according to lobbying reports filed Monday. Most of these companies are in the energy, pharmaceutical, insurance and telecommunications industries. The lion’s...

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The Clean Coal Lobby

What do you do if environmentalists are gunning for you and want to use Washington to destroy or at least severely curb the use of the only project you sell? You call on Washington for billions in subsidies to make your product cleaner. Hence, the clean coal lobby. The Center for Public Integrity's new initiative tracking the boom in climate change lobbying looks at the clean coal lobby in a new report, on the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity: However one interprets ACCCE’s message, it has the power of well-heeled and politically engaged companies behind it. Amid the punishing economy of 2008, the top five U.S. coal mining companies saw their profits more than double...

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Chamber of Commerce is top-lobbying trade group, followed by PhRMA and Realtors

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reported $9.996 million in lobbying expenditures in the first quarter, more than any other organization. The Chamber scored two big lobbyong successes in early 2009: the passage of President Obama's $782 billion stimulus bill and the defeat of the Employee Free-Choice Act, also known as the card-check measure. Among trade groups (not counting individual companies) second place goes to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), which spent $6.91 million and succeeded in passing the State Children's Health Insurance Plan into law, and has pushed to expand Medicaid and limit cost-saving measures government might seek in government-run...

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When They Say "Smart Grid," Think "General Electric"

The city of Miami has announced it is rolling out a new "smart grid" for electricity, an idea getting tons of buzz in Washington and in many city and state governments. It's a nice idea--get smarter computers to help us direct the transmission and generation of electricity, minimizing waste and maximizing efficiency. Of course, the folks pushing the hardest for this are the folks who would get the contract--mostly General Electric, the company that has spent more on lobbying in the past decade than any other company. Jay Yarow at The Green Sheet lays it out in a post titled "Miami's Massive Smart-Grid Project A Gift To Cisco And GE." Yarow also included a clip from GE...

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Regulate Me (The Insurance Edition)

While most politicians and most journalists seem to assume that big business generally wants to be left alone by government, the truth of the matter is that most regulation that actually gets passed has the backing of the largest players in the industry being regulated. We have seen this very recently with the toy industry, the food industry, and the tobacco industry. Big business has many reasons for wanting to be regulated--it disproportionately hurts smaller businesses, keeps out competition, gives an advantage to those with better political connections, insulates against torts, and gives an air of credibility. A NYTimes op-ed today by the Allstate Insurance CEO offers another reason...

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Specter versus Toomey is Wall Street versus Main Street

Next year’s Senate Republican primary in Pennsylvania—Sen. Arlen Specter versus former Rep. Pat Toomey—could be a battle for the soul of the GOP. But it’s not a liberal-versus-conservative battle as much as a Goldman Sachs-versus-Mom n Pop fight. Campaign finance records show that Specter is Wall Street’s favorite Republican, and voting records show why. While Specter attacks Toomey as a banker, and tries to paint his donors as Wall Street fat cats, Toomey is actually a small businessman—having run a community bank that didn’t take bailout cash, and before that starting a neighborhood bar in Allentown, Pa. As leading Republicans take sides...

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AIG head’s $3M in Goldman stock raises apparent conflict of interest

Edward Liddy, CEO of government-run AIG, still owns more than $3 million of stock in Goldman Sachs, which has pocketed $13 billion or more of the $170 billion federal officials have spent bailing out the ailing Wall Street insurance giant. Liddy is managing a company that receives taxpayer dollars to pay other financial firms, with Goldman Sachs the top recipient. While there is no reason to believe Liddy is influencing AIG actions to unfairly benefit Goldman, the situation represents a potential conflict of interest that would never be allowed in a government agency, but is permitted in the strange public-private chimeras like AIG spawned in this age of bailouts. Liddy, according...

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New Chamber index shows conservatives aren't corporate pawns

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., had the most conservative voting record in 2008 according to the American Conservative Union (ACU), and was a “taxpayer hero” according to the National Taxpayer’s Union (NTU), but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says his 2008 record was less pro-business than Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton. Similarly, Texas libertarian GOPer Rep. Ron Paul—the most steadfast congressional opponent of regulation, taxation, and any sort of government intervention in business—scored lower than 90% of Democrats last year on the Chamber’s scorecard. Liberal Democrats often accuse conservative Republicans of being pawns for Big Business,...

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The business of Detroit is producing lobbyists

President Barack Obama went out of his way to reassure Detroit autoworkers that their jobs were safe. The lobbyists for General Motors and Chrysler had no concerns about their jobs. As the two automakers have become wards of the government, they have also become utterly dependent on lobbyists. GM spent about $8 million to $8.5 million on federal lobbying each year from 2003 to 2006, lobbying records show. Then, as things turned dramatically southward for the company, lobbying spending exploded, jumping 64 percent in 2007 to $14.6 million. Last year saw another big jump. Chrysler ramped up its lobbying at a steadier pace. From $3.1 million in 2001, it progressively rose to $7.1 million in...

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Analysis: Obama’s auto plan redefines relationship with business

President Barack Obama has become a de facto bankruptcy judge — one of many important consequences of the White House’s actions in recent days regarding the auto industry. The administration’s increased role in General Motors and Chrysler — analyzing and directing the restructuring, providing additional loans under the Troubled Assets Relief Program, and creating new subsidies — represents an important shift in the government’s relationship with businesses it is bailing out. “Basically, what is happening here is a bankruptcy process,” said Dan Ikenson at the libertarian Cato Institute. Ikenson speculates that labor union resistance has...

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The corporate myth of free trade

With the economic downturn killing jobs in the U.S. and around the world, politicians, pundits, and business leaders are loudly fretting that “protectionism is rearing its ugly head.” This concern for free trade is admirable, but coming from the same voices that have pushed the massive bailouts, record “stimulus” spending, and expansion corporate welfare over the past few months, it seems a bit like a brothel manager insisting on modest attire for his front-desk clerks. If you dig a bit further into the legislative and lobbying priorities of those politicians and businesses now fighting off “protectionism,” you see that by “free trade” many...

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Worn down by feds, Whole Foods turns to lobbying

Whole Foods, the specialty supermarket chain that cultivates organic foods and an upscale image, has bucked the rest of the business lobby and joined with Starbucks and Costco in a coalition pushing a compromise with labor unions. Over the weekend, the three companies reached out to the unions that are trying to get in a stronger position to sign up workers. Though not embracing labor’s preferred “card-check” method of unionizing shops, the coalition did advocate new laws to make unionizing easier. The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attacked the coalition’s overture, and many conservatives called it a business sellout. While Costco and Starbucks...

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Obama food policy may mean end of farmers markets, family farms

President Barack Obama made some foodies’ hearts melt on the campaign trail by referring to writer Michael Pollan, who has helped spark a revival in local, unprocessed food. But Obama’s push for strict new federal food-safety regulations could drive organic food and farmers markets into the back alleys. The Food Safety Modernization Act, touted as a consumer protection bill, is backed by the giants of the affected industries, such as General Mills and the National Restaurant Association, while posing possibly lethal threats to smaller market players like family farms and local produce. Last Saturday, Obama dedicated his weekly radio address to food safety, declaring...

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AIG mess clips the wings of high-flying Obama team

- York: Candidate Obama vs. President Obama - Mason: Stumbling along the learning curve - Carney: AIG mess clips the wings of high-flying Obama team - Tapscott: When America becomes Obamaland - York: Obama pushes his agenda, deficits be damned - Stirewalt: Politics as hardball, not as higher calling - Tapscott: Bush spent big, Obama spends even bigger President Barack Obama and his prized deputy, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, knowingly allowed bailed-out insurer AIG to spend $165 million in taxpayer dollars on bonuses...

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High-minded rhetoric, but business-as-usual government

When he was running for president, Barack Obama impressed liberals and conservatives alike with his promises of honest government and clean politics. “Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency,” Obama declared on his first full day in office. But the president’s record on transparency, earmarks and lobbyists suggest that his lofty rhetoric has given way to business-as-usual governing. Almost immediately, he discarded his promise to allow five days of public comment before signing any non-emergency legislation. On earmarks, the Obama team has adopted a St. Augustine posture — good government is coming, just not yet. When Obama...

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The Obama era brings boom times for lobbyists

Early numbers suggest that the first quarter of 2009 has seen lobbying in the nation’s capital spike by nearly 22 percent over last year, which would be the largest ever increase in lobbying activity — and a strong indication that President Barack Obama has helped usher in a Golden Era for K Street. Between Jan. 1 and March 16 this year, the Senate Office of Public Records received 1,381 new lobbying registrations, which include new lobbying firms, new clients at existing firms, and businesses hiring their first lobbyists. This is the largest batch of new registrations since 1999, the first year these records were kept, and a 21.7 percent increase over last year. If you...

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Livestock tracing bill could be end of family farms, ranches

Congress is considering legislation aimed at making our food supply safer, but for small farmers and ranchers, one such bill looks like another example of big business and big government teaming up to get the little guy out of the way. Nobody’s written the bill yet, but the idea pushed in a congressional hearing this week was to create a mandatory program that would allow the U.S. Department of Agriculture to track every single head of livestock in the country. This would allow the government to track and contain outbreaks of animal infections, supporters argue, protecting consumers from tainted meat. On the government’s end, this requires a database and tracking hardware...

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When going green means making green

Big business is increasingly embracing green legislation — and taking advantage of opportunities for big profits for companies with a strong lobbying presence in Washington and in state capitals. The motivations vary for companies that are going green, said Ben Lieberman, environmental policy expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “For some it is just public relations, [but] it’s pretty clear that the companies and legislators focus on whatever benefits them,” Lieberman said. General Electric may be the most prolific at seeking ways to profit from environmental laws. When GE Chief Executive Officer Jeff Immelt began his “Eco-magination”...

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Obama injects politics — and profit — into science

In the name of “depoliticizing science,” President Barack Obama held an applause-filled rally before supporters Monday to declare that his administration would begin funding research that destroys healthy, living human embryos. This supposedly anti-political move was a victory for one of Washington’s most powerful industry lobbying groups. The Biotechnology Industry Organization, which represents drugmakers and for-profit laboratories, quickly endorsed Obama’s new policy. “We fully support and are enthusiastic about President Obama’s decision to allow the National Institutes of Health to fund embryonic stem cell research,” said BIO President and...

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Sebelius at HHS a boost for abortion, stem cell industries

Just as the oil industry got its way in the Bush Administration, the abortion and stem-cell industries appear likely to get their way in the administration of President Barack Obama. Obama’s nomination of Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as secretary of Health and Human Services is a boon for the big business of abortion and the government-dependant industry of using human embryos for stem-cell research. Sebelius has a long public record of protecting abortion from even the mildest of restrictions and regulations, and is a vocal proponent of expanded taxpayer funding of stem-cell research based on the cloning and destruction of human embryos. As HHS chief - especially with a...

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Obama’s hidden bailout of General Electric

While many companies hire lobbyists to win earmarks, General Electric’s unmatched lobbying force has secured a tax increase — or its equivalent — in President Barack Obama’s budget. Labeled “climate revenues” and totaling $646 billion over eight years, this line item in Obama’s budget has inspired confidence in GE Chief Executive Officer Jeff Immelt. As Immelt put it in a letter this week, he believes that the Obama administration will be a profitable “financier” and “key partner.” On page 115 of Obama’s fiscal 2010 budget is Table S-2, titled “Effect of Budget Proposals on Projected Deficits.” The chart...

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Dr. No in the Age of ‘Yes We Can’

“I’m probably the least partisan person up here.” These are surprising words to hear from Sen. Tom Coburn, the freshman Republican senator from Oklahoma, who doesn’t exactly have a reputation as a moderate: In 2008, he earned a 100 percent rating from the American Conservative Union and a big zero from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action. But the Capitol Hill battle in which Coburn is most engaged — shining a spotlight on the spending, hypocrisy, and machinations of government — is one he says is neither conservative or liberal. “The American people don’t trust Congress,” he told The Examiner in an interview at his Capitol...

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A doctor in the House and Senate

Tom Coburn enjoys being portrayed as a modern Cincinnatus — the Roman farmer who served as dictator in time of crisis, but returned to the soil once his task was accomplished. Cincinnatus, however, set down his plow to take the reins of state. Coburn has refused to give up his medical practice while in office, returning home on weekends to deliver babies and treat patients, igniting clashes with ethics committees in both chambers. He estimates he’s delivered more than 500 babies while in office, and he still faces an ethics complaint in the Senate, even though he does it for free. The battles started soon after Coburn arrived in the House in January 1995. He took a ruling...

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Teachers unions say 'jump,' Congress says 'how high?'

Teachers unions, through their allies in the Democrat-controlled Congress, are on the verge of demolishing the chief threat to their monopoly—school vouchers for low-income families in the District of Columbia. If they win in the end and kill this program, it will be another triumph for a near-monopoly that has lined the coffers of nearly every member of Congress and deployed an army of lobbyists throughout Washington. When the House passed the $410 billion omnibus appropriations bill this week—funding the normal operations of government for the next seven months—it included a provision that effectively would end the D.C. school voucher program after next school...

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Sticker shock? Obama's invoice to taxpayers

Since his election, President Barack Obama has rolled out the most aggressive domestic spending proposals in American history. Some of Obama’s plans are spread over time, while others call for concentrated spending in the next several months. Either way, the tally between now and September of next year for Obama’s new programs and spending hikes will likely cause sticker shock. Wall Street Bailout: The first $350 billion tranche of the Troubled Asset Relief Program was not a model of accountability or effectiveness, but Obama, just before taking office, called on Congress to release the second half. Cost: $350 billion Stimulus: The largest spending bill in history is heavy...

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Insurers, drug makers poised to profit from Obama health plan

Although President Barack Obama promised that he would freeze out the lobbyists in order to finally reform our broken health-care system, his nascent push to overhaul the industry already shows signs of becoming a lobbying feeding frenzy, with health insurers, drug makers and employers all poised to benefit from government’s expanded role. We don’t yet have the specifics of Obama’s plan, but we do know its centerpiece: an individual mandate on health insurance. Obama has said — and corporate-labor lobbying coalitions have agreed — that Washington should require Americans to buy health insurance. When healthy people opt out of the insurance pool, the theory...

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Concrete bandits are stimulus package profiteers

President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus program spends heavily on infrastructure, which is fitting since the construction industry has spent heavily on politics. Dozens of well-connected industries won billions of dollars in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act signed this week by Obama—borrowed money that will be repaid by future generations—and they all lobbied heavily for their handouts and for the bill’s passage. The construction industry deserves special attention because it got special consideration in the bill. While every corner of the construction industry pushed hard for the stimulus and will profit greatly from it, a good place to begin is...

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Obama administration lobbyist count increases

Washington lobbyist Christine Varney is poised to take her third pass through the revolving door of lobbying and government with her nomination by President Barack Obama to be his administration’s top antitrust enforcer. Also, on Thursday, Obama nominated Derek Douglas, a former lobbyist for the O’Melveny & Myers law firm and Center for American Progress, as special assistant on urban affairs. As with most of the at least 14 former lobbyists nominated or hired by Obama, Varney and Douglas appear to be not covered by his executive order restricting the official activities of former lobbyists. Obama’s first executive order forbade appointees who had served as...

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Obama’s stimulus: The Lobbyist Enrichment Act

Borrowing $787 billion from the next generation and spending it as rapidly as possible may or may not provide a jolt to the U.S. economy. But one thing is certain: H.R. 1, the Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act, has already triggered a lobbying boom, suggesting once again that the Age of Obama will be a golden age for K Street. The stimulus has spurred small companies to jump into the lobbying game for the first time and big companies to bring in new hired guns. For example, the National Association of Home Builders hired Baker & Hostetler a week after Barack Obama’s inauguration to lobby explicitly on the stimulus bill, which, in the end, included an $8,000 credit for home...

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Obama, Durbin, Blagojevich, and K Street get biggest earmark in history

What do you get when you combine impeached former Illinois Democratic governor Rod Blagojevich, legendary K Street lobbying firm Cassidy & Associates, Senate appropriator Dick Durbin, D-IL, President Barack Obama, former Democratic House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri, and the largest spending bill in the history of the planet? You get the costliest earmark Washington has ever seen. Obama proclaims his stimulus bill is earmark-free, but that claim is a bit Clintonian. Turns out, it depends on what the meaning of the word earmark is. What if a provision in the bill doesn’t name one specific project, but is written so narrowly that only one project is...

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Judd Gregg’s wisdom: Abolish Commerce Department

New Hampshire Republican Sen. Judd Gregg’s nomination as Commerce Secretary has drawn headlines, in part for the political fallout, but also because Gregg, back in 1995, voted to abolish the very agency he is now slated to head. The arguments Republicans made back then, in the heady days of the Contract for America, still apply today. The Department of Commerce represents wasteful spending, and it functions primarily as a welfare agency for well-connected corporations. Teddy Roosevelt created the Department of Commerce and Labor in 1903, and 92 years later, when Republicans took control of both chambers of Congress, they pushed to abolish the agency. The Budget Resolution that...

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For a Geithner intimate, the color of money is green energy

Tom Daschle is gone, but one of his closest confidants remains inside the Obama administration, with a reputation built on the kind of influence peddling that raised ethical questions about Daschle and his lobbyist wife. New Treasury Department Chief of Staff Mark Patterson jumped from Daschle’s inner circle on Capitol Hill to K Street, where he served as a top in-house lobbyist, and then back to government as Geithner’s right-hand man in running Treasury. Patterson’s journey to the Obama administration and his relationship with Daschle raise more doubts about Obama’s promise to “close the revolving door between K-Street lobbying shops and the White...

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Washington toy story shows why regulation helps the big guys

Thousands of self-employed businessmen, artists, and boutique owners who make or deal in hand-crafted children’s toys, clothes, or furniture could be out of work next month. A 2008 federal law, with the salutary-sounding name “Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act,” could drive these craftsmen out of business. Big toymakers, who helped write the bill, are ready for the regulations that will go into effect Feb. 10, while smaller toymakers look likely to suffer. It’s another example of how Washington, when it regulates an industry, often helps the biggest businesses in that industry while crushing the smaller guys. This toy story begins in the summer of 2007...

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The question Obama doesn't want you to ask

“Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions—who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans,” President Barack Obama said in his inaugural address on Tuesday. For these non-believers, the president had scorn: “What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them—that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.” In practice, we know what this means: Obama wants more federal spending, more federal regulation, more federal mandates, and more federal...

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Obama’s secret telecom advisor pushing his company’s interest

A telecommunications company has confirmed for this columnist that its vice president for policy—who is also an Obama donor and a former lobbyist—is advising Barack Obama’s transition team on telecom policy. Obama’s transition team, which has failed to disclose this executive’s involvement, happens to have proposed a significant change in telecom policy that will profit that very company, called Clearwire. By pushing to delay the long-scheduled transition of television broadcasting from analog signals to digital signals, president-elect Obama is directly aiding Sprint and its partner Clearwire while hurting Verizon. Clearwire’s executive vice...

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Bringing Bill Richardson’s leadership style to Washington

When president-elect Barack Obama introduced his pick for Commerce secretary last month, he praised him, saying, “As governor of New Mexico, Bill showed how government can act as a partner to support our businesses….” Those words have a different ring to them now that Bill Richardson has withdrawn from consideration amid an investigation into a donor who won a huge state contract. Barack Obama’s transition team is coming under fire for failing to unearth the facts on this suspected pay-to-pay deal under investigation, but the problem is more serious than inadequate vetting. The problem is that Obama has embraced Richardson’s approach to governing, and so...

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2008, Year Of The Bailout

Not too long ago, in fact, at the beginning of 2008, the U.S. had a reputation as a free-market economy in which businesses rose and fell of their own strengths or flaws and to their own profit or loss. But 2008 changed all that. Too be more precise, the administration of President George W. Bush changed all that in 2008. Americans used to get exorcised any time the federal government considered bailing out private interests. When Chrysler got a $1.5 billion loan in 1979 (about $4.25 billion in today’s dollars), there was an outcry. When the Clinton administration bailed out Wall Street bankers in 1994 with a bailout of the Mexican peso, it was scandalous. But as 2008 wound down,...

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Ghosts of Auto Bailouts Past

As Santa Bush stuffs the stockings of Wall Street firms, developers, and banks this year, he hasn’t forgotten the automakers who lobbied their way onto his “nice list.” As Christians begin the season celebrating the birth of mankind’s savior, GM can celebrate the long history of gifts from its perennial savior—the federal government. After getting burned in the mid-1960s by Ralph Nader, whose book Unsafe at any Speed assailed the safety of the Chevy Corvair, GM, and the auto industry as a whole, GM apparently decided that fighting against big-government busy-bodies was not a winning strategy. So GM joined the big-government busy-bodies. In 1981, police had...

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Obama taps another corporate-welfare king in Vilsack

Americans with a good memory—and who didn’t blink—will remember that former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack ran for president in this past election. In fact, he was the first candidate to formally announce. So technically, by choosing Vilsack as Agriculture secretary, Obama has tapped yet another vanquished presidential competitor for his cabinet, burnishing the image the media loves of his building a “team of rivals.” But there is another trend emerging regarding Obama’s top picks: expertise in doling out corporate welfare. Tom Vilsack joins the Obama administration as another corporate welfare maven—and I’m not just talking about...

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Blagojevich Shakedown is Standard Government Practice

Did you hear about the politician who threatened to harm an ailing company unless it agreed to the politician’s campaign donors? Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich? Sure. But I could also be talking about dozens of congressmen, senators, or governors, most of whom are not currently under arrest. In fact, such shakedowns of corporations are standard operating procedure in Washington and in many state governments, and the bailout bonanza on Capitol Hill makes such borderline corruption an everyday occurrence. Take Rep. Steve Kagen, D-WI, who lashed out last week at Cerberus, the private equity firm that owns a controlling stake in Chrysler, one of the Detroit automakers begging at the...

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Obama taps corporate welfare maven for Commerce Secretary

Barack Obama, elected president last month promising to curb the influence of corporate lobbyists and special interests and to change the way Washington works, continues to fill his administration with politicians steeped in the world of special favors and corporate welfare. By naming New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson as Secretary of Commerce this week, Obama signaled that his Commerce Department will be an ally for any big businesses willing to go along with the administration’s aims. As governor, Richardson’s hallmark was forming “public-private partnerships.” He built such partnerships in the arenas of real estate, energy, biotech, and health insurance. What is...

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Obama Thankful for Bailouts and Added Power

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” incoming White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel recently said. “And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” What “things” do Emanuel and the Obama administration want to do, and what “opportunities” have been presented them by the current economic crisis? In short, the armada of bailouts deployed by the outgoing Bush administration will soon become the weapons the Democrats need to push greenhouse gas regulations that they haven’t been able to get in through the front door. Put another way, with the federal government now paying (with your...

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Goldman Sachs Will Be Sitting Pretty With Emanuel in the Obama White House

Goldman Sachs always has clout in Washington, as evidenced by the firm’s alumni serving as Treasury secretaries under both Presidents Bush and Clinton. Today, in these tumultuous times of bailouts and meltdowns when the investment banking leviathan needs Washington more than ever before, Goldman can leverage its most valuable asset yet—incoming White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. Goldman Sachs is the giant of Wall Street, and more than any other investment bank, Goldman is surviving the current financial storm. Traditionally a Democratic booster, and one of Barack Obama’s top sources of funds in this past election, Goldman has always had some particularly strong...

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Emanuel Used Political Connections to Leverage Personal Wealth

Barack Obama, in the name of ethics, has promised to “close the revolving door between K-Street lobbying shops and the White House.” He very well might do that, but the man running the show in his White House, Rep. Rahm Emanuel, is among the all-time champions in parlaying work in government into business connections and personal wealth—$16.2 million in two-and-a-half years—and then leveraging those business connections back into political success. Emanuel, Obama’s pick as White House chief of staff, was never a K Street lobbyist, but in between his stints in government he was a highly-paid deal-maker who enriched himself by using his government connections...

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Emanuel Will be Wall Street's Man in the Obama White House

Sixteen years ago, when Bill Clinton was moving into the White House, good-government liberals were disheartened that the President-elect named his campaign’s top fundraiser, Rahm Emanuel, as White House political director. They read this as a sign that cash would be king in the Clinton Administration. They were right. Four elections later, after getting rich in a brief stint in finance, Emanuel is the favorite congressman of Wall Street, measuring by campaign contributions. In the midst of a financial crisis that President-elect Barack Obama blames on Wall Street’s greed and excessive influence in Washington, Emanuel is once again headed to a perch of power in a Democratic...

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Will Maryland Government Enter the Gambling Industry?

If you live in Maryland, you may have seen the signs around your neighborhood reading “Keep Taxes Low, Strengthen Our Schools,” and urging you to vote Yes on Question 2 this Election Day. Anytime someone makes you an offer like that, you ought to be skeptical. As always, it makes sense to follow the money. In this case, it quickly becomes obvious who is pushing this constitutional amendment and how they stand to profit. The race tracks that will host and operate the 15,000 video lottery terminals will get rich, and the appropriators and bureaucrats get a new stream of cash without having to impose a tax increase. The lawmakers claim it’s for the schools, while the...

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Free All of the Joe the Plumbers

Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, also known as “Joe the Plumber,” has received more scrutiny from the mainstream media than Barack Obama. The Associated Press (which has never found the time to report that Obama’s earmarks for donors and a former employer) reported that Joe has no plumbing license. Liberal bloggers and mainstream journalists have pegged it as scandalous or mock-worthy that Joe is engaging in unlicensed plumbing. Instead we should be asking why the City of Toledo, Ohio, or any city, county, or state, is justified telling its citizens whom they can or cannot hire to fix a leaky pipe. Joe the Plumber probably won’t succeed in derailing Obama’s...

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Obama and Big Business vs. a freer health insurance market

Barack Obama attacks John McCain's health care plan as spurring the "unraveling of the employer-based health care system." Big employers are siding with Obama. Not surprisingly, employers want employees more dependent on them. Of course they don't want it to become more affordable for you to strike out on your own. Sure, "unraveling" the employer-based health care system" is a bad thing for employers, but it might also be good for everyone else. The core of McCain's healthcare plan is shifting federal tax breaks regarding health insurance. Currently, health insurance fits into a special class of employer benefit—not only does your company get to deduct...

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Obama hangs out fly-paper for lobbyists

Sen. Barack Obama has made a big deal of his refusal to take money from lobbyists, but he’s been quieter on another campaign finance fact: from the industries behind our financial crisis, Obama has taken much more money than John McCain has. Now, with his open-ended and unspecific calls for new financial regulations, Obama has issued a dog-whistle call to financial firms and their lobbyists. On Tuesday night, in the second debate, Obama answered a question on the economy by stating, “we’re going to have to change the culture in Washington so that lobbyists and special interests aren’t driving the process and your voices aren’t being drowned out.”...

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Protectionism for Wall Street

Who knew Wall Street shared the economic views of steel workers, domestic manufacturers, and buggy-whip makers when the automobile was invented? Just like those industries threatened by market realities and a changing economic landscape, Wall Street is calling on Congress to intervene in order to preserve the status quo. I guess we only call it protectionism when it’s men in hardhats who are at risk of losing jobs. When it’s men in pinstriped suits worried that their industry might dry up, we call it “stabilization.” Protectionism is the right word for the bailout the House is voting on today. Without a bailout, we are told by the people who got us into this...

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The new masters of the universe

Wall Street, always dependent on Washington for protective regulation and “pro-market” policies that drive capital towards housing and securities, has prostrated itself before the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury in recent days, ushering in a brave new era of a nationalized economy. Who wins? Who always wins? The politicians, the bureaucrats, and the businesses with the best lobbyists. As Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson presents it, the administration’s $700 billion bailout plan would allow the federal government to buy up mortgage-backed securities whose value is tough to determine, and whose prices are plummeting. In truth, the plan would empower Paulson, using...

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AIG feels at home in the government

To judge by the rhetoric coming from Capitol Hill liberals, you would think the recently bailed-out American International Group (AIG) was some sort of free-market, government-hating, leave-me-alone-to-make-my-profits capitalist cowboy before it came begging this week for a handout from Uncle Sam. The company’s lobbying record and campaign contributions tell a different story. AIG has built its business in conjunction with big government and, naturally, lobbied for big government programs that make some of its businesses possible. Still Democrats are using the company’s collapse, and the broader context of the financial crisis, as an indictment of the free-market and of...

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Rangel is Capitol Hill money man

Very few men can wield a gavel like Rep. Charles Rangel, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over tax law. The Harlem Democrat has run into some ethical headaches recently, but a broader look at his 18-month tenure atop the powerful House panel shows a man who knows how to leverage his power, line his campaign coffers, and foster support among powerful players in the business world. While the late Republican majority was hardly a paragon of good government — corruption and bribery scandals were at the heart of the GOP’s fall in 2006 — Rangel’s Ways and Means chairmanship has been a fundraising bonanza, with much of the money...

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Living it up at the conventions on your dime

Minneapolis – They say there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but this week I have sure been enjoying lots of Summit India Pale Ale, fried walleye and all kinds of tasty nourishment at events surrounding the Republican National Convention, without paying for any of it. The same was true in Denver last week. Of course, none of this was “free.” My free food and drink — which paled in comparison to wining and dining enjoyed by the politicians and policymakers here — were the wages of a government that has far outgrown the power and influence our founders intended. The less-savory fruits are high taxes, often oppressive regulations, and a lobbying game that...

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Joe Biden’s Big Oil connections to Burma

Democrats could count on revving up the crowd in the Pepsi Center this past week by invoking “Big Oil” as the main beneficiary of Republican economic policy. Sens. Joseph Biden Jr., Hillary Clinton and about 20 others hammered this wedge from the convention podium. But Democrats - and Biden in particular - might have an oil problem of their own involving an oil company called Unocal (now merged with Chevron), one of Biden’s closest former staffers, and the military dictatorship in Burma. The “Big Oil” charge makes a handy weapon for Democrats, in part because Big Oil is close with Republicans. According the Center for Responsive Politics, the oil and gas...

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T. Boone Pickens wants your water

Texas oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens is about to make a killing by selling water he doesn’t own. As he does it, it will be praised as a planet-friendly wind project. After he pulls it off, the media will deride it as craven capitalism. In truth, it is one the most audacious examples of politics for profit, showing how big government helps the biggest business steal from the rest of us. The plotline behind Pickens’ water-and-wind scheme is almost too rich to believe. If it were a movie script, reviewers would dismiss it as over-the-top. The basic story amounts to this: Pickens, thanks to favors from state lawmakers whose campaigns he funded, has created a new government whose...

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Shocking!: Windmill Owner Wants More Wind Subsidies!

Would a major newspaper editorialize with surprise that "even Kraft Foods says we need to eat more macaroni and cheese"? Would guests on The McLaughlin Group get away with saying that "even Budweiser is lobbying for more beer consumption"? Then why do talking heads and journalists exclaim with surprise that "even T. Boone Pickens," is lobbying for greater U.S. reliance on wind power? Don't they know he owns the largest wind farm in the world? The "Pickens Plan," the legendary oilman's public relations and lobbying blitz billed as a way to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, has its virtues and its flaws, but it should be presented in an honest...

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Bank of America PAC money behind Dodd's Countrywide loan

"We call it the 'Bank of America bill on steroids.'" A House staffer told me that, demanding anonymity, but speaking on behalf of aides to GOP members of the House Financial Services Committee.He was talking about the bill whose Senate version has been brought to the floor this week by Continued...

 

Timothy P. Carney: Iowa’s gain is taxpayers’ pain

West Des Moines, Iowa — Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani made his way through the shops on Fifth Street in historic Valley Junction (the fancy name for the rapidly growing town of West Des Moines) in the cold early evening hours on Wednesday night.A mob of staffers trailed him along with some reporters looking for atmospherics with which to......

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Timothy P. Carney: Energy bill splits Big Business

Prospects aren’t good for enactment of major energy legislation aimed at "greening" America’s power and transportation sectors, and much of the media are portraying it as a win for big business over environmental groups.That explanation is half right: The energy bill’s problems are largely due to opposition by utility companies, but the lobbying effort on the other side has been equally driven by big business seeking profits.One particularly controversial provision in the Democrats’ current energy bill would require all utility......

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Timothy P. Carney: Congress pushes subsidies for tourism industry

Congress moved forward this week on legislation creating a federal program to promote international tourism. Tourism industry leaders are pleased, but perhaps not as pleased as the lawmakers and lobbyists who pushed the industry to call for such a program.With their rapid rush to pass "lobbying reform" and their regular complaints about "corporate influence" you would think congressmen find lobbyists annoying—or at least you wouldn't expect lawmakers to try and multiply the number of Capitol Hill lobbyists. The case of the Travel Promotion Act (TPA), however, shows how lawmakers often......

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Private profit disguised as public health

Federal regulation of food, often portrayed as government efforts to protect consumers from unscrupulous industry, has shown itself this month to be a club by which one business can crush its competitors. Specifically, a Michigan company founded by a former Democratic congressman lobbied his former Capitol Hill colleagues and the Food and Drug Administration to outlaw a competing product - carbon monoxide in meat packaging. In the end, the Michigan firm, Kalsec, won a partial victory when a powerful lawmaker - to whose campaigns the firm_s founder had contributed -......

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Timothy P. Carney: Death tax is a lifeline for insurance industry

Democrats eager to preserve the federal estate tax — the fate of which is currently being debated by the Senate Finance Committee — portray the levy as a grand equalizer and argue that killing the tax would help only the ultrarich.The real beneficiaries of repealing the tax, however, would not be Paris Hilton and her ilk, but the countless small businessmen, family farmers, and retired parents and grandparents who now have to spend billions to avoid paying it.It’s only natural, then, that estate planning businesses — including the life insurance......

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Timothy P. Carney: Government shelters agro-giant from storms of competition

All good companies adapt to changing business environments, but perhaps no corporation matches Archer Daniels Midland’s adeptness at using big government to generate profits, come rain or shine.The agribusiness giant, which has spent decades shoring up its relations with top policymakers, posted a $441 million profit in the most recent quarter — ADM’s best-ever showing — thanks to official subsidies, protective tariffs and mandates for their ethanol, exports and corn syrup businesses.ADM is America’s top producer of ethanol, a fuel made from agricultural products, mostly from corn in the United......

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Timothy P. Carney: Hillary Clinton: Shill for the pill

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., portrays herself as a scourge of the pharmaceutical industry, but she has shown that she’s willing to help a drugmaker if that’s what it takes to profit Planned Parenthood, her indispensable political ally.Clinton’s campaign Web site touts that she has "battled the big drug companies." Yet she has sponsored many bills that would directly subsidize Barr Laboratories, maker of the emergency contraceptive pill Plan B, which also functions as an abortifacient. Thanks to a deal cut between Barr and Planned Parenthood, those taxpayer subsidies will......

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Timothy P. Carney: Lieberman donors warm to his climate-change bill

Global warming has moved to the forefront of the congressional agenda thanks to a new bill sponsored by Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and John W. Warner, R-Va., that would restrict emissions of greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide.Environmental groups give the bill mixed reviews, but undoubtedly pleased is Lieberman’s top donor, which stands to profit from this bill that will raise the costs of energy and goods for all Americans."America’s Climate Security Act," as the bill is dubbed, would require factories and power plants (among others) to spend greenhouse gas......

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Timothy P. Carney: Congress porks up waterways bill

The Senate recently passed a bill authorizing money for the Army Corps of Engineers with a price tag of about $14 billion. The House version of the Water Resources Development Act passed at $15 billion. In a conference committee, lawmakers from both chambers hammered out the differences, and in the end came to a compromise: $23 billion.While not that unusual, this bill’s growth behind closed doors certainly defies the civics-textbook explanation of how a bill becomes a law. The 450 earmarks in the final bill, including many that appeared only......

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Timothy P. Carney: Does SCHIP insure kids or subsidize savvy HMOs?

Democrats may never get enough votes to override President Bush’s veto of their bill expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), but they hope to draw quite a bit of GOP blood in the process.The Democrats’ congressional campaign chairman, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., has promised that a vote to uphold the president’s veto will be portrayed as a vote "in lockstep with the president and against children’s health."If SCHIP’s opponents chose to employ the same sort of language, they could charge Van Hollen and his colleagues of voting......

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Timothy P. Carney: Unions use minimum wage hike to quash competition

Labor unions lobbied Congress heavily over the past few years to increase the federal minimum wage, trumpeting the cause as a struggle to help the working man. The higher minimum wage that went into effect this summer certainly helps union workers, but as last month’s uptick in unemployment shows, the benefit may come at a real cost to other American workers.Raising the minimum wage has very little direct effect on union workers, federal government statistics suggest. Basically, minimum wage workers are not union workers. Men are more likely to be......

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Timothy P. Carney: Schumer, Democrats show hedge funds the D.C. ropes

On CapitolHill and the presidential campaign trail, Democrats are pushing a tax hike on some of America’s richest businessmen — managers of private equity firms and hedge funds. Whatever the outcome of the tax debate, by opening up the issue, Democrats have tapped a new source of campaign funds and lobbying jobs for their friends.In June, Democrats in both chambers of Congress proposed three different bills to hike taxes on managers of hedge funds and private equity firms. The bills gathered co-sponsors over the summer, and Democratic presidential candidates lined......

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Timothy P. Carney: Software firms lobby for federal cash pipeline

President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which increases federal influence over local schools, is beginning to look like another slush fund for well-connected industries to tap into rich veins of taxpayer dollars.As with most federal programs of its kind, federal education money often goes not where it is most effective, but where the most effective lobbyists are.In this case, the software industry, already benefiting from the mandates and federal grants in NCLB, has a bill in both chambers of Congress that would earmark for "technology" federal education......

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Big Business is LOST at sea

Bush administration officials, the Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill, and most Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) at the UN support it. So do the American Petroleum Institute, the Chamber of Shipping of America, and AT&T. With this cast of supporters, something fishy is going on.It's the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, but its detractors still use its old name: the Law of the Sea Treaty, or LOST. LOST was originally drafted at the end of the Carter administration, but was scuttled President Reagan.During the presidencies of George H.......

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Timothy P. Carney: Virginia’s steep traffic fees are beneficial to big developers

These days, Virginia lawmakers are getting an earful from voters who are mad as heck about the new traffic fees that could run a guy $900 for going 20 mph over the speed limit. While these "abuser fees" — as the bill’s sponsor calls them — are not popular with the average Virginian, they could be the answer to the prayers of the most generous group of political donors in the commonwealth: developers.Earlier this year, the Republican majority in both chambers of the General Assembly joined together with Democratic Gov.......

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Timothy P. Carney: Sen. Clinton: Big business liberal

Journalists left and right recently have noted that Mark Penn, the top adviser to Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign, continues to work full time as a public relations consultant for corporate giants from the oil, pharmaceutical, software and tobacco industries. Clearly there is something contradictory, these journalists assert, in Penn’s running the campaign of a liberal politician while also laboring in Washington for the biggest companies in the most controversial industries. In truth, Penn seems to be serving both of his masters well, as Sen. Clinton backs a series of regulations......

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Timothy P. Carney: Big Ethanol wins big on CAFE

While U.S. automakers have attracted media attention this summer with their furious campaign to block stricter federal requirements on fuel efficiency, the businesses that stand to gain from heightened federal regulation have stayed below the radar.Primarily, the ethanol industry — already profiting from a smorgasbord of federal and state subsidies and mandates — will likely find riches in the more stringent Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards being adopted in Congress.In 1975, following the Arab oil embargo, Congress created CAFE standards to force automakers and car buyers toward more fuel-efficient......

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Timothy P. Carney: Truckers’ well-paid friends in Congress fight for subsidies

It’s a new way for states to manage their highways that could solve traffic congestion in some of the most clogged parts of the country while also warding off tax increases and bringing state governments more money.Who could oppose such a plan? For one, the companies that are being subsidized by the current way of doing business — that is, the trucking industry. For two, the industry’s friends in Congress.Governors in both parties are warming up to the idea of leasing roads to private companies, which would pay the state......

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Timothy P. Carney: Immigration bill’s guest-worker program is corporate welfare

The immigration bill plodding across Capitol Hill this year is described as a compromise between many competing interests and constituencies. It certainly offers some pain and some gain for the causes of law and order, labor and immigrants.But for big business, this bill is a big winner. The biggest complaint business has about the bill before the Senate last week — and the White House’s biggest complaint too — is that the guest-worker program is not even bigger.The Senate bill would create a guest-worker program that would grant 200,000 (the......

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Timothy P. Carney: Drug industry lauds FDA authority

When the U.S. Senate passed a bill May 9 to expand the Food and Drug Administration’s authority to regulate prescription drugs, the big drug makers applauded. This latest expansion of government regulatory power marked another win for the pharmaceutical industry, which has one of the most successful lobbying records in town.The U.S. pharmaceutical industry is built on federal regulations and more often than not finds itself on the side of increased government control over pharmaceuticals. This year’s push (spearheaded by "Liberal Lion" Teddy Kennedy) to heighten FDA oversight is no......

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Timothy P. Carney: Bureaucrats have a fail-safe way to turn businesses into regulators

Why is eBay a top supporter of the federal laws aimed at killing online gambling? What do government regulators think they will gain from forcing AT&T to voluntarily and unilaterally adopt "net neutrality" regulations? What’s the intent of the federal and state regulators threatening to block oil giant TXU from selling out? Behind these three collisions of big business andbig government lie the same dynamic — one that uses threats of government force to win the big businesses over to the side of the regulators. First, consider the case......

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Timothy P. Carney: Wal-Mart, Costco back minimum wage that could hurt small rivals

Amid all those goodies in the Iraq supplemental funding bill for sugar beet farmers, California orange growers and ornamental shrub dealers lies another provision requested by big business: an increase in the federal minimum wage. Two of the five biggest retailers in the U.S. — Wal-Mart and Costco — have lobbied for the minimum-wage hike that Democrats are now on the verge of delivering, a move that would likely help the discount giants by hurting their smaller competitors. Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the world, and a favorite bad......

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Editorial: Ruling on EPA favors Big Energy

When the Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Environmental Protection Agency can and probably should regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant, a Washington Post news article said the majority was "siding with environmentalists." That’s true, but a quick look at the docket in Massachusetts v. EPA reveals the liberal majority also sided with two large electric utilities that stand to profit from the decision. In Massachusetts v. EPA, the four liberal justices plus Justice Anthony Kennedy ruled that carbon dioxide — the stuff you breathe out and plants breathe in......

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Timothy P. Carney: Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulations boost buyout firms

Those "barbarians at the gate" of the 1980s now have the federal government opening doors for them. Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts, & Co. (KKR) — the private equity firm that pioneered the "leveraged buyout" two decades ago — can thank federal regulations and laws for creating many of its recent buyout opportunities, including the high-profile pending buyout of Texas energy company TXU. KKR is certainly not the only firm in its industry benefiting from government regulation. In fact, much the business in the private equity industry is spawned by government action......

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Timothy P. Carney: Broadcasters use antitrust rules to kill off weaker competitors

President Theodore Roosevelt and Sen. John Sherman might be surprised to see how antitrust laws and antimerger regulations are being used today in the radio industry: as a weapon for big business against smaller competitors. The broadcast radio industry is lobbying the federal government to block the proposed merger of XM and Sirius satellite radio companies, who claim they might both fold without the merger. While engaging in this high-priced lobbying campaign to inflict a possibly mortal woundto their competitor, the broadcasters accuse the satellite companies of "seek[ing] a......

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Timothy P. Carney: Philip Morris wins with Kennedy, Waxman bill against ‘Big Tobacco’

Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., speak as if they are going after Big Tobacco with their bill to heighten regulation of cigarettes, but their most important ally is the embodiment of Big Tobacco: the Altria Group, parent company of Philip Morris.Indeed, the liberal lawmakers may be doing wonders for the cigarette behemoth’s bottom line with their legislation.Kennedy and Waxman, along with Republican Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, have introduced bills this month that would grant the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate the manufacture, sale......

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Timothy P. Carney: Sweeping Boeing’s bank under the rug

President Bush’s budget proposes cutting nearly all funding for the favorite government agency of many American big businesses — and they’re just thrilled.The Export-Import Bank of the United States is a federal agency that loans money and guarantees loans to foreign governments and companies to help the foreign buyers buy American goods.In recent years, Congress has appropriated more than $900 million for Ex-Im, but this year, the president’s budget calls for only $1 million, a 99 percent reduction. This is hardly a step by the president to abolish corporate welfare,......

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Timothy P. Carney: Big business loses a buddy with Mark Foley resignation

We’re still figuring out who knew what and when about former Florida Rep. Mark Foley’s behavior toward pages, but the disgraced Republican was never discreet about fighting for corporate welfare for his campaign donors. Almost all congressmen win favors for their financial supporters, but few members displayed such a direct correlation between the bills they sponsored and the campaign checks they cashed.Start by looking at the Center for Responsive Politics’ list of Mark Foley’s top contributors for his recent, aborted re-election campaign. Topping the list is Florida Turbine Technologies.Joe and......

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Timothy P. Carney: Welcome to Washington, Wal-Mart

As liberal politicians, vocal unions and editorial pages argue that Wal-Mart underpays and mistreats its employees (The Boston Globe even implied that Wal-Mart workers are "patsies"), few Wal-Mart watchers have noticed a new addition to the retailer’s payroll: lifelong Democratic operative and lobbyist Leslie Dach.Dach has kept a low public profile, but his roots run deep into the Democratic Party’s establishment. His hire by the nation’s largest retailer punctuates the new direction Wal-Mart is headed: East from Bentonville, Ark., to Washington.Dach will pull in about $3 million over the next......

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