lobbying

So Heath Shuler is not running for re-election. Fine with me. We need a real progressive in there. Hopefully, we have a shot.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/02/heath-shuler-retirement-reelect...

More importantly though, should we have a pool on how long it takes before Shuler is plugged into K Street's revolving door. I give it a matter of weeks, if not days.

The lives of educators are getting more difficult, a-gain. The program of death by a thousand cuts undertaken by the NC General Assembly (GA) continues unabated. The latest, and not well known, cut involves the increasing difficulty of creating a legal school schedule. You, gentle reader, might not recall that school calendars are not created with the principle goal of educating young minds, but rather to maximize the profits of the coastal tourist industry.

An unethical move to control ethics probes:

The budget plan that will go to the House floor next week would move campaign finance reporting from the State Board of Elections and lobbying registration from the Secretary of State's office, combining operations in the State Ethics Commission.

A bill filed by Sen. Andrew Brock, R-Davie, would essentially merge the State Ethics Commission and the State Board of Elections, combining all their functions.

It doesn't just combine them, it moves them into a new entity under the direct control of GOP legislators:

Cross-posted from an article by Sue Sturgis on Facing South.

Standing out among the more than 250 people who testified at the recent Environmental Protection Agency hearing on proposed coal ash regulations in Charlotte, N.C. was one speaker with an especially distinguished background: Charles Steele Jr. (in photo at right), the first African-American member of the Tuscaloosa City Council and a former Democratic state senator from Alabama who went on to lead the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the legendary civil rights organization whose first president was Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Steele left SCLC last year and now runs a consulting firm in Atlanta.

Join Us in Raleigh: BlueNC friends -- I hope some of you can join me on June 22nd for a citizens lobby day about voter-owned elections and the need for an alternative to the big donation-driven system of running for office we now have. We'll help you make appointments with your state reps. National commentator, Harvard law professor and institutional ethics expert Larry Lessig will be a keynote speaker. If you sign up, please tell them Katy sent you, so I can continue to actually get paid to hang out here! :) From the Democracy NC Link of the Day:

An Action Alert for the BlueNC community from our friends at the NC Justice Center:

Next Tuesday, May 25th, the NC House Committee on Financial Institutions will meet to discuss SB1015, The Homeowner and Homebuyer Protection Act, sponsored by Senator Josh Stein.

This bill would prohibit foreclosure rescue scams and create reasonable regulation and standards for option to purchase or "rent to own" contracts and contracts for deeds. These scams and unscrupulous real estate transactions are used to exploit and manipulate families struggling to pay a home loan or families who are having trouble obtaining a loan to purchase a home.

Please act today!

Those of us who have studied Senator Richard Burr's Congressional acts couldn't help but notice a plethora of legislation suspending duties or tariffs on various and enigmatic chemical compounds.

I've spent time here and there trying to link these compounds together, in an effort to discover which private corporations were being served by these bills. Well, it appears there's one really big one, and it's a foreign-owned corporation at that.

Now I can't even remember where that line came from... was it Army of Darkness?

Anyway, While on are weekly excursion to B&N for coffee and book browsing, my husband and I stumbled across a book that I found to be very interesting. "The Blue Pages, 2nd Edition." is a directory of business and how much they contribute to either the Democratic or Republican party, their lobby spending, and other useful information, such as whether they are harming or helping the environment, whether they offer domestic partner benefits, and if their insurance covers transgender employees, if they plead guilty to doing business with a terrorist organization, and so on.

The US Chamber of Commerce has launched an all out public campaign and lobbying effort to stop federal climate and clean energy legislation from passing Congress.

But there's a growing backlash from companies large and small who are making sure that legislators and the public know that the Chamber does not speak for all businesses.

North Carolina business owners announced their support today for a clean energy jobs bill and joined the growing number of businesses in America criticizing the United States Chamber of Commerce on the issue.

So we are now finding out the answers to some of our questions about which members of Congress actually represent We, the People...and which ones represent, Them, the Corporate Masters.

We have seen a Democratic Senator propose a policy that would put people in jail for not buying health insurance and a Democratic President who has taken numerous public beatings from those on the left side of the fence for his inability to ram something through a group of people...and yes, folks, the entendre was intentional.

But most of all, we’ve been asking ourselves: “why would Democratic Members of Congress who will eventually want us to vote for them vote against something that nearly all voting Democrats are inclined to vote for?”

Today’s conversation attempts to answer that question by looking at exactly how money and influence flow through a key politician, Montana’s Senator Max Baucus—and in doing so, we examine some ugly political realities that have to be resolved before we can hope to convince certain Members of Congress to vote for what their constituents actually want when it really counts.