WASHINGTON — In the official record of the historic House debate on
overhauling health care, the speeches of many lawmakers echo with
similarities. Often, that was no accident.
Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in
whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of
the world’s largest biotechnology companies.
E-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that the
lobbyists drafted one statement for Democrats and another for
Republicans.
The Obama administration promised to reform the financial system and
make it safe for the rest of us, but recent Congressional action is more
likely to reset the fuse for another explosive calamity. The time bomb
in this case is that arcane financial instrument known as
derivatives--the hedging devices that the big banks sell to investors,
corporations and other banks to reduce risk or evade the requirements to
hold adequate capital on their books.
When Michelle Obama announced plans to plant an organic garden at the White House, nearly everybody thought it was a great idea. Everybody except for the pesticide industry.
One of the few - and I sincerely stress the word "few" -
concrete legislative successes progressives notched in the Republican
Congress under President George W. Bush came on the evening of July
26th, 2002, when they humiliated the House into passing a bill sponsored by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) banning federal contracts
from going to companies that engage in tax "inversions." These are the
schemes whereby a corporation that is based in the United States buy a
P.O.
Lobbying groups for the energy companies and environmentalists have boosted their spending by double digits in a year because they knew that the US Senate would debate environmental legislation ahead of global climate change talks next month.
But science and specifics are hard to find in the barrage of ads and messages about green jobs, alternative energy and the dangers of pollution.
WASHINGTON - Big banks took a beating from government on
Thursday, both in the U.S. Congress where lawmakers backed tougher
industry rules, and from U.S. and UK regulators who moved aggressively
to restrain bankers' pay.
In the coming year's military spending bill, members of a House panel
continue to steer lucrative defense contracts to companies represented
by their former staffers, who in turn steer generous campaign donations
to those lawmakers, a new analysis has found.
For weeks now it's seemed more and more evident that instead of
significant, meaningful healthcare reform, we are--if we're
lucky--going to wind up with something akin to health insurance
reform.
WASHINGTON - The meeting with Bank of America executives came less than a year after American taxpayers rescued the institution with a $45 billion emergency bailout. The subject was derivatives, the complex securities that helped trigger Wall Street's crisis and drag the country to the edge of an economic abyss.
The guest of honor: Barney Frank.
Congress appears set to ignore President Obama's proposal that banks be required to offer "plain vanilla" financial products such as 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, giving the banking industry an early victory in its fight with the administration over how to reform the financial-services sector.
