The Lobbying Problem and How We Can Fix It

We have a lobbying problem in Congress. Beginning in the early 2000s, the amount of money being spent to lobby Congress exceeded the amount of money taxpayers were spending to fund Congress: Corporations now spend about $2.6 billion a year on reported lobbying expenditures – more than the $2 billion we spend to fund the […]

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A Real Schock … GOP Rep Resigns After Fraud Investigation

Aaron Schock, a House Republican from Illinois, has resigned effective March 31 after an investigation into his requests for federal reimbursement uncovered multiple discrepancies, especially concerning his mileage expenses: Schock billed the federal government and his campaign for logging roughly 170,000 miles on his personal car from January 2010 through July 2014. But when he […]

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The Direct Line Between Lobbying the DHS and Getting Defense Contracts

The top five contractors for the DHS, in terms of the value of defense contracts, spent millions on lobbying and political contributions to receive almost $9 billion worth of DHS contracts: MapLight looked into the contracts awarded by the DHS to the top 5 contractors and these contractors’ political spending. These companies were chosen because […]

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A Rock and a Hard Place: Civil Corruption and Crony Capitalism

Should corporations be allowed to operate freely without government interference? Or do they need to be regulated by government to make sure corporations treat people fairly? Nope. Neither of these options are possible right now. We’re between a rock and a hard place: between civil corruption and crony capitalism. As you might surmise, neither is […]

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