Timothy P. Carney

'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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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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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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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: 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 businesses. 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.,...

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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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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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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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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 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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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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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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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'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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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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Thank Bush, Santorum for Specter’s 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 anti-abortion 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 to protect 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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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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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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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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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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