lobbying
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How industry pressures and competing national agendas dim prospects for a climate treaty
A version of this post was originally published on the website of the Center for Public Integrity and is reposted on Grist with CPI’s kind permission. —– It is said that borders don’t matter to the atmosphere — all nations have to work together to tackle the problem of climate change. But the forces that […]
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Greens have finally got the Big Mo
Paul Krugman had a post the other day on the “aura of inevitability” and how it finally seems to be working for progressives instead of against them. I think he’s on to something. Summer was brutal for greens. “Cap and tax” attacks were bouncing around the Foxosphere. House Dems were getting killed back home for […]
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James Hansen on Obama, climate legislation, and the scourge of coal
Cross-posted from Earth Island Institute. A recent article in the New York Times pointedly asked whether NASA climate scientist Dr. James Hansen still matters. The subtext to the story was, has Hansen been too vocal and too unconventional in his criticism of Washington’s response to climate change to be taken seriously? Hansen, dubbed by some […]
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Corporations call off the old green battle, but Chamber of Commerce soldiers on [UPDATED]
Update: This story keeps growing. Since last week… The country’s largest utility, Exelon, said it was quitting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in protest of the group’s climate-bill opposition. New Mexico utility PNM Resources did the same. Nike, the most public-facing Chamber defector to date, said it would leave the Chamber board of directors while […]
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When lobbyists cheer, the news can’t be good
As suspected, agribusiness is indeed turning cartwheels over the news that Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln is now chairman of the Senate Ag Committee. The public policy director for the retrograde American Farm Bureau told The Hill, “We couldn’t have handpicked a chairman better than this.” The giant sucking sound you’re hearing is agricultural reform rushing […]
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Newly confirmed regulatory czar needs to close OIRA’s backdoor for special interests
Cass SunsteinAfter weeks of sustained attack from the right-wing on issues that are marginal to the job the President asked him to do, Cass Sunstein has emerged from the nomination process bloody but apparently unbowed (here’s yesterday’s roll call). He is now the nation’s “regulatory czar,” Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, […]
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General Electric fights for change from the inside … of a coal industry front group!
All of us who want to see the world changed for the better struggle with whether it is better to fight for that change from the inside or the outside. But you can’t fight for change from inside an organization dedicated to stopping change, like, say, the scandal-ridden front group American Coalition for Clean Coal […]
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Herbicide maker asks that lobbying be excluded from class action lawsuit
This story was written by Danielle Ivory. Lawyers representing the maker of the herbicide atrazine are asking that documents related to the company’s lobbying and trade association activities be excluded from a class action lawsuit being filed by some Illinois water utilities. As the Investigative Fund reported last week, many utilities say they cannot afford […]
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Chamber of Commerce keeps stepping on rakes
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce can’t catch a break these days. When the Waxman-Markey bill rolled out, it did what it always does: pretended to agree with the goal while recommending changes in the means so drastic that they would gut the bill. See this comical letter wherein it wants to “balance environmental objectives with […]