It's not every businessman who has the vice president of China personally sign off on his latest venture, but then Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO of Dreamworks Animation and a prolific Democratic donor, isn't every businessman.
The Hollywood titan is also a prolific Democratic donor, who has introduced President Barack Obama at fundraisers in tony locations, bundled at least $500,000 for Obama's 2008 campaign and promised to bundle as much in 2012, and, after contributing $30,8000--the maximum he's allowed to give--to the Obama Victory Fund, he wrote a $2 million check to the super PAC ...
Continue readingAs Renco’s lobbying drive fades, so does congressional support in its dispute with Peru
A group of lawmakers is urging Obama administration officials to oppose a multinational U.S. company's efforts to sue Peru in a mining dispute, citing the company's environmental and health record.
The request, made in a letter last month to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, pits the lawmakers against a secretive billionaire and big U.S. political donor—and, in some cases, against themselves.
Four of the letter-signers—Reps. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., Ed Towns, D-N.Y., and Danny K. Davis, D-Ill.—have switched sides in a controversy involving Doe Run ...
Continue readingBrazil-U.S. trip part of larger PR strategy
Warming up for a summit of hemispheric leaders in Colombia later this week, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff today wraps up a brief visit to the United States, where she met President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and leaders of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Despite the high-profile dance card, Reuters quoted some Brazilian officials as complaining that their president didn't get quite the reception she and her country deserves. "There's a feeling that most people in Washington don't appreciate what's happening in Brazil," the news agency reported one official close to Rousseff as saying ...
Continue readingSuper PAC profile: State bankers target lawmakers over Dodd Frank law
A group of state-based banking associations have launched a new Super PAC--known as "Friends of Traditional Banking"--to target lawmakers who they consider hostile or friendly to their concerns: namely, the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law.
"Everyone knows that traditional banks didn't cause the economic crisis, but that didn't stop Congress from heaping massive new regulations on them and their customers," reads the group's website. "The Dodd-Frank regulatory reform act...was supposed to target Wall Street abuses. It didn't. Instead it aimed squarely at traditional banks and their customers. When it all shakes out, it will reduce ...
Continue readingNew Sony president one half of SOPA power couple
Nicole Seligman's newly official promotion to president of the Sony Corporation is the latest evidence of the powerful political connections that have been amassed by interests battling to stop online piracy, and enhances the status of what might be called SOPA's power couple.
Seligman, who as Sony's vice president and general counsel was an outspoken advocate for the entertainment giant's intellectual property rights, is the wife of Joel Klein, a former Justice Department top gun who in 2010 left his post as chancellor of New York City schools to hire on with another corporation that has ...
Continue reading10 States Copied Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” Law
Some 24 states followed Florida in putting Stand Your Ground laws on their books, at least ten of which are... View Article
Continue readingBig financial interests chip away at Dodd Frank regulations
Today the House plans to take up two industry-backed bills dealing with derivatives, the hitherto opaque financial instruments so crucial to the 2008 meltdown, under a procedure usually reserved for noncontroversial matters.
A coalition of labor and consumer groups, Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), believes the bills, which have bipartisan support, should be controversial and is urging lawmakers to oppose them. "Both proposed bills are unnecessary and potentially harmful attempts to micromanage the work of regulators in implementing the Dodd-Frank Act," the groups argued. "They amplify the views of the regulated industries which already have overwhelmingly greater resources to intervene ...
Continue readingHealth care lobbying groups head to the Supreme Court
If war is politics by other means, so is litigation. While there will be plenty of rhetoric today about President Obama's health care law on the second anniversary of its signing -- including a new op-ed by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who was for the health care reform in Massachusetts before he was against it nationally -- the big battle begins Monday, when the Supreme Court opens an unusual three days of argument over the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
In many respects, the mega-case -- a compilation of six separate cases that have been wending through ...
Continue readingBanking money fuels senators who want to slow down Volcker
The six senators who introduced legislation Thursday to slow down implementation of the "Volcker rule," designed to prohibit banks from profiting from trading on their own accounts, are the recipients of ample amounts of campaign cash from the financial industry.
Three Democrats and three Republicans are cosponsoring the effort to push back the effective date of a rule that has provoked bitter complaints from the banking industry. The Dodd-Frank law mandated that it go into effect July 21, the second anniversary of the financial regulatory overhaul. More than 17,000 comments have flooded into federal financial agencies. The proposed legislation ...
Continue readingOn IPO bill, Democratic senators nibble on the hand that feeds them
A bill backed by President Obama and largely drafted by some of his Silicon Valley donors is causing an embarrassing rift in his party's ranks and creating an awkward situation as Democratic leaders in the Senate try to make last-minute changes today before sending it to the White House.
Proponents of the bill say it will drive capital to startups by reducing the barriers to going public. Opponents say it invites potential fraud and reduces transparency for most business seeking an IPO—not just small ones.
On Wednesday, one day after the Democrats failed to pass their own version ...
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