The U.S. mining conglomerate Renco Group spent over $80,000 in the first quarter and retained five lobbying firms in a push to convince Washington to help its embattled smelting company in Peru, according to lobbying filings. This comes after the company spent $245,000 on fees to outside lobbyists to work on the issue of Doe Run Peru in the final two months of last year.
Meanwhile, this month Renco initiated arbitration against Peru, and in its notice to commence proceedings in December, it asked for no less than $800 million in damages for what it alleges are ...
Continue readingUnofficial Libyan ambassador registers with FARA
In a sign of the ambiguity of international policy toward Libya, Ali Suleiman Aujali, the diplomat who made headlines when he defected from the Gadafi Government in February, has registered as a foreign agent with the U.S. Justice Department to represent the Transitional National Council of Libya, the umbrella group representing the forces opposed to the rule of Muammar Gaddafi.
The State Department has not officially recognized the opposition rebels as the legitimate government of Libya. If it had, as the Foreign Agent Registration Unit notes on its website, no filing would be necessary. "Diplomats and officials of foreign ...
Continue reading2012 Presidential winner…
...in the category of "Most incomprehensible FEC filing, exploratory committee division"
First glimpse at medical error rates separates the good, the bad and the ugly
Between Oct. 1, 2008 and June 30, 2010, Medicare patients at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Yonkers, N.Y., suffered thirteen instances of severe bed sores during their stay requiring additional treatment, a rate of nearly 2.9 per 1,000 treated. At St. John’s Riverside Hospital, three miles down Broadway from St. Joseph’s, the rate was 20 times lower: only one severe bed sore was reported, even though St. John's discharged far more Medicare patients during that period -- 8,270 to St. Joseph's 4,541.
Over the protests of groups like the American Hospital ...
Continue readingWhat we don’t know about doctors
As political debate rages in Washington about how to reform the nation’s $509 billion Medicare system, a hearing is taking place in a Florida courtroom today about making data available to the public on how much individual physicians are paid under the program.
Though the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) estimates that some $48 billion in improper payments were billed last year to the massive federal program--much of which is driven by health care providers including physicians--the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) maintains that a 1979 court order bars publication of government records ...
Continue readingWal-Mart, international taxes feature in latest lobbying registrations
Wal-Mart, the nation's largest private employer, has hired Capitol Counsel, a firm that includes former Ways and Means chairman Jim McCrery, to monitor corporate tax issues. McCrery was also among the lobbyists hired by Renco Group, which hired a slew of lobbyists in its battle with the government of Peru. We reported on Renco here.
Deloitte Tax LLP, part of the audit, financial advisory, tax, consulting and lobbying firm Deloitte, has signed up a pair of international clients, the Investment Funds Institute of Canada and the Life Insurance Association of Japan, opposed to provisions in the Foreign Account Tax ...
Continue readingWall Street revolver takes regulatory insight to Bank of America
One Wall Street revolver will continue a very successful post-regulatory agency career with a newly created position at Bank of America, the nation's largest bank.
Gary Lynch, who was the head of enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission in the 1980’s, most recently left Morgan Stanley where he was the financial giant’s vice chairman and before that an executive vice president and chief legal officer for the firm. Prior to his time at Morgan Stanley he was the chief legal counsel for Credit Suisse – an international financial services company.
Lynch will now be the global chief ...
Continue readingSunlight Live covers deficit reduction
This morning the Sunlight Foundation will use its award-winning live platform, Sunlight Live (sunlightlive.com) to cover the Senate Finance Committee's hearing on deficit reduction. We'll follow that hearing with live coverage of President Obama's speech on that same topic.
This morning's hearing features three witnesses:
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Dr. J.D. Foster, Norman B. Ture Senior Fellow, Economics of Fiscal Policy, The Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC
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The Honorable David Walker, Former U.S. Comptroller General, Founder & CEO, Comeback America Initiative, Bridgeport, CT
- Dr. Alan S. Blinder, Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Co-Director; and ...
Consumer database survives budget deal
The controversial online consumer complaint database launched by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in March escaped the budget axe for now, according to House legislative language released today.
The database had been targeted by freshman Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kansas, who in February attached a successful amendment (H.Amdt.159) to the appropriations bill to defund the database. Pompeo's top campaign contributor is Kansas-based Koch Industries, which had lobbied on the database when the legislation to create it was debated, as we reported last month. His chief of staff, Mark Chenoweth, formerly worked for Koch Industries and was chief ...
Continue readingPoised to make decision on regulating foreign swaps, Geithner meets with banks wanting exemption
In February, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner met with the CEO and two top-level executives from the London-based bank HSBC to discuss the issue of foreign exchange swaps.
The bank, which has a thriving foreign exchange business, wants Geithner to exempt such swaps from new rules designed to bring transparency to the derivatives market. Under the Dodd-Frank financial law, Geithner was given authority to make this decision, which he is expected to announce any day.
Amounting in the trillions of dollars per day, foreign exchange swaps are used in business to hedge bets on transactions involving different currencies. Typically, two parties ...
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