In mid-February, freshman Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kansas, whose top campaign donor is Koch Industries, proposed a successful amendment in an appropriations bill to defund a new public product safety database recently soft-launched by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Two years ago, when the bill was being debated, Koch lobbied on this specific issue, citing the "consumer reporting database provision" in legislation that passed that year.
In addition, the congressman's chief of staff, Mark Chenoweth, worked formerly both for Koch Industries and as chief legal counsel for Anne Northup, a Republican CPSC commissioner who has opposed the new database ...
Continue readingToy industry wants to put kibosh consumer database
The toy industry is pushing to weaken the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), in part by defunding a new database scheduled to launch next month that would allow consumers to go online and report an incident with a product they think is unsafe, reports the New York Times.
Rep. Mike Pompeo, R., Kansas, attached an amendment (H.Amdt.159) to the House appropriations bill last week that would prohibit any funds be used for the database.
“I’m an engineer. I love data. But I know what people put online...I think this is a plaintiff’s bar dream," Pompeo ...
Continue readingLibya and Algeria rocked by recent protests, have history of US lobbying
As the dissent against dictatorial rulers spreads in the Middle East, two countries – Libya and Algeria – experiencing unrest have spent millions lobbying the U.S. government in the past few years on various issues including improving trade relations with the United States and cleaning up tarnished images of their country.
The government of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who has been in control after he took over in 1969, hired DC lobby shops Blank Rome, The Livingston Group and White and Case for over $2 million to lobby on their behalf in 2008 and 2009, Foreign Agent Registrant Act (FARA) records ...
Continue readingTop financial regulators meets with industry leaders, lobbyists
Elizabeth Warren, who has been charged with setting up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, reported more meetings with individuals outside the government in December than any other Treasury official working on implementation of the Dodd-Frank financial law.
Warren, who also played an advisory role to the bank bailout oversight committee, reported 15 such meetings with a total of 204 different individuals representing a wide range of interests, from Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America, to representatives of financial trade associations, to those from a long list of consumer groups, such as Consumer Federation of America and the Center ...
Continue readingFinancial Crisis report highlights transparency needs
The U.S. financial collapse in 2008 was avoidable and predictable, according to a report by a commission created to investigate the crisis. The report, generated by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, is the subject of a House Financial Services hearing on Wednesday. That hearing will be live streamed on Sunlight Live, our award-winning multimedia platform combining data, live blogging, social networking and video streaming.
- government regulation and supervision,
- corporate governance
- government preparation to deal with such a crisis
- excess risk by banking institutions
- loss of ...
Overlooked part of Dodd-Frank law could keep information from the public
Buried in the massive Dodd-Frank financial law is a section that could prevent the public from obtaining records the government collects as part of its new oversight of hedge funds and other private funds managed by investment advisers.
Section 404 remained unchanged when Congress last fall repealed another part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act--section 929I--that had provided a massive exemption from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Congress approved that repeal under tremendous pressure after Fox Business News reported that the SEC had cited the new ...
Continue readingBig lobbyists battle for big and small clients over Dodd Frank fee cap
As the House Committee on Financial Services readies for next week's hearings to discuss new regulations for the banking industry, lobbyists lined up to battle over the changes, extending a battle between small banks, big banks and big retailers.
In a letter submitted to Congress on Tuesday, Feb. 8, the American Bankers Association said the potential changes, "will cause severe harm to the entire banking industry and, in particular, to community-based banks and the communities they serve."
The ABA's dire warning is a response to proposed regulations by the Federal Reserve on debit card and credit card fees ...
Continue readingBusiness community has its guns aimed at the environment, financial reforms
In a bid to roll back laws and regulations, some passed and some proposed, in the last two years, business conglomerates have targeted a handful of federal agencies -- with the Environmental Protection Agency receiving the bulk of the attention -- in reply to a request by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., calling for industry feedback on which rules the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee should investigate.
Issa, the Chairman of the House Government Oversight Committee released close to 2000 pages of letters, research studies, expert testimonials and comments addressed to the executive bodies in charge of the rule making. The documents ...
OCE report on financial reform shows nexus between fundraising and legislating
On Nov. 24, 2009, Sara Conrad, the fundraising consultant for Rep. Joseph Crowley, D-N.Y., sent an email to Michael Stein, head of government relations for financial services giant Morgan Stanley, inviting him to attend a Dec. 10 fundraising reception for Crowley’s campaign. The email was a follow-up to a prior conversation he had with Crowley’s chief of staff, Kate Winkler, about the Ways and Means Committee member's upcoming campaign events.
Around the same time, Conrad, who worked for Crowley's campaign and not his congressional office, sent several other emails, including similar notes to lobbyists for ...
Continue readingConflict minerals comment period delayed under corporate and congressional pressure
After a powerful committee chairman and several corporate interests wrote to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requesting an extension of the comment period for the agency’s proposed regulations requiring that companies disclose when they use “conflict minerals,” the agency granted the request.
The new regulations are mandated under a little-noticed provision in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act calling for companies using conflict minerals to disclose whether they were mined by rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) or neighboring countries, where metals such as gold are mined under inhumane conditions and fund war ...
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