The Washington lobbying firm Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld registered a new client on Feb. 11, 2009 -- the Tariff Action Coalition, which consists of eight companies that collectively have sought more than $20 million in tax breaks on imports plus one lobbying firm, Samuels International Associates, which represents companies seeking $3.7 million more.
The three lobbyists going to bat for the Tariff Action Coalition all have previous experience working as aides for the Senate Finance Committee. The coalition is "seeking enactment of miscellaneous tariff bills," according to the filing.
Came across it while going through lobbying registration reports for ...
Continue readingWashington Post: Lobbyist business booming
Put another way, Main Street's gloom has been K Street's boon," write Ellen Nakashima and Brady Dennis. The first quarter ends tomorrow; lobbyists don't have to disclose how much of a boom it's been until April 20.
Continue readingAIG bundled for Dodd
Jennifer Haberkorn reports in the Washington Times:
The message in the Nov. 17, 2006, e-mail from Joseph Cassano, AIG Financial Products chief executive, was unmistakable: Mr. Dodd was "next in line" to be chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, which oversees the insurance industry, and he would "have the opportunity to set the committee's agenda on issues critical to the financial services industry."Given his seniority in the Senate, he will also play a key role in the Democratic Majority's leadership," Mr. Cassano wrote in the message, obtained by The Washington Times.
Mr. Dodd ...
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The Next Abramoff: PMA Group?
The New York Times reports:
...many on Capitol Hill, recalling the scandal that mushroomed around the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, are wondering who else will be ensnared in the investigation as prosecutors pore over the financial records and computer files of one of K Street's most influential lobbyists, known both for the billions of dollars in earmarks he obtained for his clients and for his open hand toward those he sought to influence.Former PMA staff members familiar with the inquiry say prosecutors' initial questions have focused on the possibility that Mr. Magliocchetti used straw campaign contributors " a Florida sommelier ...
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Must everything be earmarked?
Columnist George Will argues that the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 -- the bailout bill that set up TARP, is unconstitutional because it delegates legislative power to the executive branch:
Congress did not in any meaningful sense make a law. Rather, it made executive branch officials into legislators. Congress said to the executive branch, in effect: "Here is $700 billion. You say you will use some of it to buy up banks' 'troubled assets.' But if you prefer to do anything else with the money -- even, say, subsidize automobile companies -- well, whatever."FreedomWorks, a Washington-based libertarian advocacy organization, argues that ...
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Following Dirty Money
I like the concept behind what appears to be a new Washington Examiner feature called "Dirty Money" (you can see the latest installment here; I can't seem to find a page where previous installments are archived). I'm not a hundred percent certain though of their methodology of determining why certain contributions are dirty--if it's merely a company or organization that had employees or members who've committed crimes (embezzlement is one listed), that doesn't necessarily seem to taint the organization's donations. I think a little more context is needed to determine whether the employees were ...
Continue readingFeds: Freddie Mac should hide info from SEC
Yesterday, we learned from the Chicago Tribune that Freddie Mac documents are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act because they contain or might compromise commercial information--that is, the proprietary insider information of a private company. Today, in the Washington Post, we learn that that private company was pressured to withhold negative information it was obligated to disclose under SEC rules. It seems that following government policy will adversely affect its bottom line, and the firm wanted to tell its remaining shareholders that.
Federal officials who took over Freddie Mac stopped short of nationalizing the company, leaving it partly ...Continue reading
Ban on Mexican trucks leads to Mexican tariffs
When I started looking at tariffs, I assumed I would be following measures to lower tariffs. Lately, all of the news has been running in the other direction.
Looking at OpenCongress.org, I found no tariff suspension bills. H.R. 1480, sponsored by Rep. Steve Kagen, would "require that certain laminated woven bags be marked with the country of origin," while this Senate resolution would express the sense that "United States and the People's Republic of China should work together to reduce or eliminate tariff and nontariff barriers to trade in clean energy and environmental goods and services."
Still ...
Continue readingCongressional ethics committees: What’s past is prolog
Glenn Reynolds notes that the two congressional ethics committees are off to a less than rapid start and observes, "It's like it's not meant to actually do anything."
This is a longstanding tradition in American politics, going all the way back to Mark Twain's day (Twain, of course, famously observed that America has no distinctly criminal class, except Congress. He and Gilded Age co-author Charles Dudley Warner didn't think much of the ethics committee process of their day either: "Why does the Senate still stick to this pompous word, Investigation?' One does not blindfold one's ...
Continue readingFreddie Mac records exempt from FOIA
Bob Secter and Andrew Zajac of the Chicago Tribune report that, while researching what went at Freddie Mac during the period White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel served on the board of directors of Freddie Mac, they were unable to get minutes of board meetings and other information:
The Obama administration rejected a Tribune request under the Freedom of Information Act to review Freddie Mac board minutes and correspondence during Emanuel's time as a director. The documents, obtained by Falcon for his investigation, were "commercial information" exempt from disclosure, according to a lawyer for the Federal Housing Finance ...Continue reading
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