Big Tobacco was once a much bigger player in congressional politics than it is now. As recently as 1990, the sector was handing out hefty bribes on a bipartisan basis. That year the tobacco companies gave $1,139,125 to Reoublicans and $1,012,249 to Democrats.That year the two top tobacco bribe takers were Senators Mitch McConnell ($60,650) and Jesse Helms ($57,280).
"Hell hath no fury," wrote Michael Corcoran at Truthout on Tuesday, "like a coalition of health care lobbyists scorned."The insurance industry, Big Pharma and other stakeholders in the status quo of "healthcare" spend immense amounts of money annually on lobbying and on legalistic bribes to politicians. To stop Medicare-For-All...
Ro Khanna voted NO but the bill passed Monday by voice vote (so unrecorded and unaccountable, using a fast-track procedure for "non-controversial" bills). The Senate will move as fast as they can-- even without committee hearings-- to pass it there as well. I kind of thought we just elected a Democratic House so that stuff like a ban on free electronic tax filings wouldn't be able to pass Congress. No?
Damian Paletta is the Washington Post's White House economic policy reporter and before we get into the much-discussed piece he wrote over the weekend, How regulators, Republicans and big banks fought for a big increase in lucrative but risky corporate loans, let's look at which current members of Congress have taken the most in bribes from the Finance Sector.
About a decade ago, mostly back in 2006 and 2008, we used to write a lot about a North Carolina multimillionaire congressman named Robin Hayes. The district he represented, NC-08, is now mostly NC-09, the one where a Trumpist candidate was caught rigging the ballots last year, causing the election to be voided. The district has no representative in Congress now and a new election is in the works.
Last week, we looked at a video message from Abigail Disney from the Patriotic Millionaires, talking about-- though not by name-- some extremely bad Democrats in New York: Governor Cuomo and Senate Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, of course + The Long Island 6: legislators Todd Kaminsky, Monica Martinez, Kevin Thomas, James Gaughran, John Brooks and Anna Kaplan. Like the clip above, it's part of their campaign to pass a small tax on the super rich-- just people whose annual income is over $5 million.
Eric Levitz's column in New York Magazine over the weekend, House Democratic Establishment Declares War On Democracy is exactly the kind of headline Pelosi, Hoyer and Cheri Bustos deserve.
by Thomas NeuburgerShort and dirty. Via David Dayen, writing at the American Prospect (emphasis added):
For anyone who thinks Maddow is only good for explaining complicated Putin-Gate conspiracy theories and related judicial developments, the video above is one of her best-ever segments... and unrelated to Putin-Gate. This is Maddow at her very best-- and probably started a ball rolling that put enough pressure on Trump for him to order the grounding of the Boeing 737 Max 8 jets "immediately." Key points about the two crashes of the Boeing 737 MAX 8:
