Lobbying

In Hong Kong, ex-legislator Gary Cheng Kai-nam has been convicted of corruption after he was caught double-dipping. While acting as a government official, Cheng set up his own PR firm and worked as a paid lobbyist. "It was bad enough that Cheng should have found it proper to set up a public affairs consultancy after becoming a legislator," observes the South China Morning Post.

How will the President of the United States make millions, if not billions, from the war on terrorism? He'll probably inherit it, according to this collection of reports on the Carlyle Group, a secretive $12 billion private equity firm based in Washington that has parlayed a roster of former top-level government officials, largely from the Bush and Reagan administrations, into a moneymaking machine. Its members include prominent world leaders such as George Bush, Sr.

The U.S. Congress has passed a Republican-drafted stimulus bill, ostensibly designed to speed the recovery from the damage done to an already wobbly economy by the terrorist attacks and the more recent anthrax scare. However, the bill consists mostly of a $70 billion tax cut to corporations, while offering only token support for the unemployed. At latest count, 7 million Americans are without work, the highest number in 4 1/2 years.

Big tobacco continues to pour money into lobbying Congress according to a story published in the Winston-Salem Journal. "Each day that Congress meets, the nation's four largest cigarette manufacturers spend more than $100,000 pushing their agenda on Capitol Hill." Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. and Lorillard Tobacco Co. spent $44.2 million lobbying Congress in two and a half years ending June 30, according to reports filed by corporations and lobbying firms with the U.S. House and Senate.