Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is holding hearings on "waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars"; topics include Iraq reconstruction, Homeland Security contracting, and prescription drug pricing. Companies called to testify are "scrambling to hire lobbyists with Democratic ties," reports Bloomberg.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
The case of PR firm Fleishman-Hillard overcharging the city of Los Angeles for consulting services continues. Two former executives at the firm's Los Angeles office, Douglas Dowie and John Stodder, were sentenced to 42 months and 15 months in federal prison, respectively.
Submitted by Bob Burton on
The British government is looking to recruit a senior PR professional to help sell the controversial UK National Identity Cards Scheme. The yet-to-be appointed Director of Marketing and Communications will will help oversee the roll-out of the ID cards, which are scheduled to be introduced in 2009.
Early Wednesday evening, the House passed the College Student Relief Act of 2007, a bill which would reduce the interest rate on subsidized federal Stafford Loans from 6.8 to 3.4 percent over a five-year period.
The House passed a bill Wednesday enacting several recommendations of the 9/11 commission, accomplishing the first of several “first 100 hours” initiatives put forth by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Democratic-led 110th Congress.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"Sucking in public servants, spewing out lobbyists, K Street spins influence into cash so fast, it's tough to track who landed where," writes Elizabeth Williamson. "Now you can click and find out. Billed by its creators as 'MySpace for the K Street set,' Revolving Door is a new, searchable database on OpenSecrets.org that gives Washington watchers and the merely envious the intel they crave." The Revolving Door database tracks anyone whose résumé includes positions both as a lobbyist and with the federal government.
The long anticipated “first 100 hours” of the Democratic-led 110th Congress is now officially underway. The new House Speaker, Rep.
I spoke with author J.R. Norton in June of this year about his book, Saving General Washington: The Right Wing Assault on America's Founding Principles. The following excerpts are from an interview on "A Public Affair" on WORT (89.9 FM), community radio in Madison, WI, and from a follow up in-person interview.
JSP: Why do George Washington and the rest of the Founding Fathers need to be saved?
J.R. Norton: Well, it's a bit of metaphor. It's in part aimed at rehabilitating and reintroducing these founding figures of American history, but on a broader level, on a more important level, it's about reintroducing the values that these guys stood for. Certainly over the last five or six years, I think we've really lost sight of those virtues.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
After reviewing "two University of Chicago economists' findings about the political slant of American newspapers," reporter Chris Adams concludes that the study "has structural flaws." For instance, the study counted the Washington Post's mentions of "real estate tax" as "estate tax," a phrase identified as Democratic (as opposed to its Republican counterpart, "death tax").
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