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Justice

NRA-Backed Republican Congressman Indicates Support For Ammunition Regulation, Background Checks

By Annie-Rose Strasser on Jan 11, 2013 at 3:30 pm

Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA)

GOP Congressman Phil Gingrey (R-GA) on Friday came out in favor of stronger gun laws, particularly a limit on high-capacity magazines and background check requirements.

Gingrey is backed by the National Rifle Association and received their coveted “A+” rating. Despite the fact that it might cause backlash with the financially powerful organization, Gingrey endorsed such stronger gun laws in an interview with the Marietta Daily Journal:

“There are some problems, and maybe these huge magazines even for someone who says, ‘look, I just use an AR-15 for target practice,’ but do you really need to be standing there shooting at a silhouette a shot a second or even quicker with that kind of weapon? For what purpose?” Gingrey asked. “I would be willing to listen to the possibility of the capacity of a magazine.”

Gingrey, who took the time to praise Adventure Outdoors owner Jay Wallace as the gold standard for running a responsible gun retail business, said he is also open to revisions of the so-called gun show loophole.

“What it is basically, if you go to a gun show and there’s somebody out there in the parking lot, and they’re getting out of their car, and they’ve got an A-15 on their shoulder or …. John Q. Public wants to sell a handgun or whatever, then there’s no background check,” Gingrey said. “You know, you’re buying a used weapon from somebody and then basically no background check.”

Gingrey’s position indicates that the stronger gun laws Vice President Biden might suggest on Tuesday will enjoy some level of bipartisans support. It also demonstrates that such measures are sensible, and not specifically “Democratic” proposals.

But while Gingrey might be lauded for his approach to sensible gun laws, he might be damned on other issues. In the same interview, the Congressman floated the idea that Todd “legitimate rape” Akin was “partly right” when he said that a woman cannot get pregnant from rape.

(HT: PCCC)

Security

Defense Industry Shifts Campaign Dollars To Republicans

By Eli Clifton on Apr 24, 2012 at 10:45 am

The defense industry is known as a major lobbying power in Congress but the industry’s sharp uptick in campaign contributions, the majority of which are designated to Republicans, in the 2012 political cycle indicates that defense contractors are making a strong rightward shift in their political giving.

Defense industry contributions to individual candidates and PACs reached nearly $13 million earlier this month. That number, only $11 million short of the $24 million contributed in the 2008 political cycle, suggests that the defense industry will contribute more in this political cycle than in any previous election. And the increase in funds is matched by a dramatic partisan shift in the industry’s contributions.

In 2008, 51 percent of contributions went to Democrats while 49 percent were designated for Republicans. In 2010, that trend continued with 53 percent going to Democrats and 47 percent to Republicans. But the 2012 cycle appears to mark a shift in partisan bent as a whopping 60 percent of defense industry campaign dollars went to Republican campaigns.

When contacted by Politico, General Dynamic spokesman Kendell Pease explained that the Republican majority in Congress could explain the shift in campaign dollars toward the GOP:

Those are the folks that are here. Those are the folks that are making decisions now, today, and it’s very easy to figure out where they stand on issues that we feel are most important. We continue to support those folks, both House and Senate, who support those issues that we feel are most important.

Indeed, supporting Republicans has paid off. A budget proposal put forward by Mitt Romney would add $100 billion to the Pentagon’s budget by 2016, while imposing cuts on health care for the poor and disabled and reductions in funding for food inspection, border security and education. And a House Republican budget proposal calls for $554 billion in defense spending in 2013, a $29 billion increase over the White House’s proposal.

As chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) has found himself the biggest recipient of defense industry dollars, taking in over $393,000 in the 2012 political cycle. The defense industry, apparently eager to repay McKeon for fearlessly defending the defense industry from budget cuts, has extended its largess to his wife, Patricia McKeon, who took in at least $19,200 in defense industry campaign contributions for her California State Assembly campaign (where national defense is not at issue). But McKeon denies the contributions were the result of arm twisting or repayment for his work in protecting the defense budget as budget cuts sweep across Washington. “She’s made lots of friends [in Washington],” McKeon told the Los Angeles Times. “When they found out she was running, they offered to help.”

Alyssa

Six Reasons You Should Watch HBO’s ‘Girls’ on Sunday at 10:30PM

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Apr 13, 2012 at 1:38 pm

The summer after I graduated from college, I watched all of Sex and the City as reassurance that I wouldn’t be sexmurdered, as Law & Order: Special Victims Unit seemed determined to tell me, and after 30 Rock premiered that fall, as reassurance that, short and bespectacled though I might have been and remain, there were options beyond Liz Lemonhood. I say all of this not to let you know that you will only like Girls, Lena Dunham’s brilliant new comedy for HBO about four young women fumbling through their early lives in New York if you liked Sex and the City. Quite the reverse. Those of us who love Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha will see ourselves, and be able to laugh at ourselves in Girls. But there’s an enormous amount there for those of you who didn’t. And while the show is unfortunately really, really white for a show set in New York City, on all other counts, it’s a show so good it’s almost implausible to me that it was made at all. Need specifics other than my good word, which appears at great length here in an essay for The Atlantic based on a long interview with Dunham? Here are five reasons to watch Girls after you get your dose of Game of Thrones on Sunday:

1. It’s hilarious: “The totem of chat. The lowest, that would be Facebook, followed by Gchat, then texting, then email, then phone. Face to face would be ideal, but it’s not of this time.” “I wouldn’t take shit from my parents. They’re buffoons. But my grandma gives me $800 a month…I supplement. But it gives me the freedom to not have to be anyone’s slave. You should never have to be anyone’s fucking slave. Except mine.” “I was live-in educator to these three children, and they all sang, and their father was a brilliant pacifist thinker.” These three lines from the pilot aren’t even close to the funniest things the characters say in that half-hour alone. And it gets funnier from there.

2. It’s delightfully progressive about sex and sexual health: Girls is one of the only shows on television where people talk about sexual health and reproductive rights like actual people in real life do. “What was she going to do? Have a baby and take it to her babysitting job? That’s not realistic,” Dunham’s character Hannah says when her friend Jessa (Jemima Kirke) gets pregnant and decides to have an abortion. In a delightful parody of oversoberness about reproductive choice, Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) tells Jessa, who is smoking a joint the night before her procedure, “What you’re going through is like really, really hard for any young woman, and it totally makes sense that you would want to escape through drug use. But you have to know, you’re not just my cousin. you’re my friend. And I could not be more proud of you for getting this abortion.” When Hannah heads in for an STD test and one of her friends makes fun of her obsessive fear of AIDS, Hannah grumbles “I have obsessive fear of HIV that turns into AIDS. I’m not a fool.” And Dunham told me that she worked extremely hard to make sure a subplot in which her character is diagnosed with HPV and tries to find out how she could have gotten it medically accurate. That accuracy and frankness goes hand-in-hand with well-developed plots and very funny dialogue.

3. Lena Dunham is basically the female Louis C.K.: Emily Nussbaum made the comparison explicit in her New York Magazine cover story—and reports that Dunham once dressed up as C.K. for Halloween. The comparison is apt: whether it’s Dunham’s bodily frankness, the relentless and hilarious chronicle of failure and self-criticism, or even masturbation, Lena Dunham is a younger, more hopeful version of Louis C.K.

4. It’s one of the only shows on television where the characters have realistic wardrobes and apartments: Dunham turned down the larger sets HBO offered her to make it easier for the cameras and crew to get around in favor of making sure her characters would live in reasonably-sized apartments—she told me of New Girl, “I love that show, by the way, but every week there’s a new room I didn’t know was there! It’s like that real estate dream you have in New York, where it’s like over there! Over there! Over there! It’s really wild, that New Girl apartment.” And she fit her costumes with Spanx on, but didn’t wear them she was shooting so Hannah’s clothes would look like they didn’t fit, a symptom both of her lack of money and of the way the character hasn’t quite settled into her body.

5. The friendships are wonderful: Rebecca Traister expounds on this theme at length in Salon, reveling in the way that Girls shows that friends can be your true partners. That larger point aside, it’s just fun to see the characters go through what seem like well-worn conversational paces—”Sex from behind is degrading. point blank. You deserve someone who wants to look in your beautiful face, ladies,” Shoshanna reads from an advice book, only to have Jessa snap at her “What if I want to focus on something else?”—curl up in each other’s beds, rock out to Robyn. Speaking of which…

6. The show’s sense of pop culture is spot-on: This may seem like a little thing. But Girls does a tremendous job of actually populating the show with references, conversations, and music playing in rooms that the characters would actually watch and listen to. Whether it’s Robyn, or Kelly Clarkson, or a game show hosted by Jerry Springer called Baggage, in which people reveal their worst secrets (Hannah says of hers: “My littlest baggage is probably that I am unfit for any and all paying jobs. My medium baggage is that I bought four cupcakes and ate one in your bathroom just now. And my biggest baggage would be my HPV.”) Culture is a way we communicate with each other, and find the people we like. That Girls gets this right is just another indicator of its commitment to creating scenarios that are wonderfully emotionally true.

NEWS FLASH

BP Buys Congressional Influence To Serve Its Own Interest | BP lobbied Congress on the Deepwater Horizon disaster to torpedo bills that would hurt the company’s self interest, even as it faced penalties for causing the spill itself. The Huffington Post writes the story “underscores how even the most embattled company often sees Congress as a worthy investment. BP spent $8.43 million in 2011 on efforts to influence legislation. While that total fell far short of the nearly $16 million it spent on lobbying in 2009 — much of it on working to defeat cap and trade legislation — it represented a $1 million uptick from 2010 levels. It was also about .0324 percent of the company’s $26 billion in profits from last year: a small price to pay to ensure the preferred legislative outcomes for the firestorm it ignited.” Now, the company’s lobbying appears to have paid off as BP is now one of the most active drillers in the Gulf.

Politics

Romney Is ‘Clear Favorite’ Of DC Lobbyists, Analysis Shows

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Mar 12, 2012 at 11:35 am

A Reuters analysis of public disclosure records confirms that Mitt Romney is winning the inside-the-beltway primary of Washington lobbyists. Nearly 390 registered lobbyists and lobbying political action committees (PACs) have contributed more than $1.5 million to “clear favorite” Romney’s campaign and the super PAC supporting him, “far more than what any other Republican candidate or his Super PAC has received.”

Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) have together raised a combined $94,000 from registered lobbyists, while their super PACs have not received any money from K Street.

Romney has also used lobbyists as “bundlers” to help raise contributions, 16 of whom had collected more than $2 million for Romney’s campaign through the end of 2011, according to an New York Times analysis from last month.

Romney’s lobbyists donors mainly represent the healthcare, finance, and energy sectors. And Romney’s agenda would likely benefit the bottom line of many of these corporations, as he’s called for cutting corporate taxes, eliminating important environmental and labor regulations, and repealing the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law and post-Enron Sarbanes-Oxley corporate accounting overhaul.

“The insiders approach this from a lot of different angles than a casual voter. They’ve been in town for a long time, they’ve watched this process for a long time, they can smell a winner,” said Tom Korologos of the law and lobby firm DLA Piper on Romney.

Justice

Corporate Front Group Buys Attack On Humane Society During Oscar Broadcast

By Ian Millhiser on Feb 27, 2012 at 11:30 am

During last night’s Oscar broadcast, a corporate front group ran an attack ad claiming that only a small percentage of the Humane Society of the United States’ donations fund animal shelters. Watch it:

This ad was surprising because it seemed to come out of nowhere. Who, exactly, has such a beef with the Humane Society that they would buy ad during a broadcast where a 30 second segment costs an average of $1.7 million? As it turns out, the food industry.

It is indeed true that much of the Humane Society’s money goes to programs other than animal shelters for stray cats and dogs — much of the Society’s resources go to fighting animal cruelty in the courts and in legislatures. In court, the Humane Society defends laws prohibiting horse slaughter, it fights to protect dolphins from aggressive tuna fishing techniques, and it supports regulations governing the treatment of “downed” cattle. In Congress and state legislatures, the Humane Society backs many anti-cruelty bills, including the Egg Products Inspection Act Amendments of 2012, which would prevent egg-laying hens from being packed into tiny cages that leaves them with virtually no room to move around.

Corporate PR Flack Rick Berman

The anti-Humane Society ad was paid for by the Center for Consumer Freedom, a corporate front group run by right-wing PR flack Rick Berman that is closely tied to the food industry. Berman’s Center accuses the Humane Society of engaging in “a slow but steady push to take away consumer choices by forcing meat, eggs, and dairy foods out of more Americans’ reach,” and he has a long history of similarly hyperbolic claims paid for by corporations looking to misrepresent the safety of their food products.

So the anti-Humane Society ad appears to be the latest in a long line of Berman’s attempts to pad the food industry’s bottom line at the expense of ordinary Americans’ health. Nevertheless, this particular attack is disturbing even by Berman’s standards. It’s one thing to advance arguments — even false arguments — intended to rebut the policy arguments of your opponents. It is another thing altogether, however, to attack a charity by targeting their donors. Berman’s latest effort is nothing less than an intimidation campaign designed to send a clear message to charities that if they work against a wealthy corporation’s interests, they will find themselves on the receiving end of a hit job led by deep pocketed industries capable of throwing away more than a million dollars on a single ad.

Climate Progress

UPDATE: Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels’ State-Paid Lobbyist Can’t Explain Keystone XL Pipeline Lobbying

By Josh Israel on Feb 3, 2012 at 1:30 pm

Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN)

Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN)

Last week, ThinkProgress Green reported that Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN), joined the oil industry in lobbying Congress on behalf of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, using taxpayer dollars. Although the proposed pipeline does not go through Indiana, and few, if any, Indiana workers are expected to be employed in its construction, the state’s DC representatives received $66,000 from Indiana taxpayers to lobby Congress in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Citing the ThinkProgress Green report, House Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) wrote one of those lobbyists yesterday, noting that her disclosed Keystone KL lobbying “seems unusual” as Indiana lacks any “obvious interest” in seeing the pipeline completed. In the letter, addressed to lobbyist Deborah Hohlt, Waxman “would appreciate the opportunity to learn about Indiana’s interests in the proposed Keystone XL pipeline” and requested a briefing from her.

“You’re kind of catching me off-guard,” Hohlt told Politico when asked about her tar-sands lobbying:

Hohlt had no answers when POLITICO contacted her Thursday, saying she still hadn’t seen Waxman’s letter. “You’re kind of catching me off-guard,” she said.

But Jane Jankowski, the press secretary for Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, said Hohlt simply listed in her disclosure report “any topic she’s spoken about on behalf of the state.”

“Gov. Daniels has talked about the need for the Keystone pipeline and issued a statement about it, which she passed on to our delegation, so she included it on her report,” Jankowski wrote.

Hohlt’s disclosure form lists the pipeline as one of four energy-related issues on which she lobbied both Congress and the Department of Energy.

A second lobbyist, Griffin Foster, also reported lobbying Congress and the Obama administration on the Keystone XL pipeline on Daniels’ behalf, over the same period.

Climate Progress

CHART: Big Oil Backers Of Keystone XL Pipeline Gave Big To Senate GOP Allies

By Josh Israel on Jan 31, 2012 at 9:59 am

Keystone XL Map

Proposed Keystone XL pipeline map

On Monday, 43 Senate Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) introduced legislation to circumvent the Obama administration and approve the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. A ThinkProgress Green analysis reveals at least 35 of the 44 senators backing the proposal have received special interest political action committee contributions from the biggest backers of the pipeline since the start of the 2010 cycle.

$644,400 went to 35 of those senators who have endorsed this measure. Sens. Richard Burr (R-NC) and Rob Portman (R-OH) received the most, with $43,500 each. Manchin received $2,500 and the rest went to Republicans.

The most active companies and trade associations lobbying for the pipeline over the last three months were the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, ConocoPhillips, the Business Roundtable, Shell Oil, ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association, Deere & Company, TransCanada Pipelines, and Devon Energy.

Of those, the PACs for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association, Deere & Company, and Devon Energy all made contributions to federal candidates over the past three years.

Here are their totals:
Read more

Climate Progress

Lobbying Of Keystone XL Backers Dwarfed Opponents During Debate At End Of 2011

By Josh Israel on Jan 26, 2012 at 11:00 am

Keystone XL protest in front of the White House

Keystone XL protesters (credit: Josh Lopez)

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, ExxonMobil, Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN), and other insiders made a furious lobbying push in the fourth quarter of 2011 for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, as Congress and the White House debated the dangerous project’s future. Forty-five companies and organizations reported significant lobbying between October 1 and December 31 on the Keystone XL Pipeline in general or on legislation aiming to speed up the Obama administration’s consideration of the application — with the lion’s share coming from proponents of the foreign crude project.

Last week, ThinkProgress reported that, through the third quarter of 2011, at least 31 companies or organizations reported lobbying in favor for federal approval of the application by the TransCanada Corporation to build a tar sands pipeline between Alberta, Canada, and Nederland, Texas — while seven lobbied against it. That group included a wide array of energy and construction companies, trade associations, and labor unions lobbying for and a handful of environmental groups lobbying against.

During the fourth quarter of 2011, oil money poured into Washington to push for the tar sands pipeline:

– Backers include some of the most influential players in Washington. At least 31 pipeline supporters spent over $36.7 million lobbying on this and other issues in the fourth quarter of 2011. These included huge players including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Petroleum Institute, ExxonMobil, and ConocoPhillips — each of whom spend $1 million on lobbying each quarter. New supporters included the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers ($251,383) and the office of Gov. Mitch Daniels ((R-IN) ($66,000).

– The few organizations lobbying against the pipeline were much smaller players. Seven organizations publicly opposed to the pipeline reported only about $1.1 million on all lobbying for that time. These included newcomers Environment America Inc., the National Farmers Union, and the Friends Committee on National Legislation. The Friends Committee is the advocacy arm of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and its $427,181 lobbying total made it the largest spender on the no side, for the quarter.

– Most of the lobbying groups who lobbied for the issue in previous quarters continued to do so in this period. Just a few proponents, such as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the National Taxpayers Union lobbied in previous quarters on the issue, but did not appear to in the fourth quarter. Only the Defenders of Wildlife lobbied in opposition to the bill in earlier quarters, but did not report lobbying on Keystone XL in this period.

– Self-interest continued to be a big factor. TransCanada Pipelines Inc. spent $410,000 on lobbying in quarter four of 2011.

As these groups were lobbying, the fourth quarter of 2011 saw public hearings on the bill, mass protests, industry-backed TV spots, and legislation pushed by Congressional Republicans to force an expedited permit application response by the administration.

TransCanada has vowed to reapply with a modified proposal and Republicans are threatening to hold up tax relief for working families to force federal approval. Expect 2012 to be more of the same: Washington lobbyists are gunning for Keystone XL, while the opposition is mostly grassroots and a few environmentalist organizations, largely outside of the Washington money game.

Climate Progress

Lobbying Disclosures Reveal Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels Used State Dollars To Lobby For Keystone XL Pipeline

By Josh Israel and Brad Johnson on Jan 26, 2012 at 9:30 am

Recently released lobbying disclosures show that Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN), who delivered the GOP rebuttal to the State of the Union last night, joined the oil industry in lobbying Congress on behalf of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

The pipeline does not go through Indiana, and few, if any, Indiana workers are expected to be employed in its construction. However, the Indiana Petroleum Council has been touting the project.

An analysis of fourth quarter 2011 lobbying forms by ThinkProgress Green finds:

The state of Indiana’s DC representatives received $66,000 from Indiana taxpayers to lobby Congress in the fourth quarter of 2011. Deborah Hohlt reported receiving $50,500 for lobbying on behalf of the state, including advocacy of the tar sands pipeline. Hohlt is a long-time Washington lobbyist who began her career at the Republican National Committee and George H.W. Bush administration. Griffin Foster reported receiving $15,500 for lobbying on behalf of the state of Indiana, including the Keystone pipeline. Foster is a former legislative assistant to Rep. Judy Biggert (R-IL).

During the rebuttal, Daniels attacked President Obama for “extremism” that “cancels a perfectly safe pipeline that would employ tens of thousands.” Daniels did not mention how many of those jobs seem to be going to DC lobbyists.

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