As the year-long fight over health care reform draws to a close, corporations are once again pouring big money into influencing the debate. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has already spent $11 million just this month to try and get 27 Democrats who supported the health care bill last year to oppose it. Pharmaceutical companies have bought $12 million worth of advertising to try and defeat the measure. The total amount of money being aimed at swing Democrats during this round of lobbying could total $30 million before week's end. The corporate front group Americans for Prosperity, financed by the billionaire conservative oil man David Koch, has also jumped into the fray, funding an anti-reform ad campaign that cost nearly $1 million. As several on-the-fence Democrats try to sort out their constituents' feelings towards the bill, the lobbying is becoming deafening.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is growing its bank account and jumping into grassroots lobbying game now since the Supreme Court opened the floodgates for corporations to spend unlimited money on elections. The Chamber spent more than $144 million on lobbying and grassroots organizing in 2009, far beyond the spending of individual labor unions or the Democratic or Republican national committees. The Chamber is expected to exceed that spending level in 2010. One of the factors causing the rapid increase in money pouring into the Chamber is the Supreme Court's ruling in the Citizens United case which handed corporations the free-speech right to spend as much as they want to elect or defeat candidates. The Court's ruling struck down a century of established case law upholding limits on corporate political spending. It also made business executives more comfortable using corporate funds for political purposes. Passing funds through trade groups instead of spending directly on elections has another benefit for corporations: Trade groups can legally avoid disclosing their donors' identities. The Chamber has developed a system where corporations give them money, and they in turn produces issue ads targeting individual candidates without revealing the names of the businesses who are funding the ads. This means that for all the increased influence corporations now have on elections, there is no equivalent transparency. The Chamber's system keeps secret which businesses are influencing a given election, and to what extent.

As President Obama moves ahead with health care reform, interest groups on both sides of the issue are again ramping up their lobbying efforts. Robert Zirkelbach of America's Health Insurance Plans, the insurance industry's top lobbying group, said his industry is making "a big effort" to counteract attacks from Obama and other Democrats, who have pointed to hefty premium increases to show why health care reform is needed. "We're working really hard to set the record straight on what's driving health care prices in this country, which is underlying medical costs and not health plans," he said, repeating a statement that contradicts a recent study by Health Care for America Now that found insurers are actually raising premiums twice as fast as their underlying medical costs are rising. Organizing for America, the Democratic National Committee's grassroots arm, launched a campaign encouraging Obama supporters to call in their support for reform to talk-radio stations around the country. Other groups ramping up include the 60 Plus Association, which bought $500,000 worth of television ads targeting 18 centrist House Democrats who voted in favor of reform, the corporate-funded Americans for Prosperity, which purchased $250,000 worth of ads last week, the National Right to Life Committee, MoveOn.org and the pharmaceutical lobby. The only group not joining the lobbying frenzy is AARP, whose chief executive, A. Barry Rand, has promised will "make no new statements, send no new letters, run no new ads about health reform." He asked other groups to do the same. "Let's turn down the volume on the outside noise to that our leaders might actually listen," he said.

Cable news networks like MSNBC, CNN, CNBC and Fox News routinely use commentators who have financial conflicts of interest that are undisclosed to viewers. Former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, for example, appeared on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, to discuss the economic crisis. There he said the real answer would be for the president to "take his green agenda and blow it out of a box," and that the U.S. needed to "create nuclear power plants." Ridge seemed like an objective commentator, but what viewers weren't told was that he had pocketed $530,659 for serving on the board of Exelon, the country's largest nuclear power company. He also held an estimated $248,299 in Exelon stock. Another frequent commentator, "NBC Military Analyst" Barry McCaffrey, told viewers that the war in Afghanistan would require a "three to ten year effort" and "a lot of money." The network failed to reveal that the military contractor DynCorp had paid McCaffrey $182,309 that year alone, and that DynCorp had just won a $5.9 billion contract to aid American forces in Afghanistan. Dick Gephardt, who viewers were only told was a congressman during the Clinton-era health care reform effort in 1993, appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Meeting" to discuss health care reform, where he labeled the public option "not essential." Unmentioned was his work advising pharmaceutical interests through his lobbying firm, Gephardt Government Affairs. These types of blatant, undisclosed conflicts are rife on cable news and information shows. Lobbyists, PR flacks and corporate officials regularly appear promoting their clients' interests, introduced only with titles like "Former governor," "Republican strategist" and "Retired U.S. Military," without disclosing their true lobbying connections.

California officials who oversee the spending of billions of dollars in California's Medicaid prescription drug program failed to disclose free flights, hotel rooms and meals funded by pharmaceutical companies. One of the officials, the chief of the pharmacy division at California's Department of Health Care Services, helps decide which drugs will be among the $8.5 billion worth of medication that California will dispense to low income people. Pharmaceutical companies funneled money for the officials' trips through several non-profit business groups that exist solely for the purpose of funding meetings and conferences. The groups raise money by charging drug company executives who do business with Medicaid programs up to $2,000 in registration fees. The groups have raised about $1.8 million from corporate executives since 2005, and spent the money on travel, lodging and entertainment for California's Medicaid pharmacy directors. Under Medi-Cal policy, state officials are prohibited from accepting gifts worth over $320 from any firm, subsidiary or person that "has financial dealings with the department," and are supposed to report the trips as gifts. After the investigative journism group California Watch revealed the gifts, a Medi-Cal spokesman confirmed that pharmacy officials had taken about a dozen trips since 2006, acknowledged that they should have been reported as gifts and said the omissions would be corrected.

Citizens in the Ukraine are starting to see American-style campaign sloganeering and other tactics in the race between their Prime Minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, and her main rival, Viktor Yanukovich, for the office of President. Tymoshenko's banners, billboards and posters bear slogans like "They talk, she works," "They promise, she works," and "They betray, she works." The ad campaign is significant because it is the product of the American political consulting firm AKP&D Message & Media, the company founded by President Obama's chief advisor, David Axelrod. Axelrod's son, Michael, still works for the firm. Mr. Yanukovich is being advised by Paul Manafort, a Republican strategist from the firm Davis, Manafort & Freedman, Inc., which has advised several U.S. presidents. Ukraine's outgoing president, Victor Yushenko, received American-style help and campaign advice from Hillary Clinton's campaign strategist, Mark Penn, who was president of the big American PR firm, Burson-Marsteller. The Ukraine is a gold mine for big American political firms, since it is one of the largest countries in Europe, has obscure and weakly-enforced campaign laws, and the major Ukrainian political parties are backed by big businesses, with money to finance professional campaigns.

Last September, when President Barack Obama gave a major speech on Wall Street urging bankers to support financial reform, the CEOs of the nation's megabanks didn't bother to show up -- a move widely interpreted as a sign of disrespect. But those same CEOs found time to get to Capitol Hill to attend a two-day "Financial Services University" for the 20-something congressional aides who will be helping write the rules designed to rein in and reform Wall Street. The instructional seminar was organized by the Financial Services Roundtable, a powerful lobbying group for the finance industry. Many of the staffers in attendance were barely out of college, but they will soon be a position to help draft new rules that will govern how the megabanks can make their money. Richard Davis, CEO of U.S. Bancorp attended, as did Robert Kelly, CEO of the Bank of New York, who told the staffers that bankers support reducing the number of regulators watching the industry. (Kelly told the group the U.S. has "zillions.") The CEOs did not mention the factors that led to the liquidity crunch, like the sky-high leveraged bets made possible by the lack of regulation, or how their actions blew up the economy and nearly destroyed the financial system. Instead, they talked about how the recently-passed credit card reform measures will hurt their companies. Nor did Kelly or Davis mention that the $800 million in revenue they'll miss after the rules go into effect is money they were taking from average Americans through unfair overdraft charges and predatory fees.

Republicans are on the defensive. As we enter the 2010 election cycle, Republicans are a bit worried that Americans might remember how their maniacal push to deregulate Wall Street resulted in the collapse of the global economy on their watch. They need a new message to appeal to hard-hit voters. To the rescue comes renowned Republican strategist and spinmeister Frank Luntz. Luntz, who has been reprimanded by American Association for Public Opinion Research for his misleading polling work, advises Republicans to keep it simple: 1) Never minimize the pain of those suffering from the crisis; 2) Acknowledge the need for reform that ensures it never happens again; 3) Then lie, lie, lie. The killer lie? Characterize any meaningful Wall Street reform legislation as “the big bank bailout bill.” In reality, the financial reform package passed by the Democratic House of Representatives would create a mechanism for the resolution of failing financial institutions that would shift responsibility for any future bailout from the taxpayers to the largest financial institutions themselves. These institutions would prepay into a crisis fund, much like the FDIC’s long-standing fund for failing banks. Various Republican proposals to unwind these institutions are far more likely to leave taxpayers holding the bag. Think Progress points out that Luntz’ client list includes a group of financial institutions desperate to prevent the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency that would crack down on their deceptive practices. Among his clients are Ameriquest, the subprime mortgage dealer, American Express, the credit card giant and Merrill Lynch, Bear Sterns. The Luntz memo is a warning to Democrats. If they don’t pass tough strong structural reforms that truly prevent the next crisis and communicate that message clearly to the voters, they will be defeated by the big lie. To read the memo which was leaked to the Huffington Post, click here.

A Republican campaign attorney who agrees with the CU decision says he believes it threatens the political parties with extinction.The Supreme Court 's recent decision in the Citizens United (CU) case -- which allows corporations to spend freely to influence elections -- is already having an effect. Donations are surging into the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as corporations start outspending political parties on lobbying and advertising. In 2009, the Chamber raked in $144.5 million, compared to the RNC's $71.6 million and the DNC's $97.9 million, and for the first time, the lobbying and grassroots advertising budgets of the Chamber have exceeded those of the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). In 2009, the Chamber financed a number of ad campaigns that largely worked. It scared the Senate away from considering cap-and-trade legislation and, with financial help from insurance companies, ran cutting ads opposing health care reform that arguably helped undermine support for that bill. Now it is spending in key states and districts to defeat financial reform legislation. The Chamber, a powerful advocate for big business, is organized as a 501-c-6, and does not have to disclose its donors. Benjamin Ginsburg, a Republican campaign finance lawyer and partner in the Patton Boggs law firm who supports the CU decision, went so far as to say that he believes the political parties are "threatened by extinction."