Lobbying

Getting Out the Quid Pro Quo

"Washington lobbyists are being deployed in droves to tight congressional races and presidential battleground states around the country," reports The Hill. "Both parties have been recruiting," but some Republican officials have set "participation quotas, requiring [firms] to supply a certain number of volunteers." The pressure is high; "People who didn't go may be looked on negatively" after the election, said one lobbyist.

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Fast Food Companies Are Bad for Your Health Care

"California's initiative laws, initially passed to thwart corporate influence in politics, now facilitate just the opposite," writes Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser. Proposition 72, "an initiative that would require large and medium-sized business owners to give health benefits to their workers," is opposed by McDonald's, Burger King, Best Buy, Target and other fast food and big box companies.

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Cable TV's Secret Channels of Influence

If cable TV subscribers paid for just the channels they watch ("a la carte"), instead of paying a flat fee for channel packages, it would "jeopardize an economic model that has helped the industry maintain huge profits." The Center for Public Integrity reports on "a highly sophisticated lobbying campaign" by the cable industry to build anti-a la carte "astroturf." Some of the "seemingly disinterested

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Accidental Full Disclosure by the FCC

"A trade association that represents competitors of the large regional telephone companies" had their lobbying plan "published by mistake on the Federal Communications Commission's Web site." The Association for Local Telecommunication Services's (ALTS) lobbying plan "starkly criticized the policy positions of FCC members and lawmakers and described the need for the association to hire, for $120,000 a year, a 'heavyweight Republican [lobbyist] that can navigate between the FCC chairman and the White House.'" The plan also said "ALTS has 'he

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