Capitol Confidential - Page 11

With corruption and abuse running rampant in Washington, D.C. coupled with a historic debt and massive deficit that some believe has the United States following in the footsteps of Greece, one would think the appropriators in Congress would concerns themselves

Sen. Bob Bennett suffered a stunning defeat in his quest for re-election Saturday. And as the Senate considers the Obama/Dodd financial ‘reform’ bill, other Senators should be asking themselves if they want to be next. Bennett, representing the most conservative

On Tuesday, May 4, 2010, the Director of the U.S. Census Bureau sent a welcome memo addressed to the part-time workers his agency had allegedly hired to complete the 2010 Census. He referred the memo to his “600,000 new colleagues,”

News reports last week suggested that 130 companies that cater to main street concerns — like Harley Davidson — had hired lobbyists because of the impact the financial reform legislation will have on their business. The regulatory boondoggle will affect

Despite the populist rhetoric and anti-bank bank posture, a look behind the curtain of the Wall Street Reform bill reveals nothing more than self-interest, business as usual and more power and influence to Wall Street instead of the free market.

Last week, three major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and five industry trade associations sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski urging him to ditch what has come to be known in some tech policy circles as

Wall street wants it, unions want it, Obama wants it and now you can add at least one Communist filmmaker to the list of supporters of CFPA. As thousands of union members converged on Wall Street last week, they were

If America would like to see the millions of people who lost their jobs over the past year finally get off the unemployment line, you would hardly know it by the actions of our labor organizations. The AFL-CIO is currently

It’s amazing to watch the civil libertarians hide when Democrats propose the most sweeping intrusions of privacy in generations. In addition to the litany of bad policies contained in the Dodd Financial Reform bill is this nugget on pages 1039-1040.

As self-righteous Senators grill Goldman Sachs about their role in the housing bubble, it would not be far fetched to request that the Senators switch seats with the Goldman executives. After all, it wasn’t Goldman that passed the Community Reinvestment

The more details that emerge about the Obama-Dodd financial “reform” bill, the worse it smells. The bill is most certainly an attempt to give the government vastly more power and control over the economy. And despite the vocal, condescending, even

As we reported a few weeks ago, White House Deputy CTO Andrew McLaughlin became ensnared in the Google Buzz privacy controversy when his Gmail contacts were made publicly available through his Buzz profile, which included 28 senior Google lobbyists and

Yesterday, Republicans held firm against bailouts to big banks and Wall Street. They held firm against creation of a super regulatory bureaucracy. They held firm against a massive government intervention in our economy. All in all it was a good

Sen. Chris Dodd’s financial regulatory reform bill, on which the Senate is slated to take a cloture vote this afternoon, has been the subject of much criticism of late, primarily for what opponents say amounts to a de facto institutionalization

As Democrats continue to up the volume on their deceptive campaign to pass a new government takeover and bailout bill for bit Wall Street Banks, apparently there is some nervousness about the pressure Democrats are directing at the two Republican

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is facing renewed criticism this week with scientists charging that the government arm inaccurately labeled ethanol a “renewable fuel” last February. According to reports, at the same time that it revised its renewable fuel standards,

Conservative talk radio in Memphis is calling for the firing of the staff member of Sen. Bob Corker who demeaned and belittled Tea Party activists in the Volunteer State calling them “sad” and “creepy” when they visited the office protesting

The “Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010”, authored by Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), will be considered by the Senate in the very near future and it will make federal bailouts of private enterprise permanent. The House has already passed

It’s not often the two Republican Senators from Maine safeguard the country from excessive government with more vigilance than a Republican Senator from Tennessee. But on the issue of Financial Reform, Sen. Collins and Snowe have become champions for the

We have learned of an apparent conflict of interest for a senior Obama administration official already in hot water over questions about his communications with his former employer. Andrew Mclaughlin is the Deputy Chief Technology Officer for the Office of

Conservative luminaries led by anti-abortion rights activist Phyllis Schlafly and anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist last Thursday penned a decidedly anti-Net Neutrality open letter to Members of Congress, in which they warned that the new regulations proposed by the Federal Communications

The number of jobs in the U.S. is currently 129.7 million. So to justify the Administration’s current claim of 2.8 million jobs “created or saved” by stimulus, they need to also claim that without that stimulus there would be only

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) understands that the Dodd Financial Reform bill they are trying to ram through the Senate is a bailout. She has publically opposed the legislation. But that hasn’t stopped the Administration from pressuring her to change her

The Obama Administration is concerned their takeover of the financial industry is at risk and are offering Republicans a fig leaf to buckle. First they deny there was a bailout in the legislation. Now they are proposing the removal of

Democrats’ collective fixation on Frank Luntz’s memo on Financial Reform misses the point entirely but it is very telling. The now famous Luntz memo makes strategic recommendations based on an aggregation of voters’ responses to being informed about various portions

Despite efforts by some weak sisters like Sen. “Bailout” Bob Corker (R-TN) to cut a deal with “Countrywide” Chris Dodd (D-CT) on legislation to create a Blank Check Bailout Bill and lots of loud speculation from Senate Democrats about peeling

A study released Monday by economists from George Mason University, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Virginia said that the Federal Communications Commission’s proposed telecommunications regulation known as net neutrality would limit further broadband investments and innovation and substantively

The public relations campaign to expand the presence of the nation’s largest discount department store into two of Chicago’s most depressed neighborhoods took a decidedly nasty turn Saturday, when a prominent Democratic operative compared employment at Wal-Mart to slavery in

In the wake of the Court of Appeals judgment last week that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lacks sufficient authority to regulate broadband services, senior congressional Democrats are reaffirming their support for alternative methods of executing what some critics charge

Last month, Capitol Confidential reported that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could be set to give the already well-subsidized ethanol industry a big boost by approving an increase in the amount of ethanol blended into gasoline from 10 percent to

In a blow to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and its Chairman, Julius Genachowski, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today ruled against the agency in a case brought by Comcast. At issue in the

Sean Mahoney, a New Hampshire businessman who until today served as the Republican National Committeeman for the Granite State, announced today he is resigning from the RNC. Mahoney, who has served on the RNC’s Conservative Steering Committee and co-sponsored an

Last week, we reported that Obama administration Deputy CTO Andrew McLaughlin -who headed up Google’s lobbying shop before joining the administration – had been ensnared in the Google Buzz privacy imbroglio when his Gmail contacts were made publicly available through

It’s been several weeks now since the disastrous rollout of Google Buzz’s initial social networking platform. It was on February 9ththat Google Buzz unleashed its newest foray into social media to compete with the likes of Facebook and Twitter. According

Making the rounds of Democrat Offices on Capitol Hill is a ‘messaging’ memo designed to help Democrat members navigate a politically dangerous environment where the public is united in opposition to their government take-over of health care. Key message: “do

Yesterday, I decided to call Rep. John Garamendi’s (CA-10) office in Washington, D.C. He’s my representative and I wanted to voice my opposition to the Senate Health Care Bill. I spoke with a female staffer and politely told her that,