Anti-regulation U.S. Chamber of Commerce pouring record sums into lobbying

The Obama years have so far been a predictable boom-time for the army of anti-regulation lobbyists paid by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Center for Responsive Politics reports that the Chamber spent $276 million over the past two years lobbying against, among other things, health care reform, environmental protections and Wall Street regulations. The Chamber is the number-one spender on lobbying this year as in years past, but it is outdoing itself, setting records in its own outrageous largess. In just the last three months of 2010, the Chamber spent $50.9 million on lobbying at the federal, state and grassroots levels. That’s a step down from last year, when in the last financial quarter as health and financial industry reform were being discussed in DC, the Chamber spent $79 million from October through December to defeat or water-down Democratic legislation.

With Congress gridlocked on climate legislation, environmental groups forge ahead

Despite the Gulf oil spill, a massive pipeline break in Michigan and broad concerns about global warming, ambitious climate-change and energy legislation is likely dead for the year. That poses a conundrum, going forward, for environmentalists: How to convince lawmakers of the need for legislation to sever the country’s decades-long ties to oil and to reform energy policy more generally?

Wash Post paints with numbers the oil industry lawmaker-lobbyist circuit in DC

The Washington Post does the math on the “revolving door” turning always between the federal government and the oil industry, underscoring the significant influence the industry has over Congress and the administration.

Key numbers:

BP and other companies involved

…

An army of former government employees lobbying on finance regulations

Today, the Center for Responsive Politics and Public Citizen jointly released a mammoth report on the “small army” of former federal employees lobbying on financial regulatory reform. “Banking on Reform” finds that a whopping 1,447 former Hill or administration…

Financial reform activists lobby the lobbyists

WASHINGTON– On Monday, with Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) promising a final vote on financial regulatory reform in the next few days, rather than weeks, thousands descended on K Street in Washington, D.C., to lobby the lobbyists.

News media skim past key sections of Norton resume

Reporters have to make choices in writing their stories because they can’t include everything. Stories about Colorado U.S. Senate candidate Jane Norton, however, might be expected to include the jobs that occupied the longest period of her work life– the…

Major political players train sights on Curry rafting-rights bill

Former Democratic state Sen. Michael Feeley, a lawyer-lobbyist who spent seven years as Minority Leader, is behind an advertising campaign aimed at torpedoing a rafting rights bill floated in the House by Rep. Kathleen Curry.

Friends of Colorado’s Rivers…

Plan for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency falters in Senate

WASHINGTON– The White House wants it. Senate leaders support it. The House has already passed it. And, in the wake of the worst financial upheaval since the Great Depression, many consumer groups and state regulators say it’s vital if the country is to avoid another economic collapse. Yet the proposal to create a new consumer financial protection agency is, for all practical purposes, dead on arrival in the Senate. Just call it the public option of the finance reform debate.

Your bailout money paid for lobbying campaigns designed to screw you

The top eight spenders in the financial industry spent nearly $30 million to lobby Capitol Hill last year, according to Nathaniel Popper of the Los Angeles Times — a 13 percent increase from 2008. That uptick was fueled…

Payday lenders flout new laws across the country

WASHINGTON– As states from New Mexico to Illinois passed payday loan reform laws over the past few years, the movement to curb customer-gouging short-term high-interest loans seemed to be gaining steam and growing teeth. Ohio and Arizona voters even took to the polls to approve rate caps on payday lenders, regardless of threats that the industry would fold if it had to reduce rates from as high as 400 percent to 36 percent or less.