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By Andrew Newton on 05 Jan, 2010 - 15:31 UTC

The International Monetary Fund is not known for random assaults on the financial establishment.

 

This makes the results of a new IMF study - A Fistfull of Dollars: Lobbying and the Financial Crisis -  all the more compelling. Large US banks that spend heavily on lobbying are more likely to engage in high-risk lending, and their shares perform less well. The UK's Guardian newspaper notes that finance sector lobbying outstripped all other sectors.

 

It is 8 days until the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission begin to take testimony from top bankers. Their lobbying activities should provide one of the core, and still current, seams of questioning.

This is seriously worrying. The US Supreme Court is to create an opportunity to revisit curbs on corporate spending on political advertising.

 

You might think the army of former insiders hired by the healthcare industry to lobby for private interests in healthcare reform at a cost of $1.4 million per day was already sufficiently invasive of democracy.

 

The current US Supreme Court, however, is using a narrow case arising from the previous presidential election to raise the possibility of rolling back controls on corporate financing of election advertising, essentially threatening to hand deep-pocketed corporations a blackmailing tool against any elected official who is reluctant to pursue their particular legislative agenda.

 

If these constraints are rolled back you can kiss goodbye the last vestiges of "By the people" US democracy.

The Capital Eye blog at OpenSecrets.org sets out links to information showing which sectors have paid how much money to which political campaigns.

 

The blog explains that it is difficult to fully understand this week's hearings on climate change in the US Congress without this data, including:

 

  • "Overviews of federal campaign contributions by the energy sector over time. This breaks down into contributions from electric utilities, the mining industry and oil and gas companies. Automakers and the agriculture sector, among others, will also likely want to offer input as energy-related legislation moves forward. And, of course, we can't forget the environmentalists and alternative energy producers, who now appear to have a more prominent seat at the table.
  • These industries also try to peddle influence by lobbying the federal government. Take a look at how much the energy sector, electric utilities, the mining industry and oil and gas companies spent on lobbying in 2008. For automakers, go here; for the agriculture sector, go here; and for environmental groups, go here.
  • How much have individual members of Congress received from these industries? OpenSecrets.org can show you: energy sector, electric utilities, mining industry, oil and gas companies, automakers, agriculture, environmentalists and alternative energy producers. Play around with the dropdowns and slider menu to change the timeframe or see totals to specific members of the House and Senate. 
  • Check out which industries gave the most to members of the various 110th energy-related committees (111th coming soon) by going here and selecting any of the following: House Energy and Commerce Committee; House Select Energy Independence and Global Warming Committee; House Science Committee; Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee; Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee; and Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
  • House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Subcommittee on Energy and Environment Chair Ed Markey (D-Mass.) penned the cap-and-trade global warming bill before their committee this week. Take a look at their individual profiles to see where these two are getting their money, here for Waxman and here for Markey.
  • For a look at how the various industries tried to influence energy-related legislation in the past, take a peek at Capital Eye's 2008 Power Struggle series and 2007 Power Play series."

 

 

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The Obama administration is set to regulate CO2 emissions through the Environmental Protection Agency, pressurizing Congress to agree a way forward.

 

Last year a Supreme Court judgment held that the EPA had authority to regulate CO2 under air pollution laws. The Bush administration turned down the opportunity.

 

President Obama has given the EPA the green light to regulate CO2 and an announcement is expected from the regulator as early as this week.

 

Once the EPA's regulations are published, albeit not in force, Congress won't be able simply to sit on its hands but will instead feel pressure to introduce its own legislation.

 

The administration is pushing for agreement on a cap-and-trade regime by the UN climate change talks in Copenhagen in December.

Mr Lessig goes to Washington
By Andrew Newton on 09 Feb, 2009 - 07:43 UTC
Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law Professor and Creative Commons inventor, has turned his attention to getting money out of politics.

In an interview in Mother Jones Lessig explains how the corrupting influence of money connects all the issues that concern us (a view shared by us here, at APEsphere), and how he hopes to help address that as the new director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard.

What does Lessig think someone outside Washington can do?

"The challenge is, how do you phrase issues so that people begin to recognize that the issue that they're most concerned about—whether it's global warming, or health care, or safety in the workplace, or safe foods for their kids to eat—is at base also an issue about the kind of corruption that I am focused on. We're thinking, how do you get people to have a refrain in their head: "It's the money, stupid." That's the constant single thread that links these problems that people look at, and at a certain point, get people to recognize they're just going to have to do something about this underlying problem."
"To reduce emissions "to levels guided by science to avoid dangerous global warming" and to set targets that are "certain and enforceable." Really?
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