Guest Post by Deanne Loonin (attorney and advocate for low-income student loan borrowers) Programs to help struggling student loan borrowers will only succeed if servicers effectively do their jobs and provide high quality information and assistance. Servicers are a borrower’s primary point of contact.  Ideally, they should provide borrowers with accurate and comprehensive information about
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Last night, Lee Fang joined a panel on Thom Hartmann’s television program to discuss the failure of the DISCLOSE Act, legislation designed to bring transparency to the election system. Under current law, much of the electioneering in our political system is undisclosed. The legislation, which was filibustered twice last week, would have forced secretive 501(c)
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This guest post was written by United Republic’s Jasper McChesney. He also designed the infographic below: Few would argue against spending tax-dollars wisely: eliminating ineffective and wasteful programs in favor of better ones. But when federal dollars flow to private industries with powerful lobbies, politicians can have a hard time closing the spigot. The for-profit
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The election this year is shaping up to be the biggest spending spree since the Gilded Age. In an era of Citizens United, a small number of billionaires on both the right and left are stepping up to funnel tens, potentially hundreds, of millions of dollars to elect either Mitt Romney or Barack Obama. A
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Republic Report’s Lee Fang Discusses Backdoor Bribery on MSNBC Campaign asks retiring members of Congress to share future plans United Republic’s senior investigator, Lee Fang, went on The Dylan Ratigan show to talk about the Backdoor Bribery campaign. Republic Report has sent a letter to every retiring member of Congress asking them to disclose any
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When Republic Report launched Sell Out Of The Week feature, our initial winner was President Obama, who earned the prize for embracing his super PAC, essentially endorsing unlimited corporate cash invading the democratic process, after having failed over three years in the White House to take some critical steps to clean up the system. We’ve
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Last week, the Sunlight Foundation’s reporting blog responded to a post I wrote about my experience as a lobbyist convincing members of Congress not to impose a retroactive tax on inverted companies, including my then-client, Tyco. Inverted companies are those who reincorporate overseas, primarily to avoid paying US corporate taxes. Tyco was actually purchased by
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Two weeks ago, Republic Report announced Sell Out Of The Week, a regular feature for the blog. President Obama gained the distinction for breaking his promise, and embracing unlimited corporate money for his super PAC, while refusing to take simple steps to clean up the system. Last week, we highlighted Democratic consultant Joe Trippi, who
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