Washington – The key takeaway from the super-heated battle for Georgia’s 6th Congressional district, where Republican veteran Karen Handel beat Democratic neophyte Jon Ossoff, is that partisan gerrymandering is king. It swings elections more powerfully and reliably than a flood of MegaMoney. Democrats and their supposedly “independent” Super-PACS turned this special election into the most […]
Washington – SuperPACs in 2016 were breaking records once again – close to $1.6 billion raised – but there was a new twist. Instead of putting top priority on the presidential race, SuperPACs, political parties and independent donors poured more money into the battle for control of the Senate – $616 million, plus millions more to be […]
Washington – What got lost in the mudslinging of the second presidential debate and the political uproar over Donald Trump’s bragging about predatory sexism was an important watershed in U.S. political history – the political reforms that a majority of Americans back in opinion polls gained a first tier advocate moving closer to the White […]
Washington – The untold story of Campaign 2016 is that political reform is on the move in grass roots America. Not just Bernie Sanders’s trumpet call for a political revolution, but citizen movements at the state level pressing for political reforms against Citizens United, partisan gerrymandering and dark money to make elections fairer, ease gridlock in […]
Washington – If you’re tempted to think campaign MegaMillions no longer matter because maverick Republican Donald Trump is self-financed and Bernie Sanders has funded a nationwide rebellion with two million small donors, take a look down-ballot. MegaMoney is flooding into a high stakes battle for control of Congress. SuperPAC war chests and the lava of […]
Washington – If you think our tax system is rigged in favor of U.S. multi-national corporations, Exhibit A is the laws passed by Congress that have let nearly 50 major American companies renounce their U.S. citizenship and merge with foreign companies in order to duck U.S. corporate income taxes. In the anodyne lingo of Wall […]
Washington – In its focus on presidential personality politics, the mainstream media has overlooked a stunning watershed in U.S. political history – campaign reform has jumped this year from a fringe issue, popular with grass roots reformers, to a high profile cause embraced by a major White House contender. This past week, Hillary Clinton promised […]
Washington – If you wonder what price we all pay for corporate money flooding political campaigns ($1.7 billion in 2014), see Exhibit A — the attempt by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to exploit legal loopholes and renounce its U.S. citizenship to become an Irish company and to duck U.S. corporate income taxes. Pfizer made no secret […]
Hedrick Smith, who conceived this website and is its principal writer and architect, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times reporter and Emmy award-winning documentary producer for PBS and PBS FRONTLINE. more »
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