lobbying

Outrage Du Jour - Sallie Mae Lobbies Against Student Loan Reform

The Outrage Du Jour is Sallie Mae spent $4 million dollars, U.S. taxpayer dollars to lobby against student loan reform.

This call out is coming from the White House and what a right on target to choose.

Sallie Mae had launched an intense lobbying effort to push the Senate's hand, including "sit-downs with lawmakers, town-hall-style meetings and petition drives to plead their case and stay in business." Over the past year, the company spent more than $4 million lobbying Congress, a review of campaign finance records showed. That was the equivalent of $25,000 for every day Congress was in session.

U.S. Education Secretary Duncan:

He calls it Politics, I call it the Financial Oligarchy

Tyler Cowen writes an general op-ed on how Poliics now runs the financial sector in Where Politics Don’t Belong:

President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the birth of a military-industrial complex. Today we have a financial-regulatory complex, and it has meant a consolidation of power and privilege. We’ve created a class of politically protected “too big to fail” institutions, and the current proposals for regulatory reform further cement this notion. Even more worrying, with so many explicit and implicit financial guarantees, we are courting a bigger financial crisis the next time something major goes wrong.

I call this the financial oligarchy or multinational corporations took over Washington D.C.

Cowen also notes the lastest deals with big business have turned off many who are in favor of health care reform.