Educational CyberPlayGround ®

K12 Education- Learn How Lobbyists
Buy Politicians

Stephanie Herman and the Venn Diagrams of influence

Do you believe in Science?

No? To bad. Science exists wheather you believe in "it" or not.

2018 The federal government prosecutes an alleged Russian spy whose mission flourished thanks to her deep ties with the NRA, the gun group canno longer be able to so easily declare itself a patriotic defender of America. Erickson emailed a high-level Trump campaign official with the message that “Russia is quietly but actively seeking a dialogue.” He noted that the “international reach of the NRA placed me in a position a couple of years ago to slowly begin cultivating a back-channel to President Putin's Kremlin.” Three months earlier, Erickson and Butina had formed Bridges LLC; Erickson later told McClatchy that they created the South Dakota-based company for Butina.

 

Guns 2017 - Since 1998, the NRA has donated $3,555,194 to current members of Congress. Find out here who has received donations. Has your US Congress person received donations from the NRA 49 of 100 U.S. senators have accepted NRA donations. 258 of 435 U.S. House Representatives have accepted NRA donations. $3,781,803 (in 2016). Washington Post
Remember

  • "gun control doesn't work!!"
    except in Canada, Japan, England, Spain Australia, Sweden, Iceland, Italy, Israel, Denmark, Germany..
  • "Mass shootings are just the unfortunate price of protecting people's freedom to commit mass shootings" says NRA
    http://www.theonion.com/article/nra-says-mass-shootings-just-unfortunate-price-pro-57094

How Lobbyiests Buy Politicians

The first ed sec in history who's openly hostile to pubic educatioNNow we have billionaire Betsy Devos Michigan-based Republican donor and a prominent supporter of school vouchers as the Secretary of the Department of Education. She and her husband founded American Federation for Children, a political action committee that supported candidates in favor of expanding charter schools and school vouchers. The DeVos' fortune stems from the businesses of the father of Betsy's husband, Dick DeVos, according to a 2014 Mother Jones profile of the couple. Her father Edgar Prince founded the social conservative group the Family Research Council and her brother is Erik Prince, founder of the the security firm Blackwater. Betsy DeVos and her big-giving relatives: Family qualifies as GOP royalty

SCAM


HOW THE RICH VATICAN CATHOLIC CHURCH WEASELS OUT OF PAYING THEIR OWN BILLS OFF THE AMERICAN TAX PAYER.

In New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan is personally lobbying for the state to spend up to $150 million a year on private school subsidies — a policy he hopes would keep some struggling Catholic schools afloat. The initiative has already passed the state Senate and has about 100 co-sponsors in the Assembly.

BONDS & BLACKBOARDS
all that money thrown at the politicians is about to pay off

 

According to the NY Daily News, the Gates Foundation and Walton Family Foundation hosted an event focused on spurring investment in charter schools. The event, "Bonds & Blackboards: Investing in Charter Schools," was held at the Harvard Club in NYC. This event is just an example of a long term effort by hedge fund executives to close public schools and expand charter schools. As the article details, this effort is hallmarked by donations to politicians, aggressive lobbying, and seven-figure donations to pro-charter expenditure groups such as New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany.

VOUCHERS GIVE MONEY TO FRIENDS

States aren't the only source of action: Republicans in Congress are pushing for federal voucher programs, too.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) has proposed consolidating dozens of federal education programs into one $24 billion funding stream that states could use for vouchers for low-income students. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) has made several high-profile speeches to promote school choice, including vouchers. And Republicans in both houses have vowed to restore funding for a D.C. voucher program that President Barack Obama cut out of his most recent budget.

 

POLITICIANS IN K12 LOBBY POCKET

WHO OWNS K12 EDUCATION IN PA?

Among one of the lobby's biggest donors is Vahan Gureghian, the CEO of CSMI, which manages the Chester Community Charter School in Delaware County. According to Follow The Money, Gureghian pumped $336,000 into the campaign coffers of former Gov. Tom Corbett - making him his second largest individual donor over his gubernatorial career. Gureghian has also donated close to a million to other Pennsylvania politicians and PACs. Meanwhile, the American Federation for Children, a national organization that supports the growth of charter schools and "school voucher" legislation, has pumped in $3.7 million to Pennsylavania lawmakers. A trio of investors in Montgomery County - Joel Greenberg, Jeffrey Yass, and Arthur Dantchik - have donated about $4 million under a PAC dedicated to similar aims. Collectively those donations have been spread across scores of Pennsylvania politicians. Generally, that money has flowed to a greater number of Republican candidates but Democrats also have been big recipients. The biggest recipient of all, by far, is State Sen. Anthony Williams, a Philadelphia Democrat with ties to the charter-school sector. Williams has collected $6 million in donations, the bulk of which came during his 2010 bid for governor. Williams finished third in the Democratic primary, with only 18 percent of the vote, but remains a leading member on the Senate's education committee. Bills and appointments

One of the more notable examples of the lobby's potential influence, Feinberg said, occurred around 2012. The Department of Education was investigating four charter schools and 10 school districts for testing irregularities in 2009, 2010, and 2011, including Gureghian's schools in Chester County. The state found a statistically improbable number of answers had been erased and changed to correct answers. The state ultimately let Gureghian's company investigate itself in 2012 and, after its internal investigation proved inconclusive, the state dropped its own investigation. That wasn't the case for other schools." That's how powerful they are," Feinberg said. "That's an example of how powerful." A 2014 analysis by the Philadelphia Public School Notebook, a media outlet that covers education, found that Pennsylvania charter schools received $350 million for special education students but spent just $156 million to meet their needs.

The Newsroom explaining why America's Not the Greatest Country Any Longer... But It Can Be.

 

See K-12 Financial Literacy
FYI: Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell is no genius he just took a page out of Senator Aldrich's old school playbook on how to rig the rules of the game.

How Big Money Rigged the Rules in Washington

 

Michael Gross wrote "740 Park: The Story of the World's Richest Apartment Building".
Home to more billionaires than any other city in the United States. Truly the Masters of the Universe live there.
Jackie Kennedy's home built by her Grandfather James T. Lee with a consortium of people who were considered responsible for the market crash of 1929 and the depression that followed. Her maternal great-grandfather emigrated fromCork, Ireland, and later became the Superintendent of the New York City Public Schools.

Park Avenue: Money Power and the American Dream.

 

 

Jacob Hacker Professor of Political Science; Director, Institution for Social and Policy Studies
203-432-5554 jacob.hacker - yale.edu
Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Richer Richer--and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class
America's money-addicted and change-resistant political system is at the heart of the enormous and rapidly growing income inequality that they say is undermining America's economic and political stability. It is aided and abetted by politicians who favor the very rich or allow policies that once favored the rest of us to erode. Business pays K Street lobbiests to write the bill exactly according to what the business requires then pays off the congressman and senator to get the "bill" passed.

 

When did big money take control of Washington?

Ralph Nader and other Corporate Reformers in the 1970's wanted to protect the commons and our commonwealth scared Corporate America to death so they circled the wagons. They followed the perscription written by insider Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell.

The Powell Memo: A Call-to-Arms for Corporations

A confidential memo written to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by Attorney Lewis Powell, Jr. (born in Virginia in 1907). The memo described how business could defend and further capitalism against---wait for it--- socialist, communist, and fascist cultural trends. Among these cultural trends were the usual suspects, minorities and women.Nixon later nominated Powell to the Supreme Court

Based in part on his experiences as a corporate lawyer and as a representative for the tobacco industry with the Virginia legislature, he wrote the Powell Memorandum to a friend at the US Chamber of Commerce. The memo called for corporate America to become more aggressive in molding politics and law in the US and may have sparked the formation of several influential right-wing think tanks, as well as inspiring the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to become far more politically active.

In August 1971, prior to accepting President Nixon's request to become Associate Justice of Supreme Court, Lewis Powell sent the "Confidential Memorandum" with the title, "Attack on the American Free Enterprise System." Powell argued, "The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism came from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians." In the memorandum, Powell advocated "constant surveillance" of textbook and television content, as well as a purge of left-wing elements.
This memo foreshadowed a number of Powell's most notable court opinions, especially First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, which shifted the direction of First Amendment law by declaring that corporate financial influence of elections through independent expenditures should be protected with the same vigor as individual political speech. Much of the future Court opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission relied on the same arguments raised in Bellotti. Today, though, the Powell Memo is routinely invoked as the blueprint for virtually all of the conservative intellectual infrastructure built in the 1970s and 1980s -- a memo that changed the course of history, in the words of one analysis of the anti-environmental movement; and the attack memo that changed America, in another account.

Please Notice the memo is sent to Mr. Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr., Chairman, Education Committee, U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Coporate interests Do Not want a population of well-informed, well-educated citizens capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that, that doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They want disorganized, obediant workers.

Confidential Memorandum: Attack of American Free Enterprise System
DATE: August 23, 1971
TO: Mr. Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr., Chairman, Education Committee, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
FROM: Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

In 1971, Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer and member of the boards of 11 corporations, wrote a memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, Jr., the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memorandum was dated August 23, 1971, two months prior to Powell's nomination by President Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Powell Memo did not become available to the public until long after his confirmation to the Court. It was leaked to Jack Anderson, a liberal syndicated columnist, who stirred interest in the document when he cited it as reason to doubt Powell's legal objectivity. Anderson cautioned that Powell “might use his position on the Supreme Court to put his ideas into practice…in behalf of business interests.” Though Powell's memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced or inspired the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administration's “hands-off business” philosophy.

At last count, there were 245 millionaires in congress, including 66 in the Senate.

ContactingtheCongress.org
202-224-3121

 

TRUST DEFICIT

4/10/2013 The Federal Reserve got caught this time! Proves 154 people including Congress participates in Insider trading because not one of them reported this happened!!

They received the minutes shortly after 2 p.m. on Tuesday, but not one person reported the early breach to the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve discovered the mistake on its own early Wednesday and then decided to release the minutes to the broader public at 9 a.m.
The Federal Reserve usually releases minutes from its meetings at 2pm. It was forced to put them out five hours early Wednesday 10th 2013 after learning that 154 people got them a day early, and those people included employees at some of the world's largest banks.This is a key document that can move markets from time to time. Wall Street players often dig deep into the minutes for hints about when the central bank may pull back on its bond-buying policy or raise interest rates.
The 154 individuals who received the minutes on Tuesday included Congressional employees, but also employees at some of the world's largest banks, such as Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, UBS and HSBC. Most of the people at these banks appear to work in legislative affairs (a.k.a. lobbying). Employees of trade organizations like the American Bankers Association, the National Association of Realtors, and the National Credit Union Administration were also on the distribution list.
http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/10/news/economy/fed-minutes-early/

 

ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. A national consortium of state politicians and powerful corporations, ALEC presents itself as a “nonpartisan public-private partnership”. But behind that mantra lies a vast network of corporate lobbying and political action aimed to increase corporate profits at public expense without public knowledge.
http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-united-states-of-alec/ voting behind closed doors to change the law before the public knows anything about it. In state houses around the country, hundreds of pieces of boilerplate ALEC legislation are proposed or enacted that would, among other things, dilute collective bargaining rights, make it harder for some Americans to vote, and limit corporate liability for harm caused to consumers — each accomplished without the public ever knowing who's behind it.

K STREET downturn in reportable lobbying revenues was offset by regulatory work as the action moved to the agencies.
Patton Boggs maintained its position as the top-grossing lobbying firm, bringing in $48.4 million in lobbying revenue in 2011. That was up from $45.2 million in 2010. The uptick stems more from the firm's June merger with Breaux Lott Leadership Group than from overall business growth. Several lobbyists pointed to last week's massive online mobilization that tanked two fast-moving anti-online piracy bills as the perfect example of how the influence game is changing. While clients are still willing to pay for access lobbying, there is more of a focus on nonreportable strategy through social media and other grass-roots initiatives.

Reuters reports that the tech industry has outspent the entertainment industries. Silicon Valley blindsides Hollywood on piracy : The technology industry has ramped up its political activities dramatically in recent years, and in fact, has spent more than the entertainment industry -- $1.2 billion between 1998 and 2011, compared with $906.4 million spent by entertainment companies. The entertainment industries, however, seem better at knowing where to buy friends. Through the end of September, Hollywood had outspent the tech industry 2-to-1 in donations to key supporters of measures it was backing. More than $950,000 from the TV, music and movie industries has gone to original sponsors of the House and Senate bills in the 2012 election cycle, compared with about $400,000 from computer and Internet companies, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Spending money is not enough, you have to cultivate your friends. You'd think that the tech industry would understand that it's not the number of friends that counts, but the number of friends that can be counted upon. 2012

Billionaire Koch brothers takeover of America's democracy.

Koch brothers plan to spend 80 Million in 2012 election.

Koch is Lord of the Derivitives - The over-the-counter derivatives market has escaped the commission's reach since the first interest rate swap was traded in 1981. The transactions fell outside a law requiring that all futures be traded on regulated exchanges. What has not been reported is that a big part of Koch Industries' expansion over the past few decades has occurred in the dark realms of unregulated derivative trading. The Kochs weren't just playing the market for themselves, but provided financial and risk management services to other companies. Now their clients include airlines, utilities, oil companies, pension funds, hedge funds and endowments. But Koch Industries is not just a regular financial/risk management services provider. Because the company is a major producer and/or distributor of many of the commodities that it bets on, it not only has insider knowledge but physical control of market conditions. That gives it a whole lot of power to game and manipulate markets from both the speculative and physical ends—something that even the most powerful investment houses can't do on their own. Best part is: only insiders know how much or how little manipulation exists because the derivatives are exempted from regulation.

Bringing Jobs Back To America

video platform video management video solutions video player

U.S. Bridges, Roads Being Built by Chinese Firms OUTRAGEOUS!
SUBSIDIZING JOBS IN CHINA! Cities hire Chinese instead of American workers for building projects. US law can't protect a billion dollars from going to China! California Officials say they can't find American Welders States go around "Buy American" laws.

INSIDER TRADING

Congress: Trading stock on inside information? What do you mean honest graft? Congressman get a pass on insider trading? cbs There is an Indiana University Law professor who claims that (contrary to popular belief and 60 Minutes) members of Congress are not exempt from insider trading laws.

Financial Documents Suggest GOP Rep. Bachus Profited from 'Insider Trading' on TARP Bailout by Wynton Hall
U.S. Representative Spencer Bachus (R-AL) had access to highly sensitive financial information during the 2008 bailout debates that may have helped him earn tens of thousands of dollars by trading stock options, even as most Americans' portfolios took a beating.
On Sunday, Rep. Bachus's trading behavior came under fire in a 60 Minutes report based on Throw Them All Out, the book by investigative journalist and Breitbart editor that has triggered a political earthquake in Washington. Schweizer, who is also a Breitbart editor, devotes a significant portion of the book to exposing possible congressional insider trading.

Sen. Feinstein Loaded up on Biotech Stock Just Before Company Received $24 Million Gov't Grant

Capitol Cronyism: Obama-Backer Warren Buffett Helped Shape Bailout Rules, Then Made Massive Profits from Them
In the wake of the $700 billion TARP bailout, Warren Buffett apparently shaped a plan to clean up toxic assets that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner later adopted--resulting in massive profits for Buffett. That's the latest bombshell revelation from investigative journalist and Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer's sensational new...

HOW TO PROSECUTE AND CONVICT LAW BREAKERS? Whether strain reflects lack of funds for enforcement or career incentives facing prosecutors, system capacity theory suggests how increasing prosecutorial capacity and resources can increase the number of prosecutions and convictions.

DEFINITION OF"POLITICKCY"

The Blood Sucking Oligarchy who are politicians practice "POLITICKCY".

Not just Wall Street but Koch brothers continue to trade Derivatives that brought this country down.

@TWEETCONGRESS:
CLICK to Enter your zip code or a representative's name to see if your local representative is on Twitter.

Nobel Economist Joseph Stiglitz talks about growing inequality: 1% Americans take in 1/4 of the nation's income.

The Sunlight Foundation uses cutting-edge technology and ideas to make government transparent and accountable

The Day in Transparency 4/6/2011
Koch Industries, America's second-largest private corporation, spends millions on lobbying in Washington, often to advocate against government regulation. The money Koch Industries has spent on lobbying has increased from $857,000 in 2004 to $20 million in 2008. (Center for Public Integrity)

THE SECRETS OF HOW LOBBYIESTS BUY POLITICIANS.

YOU CAN LEARN THEIR TECHNIQUES


YOU CAN FIND THE MONEY
Let's play Hide and Seek

The Loophole:
Push the money through a Foundation or Trust.

See Financial Literacy

 

OperationLeakS Anonymous
http://uleak.it/ is a Url Shortening Service. By #Anonymous IP's are never recorded Leak your image and it's free to use.

Honest services fraud - Lobbying alone was a $2.6 billion industry in 2010, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. All that spending just sucks the oxygen out of the room for people trying to do true entrepreneurship.


START WITH THE K STREET INJECTION

PUT THE NEEDLE DIRECTLY INTO THE VAIN


COUNCIL ON FOUNDATION

THE ORGINAL PIPELINE TO WRITING THE LAW THE WAY YOU WANT IT

SPLIT UP INTO THE FOLLOWING DEPARTMENTS

DON'T FORGET THIS OTHER AVENUE FOR LOBBIESTS

REGIONAL ASSOCIATIONS OF GRANT MAKERS

CUSTOM DESIGNED SECRETS
GUARANTEED TO HELP PUSH YOUR THINK TANK "POLITICKCY"
BLOOD SUCKING LAWS DEFEATED OR
WRITTEN THE WAY YOU WANT THEM TO.

Hollywood Total Corrupt Chief Lobbyiest Loophole: if you merely "speak to policy," you're in good shape. Leahy also dismissed any concerns that the Senate's "revolving door" rules, which prevent recently retired senators from directly lobbying their former colleagues for two years, would hobble Dodd in his role.

Executive order applies to FCC commissioners:

Find the Money!

POLITICKCY

politics + policy =
blood sucking ticks
kOCH bROTHERS

 

 

Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 (Section 5) -
All Filers Are Required to Complete This Page

Query the Lobbying Database


Lobbying Disclosure Electronic Filing System
The Lobbying Disclosure Contributions website allows employed lobbyists, as well as registered lobbying firms, organizations, and self-employed lobbyists, to file LD-203 Contribution Reports.

Clerk of the House of Representatives lobbying

Disclosure
Legislative Resource Center
B-106 Cannon Building
Washington, DC 20515
Secretary of the Senate lobbying disclosure
Office of Public Records
232 Hart Building
Washington, DC 20510

TEA PARTY PAC MONEY
SPENT BY NAME

Tea Party Activists Press Forward Despite Meager Finances
TEA PARTY VICTORY PAC

Conservatives On Wisconsin Supreme Court Let Corporate Lobbyists Write Judicial Ethics Rules
Wisconsin elects its Supreme Court justices, but the court's four conservative justices -including Gov. Scott Walker's embattled ally Justice David Prosser — all voted to reject an ethics rule that would have prevented them from hearing cases involving their major campaign donors. Instead, the conservative justices enacted a rule written by powerful corporate lobbyists.

Using the Internet to research charities

Guidestar allows you to search for charities recognized by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.

eral Electric is its ability to lobby for, win and take advantage of tax breaks.

A review of company filings and Congressional records shows that G.E. has spent tens of millions of dollars to push for changes in tax law.

The most lucrative of these measures allows G.E. to operate a vast leasing and lending business abroad with profits that face little foreign taxes and no American taxes as long as the money remains overseas.
Martin A. Sullivan, a tax economist for the trade publication Tax Analysts, said that booking such a large percentage of its profits in low-tax countries has “allowed G.E. to bring its U.S. effective tax rate to rock-bottom levels.” “Cracking down on offshore profit-shifting by financial companies like G.E. was one of the important achievements of President Reagan's 1986 Tax Reform Act,” said Robert S. McIntyre, director of the liberal group Citizens for Tax Justice, who played a key role in those changes. “The fact that Congress was snookered into undermining that reform at the behest of companies like G.E. is an insult not just to Reagan, but to all the ordinary American taxpayers who have to foot the bill for G.E.'s rampant tax sheltering.” Transforming the most creative strategies of the tax team into law is another extensive operation. G.E. spends heavily on lobbying: more than $200 million over the last decade, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Records filed with election officials show a significant portion of that money was devoted to tax legislation. G.E. has even turned setbacks into successes with Congressional help. One provision allowed companies to defer taxes on overseas profits from leasing planes to airlines. It was so generous — and so tailored to G.E. and a handful of other companies — that staff members on the House Ways and Means Committee publicly complained that G.E. would reap “an overwhelming percentage” of the estimated $100 million in annual tax savings. According to its 2007 regulatory filing, the company saved more than $1 billion in American taxes because of that law in the three years after it was enacted. While G.E.'s declining tax rates have bolstered profits and helped the company continue paying dividends to shareholders during the economic downturn, some tax experts question what taxpayers are getting in return. Since 2002, the company has eliminated a fifth of its work force in the United States while increasing overseas employment. In that time, G.E.'s accumulated offshore profits have risen to $92 billion from $15 billion. The company spent $4.1 million on outside lobbyists last year, including four boutique firms that specialize in tax policy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/business/economy/25tax.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3&hp

Incorporate in Delaware: The filing fees are low: it costs $50 to file ($175 for bigger companies), and $250 to re-up annually. But that's only incidental. The big advantage to incorporating in Delaware is the protection. If you sue a corporation you have to do it in the state where it's incorporated, and Delaware courts have a long and consistent history of judicial rulings that protect shareholder assets from creditors.