Senator Chris Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, scolded Wall Street representatives at a hearing Thursday for sending “an army of lobbyists whose only mission is to kill the common-sense financial reforms” needed by the public. “The fact is,” Dodd said, “I am frustrated, and so are the American people.” He charged that [...]

Democracy requires at least three parts: Important decisions are made in the open. The public and its representatives have an opportunity to debate and influence them. And those who make the big decisions are accountable to voters.
But these principles are in retreat. The Troubled Assets Relief Program began with a virtual blank check from Congress. [...]

When it comes to Obama transparency, Electronic Frontier Foundation privacy attorney Kurt Opsahl points out that the chief executive told the American public one thing Wednesday night and a federal appeals court another just a few weeks ago.
The issue at hand surrounds lobbying. “It’s time to require lobbyists to disclose each contact they make on [...]

Under-performing banks that are politically connected received more bailout funds, according to a study by the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.
According to the report (.pdf), banks located in districts with House members serving on financial committees had a 26 percent increase in the funding they received under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Likewise, [...]

Hundreds, if not thousands, of lobbyists are likely to be ejected from federal advisory panels as part of a little-noticed initiative by the Obama administration to curb K Street’s influence in Washington, according to White House officials and lobbying experts.
The new policy — issued with little fanfare this fall by the White House ethics counsel [...]

Still, people inside and outside the bank say they were stunned when Richard D. Parsons, Citigroup’s chairman, enlisted the services last spring of Richard F. Hohlt, a longtime Washington insider with a history of aggressive advocacy for the banking industry.
Critics say that as a top lobbyist for the savings and loan industry in the 1980s, [...]

Schmidt’s complaint stems from campaign literature in which Krikorian claimed she “has taken $30,000 in blood money from Turkish sponsored political action committees to deny the slaughter of 1.5 million Armenian men, women and children by the Ottoman Turkish government during World War I.”
via Turkey’s influence over lawmakers surfaces in Ohio hearing — Sunlight Foundation’s [...]