Category: Money in politics
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Tommy Norment’s Turn in the Yearbook Whipsaw
Da Bomb. The Virginia Pilot is reporting that Tommy Norment, R-Williamsburg, Republican majority leader of Virginia’s State Senate, was an editor for a VMI yearbook called The Bomb that printed “racist photos and slurs, including blackface”. The yearbook in question was published in 1968. African Americans were allowed to enroll at VMI in the Fall of…
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I’m Shocked, Shocked To See Corporate Checks In Here! (Your Donations, Sir.)
Interesting to see Governor Ralph Northam channeling Claude Rains Monday, choosing the first day of the annual two-day General Assembly campaign finance feeding frenzy to highlight his support for a series of campaign finance proposals. Campaign fundraising by state legislators and their pooled caucus accounts goes dark with the opening of the regular session today. …
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Following the Dark Money: Bloomberg to NYU to Virginia’s OAG?
Here is a counter-factual mental exercise for you. Imagine that former Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a conservative skeptic of climate change, had applied for a grant from the conservative-libertarian Koch Foundation to cover the cost of hiring an AG staff member dedicated to litigating environmental groups. Then imagine that Cuccinelli’s office had to compete nationally…
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Altria rumored to be in talks to buy Canadian cannabis company Cronos Group
High in Henrico. Henrico County based Altria, makers of Marlboro cigarettes among other products, is rumored to be interested in buying Canadian cannabis company Cronos Group. Altria is refusing comment while Cronos said it “confirmed that it is engaged in discussions concerning a potential investment by Altria Group … in Cronos Group.” Cronos went on…
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Va 2019 General Assembly session – prefiled House of Delegates bills
Much ado about nothing. As of this morning there were 83 prefiled bills for the House of Delegates and 225 prefiled bills for the State Senate. With a few exceptions the House prefiles are pretty “ho hum”. I will examine the Senate prefiles in a subsequent column. One from column A and two from column…
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Five Virginia Corporations Among Most Transparent
Five Virginia companies — including the frequently criticized Dominion Energy and Altria Group — are included among the 57 transparency “trendsetters” in the 2018 CPA-Zicklin Index. The others include Northrop Grumman Corp., Capital One Financial, and Norfolk Southern Corp. The Index benchmarks political spending disclosure practices and political spending policies of S&P 500 corporations. The ideal…
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Transparency? No, Alignment Drives PAC Decisions
Abigail Spanberger won’t take money from corporate political action committees but will from ideological political action committees because the issue PACs have their position statements on their web pages. Spanberger said that Friday to a business organization that donates no political money, Virginia FREE, but there were plenty of big donors or their representatives in…
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CrowdLobby: A Cool Idea Still Needs Work
Samantha Biggio and Heidi Drauschak, both recent University of Richmond law school grads, had an idea for a new business, and they raised $35,000 through the crowd-funding Kickstarter website to fund it. Their business idea? To launch a website, Crowdlobby… where people can raise money through crowd funding to launch lobbying initiatives. The idea has…
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Will Virginia Legalize Recreational Marijuana Use?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68cbjlLFl4U&w=500&h=288] High times today. The marijuana legalization wave is beginning to wash over North America. Nine states (WA, OR, CA, NV, CO, MA, VT, ME and AK) along with the District of Columbia have legalized the recreational use of marijuana. Well over 20% of Americans now live in states which have legalized recreational marijuana…
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Higher Ed’s Hidden Influence: Alumni Legislators
Fund-raising tip for public colleges and universities: Get more of your alumni elected to the General Assembly. Across the country, a higher number of graduates of public colleges and universities is associated with higher funding for a state’s public higher-ed system, finds a new study, “School Spirit: Legislator School Ties and State Funding for Higher…
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Who Are These Guys, and Where Do They Get All Their Money?
The report issued by the Northam administration investigating charges of abuse at the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center has come under withering criticism by nonprofit groups that filed a lawsuit last year bringing attention to the treatment of unaccompanied immigrant children held there. The Virginia Mercury has the story here. While I used the Department of…
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Transparency for Thee But Not for Me
In response to attacks from left-wing critics, the Charles Koch Foundation said last week that it will post all future multiyear agreements with universities online. The Foundation is one of the nation’s most generous contributors to higher education in the United States, ladling out $90 million in gifts in 2017. Among the biggest beneficiaries has…
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Irony: Clean Money Group Donates More than Power Company
The Virginia Public Access Project has updated its list of largest campaign donors in Virginia, and the results making good reading. My money is cleaner than yours. Perhaps the most fascinating tidbit is that Charlottesville-based Michael Bills, founder of Clean Virginia and scourge of Dominion Energy Virginia’s influence on state politics, has injected more money…
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Updates: Money, Power and Politics (Oh, My)
The following are updates on earlier Bacon’s Rebellion stories of mine. Clean Virginia Files First Report Clean Virginia Fund, the political action committee that is trying to buy legislators’ loyalty away from regulated utilities, has filed its first report with the State Board of Elections. Charlottesville financier and hedge fund magnate Michael D. Bills is…
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AP’s Latest Hit Piece: Journalism or Polemic?
Here we go again. The Associated Press’ Alan Suderman has popped out another context-free article making an issue of Dominion Energy’s tenfold increase in lobbying expenses over the past year to more than $1 million. That spending, writes Suderman, “came during a period when the company successfully pushed through legislation that could lead to substantial increases…