US businesses buy favour from lawmakers
Saturday, 7 August 2010
From Fazle Rashid
NEW YORK, July 06: A dozen of former and current lawmakers including Edward Kennedy were handsomely paid from endowment "financed in part by corporations with businsses before the Congress".
The lawmakers often pushed legislation or special appropiations sought by the corporations. One Senator from Hawaii was paid $100,000 by a shipping company for allowing it to expand its American ports of call. A House of Representatives member from South Carolina backed a legislation to promote new nuclear power plants. He received donations from a nuclear energy company which want o build plants. A Senator from Kentucky received hundreds of thousands of from a military contractor that later got a $12 million contract.
Companies and lawmakers defended the donations as simply contributions to a good cause but critics charge that they are a way for businesses to influence lawmakers in addition to campaign contributions without the limits or required disclosures, the New York Times in a front page story reported today.
It is another way to curry favour and a less visible one. Many donors have specific purpose for which they are seeking lawmakers help. A chemical company has made three cotributions to an endowment to a law school in Minnesota. The company is demanding changes in federal highway legislation that would result in widespread use of is products.
NEW YORK, July 06: A dozen of former and current lawmakers including Edward Kennedy were handsomely paid from endowment "financed in part by corporations with businsses before the Congress".
The lawmakers often pushed legislation or special appropiations sought by the corporations. One Senator from Hawaii was paid $100,000 by a shipping company for allowing it to expand its American ports of call. A House of Representatives member from South Carolina backed a legislation to promote new nuclear power plants. He received donations from a nuclear energy company which want o build plants. A Senator from Kentucky received hundreds of thousands of from a military contractor that later got a $12 million contract.
Companies and lawmakers defended the donations as simply contributions to a good cause but critics charge that they are a way for businesses to influence lawmakers in addition to campaign contributions without the limits or required disclosures, the New York Times in a front page story reported today.
It is another way to curry favour and a less visible one. Many donors have specific purpose for which they are seeking lawmakers help. A chemical company has made three cotributions to an endowment to a law school in Minnesota. The company is demanding changes in federal highway legislation that would result in widespread use of is products.