July/August 2009 Issue

Bailout & Switch

Which Hill insiders now lobby for big finance?

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Reporters in our Washington bureau have been tracking the former congressional staffers (and members) now on the payroll for companies getting taxpayer bailouts. The full list is here. A sample of the lobbying firepower and Big Finance‘s return on investment:

AIG

ASSETS: Moses Mercado, Obama campaign adviser, former deputy chief of staff, Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.)
Ronald Christie, former special assistant, President George W. Bush
Hazen Marshall, former staff director, Senate budget committee
Gregory Nickerson, former staff director, House Ways and Means subcommittee
Robert Leonard, former chief counsel and staff director, House Ways and Means committee
LOBBYING EXPENDITURES (2008): $9.7 million
BAILOUT: $180 billion
ROI: 1.85 million percent

DOES IT FEEL LIKE POLITICS IS AT A BREAKING POINT?

Headshot of Editor in Chief of Mother Jones, Clara Jeffery

It sure feels that way to me, and here at Mother Jones, we’ve been thinking a lot about what journalism needs to do differently, and how we can have the biggest impact.

We kept coming back to one word: corruption. Democracy and the rule of law being undermined by those with wealth and power for their own gain. So we're launching an ambitious Mother Jones Corruption Project to do deep, time-intensive reporting on systemic corruption, and asking the MoJo community to help crowdfund it.

We aim to hire, build a team, and give them the time and space needed to understand how we got here and how we might get out. We want to dig into the forces and decisions that have allowed massive conflicts of interest, influence peddling, and win-at-all-costs politics to flourish.

It's unlike anything we've done, and we have seed funding to get started, but we're looking to raise $500,000 from readers by July when we'll be making key budgeting decisions—and the more resources we have by then, the deeper we can dig. If our plan sounds good to you, please help kickstart it with a tax-deductible donation today.

Thanks for reading—whether or not you can pitch in today, or ever, I'm glad you're with us.

Signed by Clara Jeffery

Clara Jeffery, Editor-in-Chief

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