The Chris Moeller Archives

The Principal Advantage

Principal Financial Group, a Des Moines-based financial company and one of Iowa's largest employers, has applied for a $2 billion cut of the TARP federal bailout fund, but their lobbyists haven't stopped working overtime to help influence Congressional legislation. The new Treasury Secretary's vow to police the lobbying efforts of companies seeking taxpayer money might be facing its first major showdown.

According to lobbying disclosures, "the Bandits of High Street" (my phrase) spent more than $515,000 in the fourth quarter of last year peddling influence in Washington and were active in the efforts to sway 356 pieces of legislation in the Congress. Among other measures, Principal lobbied against the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow workers the freedom to choose a union without employer interference. So what we have here is a "global" financial company, while steering itself towards bankruptcy, attempting to bribe elected officials against the better interest of the working families who will wind up shouldering the burden of the bailout.

Stay tuned to the Des Moines Register for what will no doubt be extensive coverage.

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President Obama, in his State of the Union speech tonight, made the bold assertion-- and in a dramatic delivery-- that "America does not torture," yet The Guardian in the U.K. implies a reality perhaps much different this week. Medical records indicate that recently-released Guantanamo captive Binyam Mohamad, a British resident, suffered severe and sustained beatings during his more than four years at the prison camp in Cuba, the paper says, and quite possibly so right up to the day of his release on Saturday.

Human Rights activists are expressing bitter disappointment and disgust with the actions taken by the Obama presidency during these initial days. On Friday, the new Democratic Administration came out on the side of George Bush's Dept. of Justice by filing a claim that "detainees" being held on military bases in Afghanistan (where many Guantanamo inmates are now getting shipped, incidently) don't have Constitutional rights, leaving these prisoners without representation or an avenue for legal appeal.

Simultaneously, Obama has all but ruled out investigations into the allegations of torture and abuse during the Bush era (this tale of some of your government's exploits will make you sick to your stomach), his Attorney General has invoked the "state secrets" privilege in an attempt to get Mohamed's lawsuit dismissed, and the president has inexplicably decided to send 17,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan, without any effort at diplomacy besides or even waiting for the results of an ordered strategic "review" of that war.

Democrats told us last year that a vote for John McCain was a vote for a third term for George Bush, but it would seem that we're not quite done with the old New England cowboy even now.

Change? Where are you, change?

posted by CM @ 8:51 PM