Chefs as Lobbyists

Helena Bottemiller Evich at Food Fix:

About a decade ago, I started noticing chefs were showing up in Washington to lobby on all kinds of issues — child hunger, school nutrition, antibiotics in agriculture, fisheries management, the list goes on. A lot of these cooks-turned-lobbyists had gone through a James Beard Foundation advocacy training program called the Chef Bootcamp for Policy and Change. Katherine Miller, the force behind that program — which has now trained hundreds of chefs — recently came out with a book about this work and the impact it’s had over the years. “At the Table: The Chef’s Guide to Advocacy” is targeted primarily at chefs, but it offers insights on advocacy that are applicable far beyond the culinary world.

I recently caught up with Miller about her new book and what I find most interesting about chefs jumping into food fights.

The following conversation excerpt has been edited for length and clarity:

Helena: In the beginning of the book, you note that you were very skeptical at first that chefs should even be advocates. It reminded me of when I first wrote about this trend for Politico back in 2014 and a Republican aide gave me a great snarky quote that it’s hard to take policy advice seriously “from a group who thinks neck tattoos are a good idea.” Let’s start there. What changed your mind about the role chefs can play here?

Miller: I think it’s how some people feel about anyone with a public profile. When Bono started talking about aid to Africa, everybody was like, ‘What does he know about that subject? And why should we listen to him?’ I remember I was on the way to the first Chef Bootcamp, and I picked up a bunch of magazines, and in every single magazine I had picked that week there was Sean Brock with his tattoos. He was in Vogue. He was in TIME. He was everywhere. He was at the first bootcamp. I remember thinking ‘Oh, [chefs,] they’re everywhere!’ But in talking to the chefs, I realized the flip side of being everywhere.

There’s a restaurant on every corner of America, essentially — they are places that we trust. They buy from local farmers. They employ our kids, they employ us, they sort of serve as this living embodiment of a food system. Because chefs are so close to their community, they can have a conversation with a member of Congress who comes in, they can talk to the governor when they come in,

The Supreme Court HIstorical Society and Interest Groups

Many posts have discussed the political uses of philanthropy.

 Jo Becker and Julie Tate at NYT:

The charity, the Supreme Court Historical Society, is ostensibly independent of the judicial branch of government, but in reality the two are inextricably intertwined. The charity’s stated mission is straightforward: to preserve the court’s history and educate the public about the court’s importance in American life. But over the years the society has also become a vehicle for those seeking access to nine of the most reclusive and powerful people in the nation. The justices attend the society’s annual black-tie dinner soirees, where they mingle with donors and thank them for their generosity, and serve as M.C.s to more regular society-sponsored lectures or re-enactments of famous cases.

The society has raised more than $23 million over the last two decades. Because of its nonprofit status, it does not have to publicly disclose its donors — and declined when asked to do so. But The New York Times was able to identify the sources behind more than $10.7 million raised since 2003, the first year for which relevant records were available.

At least $6.4 million — or 60 percent — came from corporations, special interest groups, or lawyers and firms that argued cases before the court, according to an analysis of archived historical society newsletters and publicly available records that detail grants given to the society by foundations. Of that, at least $4.7 million came from individuals or entities in years when they had a pending interest in a federal court case on appeal or at the high court, records show.

The donors include corporations like Chevron, which gave while embroiled in a 2021 Supreme Court case involving efforts by cities to hold the oil company accountable for its role in global warming. Veteran Supreme Court litigators gave while representing clients before the court that included Tyson Foods and the Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China.ER

Getting GOP Support for the Marriage Bill

 At NYT, Annie Karnie explains the successful effort to swing 12 GOP senators in support for the Respect for Marriage Act:

“The inside maneuvering can only go so far without the outside mobilization,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi noted on Thursday before signing the bill, the last official act by Congress before transmitting it to the White House so it could become law.

The push was led by Ken Mehlman, President George W. Bush’s campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee who came out as gay in 2010, and Centerline Action, a centrist nonprofit funded by him and Reginald Brown, a lawyer in Mr. Bush’s White House, among others.

It involved flooding the phone lines of Republican senators with calls from constituents who favored the same-sex marriage measure, presenting them with polling that showed that voters were more likely to support a proponent of the bill than somebody who opposed it, and a public pressure campaign aimed at demonstrating widespread conservative support for the legislation.

“When this popped in the House, we immediately went into action and reached out to all of those operatives and supporters and activists who had been engaged in this issue and kind of got the gang back together,” said James Dozier, the president of Centerline’s board. A former Republican congressional aide, Mr. Dozier is married to a man and has long pressed for same-sex marriage rights.

The work got underway in July, after 47 Republicans — a surprisingly high number — joined Democrats in supporting the bill when it initially passed the House. While the G.O.P. backers amounted to less than a quarter of the party’s contingent in that chamber, the degree of bipartisanship was enough to transform the measure from a mere messaging exercise into a serious legislative effort.

Tech Beats Antitrust Push

 Emily Birnbaum at Bloomberg:

A passionate and bipartisan legislative effort to rein in the country’s largest technology companies collapsed this week, the victim of an epic lobbying campaign by Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta.

The internet titans spent hundreds of millions of dollars, sent their chief executives to Washington and deployed trade groups and sympathetic scholars to quash two antitrust bills co-sponsored by Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, and Senator Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican. The companies treated the bills like an existential threat.The years-long US legislative effort, which harnessed outrage over tech companies’ power and dominance, would have cracked down on the practices of Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Amazon.com Inc, Meta Platforms Inc. and Apple Inc. for the first time in the nearly three decades since the internet was unveiled to the public.

The closely-watched bills advanced farther than any other antitrust overhaul in decades and emerged from an 18-month House investigation led by Rhode Island Democrat David Cicilline. The American Innovation and Choice Online Act would have prevented the tech giants from using their platforms to disadvantage competitors, while the Open App Markets Act would have pared back Apple and Google’s control over app stores.Despite an aggressive eleventh-hour push, the bills were not included in the end-of-year spending package released Monday, the final shot this year. The Senate included a narrower trio of antitrust bills in the end-of-year spending package. That legislation will give more money and resources to the country’s top antitrust regulators, marking the first time Congress has voted to expand antitrust enforcement measures in decades. But those provisions will not make the sweeping changes to the law that some advocates hoped for.

Lobbying, Sports Betting, and the Vitality of Mythical Numbers

 Mythical numbers and graphics distort public policy debates.  Sometimes the distortion is deliberate.  They call it "juking the stats."

A 2018 SCOTUS decision struck down a federal law forbidding state authorization of sports betting,  Then lobbyists went to work.

Eric Lipton and Kenneth P. Vogel at NYT:

Gambling companies and their allies deployed a bare-knuckled lobbying campaign, showering state lawmakers with money, gifts and visits from sports luminaries and at times using deceptive arguments to extract generous tax breaks and other concessions, according to a New York Times investigation. It was based on thousands of pages of documents and communications obtained in part through open-records requests and interviews with dozens of industry and state officials.

Industry lobbyists, for example, dazzled lawmakers with projections about the billions of dollars that states could expect to collect in taxes from sports betting — projections that, at least so far, have often turned out to be wildly inflated, according to a Times analysis of state tax data.

The gambling industry managed to scare state lawmakers into keeping tax rates low, in part by trotting out data about a sprawling underworld of illegal gambling. The Times found that those figures, which suggested that Americans were placing as much as $400 billion of illicit bets each year, were unreliable.

...

Where did the eye-popping figure come from? The N.B.A. and the American Gaming Association identified the source as a 1999 report by the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, which Congress created to assess the harms of gambling.

“Estimates of the scope of illegal sports betting in the United States range anywhere from $80 billion to $380 billion annually,” the report said.

In a footnote, the report attributed the range not to an academic study or even an industry analysis, but to an Associated Press article from the month before the report was released. That article, in turn, reported that “commissioners were told” the estimate, though it did not indicate by whom.

A transcript from a commission hearing in 1998 points to the likely source. One of the panel’s commissioners, citing unidentified testimony and staff briefings, said that “there’s somewhere, depending on whose guesstimate you take, within $80 to $380 billion worth of illegal sports gambling.”

Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)

 Caitlin Oprysko at Politico Influence:

FARA BY THE NUMBERS: The Justice Department’s reinvigorated focus on enforcing FARA in recent years has continued paying dividends for the department, a top DOJ official said Thursday, with the FARA office recording what could be record numbers of new registrants and foreign agents in 2021.

— The department’s 543 active FARA registrants as of Thursday is the highest number since at least 2013, Jay Bratt, who leads the department’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section which oversees FARA, said in a keynote address at the American Conference Institute’s FARA forum yesterday. Bratt shied away from calling that number the largest ever at a given time because the Lobbying Disclosure Act and FARA’s LDA exemption siphoned off some registrants. “But probably post-LDA that could be the highest number that we have,” Bratt said.

— There are currently 2,772 active short-form registrants, or individual foreign agents, registered as of yesterday, which Bratt said is another high since 2013. Those agents represent 844 foreign principals. The department has recorded 121 new registrants this year, which is the second largest number, down from the peak in 2019, while the FARA unit has reviewed 5,975 documents over the last year, Bratt added. He chalked the improvement up to renewed attention on the statute since a pretty blistering 2016 inspector general report, as well as Russia’s 2016 election interference as highlighted by former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of those influence efforts.

...

— The turnaround for the unit, which by 2014 had seen active registrations drop by 60 percent from their peak in the 1980s, is enabling DOJ to focus on improving what FARA experts have repeatedly described as a severely outdated statute. “In essence … the department for the last four or five years has been focusing on enforcement,” Brandon Van Grack, the former head of the FARA unit now at Morrison & Foerster, told PI. “Now it's focusing on regulation and administration.”

Revolving Doorman

Hailey Fuchs at Politico:

[Ivan] Adler, 56, is not in fact a lobbyist. But his job shares some key similarities. He is a recruiter — one of the top in D.C. — who specializes in plucking lawmakers and staffers off the Hill or elsewhere in government and placing them into jobs on K Street, whether it be trade associations, corporations, law practices or lobbying firms.

The president of the boutique shop Ivan Adler Associates, he calls himself “The Lobbyist Hunter.” His eponymous firm specializes in matching government relations and public affairs professionals with gigs on “K Street....and beyond.” His task is to convince the idealists who descended on the nation’s capital to become public servants that the lifestyle of influence peddling is more laid back and certainly more lucrative. He maintains that “nobody has a gun to their head,” but he is, effectively, the doorman for the revolving door.

Foreign Influence in the 2020 Election

Anna Massoglia at Open Secrets:

More than $33.5 million in individual political contributions came from foreign agents and lobbyists during the 2020 election, a new OpenSecrets analysis found.

Foreign nationals are prohibited by federal law from making contributions to political groups or campaigns to influence U.S. elections. But foreign nationals can hire foreign agents or lobbyists to advocate for their interests in the U.S. and lobbyists who are U.S. citizens are able to make political contributions, even to the same lawmakers they may be lobbying on behalf of foreign clients.

Foreign agents registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act during the 2020 election cycle made at least $8.5 million in political contributions. Another $25 million in 2020 political contributions came from lobbyists representing foreign clients, including U.S. subsidiaries owned or controlled by foreign parent companies, registered under the Lobbying Disclosure Act.

That includes all of foreign agents’ 2020 individual contributions to federal-level campaigns as well as outside groups like political action committees and super PACs that are registered with the FEC. PACs affiliated with firms of registered foreign agents contributed even more.

Paycheck Protection Program Recipients

Alex Gangitano at The Hill:

Dozens of organizations that lobby the federal government received loans under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which provides funds to small businesses and nonprofits struggling due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Trump administration released data on Monday about the recipients of the small-business loans, which are forgivable if the money is used for payroll, mortgage, rent and utilities and the recipient maintains employee and compensation levels.

Trade associations, professional societies and local chambers of commerce — all of which are classified as 501(c)(6) organizations — are not eligible for the program. But many groups that conduct lobbying are classified as nonprofit 501(c)(3) organizations and were allowed to apply.

Trade groups have lobbied Congress to make changes to the program, which was part of the $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief bill Congress passed in March, so they can be included as well.

APCO WorldWide, a lobbying firm, received more than $5 million in loans. The company was hired by five clients in 2020, totaling $40,000. Clients included the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints and China Ocean Shipping Co., according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

...
Lobbying firm Waxman Consulting, where former Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) serves as chairman, received at least $350,000 in loans. The firm has made more than $182,000 so far in 2020 and has nine clients, including the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and the Good Food Institute.

...
NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation received at least $350,000 in loans. The organization has spent $10,000 on lobbying expenditures in 2020 and has three in-house lobbyists, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

The Americans for Tax Reform Foundation, the non-lobbying arm of Americans for Tax Reform, received a loan of at least $150,000.

NYT:

Here are some of the recipients of P.P.P. money that may raise eyebrows:

• Investment firms that manage billions, including Semper Capital Management, Domini Impact Investments and Brevet Holdings.
• At least 45 major law firms, including Boies Schiller Flexner, Kasowitz Benson Torres and Wiley Rein.
• Some companies connected to federal lawmakers or their families, including the Republican representatives Markwayne Mullin and Devin Nunes and the Republican senator Susan Collins (whose brothers’ business later returned its loan), as well as Ms. Collins’s Democratic challenger, Sara Gideon.
• Several start-ups that still laid off employees.
• The Ayn Rand Institute, which is dedicated to the anti-statist philosopher, and an arm of Americans for Tax Reform, the group founded by the famously anti-tax activist Grover Norquist.

ReeseDunklin and Michael Rezendes at AP:

The U.S. Roman Catholic Church used a special and unprecedented exemption from federal rules to amass at least $1.4 billion in taxpayer-backed coronavirus aid, with many millions going to dioceses that have paid huge settlements or sought bankruptcy protection because of clergy sexual abuse cover-ups.

The church’s haul may have reached -- or even exceeded -- $3.5 billion, making a global religious institution with more than a billion followers among the biggest winners in the U.S. government’s pandemic relief efforts, an Associated Press analysis of federal data released this week found.

Houses of worship and faith-based organizations that promote religious beliefs aren’t usually eligible for money from the U.S. Small Business Administration. But as the economy plummeted and jobless rates soared, Congress let faith groups and other nonprofits tap into the Paycheck Protection Program, a $659 billion fund created to keep main street open and Americans employed.

By aggressively promoting the payroll program and marshaling resources to help affiliates navigate its shifting rules, Catholic dioceses, parishes, schools and other ministries have so far received approval for at least 3,500 forgivable loans, AP found.

The Archdiocese of New York, for example, received 15 loans worth at least $28 million just for its top executive offices. Its iconic St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue was approved for at least $1 million.

More Coronavirus Lobbying

Maggie Severns and Rachel Roubein at Politico:

The nursing home industry is one of the lobbying world’s quiet powerhouses. The state actions to protect the industry came after it spent tens of millions of dollars in lobbying and other advocacy per year, according to a POLITICO review of state and federal records. At the federal level, the industry has spent more than $4 million on lobbying over the past year, employing more than a dozen full-time lobbyists and drawing on an army of contractors including Brian Ballard, former lobbyist for President Donald Trump, and ex-Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former Republican National Committee chairman.

In early April, nursing home giant Life Care Centers of America — the multi-state chain whose facility in Kirkland, Washington, was the nation’s first epicenter of coronavirus — hired a team of four former aides to ex-Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who was close with Senate leadership, to lobby on Covid-19 issues.

Industry advocates, including the American Health Care Association, which represents nursing homes, argue it would be disastrous for care facilities to be held liable for the deaths of elderly residents, who are far more vulnerable to coronavirus than the rest of the population. They also contend nursing homes have been forced to fight the virus while facing shortages of critical protective gear and testing capabilities because of flawed federal policies over which they have no control. They are also adapting to new federal regulations on the fly.

One Business is Booming: Lobbying

Fredreka Schouten at CNN:

Federal lobbying spending soared to nearly $903 million during the first three months of the year -- approaching record levels, as American businesses scrambled to shape how the Trump administration and Congress respond to the coronavirus outbreak, a preliminary tally shows.

Leading the way: The health care sector, which spent more than $160 million -- or about 18% of the total lobbying bill for all industries -- during the first quarter, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks money in politics. The finance, insurance and real-estate sector was No. 2 at $136 million, the center found.

The lobbying surge "relates to every industry and company in the country fighting for their lives and Washington turning on the spigot with almost unlimited money," said Dan Auble, a senior researcher at the center. "Everyone is getting in on this lobbying boom."

Behesting and Nonprofits

Laura Rosenhall at CalMatters:

According to a CalMatters analysis, the number of nonprofits affiliated with California legislators or caucuses grew from at least three in 2010 to at least 12 last year, with total revenue of about $2.9 million.

Much of the money has come from corporations and unions with business before the Legislature, including oil, tobacco and other lobbies whose political contributions are officially or unofficially shunned by the member’s party. The upshot, experts say, is a monetary backchannel that, while legal and even sometimes beneficial, has also become an increasingly common way for politicians to raise and spend money outside the limits even of California’s tough regulations.

“It provides another way for the lawmaker to wield influence as well as a way for those who seek to influence the legislator to curry favor,” said Rick Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine. “This gives a donor some potential extra influence that they couldn’t buy through a campaign contribution.”

...
A 2018 report by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law named presidents, governors, members of Congress and prominent mayors from both major parties who had used nonprofits to raise millions of dollars. Among them: Trump, Barack Obama, Sen. Bernie Sanders, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and, in California, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. The report found, in particular, that “spending by nonprofits that coordinate with elected officials after they take office goes almost entirely unchecked.”

....
Nonprofit entities offer politicians enormous flexibility in how much they tell the public about who’s giving them money. Federal law generally does not require that nonprofits disclose their donors to the public.

State law does require California politicians to publicly report payments of $5,000 or more made to a group at the politician’s request for a legislative, governmental or charitable purpose — a transaction called a “behested payment.” Most of the nonprofits affiliated with California lawmakers report the bulk of the donations they receive as behests to the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission. The amount of money lawmakers reported raising as “behested payments” for their nonprofits grew from $105,000 in 2011 to $2.9 million in 2019, for a total of nearly $13.3 million over the nine years.

Modernizing Congress

Recommendations of the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress:

Making Congress More Effective, Efficient and Transparent

1. Streamline the bill-writing process to save time and reduce mistakes.
2. Finalize a new system that allows the American people to easily track how amendments change legislation and the impact of proposed legislation to current law.
3. Make it easier to know who is lobbying Congress and what they’re lobbying for.
4. One-click access to a list of agencies and programs that have expired and need Congressional attention.
5. One-click access to see how Members of Congress vote in committees.

Streamline and Reorganize House Human Resources

6. Creating a one-stop shop Human Resources HUB for Member, committee, and leadership staff.
7. Making permanent the Office of Diversity and Inclusion.
8. Examining and updating the staff payroll system from monthly to semimonthly.
9. Raising the cap on the number of staff in Member offices.
10. Regularly surveying staff on improving pay and benefits.

Overhaul the Onboarding Process and Provide Continuing Education for Members

11. Allowing newly-elected Members to hire and pay one transition staff member.
12. Offering new-Member orientation in a nonpartisan way.
13. Making new-Member orientation more comprehensive.
14. Promoting civility during new-Member orientation.
15. Creating a Congressional Leadership Academy to offer training for Members.
16. Making cybersecurity training mandatory for Members.

Modernize and Revitalize House Technology

17. Reestablishing and restructuring an improved Office of Technology Assessment.
18. Improving IT services in the House by reforming House Information Resources (HIR).
19. Requiring House Information Resources (HIR) to prioritize certain technological improvements.
20. Requiring House Information Resources (HIR) to reform the approval process for outside technology vendors.
21. Requiring House Information Resources (HIR) to allow Member offices to test new technologies.
22. Creating one point of contact for technology services for each Member office.
23. Creating a customer service portal to improve technology services in the House.
24. Leveraging bulk purchasing of the House by removing technology costs out of Member offices’ budgets and moving into a centralized account.
25. Prioritizing a “rapid response” program at the Congressional Research Service for nonpartisan fact sheets on key issues.
26. Developing a constituent engagement and services best practices HUB for Members.

Make the House Accessible to all Americans

27. Improving access to congressional websites for individuals with disabilities.
28. Requiring all broadcasts of House proceedings to provide closed caption service.
29. Requiring a review of the Capitol complex to determine accessibility challenges for individuals with disabilities.

Shadow Lobbying 2018

Many posts have discussed "shadow lobbying," "unlobbying," or "non-lobbying lobbying."

Karl Evers-Hillstrom and Dan Auble at Open Secrets:

Political operatives and lobbyists continue to take spins through the revolving door between government and the private sector ... And without action from Congress to change lobbying rules, undisclosed lobbying activities are still running rampant, an OpenSecrets analysis indicates.

When an individual engages in advocacy to influence public policy but does not register as a lobbyist, it's typically referred to as "shadow lobbying."

It's common, for example, that a top government affairs employee oversees lobbying activity but never actually registers under the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) by exploiting its various loopholes.

This phenomenon extends to former members of Congress who advise lobbying firms but don't register, or heads of trade associations who run multi-million dollar lobbying operations but don't register. This can leave a portion or, in some cases, all of a lobbying operation's details hidden from the public. Also not disclosed in public lobbying filings are the millions of dollars corporations and trade associations spend on public relations and ad campaigns to influence policymakers.

In this report, OpenSecrets looks into several aspects of unreported lobbying and advocacy. Click the links below to navigate the report:

• Lobbyist Count Trends
• Moving into the Shadows
• Members of Congress go to K Street
• Trade Association Registrations
• Proposed Lobbying Reforms

Turkey Outguns the Kurds in Lobbying, Too.

 Yue Stella Yu at Open Secrets:

The Turkish government has alone spent roughly $12.3 million hiring high-profile Washington lobbying firms ... to influence the U.S. government since 2017. Turkish government-linked entities, such as Halkbank, Turkish Exporters’ Assembly and Turkey-US Business Council, combined to spend another $4.3 million in U.S. lobbying. Together, Turkish interests have doled out more than 20 times what major pro-Kurdish groups in Turkey and Syria have collectively spent during the same period.

The U.S. Mission of the Syrian Democratic Council, the political arm of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, has spent just $112,000 on lobbying since 2018. 

Saudi Influence Spending

By Anna Massoglia at Open Secrets:

Foreign influence and lobbying spending targeting the United States on behalf of Saudi Arabia’s interests has grown precipitously in the year since the death of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul.

Some firms attempted to publicly distance themselves from Saudi Arabia due to the controversy over Khashoggi and mounting allegations of human rights abuses. But other foreign agents and lobbyists capitalized on the opportunity to try to help improve the country’s reputation on the global stage.

Saudi Arabian interests reported spending just over $16 million on foreign influence operations from October 2, 2017, until October 2, 2018, according to OpenSecrets’ analysis. In the year since Khashoggi’s death, Saudi interests have poured more than $27 million into influence operations disclosed in Foreign Agent Registration Act filings in OpenSecrets’ Foreign Lobby Watch database.

The vast majority of Saudi Arabia’s influence spending targeting the U.S. in the past year went to a lobbying and communications firm called MSLGroup in a stream of payments starting days after Khashoggi’s killing. From October 2018 to January 2019, MSLGroup raked in more than $18.8 million from Saudi government — more than Saudi Arabia spent lobbying the U.S. in the entire year leading up to Khashoggi’s death.

Dark Money Doctors

Margot Sanger-Katz, Julie Creswell and Reed Abelson at NYT report on a group fighting a bill to end surprise out-of-network medical bills.

Then, in late July, a mysterious group called Doctor Patient Unity showed up. It poured vast sums of money — now more than $28 million — into ads opposing the legislation, without disclosing its staff or its funders.

...

Now, the mystery is solved. The two largest financial backers of Doctor Patient Unity are TeamHealth and Envision Healthcare, private-equity-backed companies that own physician practices and staff emergency rooms around the country, according to Greg Blair, a spokesman for the group.

...

A recent academic analysis of filings from a large commercial insurance company found that the firms, though Envision more than TeamHealth, have routinely operated outside the insurance networks of hospitals where their doctors practice. This often leads to surprise bills for patients.

...
Like all so-called dark money political action groups, Doctor Patient Unity is not legally required to reveal the names of its supporters and, in fact, appears to have worked hard to obscure its identity.

The bread crumbs were scant. Filings by the group to the Federal Communications Commission for purposes of advertising listed the name of a treasurer who works for a firm that often fills such roles for Republican political groups. The group’s corporate filing in Virginia lists an agent who is common to more than 150 other political action groups. Neither the treasurer, the named partners in her firm, the advertising firm or the lawyer associated with the corporate entity responded to calls or emails. An email to the address on the group’s bare-bones website went unanswered for weeks until the group’s statement on Friday.

Behested Payments and Elected Officials in California

CALIFORNIA SHAKEDOWN  "An Investigation Into The Questionable Ethics of Behested Payments to Elected Officials In California.

In an era of increased public awareness and scrutiny of both real and perceived political corruption and questionable ethical behavior, this report sought to investigate a very substantial issue that has succeeded in evading the public eye despite significant implications for both the public and the integrity of our system of elected democracy.

This report, titled “California Shakedown: An Investigation of Behested Payments to Elected Officials in California,” was produced by the Kersten Institute for Governance and Public Policy at the request of the Center for Ethics, Transparency and Accountability (CETA).

CETA asked the Kersten Institute to take an in-depth look at an emerging campaign finance issue whereby publicly elected officials steer contributions from individuals, corporations, unions, and other organizations to the nonprofitor charitable cause of their choice (commonly referred to as “behestedpayments”).

Moreover, these so-called “behested payments” are essentially an end-run around state and local limitations on campaign finance contributions to candidate committees directly controlled by elected officials.

Furthermore, a case study of the City of Sacramento in 2010-2013 alerted CETA, the Sacramento Bee, and good government watchdogs up and down the state regarding the perceived unethical behavior of large “charitable” contributions made by Wal-Mart and other special interests with business before the city to then Mayor Kevin Johnson and City Councilman Jay Schenirer.

This report sought to investigate this City of Sacramento case study and others like it to produce a written report on the origins of the behested payment issue in California and an analysis of potential policy solutions that have been take or could be taken to address the problem.

The following report represents the findings and conclusions reached in this investigation and ultimately provides a look at an emerging issue that raises important ethical questions about the role of behested payments in our state and local political system, as well as potential issues that may merit additional investigation and political action.

In short, this report found significant evidence regarding the highly questionable practice of California elected officials accepting large behest payment payments from special interests which then at least gave the perception of impropriety and improper influence buying by these special interests, particularly when behests appeared to directly benefit the elected official.

The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board even went so far as to refer to practice of elected officials soliciting behest contributions from special interests with business before their elected body as a “shakedown.”

The intent of this report is to provide an initial look at the issue, present relevant case studies, data and sources, and discuss potential solutions to this importantpublic policy issue. 

Gates Policy Initiative

Alex Gangitano at The Hill:

Bill and Melinda Gates have launched the Gates Policy Initiative to lobby for issues the billionaire couple has been working on through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Hill first reported.

The initiative will be focused on global health, global development, U.S. education and outcomes for black, Latino and rural students specifically, and efforts to move people from poverty to employment.

Rob Nabors, ex-White House director of legislative affairs under former President Obama, is the executive director of the 501(c)(4) initiative. He currently serves as a director at the Gates Foundation.

Model Legislation

Rob O'Dell and Nick Penzenstadler at USA TODAY:

Each year, state lawmakers across the U.S. introduce thousands of bills dreamed up and written by corporations, industry groups and think tanks.

Disguised as the work of lawmakers, these so-called “model” bills get copied in one state Capitol after another, quietly advancing the agenda of the people who write them.

A two-year investigation by USA TODAY, The Arizona Republic  and the Center for Public Integrity reveals for the first time the extent to which special interests have infiltrated state legislatures using model legislation.

USA TODAY and the Republic found at least 10,000 bills almost entirely copied from model legislation were introduced nationwide in the past eight years, and more than 2,100 of those bills were signed into law.

The investigation examined nearly 1 million bills in all 50 states and Congress using a computer algorithm developed to detect similarities in language. That search – powered by the equivalent of 150 computers that ran nonstop for months – compared known model legislation with bills introduced by lawmakers.

The phenomenon of copycat legislation is far larger. In a separate analysis, the Center for Public Integrity identified tens of thousands of bills with identical phrases, then traced the origins of that language in dozens of those bills across the country.

.