PM Dismisses Lobbying Probe Demands

Gordon Brown today dismissed opposition calls for a Government investigation into claims that policy decisions were swayed by lobbying from former Cabinet ministers.

The Prime Minister accepted assurances from the permanent secretaries of three Whitehall departments that there had been "no improper influence" on ministerial decisions.

But Conservatives denounced the decision as "outrageous", and Tory chairman Eric Pickles said there increasingly appeared to be "a cover-up at the heart of Government".

Channel 4's Dispatches was this evening broadcasting footage of a "sting" operation in which a number of MPs, including former ministers Stephen Byers, Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon, were secretly filmed in discussion with an undercover reporter posing as the representative of a fictitious US lobbying firm.

Mr Byers, describing himself as a "cab for hire", apparently requested £5,000 a day and boasted he had previously secured secret deals with ministers over a rail franchise contract and food labelling on behalf of private companies.'

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Mainstream Media Refuses to Disclose that "Independent" Pundits Are Actually Lobbyists

As reporter Sebastian Jones points out (see this and this), former Congressman Richard Gephardt runs a lobbying firm representing giant insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

Retired General Barry McCaffrey sits on the board of a giant defense contractor, DynCorp, and lobbies for war.

And many other "pundits" interviewed by the mainstream news are really high-level lobbyists for giant companies, pushing their agendas.

And yet they are treated as "independent experts" by the media.'

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Look Who's Really Writing the Healthcare Bill -- It's Big Pharma & The Insurance Lobby

Federal Reserve to Hire Ex-Enron Lobbyist in PR Move to Counter Doubts about Fed's Growing Power Over U.S. Financial System

The Federal Reserve intends to hire a veteran lobbyist as it seeks to counter skepticism in Congress about the central bank’s growing power over the U.S. financial system, people familiar with the matter said.

Linda Robertson ... headed the Washington lobbying office of Enron Corp... Robertson [also] served under Treasury Secretaries Lawrence Summers, Robert Rubin and Lloyd Bentsen...

“People have been asking whether the Fed is capable of getting its job done right,” said Lynn Turner, a former chief accountant at the Securities and Exchange Commission. “Hiring a former lobbyist from Enron will surely make one wonder.”

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America: 'Sold Out' for $5.2 Billion!

Harvey Rosenfield, President of the Consumer Education Foundation, contends that "Over the last decade, Wall Street (i.e. the entire financial sector consisting of commercial banks, accounting firms, insurance companies, securities firms including hedge funds and private equity firms) showered Washington with over $1.738 billion in supposed 'campaign contributions' and another $3.441 billion on 2,996 officially registered lobbyists (more than five for each Member of Congress) whose job it was to press for deregulation.

In return for the investment of this $5.179 billion, the Money Industry was able to get rid of many of the reforms enacted after the Great Depression and to operate, for most of the last ten years, without any effective rules or restraints whatsoever."

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