{"id":9636,"date":"2015-07-02T06:45:34","date_gmt":"2015-07-02T11:45:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9636"},"modified":"2015-07-02T06:45:34","modified_gmt":"2015-07-02T11:45:34","slug":"groups-encourage-transparency-ask-obama-for-honesty-about-corporate-spending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9636","title":{"rendered":"Groups Encourage Transparency, Ask Obama For Honesty About Corporate Spending"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Groups Encourage Transparency, Ask Obama For Honesty About Corporate Spending<\/a><\/h3>\n

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The Sierra Club\u00a0sent a letter to President Obama<\/a>\u00a0this week, urging the President to make good on his promise of increasing transparency in Washington. Specifically, the environmental group wants the administration to be forthright about the political spending of mega-polluters and their government\u00a0contracts.<\/p>\n

Courtney Hight, director of the Sierra Club’s Democracy Program, issued the following statement after the letter was sent: \u201cCorporations and big polluters already have too much power and influence on our government and our elections. The President has an opportunity to bring more transparency to the billions poured into our system from corporations by issuing this executive order. This action alone won’t bring all corporate election spending into the light of day, but it will begin to lift the curtain and let some light\u00a0in.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to the Sierra Club, other signatories include the\u00a0NRDC<\/span>, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the League of Conservation Voters, and several other prominent environmental\u00a0groups.<\/p>\n

The groups are hoping that President Obama will issue an executive order forcing any company seeking or receiving a government contract to publicly disclose their lobbying and campaign spending. While this information is mostly available, the process of connecting the dots between spending and contracts is a bureaucratic nightmare.<\/p>\n

An executive order from the president would take the guesswork out of the equation and create a system of transparency that is severely lacking in the current\u00a0system.<\/p>\n

The Sierra Club has good reason to be concerned.\u00a0The available data<\/a>\u00a0shows that some of the country\u2019s biggest polluters are also the recipients of some of the largest federal\u00a0contracts.<\/p>\n

In 2012, for example,\u00a017 of the top 100 recipients of government contracts<\/a>\u00a0were listed as some of the worst polluters in America. These companies included General Electric (2nd<\/sup>\u00a0in the\u00a0U.S.<\/span>\u00a0at the time for air pollution), Shell, Exxon, Halliburton, and\u00a0BP<\/span>.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Groups Encourage Transparency, Ask Obama For Honesty About Corporate Spending The Sierra Club\u00a0sent a letter to President Obama\u00a0this week, urging the President to make good on his promise of increasing transparency in Washington. Specifically, the environmental group wants the administration to be forthright about the political spending of mega-polluters and their government\u00a0contracts. Courtney Hight, director […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[6915,171,204,5317,584,3917,4114,865],"class_list":["post-9636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-liberty","tag-corporate-spending","tag-corporations","tag-democracy","tag-desmog-blog","tag-obama","tag-sierra-club","tag-transparency","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9636"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9637,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9636\/revisions\/9637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}