The United States Senate is often called “the most exclusive club in Washington,” or exalted by its members as the “world’s greatest deliberative body.” But a new appellation may be in order: the world’s best investment club. According to a study conducted by four business professors, in any given year between 1993 and 1998 roughly […]

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When we heard about a stunning report on lobbying that was discussed on National Public Radio, we presumed there wouldn’t be much coverage of it in the major media, and we were right. But the Center for Public Integrity, the non-partisan Washington research group that compiled the report made it all fairly visible. We asked Roberta […]

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On July 27, 2004, when he made one of the most memorable speeches in the history of our political parties, at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, Barack Obama began to click with American voters as they watched him on TV. In Illinois, helped by his reputation as a state senator and a African-American statesman, […]

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For several decades, Neal Peirce has been a national journalist in Washington, but with a sharp eye focused also on the state and local scenes. He is the author of the newspaper column “Citistates Reports” (formerly called the “Peirce Reports”), which concentrates on strategic issues for many regional newspapers. The country’s first national newspaper column […]

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Corruption at Public Broadcasting—The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is the administrative funnel through which congressional appropriations are doled out to PBS, the Public Broadcasting System’s television outlet, and NPR, National Public Radio. The CPB received about $378 million from Congress for the 2004 fiscal year, representing about 15 percent of public broadcasting’s revenues. Some […]

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