Tea Party Lawmakers Heart K Street

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Well, that didn’t take long.

The Washington Post‘s Dan Eggen reports that a number of Republicans, including tea party-backed senators-elect Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.), have hired former lobbyists as their chiefs of staff. Lee has hired former energy lobbyist Spencer Stokes, while Rand Paul has tapped anti-union lobbyist Douglass Stafford on board. In the House, Rep. Charlie Bass (R-N.H.) has brought on food industry lobbyist John Billings as his chief of staff.

From the Post:

Jesse Benton, Paul’s campaign manager, said that Stafford “is not a lobbyist in the sense that people think,” because he worked for a conservative advocacy group, the National Right to Work Committee. His stint included guiding the group’s campaign against “card check” legislation favored by unions, Benton said.

“Senator Paul wants principled people on his staff that actually care about the ideas that he’s going to fight for in the U.S. Senate, and that’s what Doug has done,” Benton said.

“Principled” isn’t generally the first word voters associate with K Street. And delving into “sense of the word” semantics isn’t going to fly with tea partiers who expect Paul and others swept into to power by the movement to help clean up Washington.

But this isn’t just a tea party problem. Hal “Bring Home the Bacon” Rogers (R-Ky.), the incoming chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and a notorious earmarker, is considering hiring Bill Inglee, a Lockheed Martin VP and lobbyist, as staff director for the committee. Maybe the Tea Party will give Paul and Lee a free pass this time and assume they’re just following the example set by the old dogs like Rogers.

As Eggen points out, “these cases illustrate the endurance of Washington’s traditional power structure, even in the wake of an election dominated by insurgent rhetoric.” Looks like it’s back to business as usual.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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