Next Step in Investigation of Coast Guard Offshore Wind Energy Study

2016-11-28

C&BP Requests Records of Coast Guard’s George Detweiler As our probe into the Coast Guard’s offshore wind study continues, a central player has emerged: George Detweiler. As readers will remember, we’ve been investigating the shipping lobby’s influence over an important, five-year study about balancing the development of a fledgling offshore wind energy industry in the… Read more »

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Will Dean Crouter Enforce Penn State’s Ethical Standards?

2016-11-22

C&BP Writes to Dean Crouter for Help to Get Prof. O’Neill to Follow Established Policy  In October, we posed a series of questions to Penn State Provost Nicholas Jones about the School of Hospitality Management’s (SHM) and Professor John W. O’Neill’s relationship with the hotel industry lobby. On November 9th, the University finally responded in… Read more »

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Hotel Lobby President Katherine Lugar Refuses to Discuss Model Legislation to Tax Home Sharers

2016-11-21

C&BP Executive Director’s Questions Rebuffed at AH&LA Board Meeting. We traveled to New York City last week to pose some important questions directly to Katherine Lugar, the leader of the hotel lobby, about efforts to penalize the sustainable, home sharing economy. During a break at the American Hotel & Lodging Association’s (AH&LA) board meeting at… Read more »

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Hotel Lobby Proposes $1.25 Billion Tax on Home Sharers

2016-11-9

Model Legislation by Hotel Lobby Also Proposes New Regulatory Scheme While Hotels Receive Billions in Corporate Welfare. As readers know by now, we’ve begun looking into the hotel industry’s efforts to slow the growth of the home sharing industry, a more sustainable form of travel. Only hours after we published a new report on how major… Read more »

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Update: Federal Agency to Mediate Coast Guard’s Public Records Evasion

2016-11-3

  The federal government’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) ombudsman, the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS), has agreed to mediate Checks and Balances Project’s complaint that the U.S. Coast Guard has refused to provide lawful, taxpayer-funded public records. Since February, we have been asking the Coast Guard to answer basic questions about its offshore… Read more »

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Welfare Checks to Hotel Lobby Totaled $3.6 Billion Since 2008

2016-11-2

Luxury Hotels Got Especially Large Amounts  When industries mature, they use expanding profits to grow their lobbying influence and obtain not just favorable policies, but government largess in a variety of forms. In our newly launched look into the hotel industry’s influence peddling, we’re quickly finding this industry is following the path worn by the… Read more »

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