lobbying

Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. broke their lobbying spending records last year as they fended off heightened scrutiny of their business models and power over the US economy. Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google spent slightly less than previous years, but they both still landed among the top 10 spenders in Washington. In total, the top tech companies spent nearly $70 million on lobbying in 2022, outstripping other industries including pharmaceuticals and oil and gas, according to a…

Photo: Mathieu Lewis-Rolland (Getty Images)This story was originally published by Grist. You can subscribe to its weekly newsletter here.Electric and gas utilities have used money collected from customers to lobby lawmakers, butter up regulators, and slow the shift to clean energy. Beyond being occasionally illegal, the practice has stuck consumers with higher bills and led to higher carbon dioxide emissions, industry watchdogs say.In one particularly egregious example, the FBI arrested Larry Householder, who was the…

Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation had a calamitous 2022 – managing to anger everyone from Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny to Joe Biden and Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. As calls grow for action to rein in the concert monopoly in the US and abroad, the company seems to have hit on a new strategy: spending big in Washington.Live Nation’s spending on lobbying jumped from about $250,000 in 2018 to nearly $1.3m in 2021, federal records show, and it may top that peak in 2022 and beyond. It has…

Owner of Twitter, Elon Musk says he will resign as CEO after finding a replacement! Read more tech news Good morning tech fam, here are some quick tech updates for you to catch on to! What’s New Today: Mark Zuckerberg discusses the goals of Meta in virtual reality. To create virtual reality products, Meta has been investing enormous sums of money. Fast-Track Insights: KuCoin is the focus of a DCB bank warning over unregistered service offerings. KuCoin violates the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing…

US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Republican Senator John Cornyn are lobbying hard for a ban on government business with Chinese chipmakers, Politico reported on Thursday, citing three people familiar with the matter. The senators want to get their amendment which blocks federal access to semiconductor products and services made by Chinese firms into the final version of this year's National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the report said.The measure would broaden provisions in Section 889 that already…

WASHINGTON—The cryptocurrency industry has significantly increased its political spending ahead of the midterm elections, betting that a friendlier Congress will help shield it from a regulatory crackdown.Crypto firms and their employees have poured $73 million into the 2022 elections, up from $13 million in the 2020 cycle, according to research group OpenSecrets, which tracks political donations. The industry also spent $15 million on lobbying in the first nine months of this year, more than in the previous eight years…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Major corporations' advocacy for clean energy and climate policies falls well short of the nearly unanimous support for cutting emissions and boosting renewable energy in the United States, according to a report from sustainability nonprofit Ceres. In an analysis of listed companies in the S&P 100…

The chief executive of the biotechnology industry’s top lobbying group in Washington is on leave amid dissent within the organization about its direction and concern about its results, according to people familiar with the group.“The BIO CEO is currently on leave,” a spokesman for the Biotechnology Innovation Organization said in response to inquiries from The Wall Street Journal. He declined to comment further. The CEO, Dr. Michelle McMurry-Heath, didn’t respond to requests for comment. It couldn’t be…

Photo: Chip Somodevilla (Getty Images)Washington D.C. tech industry group The App Association boldly refers to itself as, “the leading industry voice on the app economy,” and says it represents more than 5,000 app makers and connected device companies spread out around 27 countries worldwide. What The App Association’s website doesn’t say is that more than half its estimated $9 million worth of sponsorships revenues in 2020 came from one company—Apple.That’s according to a recent Bloomberg article, which cites sources…

Tesla Inc is lobbying the Ontario government as part of an effort to set up an “advanced manufacturing facility” in Canada, a filing by the electric-vehicle maker to the province’s Office of the Integrity Commissioner showed. The company’s Canadian unit is working with the government to “identify opportunities for industrial facility permitting reforms”, the amended filing from July 18 said. Tesla as well as the office of Ontario’s minister for economic development, job creation, and trade did not immediately respond to…