Hawaii legislators lusting for corporate lucre

Heck, the economy is making it tough for everyone. Except maybe not Hawaii's state legislators. The folks at this House Judiary Committee meeting held Feb. 12 are practically drooling into their microphones over the chance to score big corporate donations. Like it's not enough that they got a 35.7 percent pay raise effective January 1. Now they want to remove ALL limits to corporate contributions. The speaker is the chair of the Judiciary Committee.

The Federal government and 21 states ban corporate money from flowing from their treasuries into corporate political action committees. Hawaii's law has limited those contributions to $1000 in total from any corporation. Not $1000 to each PAC-- $1000 total. You can bet this burns up legislators who might want to cozy up to big rich corporations. Of course, they can't exactly say that.

Grovel, grovel grovel. The bill was changed from a $25,000 corporate limit (still $1000 private limit) now to unlimited corporate contributions. Drool, drool, drool. The bill is HB 539, if you live in Hawaii and want to stop this tsunami of corporate brib... er, contributions.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Campaign contributions
• corporate money
• lobbying
• Hawaii
• Hawaii State Legislature