special interest group

PBS Anchor and tonight’s VP debate moderator Gwen Ifill was quoted today as saying that she has never been so happy.

Over at the City Paper the professional association for developers is not a special interest group or a lobby guild, but "Nashville's development community." There's something benign, serene, almost sedative about that label.

Though Barack Obama trails John McCain by 15 points in Tennessee, he's doing well with one special-interest group in the state - but will we ever see

Democrats have some interesting plans to speak directly to the American people using Barack Obama’s email list:

“I’ve never done any favors for anybody — lobbyist or special interest group…”
– John McCain
Same old DC corruption. McCain is in bed with war profiteers, telecoms, energy companies, etc… same old, Republican culture of corruption.
Most astonishing are the McCain lobbyist ties to agents of foreign governments including Somali war [...]

State Rep.

Four years ago, the Scene's Liz Garrigan wrote of an effort by CM Charlie Tygard to run an end around on former Vice Mayor Howard Gentry by having a fellow member introduce a resolution naming him the chair of a task force after VM Gentry did not select him for a previous task force.

I've always believed that tax referendums are more about special interest group control over public revenue streams to services and less about democratic regulation of the government's power to raise revenues.

A while back, I wrote a post on “Divided We Fail”, the AARP’s shameful ad campaign that uses children to try to disguise the organization’s true intentions. Reader “poz” writes (I’m assuming in response to that post):

WATE Anchor Gene Patterson will be moderating a public forum on the changes to the Knox County Charter. One of the changes deserving special attention is a proposal to do away with elections of several public officials and make them appointments of the Knox County Mayor’s Office.

The announcement via an email from Mike: