House: American companies need freedom to be corrupt to be competitive

[IronWing]

Meanwhile, away from the Trumpoline act in center ring…

House votes to repeal anti-corruption rule.

The final bill included a measure, co-sponsored by Senators Ben Cardin and Richard Lugar, requiring that all oil, gas, and mineral companies on the U.S. stock exchange disclose any payments they make to foreign governments for licenses or permits for development. It aimed to curb bribery and give poor countries rich in resources a chance to hold their governments and resource-extraction companies accountable. After years of delay, on June 27, 2016, the Securities Exchange Commission published a final version of the rule that enforces Cardin-Lugar. It was set to go into effect in 2018.

On Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted to kill that rule and effectively gut Cardin-Lugar using a special authority that allows lawmakers to undo recently passed regulations. The Senate will likely take up a complementary measure in the coming days. It is expected to pass.

In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal last week, Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy declared that the rule “would put American businesses at a competitive disadvantage”— a position echoed by the American Petroleum Institute (API), the top energy-lobbying group in Washington, and the oil giant ExxonMobil, one of API’s top members. Over the years, ExxonMobil has claimed that Cardin-Lugar, if turned into an enforceable rule by the SEC, would compel the company to disclose private, internal data. That, in turn, would place it a severe competitive disadvantage relative to the BPs and Shells and Rosnefts of the world, the company has argued.

How Tillerson, confirmed as secretary of state today, thinks about corruption and regulating the resource-extraction industry matters. During Tillerson’s confirmation hearing earlier this month, Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine raised the point that ExxonMobil has conducted business in countries afflicted by the resource curse like Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, Indonesia, and Angola. “How will you work with nations that suffered under this resource curse ... [and] make sure they respect human rights, the rule of law and our longstanding commitment to transparency and anti-corruption?” he asked. Tillerson, in response, touted the role of USAID in “strengthen[ing] the institutional capacities and set standards of expectation in the developing part of the world including those that have resource wealth.” (Donald Trump has yet to appoint anyone to head up USAID.)

 

[ivwshane]

Meanwhile, away from the Trumpoline act in center ring…

House votes to repeal anti-corruption rule.

This is exactly what trump supporters wanted! Just wait, they'll be in here any minute now to tell us how great this is and how this will help Americans!

 

[Sonikku]

 

[Victorian Gray]

I like this one just a bit more.

 

[MongGrel]

Meanwhile, away from the Trumpoline act in center ring…

House votes to repeal anti-corruption rule.

I always liked Dick Lugar when I lived in IN long ago, my father knew him in high school. Was on of the old school sane GOP members, sad to see the current administration gut that, but deregulation is going to be the name of the game in the Trump era.

It seems the opposite of the platform Trump ran on, if you could have called it a platform other than ranting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lugar