If you have solid tips, news or documents on potential ethical violations or abuses of power, we want to know. Send us your suggestions. 
Unfortunately I believe that we are limited in what we can focus on. I think that if we proceed with the partisan sideshow of prosecuting Bush admin. officials, healthcare will get lost in the brouhaha.
The Washington Post's permanent investigative unit was set up in 1982 under Bob Woodward.
The Lobbyists Behind Tax Breaks
Sen. Charles Grassley, a ranking member of the Senate's Finance Committee and a Republican from Iowa, is demanding more transparency in the process that would make public the names of lobbyists and firms that advocate tariff suspensions, Inside U.S. Trade reports.
The push for more transparency follows a September 2006 Post investigation into such tariff suspensions, which allow individual companies to escape paying import taxes on a range of products brought into the United States.
The Post's Joe Stephens found that the number of suspensions was skyrocketing and that those narrow measures primarily benefited large, foreign-based corporations. Companies evaded a $500,000 cap on tariff savings by persuading lawmakers to file multiple bills with tax breaks aimed at the companies' imports.
As a result, some small domestic companies were hurt by proposals that benefited their foreign competitors.
A broad ethics overhaul of the tariff suspension system was passed by congressional leaders in January 2007.
Inside U.S. Trade quoted "informed sources" saying Grassley is additionally seeking to have the names of lobbyists or firms advocating for the bill to be included in existing disclosure forms.
By Derek Kravitz |
May 20, 2008; 1:39 PM ET
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