My mouth dropped open when I saw the number: $427 million. That's how much the oil and coal industries spent during the first half of 2008 to influence public opinion and public policy according to the nonpartisan reform group Public Campaign Action Fund. The analysis looked at four different areas: political contributions, lobbying expenditures, paid advertising and political spending by outside organizations.

You wonder where John McCain gets his line about "drill here, drill now?" It comes from industry front groups who are getting some of this dough.

Among the findings is that they've spent over $200 million on advertising alone. That is a hell of an echo chamber they're giving to John McCain and the Republican Party.

Read the full report.

Another right-wing group that is spending plenty of money this cycle is Newt Gingrich's American Solutions for Winning the Future.

On its website the group contends that "action is needed from the bottom-up at all levels of society... to topple the current entrenched interests." The group's "vision" is "competence, substance, integrity, and transparency in government."

But mega-developer Mel Sembler, one of the group's top funders to the tune of at least $3 million, might have missed the memo. The Palm Beach Post recently reported that Mr. Sembler and his company are under federal investigation for a $100,000 payment allegedly used to grease the wheels of local government in Florida:

A developer paid a $100,000 fee to lobbyist Hugo Unruh after being told it would be hard to win county approval for a traffic-throttling shopping center without him.

The message came from Boynton Beach Mayor Jerry Taylor, who at the time was a trusted aide to Palm Beach County Commissioner Mary McCarty.

Now the fee and Taylor's role have drawn the attention of federal investigators.

...St. Petersburg-based Sembler is a national developer of shopping centers and residential communities. It was founded by Mel Sembler, a major state and national Republican Party fund-raiser who is especially friendly with the Bush presidential family.

McCarty said Sembler is a political acquaintance whom she bumped into recently at a White House affair.

Read the whole article HERE.