current affairs---Romney clinches GOP nomination with Texas win

current affairs about us presidential election.

Mitt Romney clinched the Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday with a win in the Texas primary, a triumph of endurance for a candidate who fought hard to win over sceptical conservative voters he must now fire up for the campaign against President Barack Obama.

According to the Associated Press count, Mr. Romney surpassed the 1,144 delegates needed to win the nomination by winning at least 88 delegates in the Texas primary.

Mr. Romney, who came up short in the Republican presidential race four years ago, outlasted a carousel of Republican rivals who dropped out of the State-by-State primary contest. None of his former rivals actively campaigned in Texas.

Paid laws, American style

Powerful U.S. corporations have been writing bills themselves and giving them to state assemblies to rubber-stamp

The scandal of paid news in India, whereby politicians, private businesses, and perhaps others, buy space in newspapers to publish material which appears to have been written by the papers, has rightly attracted much critical comment, but the United States appears to be well ahead of India, with nothing less than a form of paid law. Powerful U.S. corporations have been writing bills themselves and giving them to state legislators — whose election campaigns they often fund as well — to rubber-stamp and pass on to governors for signature into law.

Main lobbying body

The main lobbying body behind this is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which has existed for over 40 years. It numbers about 300 corporations, including oil majors Exxon Mobil and Shell Oil, the Koch energy conglomerate, IT firms Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Dell, carmakers General Motors, pharmaceuticals producers Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, and Pfizer, the cigarette firm Philip Morris, the drinks giant Diageo, and the mammoth retailer Wal-Mart. Nearly 2,000 state legislators are also members.