Case Study Of Texpirg: Texas Public Interest Groups

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TexPIRG: Texas Public Interest Research Group TexPIRG, or the Texas Public Interest Research Group, is an interest group in Texas politics that is focused on keeping the powerful, wealthy interest groups from controlling the Texas state government if the goals of those interest groups are not in the best interest of citizens of Texas. TexPIRG is itself a member of a larger interest group with the same purpose, called USPIRG. TexPIRG’s mission statement clearly defines the group’s purpose: TexPIRG is an advocate for the public interest. When consumers are cheated, or our natural environment is threatened, or the voices of ordinary citizens are drowned out by special interest lobbyists, TexPIRG speaks up and takes action. We uncover threats…show more content…
For example, TexPIRG has been a strong supporter encouraging the USDA to raise the standards for food to be served to children in school cafeterias. Previously, meat that was rejected by fast food chains could be and was served to school children. Now the standards have been raised, but if food is found to be substandard, it can take as long as a week for schools to be notified, so children can still eat bad food for that long before the schools know to pull it. There are food industry giants who spend quite a lot of money lobbying legislators and persons in positions of power in state and federal regulatory agencies, whose interest are all about profit and not about quality or sometimes even safety. Big food producers are displeased with the Obama administration’s rules that require food producers to disclose ingredients and processing methods because this will cost them more to produce food and will also limit what they can sell (and what people will buy). So the new rules increase their costs and potentially can decrease their profits. Cargill, Inc., for example, spent $3.2 million lobbying Congress and the administration since 2008, and in 2008 gave more than $36 million to the campaign funds of congressional candidates (TexPIRG, “Safe Food, Healthy…show more content…
It has a part in the efforts which are increasing the controls on Wall Street designed to protect American consumers. TexPIRG is involved in requiring banks and other businesses to protect our personal information in order to protect us from identity theft. Certain businesses like pawn shops, pay day loan companies, and rent-to-own stores prey on working families, low income people and the military when they are cash poor. As a result, they pay high prices for poor quality goods with high interest or user fees in the form of the difference between what is paid monthly for the furniture, for example, and the actual purchase price. Pay day loan companies and pawn shops skirt limits on interest rates by claiming other costs, so people who use these companies lose a lot of the money that was in short supply already. TexPIRG is working to educate consumers as well as to regulate the fees these businesses charge, as well as the promises they make, which are often only loosely true (TexPIRG, Financial

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