Sunlight Foundation

Sunshine at Sundown

Last evening, over a hundred supporters of open government joined Sunlight Foundation, the National Press Club, ProPublica, United Republic, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Openthegovernment.org, Online News Association, ASNE, POPVOX, ProPublica, Public Campaign, Public Citizen, and Electronic Privacy Information Center to celebrate Sunshine Week. The event held at the National Press Club, was an opportunity to meet those working on and committed to transparency.

Although the event was just an informal gathering for advocates and journalists, the guest of honor was clearly the spirit of James Madison whose birthday coincides with Sunshine Week. An early advocate of transparency, he famously wrote:

"A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."

Tomorrow is James Madison's actual birthday and also National Freedom of Information (FOI) Day. The First Amendment Center will be holding a conference at the Newseum to discuss some of the current issues surrounding freedom of information and open records. Can't make it to the conference? You can follow the conversation live on webcast.

Here in DC? You can visit the National Archives and view the original Freedom of Information Act. Happy Sunshine Week- and hope the weather is actually cooperation in your part of the country!

Jack Abramoff's Obstruction of Lobbying Reform

Jack Abramoff, the disgraced lobbyist, appears on CSPAN to discuss his book.Jack Abramoff left Washington to serve his prison sentence as a primary perpetrator and beneficiary of its culture of corruption. While his fall from influence prompted many reforms that we were eager to see, there is still a system riddled with loopholes and lacking the transparency we desperately need. Now, he's back. Shilling a book to pay off legal debts and line his pockets, Abramoff now wears the fresh cloak of a reformer who calls to clean the pigsty where he once rolled. We welcome him to the good fight, but honestly, it's hard to believe he's serious.

The master of rhetoric will be speaking at Public Citizen later today - we'll be in the audience and watching online. He frequently boasts he had "100 congressmen in his pocket" yet he has not released the documents or named the names.

After my questioning him on this point, Abramoff responded "Having been to prison personally -- hopefully, Ms. Miller hasn't been to prison and most of your readers haven't been and never will go -- but having been to prison, it's very hard for me to put anybody in harm's way, even people I don't like. And that's besides the point anyway. The point is to change the system." Just five days before his refusal to put anybody in harm's way he told TPM “The only thing I’m doing is trying to make available what I know from my experience so that we can fix this.” Unfortunately we continue to see hollow rhetoric. Instead of waiting until your book stops giving milk, why don't you spill some of those magic beans from the files you still have?

The Sunlight Foundation is committed to lobbying reform and exposure of the full system of influence. That's why we have an outstanding FOIA to see who visited Abramoff in prison, hold public meetings discussing the issue and, of course, encourage public markup of our recommendations for lobbying reform.

Today's event at Public Citizen is an opportunity for Abramoff to convince reformers that he's really serious; helping to fix the system by revealing more substantive information about those who participated in his activities. I don't care whether what he reveals is technically legal or not - decades of exposing K Street continues to prove that it's not always what is illegal that is most troubling, but rather what is completely legal.

Unless Abramoff starts answering these tough questions and open up his treasure trove of information anyone who calls themselves a reformer should be very skeptical of this reformer road show.

Make Abramoff prove himself as a reformer rather than just calling himself one.

Image via C-SPAN.

Sunlight Weekly Roundup: Bernie Sanders calls Citizens United "a complete undermining of democracy"

In our continued effort to highlight the anniversary of January 2010's Citizens United decision, all of this month's weekly roundups will  take a look at what local bloggers across the country are saying about the ruling. Last week, we took a look at bloggers from the primary states. This week, we'll be rounding up blogs from the East coast states, where many campaign donations derive.

  • Vermont State Senator Bernie Sanders has just proposed the "Saving American Democracy Amendment" aimed at overturning the Citizens United decision. In a statement, Sanders maintained, “There comes a time when an issue is so important that the only way to address it is by a constitutional amendment.” He called the court's ruling "a complete undermining of democracy.” Sanders launched an online petition to garner support for the Amendment. Sanders is bringing the proposal before the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by  Senator Patrick Leahy. A Leahy spokesman said that while Leahy supports attempts to undo the damage of the Citizens United, he remains skeptical that the Senate will be able to gather the two-thirds super majority necessary to pass Sanders' proposal. The issue appears to have gained local traction in Vermont; Ben & Jerry’s ice cream moguls Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield sponsored a well attended public forum to lend to gather public support for Sanders’ amendment. For more on this story, check out  Shay Totten's post on Seven Days. 
  • In a tongue-in-cheek post for Maine's  Seacoast Online, Don Cavarollo asks the question: if corporations are indeed people, what others rights should they receive?  He writes, “Based on the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, corporations now have unlimited free speech rights, the same as human beings do What has been bothering me is that in certain areas, humans have a few more rules to follow than corporations.” Since adult males have to sign up for the selective service to be eligible for loans and federal job training, he wonders if “all male corporations should sign up with the Selective Service to be eligible for government contracts, research grants or guaranteed loans.” If corporations are indeed people, he wonders if mergers between corporations could be considered legal marriage. He decides that if the government is treating corporations like people, then there should be no corporate tax rate, since corporation would be “just like the rest of us.” He even wonders whether one day a corporation will be elected president.
  • Public Citizen’s Aquene Freechild put an item on the Vermont Town Meeting ballots formally calling to amend the United States Constitution to overturn the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United ruling.  In a statewide conference call, Freechild maintained, “money is not free speech, and corperations are not people.” Rob Roper and Gerhad Meyer of True North Reports see it differently, arguing, “Money may or may not be ‘speech.’ But the First Amendment also protects each person’s rights to press (the right to freely print and distribute those opinions we speak), assembly (the right to freely organize ourselves into groups — as a corporation, perhaps), and the freedom, as individuals or as groups, to petition the government."  In an effort to attract more conservatives to the anti-Citizens United campaign, Freechild is also making it clear that unions, as well as corporations, will also be barred from unlimited campaign contributions. Roper and Meyer remain unconvinced, calling Freechild’s claims about unions “hollow rhetoric” and pointing out that the Vermont resolution makes no mention of limiting unions, only corporations.
  • Joel Tyner attended a General Assembly at Occupy Poughkeepsie to discuss their upcoming action to urge the Dutchess County legislator to join Albany, New York City, Oakland, Los Angels, and Boulder in passing a resolution for a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United. According to Tyner, January 14th is deadline to get three other county legislators to sign on, “otherwise it won't even be allowed ... to even appear on February's County Legislature Committee Day agenda.” In an update to his post, Tyner adds that Wappinger County  Legislator Francena Amparo has agreed to co-sponsor resolution. Tyner now needs two more co-sponsors by Friday at 5 PM. For more updates on this story, check out Tyner's post on Dutchess Democracy .
Connect with other transparency bloggers in this Transparency Bloggers Google group   and see what others are doing in the transparency movement by joining this Citizens for Open Government Google Group.

A Mandated Database: 16 Years Late

Public Citizen reports that a federal database will soon go online that will give car buyers information about individual cars they are considering, such as whether the cars stolen, salvaged or rebuilt. Sounds great, right? The problem is that Congress passed a law requiring the database 16 years ago.Yup. You read me right. This database was mandated 16 years ago.

Three consumer groups, Public Citizen, Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety (CARS) and Consumer Action, had to go to court to make it happen. In September, they won a federal court decision, with the court requiring the U.S. Department of Justice to set up the National Motor Vehicle Title Information System by tomorrow (Jan. 30th), which will require states, insurance companies and junk yards to report safety and other information about individual automobiles. Some states, notably California and New York, are violating the court order by dragging their feet and not providing any information, but the consumer advocates are pressing the governors in those states to abide by the court ruling.

Let The Good Times (Continue to) Roll

<p>In today's edition,<i> <a href="http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/01/dc_mardi_gras_puts_a_mask_on_e.html">The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune</a> </i>reports that the annual Washington Mardi Gras party kicks off tonight at the Washington Hilton, a weekend-long event billed as &quot;one of the most sought-after tickets in any season in Washington.&quot;   The event's parties, the paper says, &quot;are arguably the most intimate gatherings of businesspeople, politicians and lobbyists left in Washington&quot; after new congressional ethics rules were adopted. Writing that the parties are&quot;a throwback to the days when politicians and lobbyists socialized regularly outside the glare of the public spotlight,&quot; the paper added that they are &quot;largely immune to the new ethics standards.&quot;  </p>    <p>A secretive, Louisiana-based group headed by a lobbyist and former aide to now lobbyist and former Sen. John Breaux (D-La.) organizes the event.  The organization declined to name this year's corporate sponsors, but in years past they included R.J. Reynolds, BellSouth, and Lockheed Martin, according to the paper. </p>
Read more

Bundle Up

Earlier today, the Campaign Finance Institute (CFI) and Public Citizen released an extensive study that found the majority of the bundlers and other fundraisers raising cash for the various 2008 presidential campaigns, over 2,000 individuals, come from only three segments of the U.S. economy: lawyers and law firms, three finance industries, and real estate. Among those industries, Republicans hold an edge in raising money from the real estate and lobbying industries. Democrats are receiving more funds from lawyers and law firms, as well as the entertainment industries. Democratic and Republican fundraisers appear to be doing a comparable job of raising cash from the securities and investment industry.

Read more

Bundlers

Lisa Zagaroli, writing for McClatchy Newspapers, reports on the growing importance of bundlers in presidential campaign fundraising. These "mega-fundraisers" are very skilled at using their business and personal contacts to raise large amounts of campaign cash for a specific candidate. Only a few presidential candidates have released any information on who is doing the bundling but we know that the bundlers usually have super access to the candidates. No presidential campaign has released both the names of their bundlers and the amount each individual fundraiser has raised. Each campaign has adopted varying degrees of disclosure on who is raising their big bucks.

On October 30, Congressional Quarterly reported that Federal Election Commission is working on new bundling rules. One proposal, which came out of the Congress, is to only disclose the bundlers who are federal lobbyists. The McClatchy report indicates that the FEC is interested in going beyond this.


Read more

New Reports Shine More Light

Two new reports shine light on waste, corruption and the buying of influence in Washington.

Earlier this week, U.S. PIRG released a report showing how the federal government continues to waste tens of billions in the process of outsourcing work to private companies. "Forgiving Fraud And Failure: Profiles In Federal Contracting" reports on how the feds continue to work with companies that did shoddy work and or were found to have committed fraud.

Last year, the federal government spent $422 billion outsourcing work to private companies, a 100 percent increase since 2000, all with precious little oversight. U.S. PIRG reports that loose rules, lack of competition, and limited accountability are the problems. PIRG's suggestions: increase the disclosure of contract information; increasing competition among multiple bidders; and strengthening the screening of bad actors.

Our friends at POGO have been refining their "Federal Contractor Misconduct Database", a valuable tool for investigative journalists and citizens who want to see the rap sheets on companies our government hires. The fact that these contractors are also large campaign donors just rounds out the equation.

Read more

New Database on Bundling

Bundling, that is the practice of one donor gathering donations from many different individuals in an organization or community and presenting the sum to a campaign, is as popular as ever by the major presidential campaigns. The poster child for questionable bundling to 2008 campaign so far goes to the still highly suspect actions of Norman Hsu. Bundling has in past cycles raised concerns too. President Bush's more infamous bundlers were Enron CEO Ken Lay and disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Taylor Lincoln at Public Citizen's Watchdog blog shows how this practice is fraught with potential scandal.

Thanks to Public Citizen and their new 2008 version of its White House for Sale databasee, it's now easier than ever to track the big bundlers for each of the presidential candidates. It also allows you to determine which bundlers are lobbyists. "With bundlers playing a bigger role than ever before in this race, anticipated to cost at least $1 billion," writes Katie Schlieper for Public Campaign. As she said, this is a great tool to use to connect the dots between donors, candidates, and policy priorities.

Read more

Ranking Influence in Washington

It's not just because of the name that I like the idea behind this new report (actually, the first installment of a new report) from Public Citizen's Congress Watch: it brings together several kinds of information on members of Congress in one place. It lets users look at contribution totals to incumbents from lobbyists, PACs, donors who don't live in the member's home state, small (under $200) donors, as well information on the junkets that members and their staff have taken. It also provides nice summary data by state (here's New York, for example).

Read more
« Previous
1 2