For a few months now, Occupy Wall Street (OWS) has been garnering attention and support around a central frustration over the undue influence of money in politics. Wall Street (hence the OWS moniker) was targeted as the embodiment of corporate excess, economic inequality and a particularly cozy relationship with the federal government. Occupys all over the country have channeled their frustrations over government bailout of banks into catchy protest slogans like:

‘Banks got bailed out, we got sold out’ and ‘Hey, hey, ho, ho, this corporate greed has got to go’.

But the influence of money in politics is not just aggregated in the iconic buildings of Wall Street or the halls of the Capitol. Those businesses and institutions that participate in the game of influencing our federal government are all around us: from the ruby red hue of the Bank of America on the corner to your local fast food joint to the innocuous looking buildings on Wall Street, K Street or Main Street. Without a scarlet L emblazoned on the awnings of the powerful lobbying firms, it is hard to spot the influence with the naked eye (although there is a map of the top ones in DC). But with a little research it’s easy to uncover the influence.

Take for instance the intersection of Connecticut and N Street (scroll over image right) as seen from our offices by Dupont Circle. We have two banks within sight: Wells Fargo and Citibank. For data available from Influence Explorer, Wells Fargo contributed $13.8 million in campaign contributions and spent a total of $24.1 million in lobbying while Citibank dropped $31.1 million into campaign coffers and lobbied to the tune of $108.2 million.* (Just a drop in the bucket compared to the $7.77 trillion the federal government spent to save the financial system as reported recently by Bloomberg News)

But the influence isn’t limited to banks; our neighbors the National Association of Broadcasters (a group representing broadcast networks) donated $9.7 million to political candidates and matched Citibank’s lobbying efforts at $108.2 million. A little further down the street, the Western Coal Traffic League spent $1 million on lobbying efforts to protect the interest of coal product consumers. Even the American Society for Microbiology got into the influence game by throwing $2,415 at candidates and schmoozing legislators for $80,000.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but this photo is actually worth roughly $305 million in influence.

Can you spot the influence in your neighborhood?

*Influence Explorer has earliest aggregated data available from 1989 for campaign contributions and lobbying data since 1998.

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley filed a lawsuit yesterday against five major U.S. banks for violating the state’s laws to protect consumers by conducting unfair and deceptive practices during the foreclosure crisis.

The complaint claims that Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citi, JP Morgan Chase and Co., and Ally Financial all committed violations of the state’s laws to protect consumer rights and damaged public records through faulty and fraudulent foreclosure proceedings, failing to modify home loans and the use of a system known as the Mortgage Electronic Records System (MERS).

Much of the outrage towards these banks and others stems from the money they received during the housing and financial crisis that began in 2008. All five of these banks received billions of dollars in emergency funds through the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) to ensure their stability and keep them from failing. But now, after many citizens and politicians feel the banks haven’t reciprocated the concern the public and the government had for their financial troubles, they’ve found themselves in legal and political trouble, including this lawsuit.

The violations these banks are accused of committing come after a series of programs that were intended to help the banks help the people. Regularly, before and after those programs were put into place, these banks take part in influential tactics to keep their own bottom line on the minds of lawmakers and not necessarily the financial stability of the public through campaign contributions, lobbying and other less-expected and less-expensive ways.

According to InfluenceExplorer.com, contributions to candidates across the country affiliated with these five banks totaled nearly $14 million. However, only a rather insignificant portion of that money—$173,000—went to Massachusetts politicians.

Also according to Influence Explorer, Bank of America’s political action committee and its employees and their family members gave $4.8 million to state and federal candidates during the 2009-10 election cycle. Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank received $25,000 of that money.

BofA also lobbied heavily on a variety of bills related to finance and other issues, spending $7.4 million during those same two years. BofA frequently disclosed lobbying on the Dodd-Frank bill—officially known as H.R. 4173, The Wall Street Transparency and Accountability Act of 2010. Presumably, the banking giant spent a great deal of that money to influence the formation and implementation of this bill, which was intended to regulate many banking practices that had no formal regulation before and threatened to significantly lower the profits a bank could rake in. The goal of that bill, according to lawmakers, was to make sure the country would never see a financial crisis like the one recently experienced again.

According to Federal Advisory Committee Act data also displayed on Influence Explorer, as of 2011, Bank of America has five employees sitting on federal advisory committees. Those employees are in the position to advise various agencies on how to implement regulations and do business, usually doing so on issues that affect their own business matters. Walter Muller, the bank’s Chief Investment Officer, sits on the Department of Treasury’s Advisory Committee of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.

JP Morgan is a big spender in Washington as well. During the 2009-10 election cycle, there were $3.4 million campaign contributions affiliated with financial company. There were also $13.4 million in lobbying expenditures reported. Like BofA, JP Morgan reported lobbying heavily on the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform bill.

JP Morgan doesn’t currently have any employees on any federal advisory committees, but did in 2010 when the company’s Executive Director of Environmental Affairs sat on an advisory committee with the Department of Commerce.

If you’d like more influence data about these two companies, or the remaining three being sued by Massachusetts—Well Fargo, Ally Financial (formerly GMAC) and Citi—you can visit InfluenceExplorer.com and TransparencyData.com.

Part of the lawsuit has been brought about because the attorney general Martha Coakley doesn’t believe the banks have adequately satisfied promises to modify mortgages and slowdown the rampant foreclosures happening in the state. For information on that issue, see the report we did on the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), which is a funded through TARP.

Of the 12 members of the failed supercommittee that were tasked with cutting $1.2 trillion from the federal deficit, five have disclosed records with the Federal Election Commission stating that they’ve received bundled contributions from lobbyists exceeding $16,000.

Representative Dave Camp, R-Mich, is the only member of the committee that has reported receiving bundled contributions so far this cycle. All $32,000 he received was bundled by one lobbyist named Harry Sporidis. Sporidis works for the firm Polsinelli Shughart and represents a number of clients in the healthcare industry, including the National Association for Behavioral Health and the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

According to the records, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash, has been the greatest supercommittee recipient of bundled contributions since 2009. She’s received just over $262,000 from large corporations including AT&T, Microsoft, Boeing, and Amazon, and well-known lobbyists like Tony Podesta who represents many prominent clients like BP America, Credit Suisse and Boeing.

This information has been made available as a result of the Honest Leadership and Government Act of 2007, which amended the Lobbyist Disclosure Act of 1995. The act made gifts to lawmakers illegal, was supposed to close the revolving door and required more disclosure regarding lobbying activity and spending – including the disclosure of bundled contributions, among other things. The act came about after Jack Abramoff, the infamous lobbyist turned felon, was convicted of fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy. His case demonstrated the wide-ranging corrupt practices that could take place in Washington. The rules require disclosure of bundled contributions went into effect in 2009, and have so far generated a rather small dataset of just over 300 records but have revealed $17.1 million in contributions to just 76 recipients including party committees. The largest bundler, the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), has given $2,120,952 in bundled contributions to just two recipients. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is one of them and received the bulk of that money: $2,072,950. The Republican Senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, received the remaining $48,000 of that money. According to records filed with the Senate Office of Public Records, EEI has lobbied on a variety of issues related to energy, including regulating greenhouse gases and Clean Air Act regulations.

The remaining supercommittee members that received bundled contributions subject to the relatively new rules are Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, Chris Van Hollen, R-Md, and John Kerry, D-Mass,. The three received $235,500, $40,000 and $20,425 respectively.

The lobbyist bundler data is now available on InfluenceExplorer.com and TransparencyData.com. The data comes directly from the FEC. Contributions are disclosed by recipients (reporting committees) to the FEC when a lobbyist/registrant or lobbyist/registrant PAC makes at least two contributions to a single recipient totaling at least $16,200. Recipients report according to their regularly scheduled reporting periods and according to biannual reporting requirements put into place just for bundled contributions, according to the FEC.

Do you remember the AT&T/T-Mobile merger that dominated the news earlier this fall? It caused quite the stir in Washington, with numerous outlets reporting on AT&T's massive lobbying efforts to push through the merger. Bloomberg was one such news outlet, reporting a story of expensive steaks and 'lobbyist's libations' in early September. The story focused on the numerous swanky fundraisers AT&T was hosting as well as their generous campaign donations to key lawmakers. This was undoubtedly a great investigative piece and involved a good deal of skilled journalism. Using this article as a guide, however, it's possible to see how any of us - or you - could do a similar investigation. Fundraisers The article begins describing the lavish fundraisers AT&T had been hosting for lawmakers, citing Sunlight's Party Time data.

• "AT&T hosted at least nine fundraising receptions and dinners since the deal was announced on March 20."
• One of which was held at Charlie Palmer Steak, where "AT&T and one of its outside firms, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, shared hosting duties for a June 14 fundraising dinner for Representative Henry Waxman, of California."
• Another was held at BLT Steak. The article says it "was the scene of a June 21 fundraising dinner hosted by AT&T for Representative Peter Roskam, an Illinois Republican who sits on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee."

Sunlight's Party Time data is free and available for anyone to use. We manually collect fundraiser and event invitations and put them online. They are searchable by a variety of of criteria including committee, leadership PAC, beneficiary, host, and venue. For example, a PartyFinder search for "AT&T" as a "Host" returns a list of all the fundraisers hosted by AT&T's Federal PAC. The most recent one was September 20th. A PartyFinder search for "Charlie Palmer Steak" as "Venue Name" returns a list of all the fundraisers held at the restaurant mentioned in the article. It's a popular locale - already three fundraisers are scheduled to be held there next month. Campaign Donations The article makes a number of points that suggest AT&T exerted its political influence through campaign donations. The article notes the following, frequently citing data obtained from the Center for Responsive Politics:

• "AT&T's political action committee gave $805,500 to federal candidates."
• The company's PAC "was the most generous corporate PAC this year."
• "House Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and Representative Fred Upton... each received $5,000 from AT&T’s PAC."
• During the past year AT&T Senior Executive Vice President Jim Cicconi donated "$1,500 to Boehner, $2,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and $1,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee."
• Since 2009, AT&T Chief Executive Officer Randall Stephenson has donated "$2,000 to Boehner, $6,000 to the Republican senatorial committee and $4,000 to the Republican congressional committee."
• "AT&T’s contributions this year have split 64 percent to Republicans and 36 percent to Democrats, compared with... 55 percent Republican and 45 percent Democratic in the previous election cycle."
• "AT&T’s PAC has given Waxman $4,000 so far this year, and Akin Gump’s PAC gave him $1,200."
• "Roskam received $3,500 from AT&T’s PAC."

Lobbying Efforts

The article notes that AT&T "boosted lobbying spending by 30 percent to $11.7 million in the first six months of 2011 compared with a year earlier" and that the company "supplemented its own in-house lobbyists with 18 outside firms pushing for the merger." The article specifically notes:

• "The firm of former U.S. senators John Breaux [ ... ] and Trent Lott [ ... ] received $240,000."
• "A company headed by former U.S. Representative J.C. Watts [ ... ] got $100,000."
• "Former House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin’s firm was paid $50,000"
• "Wiley Rein LLP, a law firm [ ... ] co-founded by former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Richard Wiley, received $160,000."
• "Clyburn Consulting LLC, where the principal [ ... ] a cousin to Representative James Clyburn [ ... ] received $60,000"
• "Akin Gump received $240,000 this year to lobby on behalf of the merger and other issues."

It’s well known by now that the Occupy Wall Street protesters are occupying Zuccotti park – a park just a couple blocks away from Wall Street in lower Manhattan. That occupation was almost ended when the owner of the park asked that the park be cleared so it can be cleaned last week.

That owner, Brookfield Properties, has not only become the unhappy landlord of a movement that has spread across the country, but also takes part in the some of the practices #occupy protesters appear to have an issue with: using money to push corporate interests through Congress and influence the political process. It should be noted that Brookfield’s involvement in politics through contributions and lobbying and the presence of Occupy Wall Street protestors in their park is purely coincidental and neither Brookfield nor people emailed with the OWS movement have said otherwise. It is, however, an interesting coincidence.

Zuccotti park operates as a public space and is open 24 hours a day. It is privately owned by Canada-based Brookfield Properties. Brookfield is a publicly traded real estate company with land and buildings in some of the most prestigious areas of the United States. They also happen to lease properties to Bank of America and Wells Fargo, both banks given TARP money during the financial bailout in 2008 and an issue that helped spark the OWS movement.

Brookfield employees have been active in political giving on the federal level for the last decade. Brookfield CEO Richard Clark and Chariman John Zuccotti—the man the park is named after—are both donors to various politicians in New York and other states and donors to an influential real estate trade political action committee. In the 1970’s, Zuccotti was the chairman of the New York Planning Commission and following that position was deputy mayor of New York.

Between 2000 and 2010, Richard Clark made at least $169,950 in contributions to PACS and committees such as Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the National Association of Real Estate Trusts and various politicians such as Kristen Gillibrand(D-NY) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY). Records also show that Clark has given to Super Committee Member Chris Van Hollen (D-MD).

John Zuccotti’s contributions between the years 2002 and 2010 were $195,300 to many of the same committees, PACs and politicians as Clark, according to TransparencyData.

Brookfield Asset Management—a company listed on Brookfield Properties’ website as having a controlling stake in the company—has reported spending just over $500,000 lobbying the federal government on energy, financial and tax issues since 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has been protesting what participants consider corporate greed for 34 days now. The protest has been replicated across the country in Washington DC, Denver and San Diego, to name just a few places. The movement cites the Arab Spring at Tahrir Square in Egypt and protests also inspired by poor economic conditions that took place in Spain earlier this year as inspiration for the occupations.

Koch Industries, the closely held firm led by conservative and libertarian political donors Charles and David Koch, has a long record of entanglements with federal regulatory authorities; its foreign subsidiaries traded with Iran and some of its foreign employees violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by using bribes to get business deals, according to an exhaustive account by Bloomberg News. That record wasn't sufficient to prevent an executive from the company, Don Clay, from holding a position advising the government on some of the very issues the multi-billion dollar conglomerate has been in trouble for violating, according to official records available through the Sunlight Foundation’s Influence Explorer.

Clay, who before joining Koch Industries served as an assistant administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency, sat on the agency's advisory committee for the the Clean Air Act and on some of its subcommittees that provided advice on various matters including regulation of toxic substances. Records show that Clay sat on multiple EPA federal advisory committees beginning in 1998 -- when he left his official post at the EPA and joined Koch Industries, through 2009.

Clay was in a position to advise the government on how to regulate a company he worked for, which is owned by people regularly fighting for less regulation in general. The EPA did not respond to questions about what issues Clay worked on exactly while he was on the advisory committee.

EPA enforcement data records presented on InfluenceExplorer.com, show details of some of the enforcement actions carried out against Koch Industries and its subsidiaries by the EPA, such as an incident in 2001 where Koch Pipeline dumped over 300,000 pounds of a toxic substance in Iowa, violating the Superfund. The company was fined $2.3 million dollars for that violation.

The table below is taken from InflunceExplorer.com and shows EPA violations by Koch Industries and its subsidiaries dating back to 2001. The data is new to the site and allows access to information that was once hard to obtain.

Case Name	Defendant	Locations	Amount
Invista S.A.R.L. (National Case)	Invista S.A.R.L.	La Porte, Tx and others	$170,099,600
Invista S.A.R.L. (National Case)	Invista S.a.r.l.	Athens, Ga; Calhoun and others	$48,978,944
Invista S.A.R.L (National Case)	Invista S.a.r.l.	Martinsville, Va; Seaford and others	$24,672,736
Allied Paper, Inc./Portage Creek/Kalamazoo River Admin Order On Consent (Cercla)	Georgia-Pacific, LLC	Kalamazoo, Mi	$14,000,000
Allied Paper, Inc./Portage Creek/Kalamazoo River Consent Decree Ou 2-Willow Boul	Georgia Pacific Corp	Kalamazoo, Mi	$11,725,509
Koch Pipeline Company	Koch Pipeline Company	Algona, Ia	$2,306,588
Allied Paper, Inc./Portage Creek/Kalamazoo River - Kalamazoo Mill And Hawthorne	Georgia-pacific Corporation	Kalamazoo, Mi	$2,029,207
Flint Hills Resources Alaska, Llc	Flint Hills Resources Alaska, LLC	North Pole, Ak	$2,000,000
Georgia-Pacific Consumer Products, Lp	Georgia-Pacific Consumer Products LP	Milford, Nj	$2,000,000
Colonial Pipeline Company	Colonial Pipeline Company	Winder, Ga	$1,582,600

During the span of years that Clay held his position on the federal advisory committee, Koch Industries reported spending close to $32 million to influence multiple issues including the environment in 1998 and between 2006-2009, according to information obtained from lobbyist disclosure forms and displayed on TransparencyData.

Clay’s position on the advisory committee, in combination with lobbying efforts, gave Koch Industries an additional avenue to influence government. Not only could the company use its lobbyists to influence lawmakers and administration officials, it also had an inside advisor who could recommend policies preferred by the company directly to the EPA.

Bloomberg reported yesterday that U.S. based bank Capital One will purchase UK-based HSBC’s U.S. credit card arm for a reported $2.4 billion.

HSBC originally acquired the credit card unit now being sold in its 2003 acquisition of Household International, known primarily as a sub-prime lender.

Both HSBC and Capital One do business in the the sub-prime market with both loans and credit cards, and both companies took losses in the housing meltdown and financial crisis in 2007 and 2008.

All of these companies spent money in the last ten years to influence policy around banks and lending. Here’s a sample of where their money went:

• Capital One spent $698,013 on campaign contributions in the last election cycle, 72% of which went to Republicans. They spent $3.36 million lobbying many of the bills related to financial regulation in the last session of Congress, including Wall Street reform, the Credit Cardholder’s Bill of Rights, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency Act of 2009, and various bills designed to help homeowners in default.
• In 2007 and 2008 – the early stages of the recent economic crisis – Capital One spent $2.3 million lobbying on  various bills that attempted to regulate sub-prime lending, such as the Expanding Housing Opportunities Through Education and Counseling Act of 2007.
• HSBC North America spent $351,305 on campaign contributions in 2009-10, 54% of which went to Republicans.
• HSBC Holdings, the parent company of HSBC North America, spent $6.5 million on lobbying in 2009-10. The financial company lobbied many of the same bills as Capitol One as well as other bills effecting consumer banking, such as the Consumer Overdraft Protection Fair Practices Act.
• Household International, prior to its acquisition by HSBC in 2003, made $1.48 million in campaign contributions and spent $3.5 million on lobbying. Lobbyist disclosures that show Household International as a client don’t mention any specific bills, but list bankruptcy as one of their main legislative concerns.

‘Influence Explored’ takes an article from the day’s headlines and exposes the influential ways of entities mentioned in the article. Names and corporations are run through Sunlight’s influence tracking tools such as Influence Explorer and Transparency Data to remind readers of the money that powers Washington.

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Kraft is splitting into two publicly-traded companies – one that will manage its snack foods business, and another that will manage its North American grocery store business.

Aside from the Kraft brand itself, the company owns a number of the most popular food brands in the U.S., including Cadbury, Maxwell House, Jell-O, Oreos, and others.

As a major food producer in the United States, Kraft’s business is affected by agriculture policy, food safety regulations, trade policy, and other government activity and regulations. Kraft spends a lot of money on the political process and focuses on policy issues that affect its interests. Here’s a sample of where its money goes:

• Kraft’s employees and its PAC spent $951,016 on campaign contributions in 2009-10, 55% of which went to Democrats.
• Kraft spent $6.4 million on lobbying in 2009-10. One bill they lobbied on included the Safe and Efficient Transportation Act of 2009, which would have increased the weight limit for freight trucks, allowing them to transport more in one load, and would have also provided money to repair bridges, presumably because of the increased stress caused by heavier trucks. The bill did not become law.
• Two other bills Kraft lobbied on, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act and the Food Safety Enhancement Act, would have increased federal authority over the food supply and increased the number of inspections of food processing plants. Both were supported by Kraft and opposed by small food producers, and neither became law.
• Kraft also received $402.06 million in federal government contracts in 2010, most of them for grocery resale.

‘Influence Explored’ takes an article from the day’s headlines and exposes the influential ways of entities mentioned in the article. Names and corporations are run through Sunlight’s influence tracking tools such as Influence Explorer and Transparency Data to remind readers of the money that powers Washington.

When the final mission of the space shuttle Atlantis completed last Thursday, a new era of U.S. spaceflight began. The Constellation program, intended to be the next generation of manned spaceflight, was cancelled by President Obama in 2010 in favor of putting more resources into developing the commercial space industry, a choice that was controversial among some at NASA.

The U.S. government is now depending on private space companies to refuel and maintain the International Space Station, and eventually to carry astronauts there as well. A story from NPR on Thursday highlights two of the biggest competitors – Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX*, and United Space Alliance.

United Space Alliance, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing, was founded in 1995. SpaceX was founded by Elon Musk, an entrepreneur and the founder of PayPal, in 2002. Both companies now hold lucrative government contracts for operations in space. For these companies, the cost of launching a NASA mission doesn’t just include rocket fuel – they also pour money into the political process. Here’s where some of their money went in 2009-10:

• SpaceX made $213,784 in campaign contributions, 82% of which went to Democrats, and spent $1.14 million on lobbying.
• United Space Alliance spent $96,351 on campaign contributions, 54% of which went to Democrats, and spent $96,351 on lobbying.
• Boeing spent $34.75 million on lobbying in 2009-10, and Lockheed Martin spent $26 million. They spent $3.08 million and $2.67 million on campaign contributions, respectively.
• Both SpaceX and United Space Alliance hired lobbyists for the 2010 NASA Authorization bill, which defunded the Constellation program and provided money for private space companies.
• SpaceX also lobbied on the Defense and Intelligence appropriations bills, which often account for large portions of the total space-related budget. United Space Alliance’s parent companies lobbied on those bills.

*Due to data quality issues, SpaceX has two separate entries in the Influence Explored database.

‘Influence Explored’ takes an article from the day’s headlines and exposes the influential ways of entities mentioned in the article. Names and corporations are run through Sunlight’s influence tracking tools such as Influence Explorer and Transparency Data to remind readers of the money that powers Washington.