The 2008 presidential campaign featured blistering attacks, particularly from the eventual victor Sen. Barack Obama, on Washington's chief money-making industry. Lobbyists are now trying to assess where they stand in Washington with a reformer in the White House and an economic downturn that is now actually stretching onto K Street.

Most of the change that will occur on K Street relates to the partisan makeup of firms. With Republicans falling further into the minority, lobby firms will need fewer GOP lobbyists and more Democratic ones. Some changes are already underway with Comcast replacing a Republican as chief lobbyist with a former staffer of prominent Obama supporter Tom Daschle.

Despite the Politico's suggestion that, "The repositioning highlights how little Washington is likely to change, despite all the anti-lobbyist rhetoric tossed around in the campaign," lobby firms certainly fear what kind of access and what new reforms they could face under President Obama's administration. If we had the sense of smell of a lion, we could smell the fear emanating from the monitor when reading this Congressional Quarterly article from today. This article is ridden with quotes from lobbyists not only attempting to sell themselves and their business to a new administration, but also trying to prebut the coming reforms and changes.

I sincerely hope that the promises of reform do not end at the ballot box as so many on K Street seem to be projecting. Further transparency requirements are needed to reel in the influence industry. A good place to start would be to enact the reforms contained in the Transparency in Government Act, available at PublicMarkup.org.

Like a man sinking in quicksand, Rep. Charles Rangel continues, with every flailing day, to sink further as more discrepancies are revealed in his personal financial disclosures. New revelations show Rangel's disclosures to be in complete disarray. Some assets and transactions are listed at high values one year and then listed at no value the next. The Associated Press compiled a list of the erratic disclosure listings.

The New York Times called on Rangel to temporarily step down from the chair of the Ways and Means Committee barring an ethics investigation. It looks like too many are having flashbacks to the Democratic scandals of the '80s and '90s that felled numerous congressional leaders.

The Washington Post takes a look at how business connections fuel bundled political contributions. One major Bush and McCain bundler, John Vogt, calls it the "favor arbitrage business," where, "You've got to know who to ask, how to ask and more importantly, you have to be prepared to return the favor."

Rep. John Doolittle has been under investigation for a long time - longer than this presidential election - and it looks like Kevin Ring's indictment brings that investigation that much closer to his door step. Ring is accused of hiding Doolittle's attempts to find a job for his wife from federal investigators. As McClatchy Newspapers reports, "[Ring's] apparent desire to protect the Doolittles is now figuring very prominently in his legal troubles."

• The Detroit Big Three are seeking $50 billion in government loans. Their big lobbying push begins as Congress comes back in session this week. The Wall Street Journal looks at the lobbying numbers. This gives a whole new meaning to "Put Your Hands Up For Detroit."
• As if Sen. Ted Stevens needed any more trouble. Roll Call reveals that a lobbying firm specializing in procuring earmarks for defense companies hired someone to handle fundraising and money management for Sen. Stevens' PAC when Stevens was chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Of course, the lobbying firm's receipts increased by 400%, moving from $1 million annually in 2002 to $4 million in 2007.
• Presidential hopeful John McCain is pulling in corporate executive contributions at a steady pace after trailing in the CEO money race to his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama.

With saturation convention coverage, how could I not post something about what is going on inside the convention halls? Here are some word clouds breaking down the speeches of the four prime time speakers from the Democratic convention. Guess which one goes with which speech:

I'll put up word clouds of the Republican prime time speakers when their convention is done.

Twice this year I've been astonished to see Ralph Reed's mug appear in election coverage. After the New Hampshire primaries the man who received over $4 million in Indian casino cash from Jack Abramoff was talking politics on CNN. Viewer reaction was intensely negative and CNN, embarrassed, canned him. While his campaign is not answering questions about it, it looks like John McCain decided that it wasn't the best idea to appear at a fundraiser with a participant in one of the biggest corruption scandals in history. Or perhaps Reed decided that he didn't need to be an undue distraction.

Either way, smart move.

Really? Not to pick on John McCain too much, but couldn't you find someone in Atlanta to host a fundraiser who didn't receive $4 million from Jack Abramoff to run a phony religious campaign against an Indian casino that was actually organized by another Indian casino to reduce competition?

McCain headed the Senate investigation that uncovered these payments. I know he has to raise money and patch up relationships in Republican quarters that have opposed him in the past. But Ralph Reed? Really?

Even CNN was embarrassed after they let Ralph Reed appear on television to cover the New Hampshire primaries.

The guy was involved in one of the biggest corruption scandals in American history. And it isn't even history yet, the investigation is ongoing. I hear Bob Ney's getting out of jail, maybe he can host a fundraiser too.

Three makes a trend, right? Today, there are three news stories on presidential bundlers - campaign contributors who solicit money from other contributors and bundle it together - and their activities. All of these stories highlight the need for bundling disclosure rules from the Federal Election Commission. But two of these stories pinpoint the potential for abuse in the bundling system.

The Washington Post looks at the odd practices of one Harry Sargent III, the owner of an oil trading company with billion dollar defense contracts. Sargent has raised over $50,000 for Sen. John McCain's presidential bid from a collection of Arab-Americans who refuse to discuss why they gave money to the Republican's campaign:

Some of the most prolific givers in Sargeant's network live in modest homes in Southern California's Inland Empire. Most had never given a political contribution before being contacted by Sargeant or his associates. Most said they have never voiced much interest in politics. And in several instances, they had never registered to vote. And yet, records show, some families have ponied up as much as $18,400 for various candidates between December and March.

Both Sargeant and the donors were vague when asked to explain how Sargeant persuaded them to give away so much money.

"I have a lot of Arab business partners. I do a lot of business in the Middle East. I've got a lot of friends," Sargeant said in a telephone interview yesterday. "I ask my friends to support candidates that I think are worthy of supporting. They usually come through for me."

As the Post story notes, this seems analogous to the Norman Hsu case that played out in 2007. Hsu was a con-artist who bundled large sums of money for Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential run from a collection of Chinese-Americans, many of whom were barely integrated into the larger American society. It turned out that Hsu funneled his own money through these individuals to be able to make contributions. Hsu was arrested for this and other crimes and Sen. Clinton returned hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations. Are Sargent's bundled contributions legitimate? Why do the people who operate as Sargent's fundraising operation refuse to discuss why they are giving these campaign contributions?

In a very similar case, two individuals of modest means, an office manager at Hess and her husband, an Amtrak foreman, contributed $61,600 to Sen. McCain's campaign committee and a joint Republican-McCain committee. McClatchy:

Alice Rocchio is an office manager at the New York headquarters of the Hess Corp., drives a 1993 Chevy Cavalier and lives in an apartment in Queens, N.Y., with her husband, Pasquale, an Amtrak foreman.

Despite what appears to be a middle-class lifestyle, the couple has written $61,600 in checks to John McCain's presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee, most of it within days of McCain's decision to endorse offshore oil drilling.

At a June fundraiser, the Rocchios joined top executives at Hess Corp. — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Hess, his wife, Susan, his mother, Norma Hess, and six other officials in giving a total of $313,500 to a joint McCain-RNC fundraising committee, Federal Election Commission records show.

Alice Rocchio insists that she and her husband used their own money to pay for these large campaign contributions, the first either her or husband have made. The June contributions to the joint committee were revealed in a Campaign Money Watch report earlier this week. The large Hess contributions came days before Sen. McCain switched his position on offshore drilling.

Clearly, these two stories show the danger of abuse in the bundling system and the clear lack of disclosure. While Congress approved disclosure of bundled contributions in the recent ethics reform bill, they only did so for federally registered lobbyists. In both cases, including the case of a federal contractor, neither party would be required to disclose the bundled contributions.

In our final bundling story of the day, the New York Times looks at the big dollar donors and bundlers surrounding Sen. Barack Obama's campaign. Despite the well-known small dollar donations machine the campaign built during the primaries, Sen. Obama is also raising massive sums from big dollar donors:

But records show that one-third of his record-breaking haul has come from donations of $1,000 or more: a total of $112 million, more than Senator John McCain, Mr. Obama’s Republican rival, or Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, his opponent in the Democratic primaries, raised in contributions of that size.

Behind those larger donations is a phalanx of more than 500 Obama “bundlers,” fund-raisers who have each collected contributions totaling $50,000 or more. Many of the bundlers come from industries with critical interests in Washington. Nearly three dozen of the bundlers have raised more than $500,000 each, including more than a half-dozen who have passed the $1 million mark and one or two who have exceeded $2 million, according to interviews with fund-raisers.

This latest info on the McCain and Obama bundlers comes thanks to an effort by a number of groups, including the Sunlight Foundation, to pressure both campaigns to disclose their bundlers as former candidates George W. Bush and John Kerry both did. Voluntary disclosure is all well and good, but as I mentioned adove, mandatory disclosure would increase accountability and would apply across the board to include House and Senate bundlers as well.

The Pfizer-General Motors-Northwest Airlines-United-Coors Democratic and Republican conventions are looking for more sponsors; Dodd doesn't understand acronyms; sometimes it's not really disclosure; bad campaign donations; ethics complaints; angry foreigners; and our favorite frozen food fan, William Jefferson. Only the Sunlight Foundation sponsors this news:

The next big moment in the 2008 Presidential election will be the late-summer nominating conventions where a carefully staged and scripted performance will be fueled by large corporate donations despite the reformer images presented by the two nominees. Participants can expect discounted plane tickets, free cars, hot parties, and lobbyists, lobbyists, lobbyists. The inverse of AA, sponsors don't help you with your problem, they make it worse. Both convention organizing committees have released documents to leading corporate fundraisers informing them that certain levels of contributions will lead to access to elected officials. The Republican convention packet explains to donors that they will be able to "connect with influential government officials (cabinet, president, next president)." The Democratic convention produced a "corporate sponsorship package" that gets you into events with Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, Sen. Ken Salazar, among others. To his credit, Democratic nominee Barack Obama wants to change the corporate funding model for conventions.

Sen. Chris Dodd claims that he did nothing wrong when he received a preferential mortgage from Countrywide Financial because he did not know that the VIP program meant he would be treated with preference. I can't decide if this makes Sen. Chris Dodd totally out of touch or totally in touch with the average American. Sen. Kent Conrad continues to defend his name, stating that he received preferential treatment unknowingly. Conrad has donated the estimated amount of money he saved from the treatment to charity.

Speaking of congressional mortgages and homes, you won't always find them on the personal financial disclosures that lawmakers are required to file. Why? Because lawmakers don't have to list personal residences that don't create rental income. The Politico writes, "They don’t have to disclose loan amounts. They don’t have to disclose loan rates. And they don’t have to disclose mortgage lenders." Sen. John Cornyn, ranking Ethics Committee member, states that he would like to see changes in personal financial disclosure forms.

Rep. Mary Bono Mack is being asked about campaign contributions from Inland Empire businessmen currently under investigation for contributions to state-level California politicians.

CREW files an ethics complaint against "dead-beat congresswoman" Laura Richardson.

Foreign companies that own U.S.-based subsidiaries are fighting back against proposed transparency reforms by Sen. Chuck Schumer to close loopholes in the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

The federal grant at the center of the indictment of family members of Rep. William Jefferson began as an earmark inserted at the last minute into an appropriations bill. In an unsurprising turn of events, no lawmaker has taken credit for the earmark.