What a year 2012 has been! We faced an onslaught of unprecedented amounts of political spending. In this post-Citizens United landscape, it was even harder to connect the dots and know who was paying for the campaigns and what they'll get in return. Dark money rained down, super PACs sprouted like mushrooms and negativity reigned all while our Congress experienced one of its least productive years, stalling meaningful reforms like the DISCLOSE Act.

But, all was not dark. During 2012, the beginnings of something very positive started to take root as the movement for online open government grew on a significant scale. This year, we launched a major global initiative, collaborating with transparency organizations to define best practices and norms for open government around the world. We joined more than 100 organizations in a Declaration on Parliamentary Openness to improve openness, transparency and citizen participation in the legislative process on an international scale.

To see all what we've accomplished this year, please watch our 2012 year-in-review video and share it with someone you know.

In 2012, Sunlight rolled out more apps and online tools to help you better hold politicians accountable. Tools like

• our popular Politwoops, hailed by TIME magazine as one of the best websites of 2012 for creating a permanent record for tweets deleted by elected officials.
• Ad Hawk, our "Shazam for Political Ads" that earned the very cool rating of “Essential iPhone App of 2012” by Gizmodo.
• Scout, which alerts you on actions that federal regulators, Congress or your state legislature take on a specific bill or issue you care about.

2013 already promises to be an exciting year with new initiatives that will give you more opportunities to join us in shining sunlight on politics and government. If you want to be kept in the loop about these new developments -- and help us continue our nonpartisan research and tech development -- please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to the Sunlight Foundation today.

We won't be able to do it without you, so please stand with us to keep politics and our government transparent and accountable.

Thanks and best wishes for a happy new year!

One of the questions we frequently hear in this brave new world of super PACs and the seven-figure donations made to these independent organizations is, simply, why is this a problem? Thanks to super PACs, after all, candidates like Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich can say in the race far longer than they could have in the past, giving voters a wider choice. A Mitt Romney, meanwhile, has super PAC supporters who can attack them both. Super PACs are contributing to political speech, the thinking goes, to a robust democratic process where primary voters who go to the polls in March, April--perhaps as late as June--will have a say in who their party's nominee is.

The problem, simply put, is that the donors to these organizations are not disinterested promoters of politics, but rather, individuals with numerous issues before local, state and federal governments, and the means to influence those who will be in charge of resolving those issues. Political giving is how they accomplish their ends.

A lobbyist for Waste Control Specialists, a company owned by mega-donor Harold C. Simmons, explained to an Albuquerque Journal reporter in 1999 why the Texas billionaire had given to New Mexico politicians: "We didn't want to be strangers when we showed up with a request," he said.

The request involved state tax breaks and incentives to lure a nuclear enrichment facility to the southeast corner of New Mexico--one move in a 17-year long struggle Simmons and a company he controls undertook to win approval for a low level radioactive waste dump in Andrews, Texas, just across the border from the site of the proposed uranium plant. The latter effort is still ongoing but has ultimately been successful--after the Simmons combine contributed more than $1.13 million to Texas legislative races, $1.68 million to gubernatorial candidates and $264,500 to Texas political parties.

Overall, Simmons, his wife, two of his daughters and the companies he controls have contributed at least $34.8 million to parties, political action committees, politicians and other political organizations, including super PACs like American Crossroads and 527s like Swift Boat Vets & POWs for Truth.

To arrive at that number, we started with data from InfluenceExplorer.com, which has federal campaign data from the Center for Responsive Politics and state level contributions for the National Institute on Money in State Politics. We added 527 contributions reported to the Internal Revenue Service (you can look them up here or download them in bulk from the Center for Responsive Politics), records of contributions to Texas political action committees from the Texas Ethics Commission, and searches of other state databases of PAC contributions where Simmons had contributed to state level candidates, including California and Virginia.

We searched for giving by Simmons, his wife, two of his adult daughters who've listed his companies or family foundation as their employers and direct contributions from his companies, which include Contran, Valhi, NL Industries, Titanium Metals, Southwest Louisiana Land and Waste Control Specialists. We included relevant giving by Amalgamated Sugar during the years in which Simmons owned that firm. We also looked at lobbying records--federal ones in InfluenceExplorer.com, and state records from the Texas Ethics Commission. We also looked for contributions by the employees and PACs of those companies, but totaled that figure separately: they gave about $2.8 million. The earliest federal contributions are from 1989 and run through 2011;  the earliest state level contributions are from 1993.

Simmons's activities have generated a great deal of attention in Texas, especially his efforts with Waste Control Specialists to secure permits to dump massive amounts of low level radioactive waste there. Media accounts were incredibly helpful, and there has been great reporting on the issue in the Lone Star State from the Dallas Morning News, the Austin-American Statesman, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Houston Chronicle, the Texas Observer and the Texas Tribune. A lot of these accounts are available online, but many--especially the older stories--were accessed through Lexis-Nexis.

Because radioactive waste disposal is a highly regulated endeavor, there is a great deal of public information about Waste Control Specialists' activities in Texas, ranging from license applications to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to a website the company itself launched as part of its public relations effort. But most government decisions are not made with so much public input and disclosure of documents. While Simmons has left a long paper trail, both of publicly reported campaign contributions and public filings with regulatory agents, many big donors find alternate routes to influence the legislative process without leaving nearly so public a footprint. Tracing their activities, in an era of organizations that influence politics without disclosing donors, is the real challenge, and something that we'll look at in future stealthy wealthy posts.

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon devoted a special slow jam to President Obama and super PACs with Brian Williams joining the musical stylings of the Legendary Roots Crew. The topic is nothing new to Sunlight, but we always appreciate a new format to publicize the issue and love to see more late night shows addressing the shadowy dealings of campaign finance. Follow Sunlight's Super PAC Tracker for updated filings and in the meantime, check out last night's segment:

Byron Tau makes a great point in Politico: Obama's reversal on super PACs returns "to a system where corporate donors, unions and other wealthy individuals are able to pay big money for access to policymakers, lawmakers and key administration aides."

The President's announcement not only opened the door to cabinet members and top White House staff headlining fundraisers for unlimited checks, it announced with certainty that they would be doing so:

Senior campaign officials as well as some White House and Cabinet officials will attend and speak at Priorities USA fundraising events. While campaign officials may be appearing at events to amplify our message, these folks won't be soliciting contributions for Priorities USA.

That might take a bit of thought to fully digest. We often assume that the laws structuring the Executive Branch generally protect merit and official work from being polluted by inappropriate political activity. But this announcement changes the stakes significantly.

There's a huge difference between regular fundraisers and super PAC events. Obama announced that White House Officials and Cabinet officials will be appearing at events "to amplify our message." "Amplify our message" means raise money, and at these events, there is literally no limit to the money. Whether or not top officials are soliciting the checks or not is beside the point. Some of the most powerful officials in our government are selling their time to the highest bidder, and, as things stand now, the public isn't even able to know about their meetings.

Cabinet secretaries have, in many ways, far more power than individual Members of Congress. Laws often give them broad, unilateral discretion in carrying out the work of the country, making decisions that affect everyone's business in profound ways. Of course, that fact is not lost on moneyed interests, who are willing to pay dearly to move policies even the slightest bit in any direction.

Unlimited checks are now going to upset that balance. Top administration officials are going to advertise their attendance at super PAC (Priorities USA) events, to bring in as much money for them as possible. The Obama announcement wasn't about getting out a message, it was about raising money. And we shouldn't be naive about why top officials are attending fundraisers either -- their attention is for sale to the highest bidder.

And the public has no way of knowing whether or when top White House officials are attending these fundraisers. If the transportation secretary attends an event that people have given $200,000 each to attend, shouldn't we know that? Especially this administration, that prides itself on openness, should recognize that the public needs to know whether and how its top officials are involved in these unlimited-funds fundraisers.

The White House likes to pride itself on saying they released the visitor logs. But getting into the White House is free. If someone pays a million dollars for access to the Secretary of State, then we really need to know about it.

So what happens next? Will this announcement from the President be accepted as sufficient, especially when his likely rivals aren't even disclosing their bundlers?

If the President is going to let his cabinet be involved in raising huge sums of money from individual contributors, he should at least make that process transparent. The President should lean on Priorities USA, who should disclose top officials' attendance at fundraisers. He should also require White House officials and Cabinet Secretaries to disclose their attendance at fundraisers somewhere as part of their schedule, as the President himself does (see "campaign activity"). The Hatch Act may create some difficulties in finding the right mechanism for this disclosure, but we need a better answer than total secrecy.

Because under the system we have now, the country's most powerful officials have an incentive to precede every official action with a meeting of the most well-heeled donors who are likely to be affected. If cabinet officials attend unlimited fundraisers, every act of their work becomes a potential hook for juicing donors. The very least we can do is make it possible for the public to understand how top officials are involved with these fundraisers.

Without public disclosure of cabinet and White House officials' involvement in unlimited fundraisers, who gets to define acceptable cabinet-level involvement in fundraising? At its best, cabinet officers all get a new distraction to their duties, at its worst, the executive branch itself becomes an extension of the Presidential dark money machine.

House Democrats unveiled The DISCLOSE 2012 Act (HR 4010, not up on THOMAS yet) today, a crucial step toward transparency to address the corrupting influence unlimited, secret corporate and union money is having on our elections and our elected officials.

Shortly before the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s disastrous Citizens United decision, the Sunlight Foundation drafted the Stop Undisclosed Payments in Elections from Ruining Public Accountability Act (the SUPERPAC Act), a streamlined disclosure and disclaimer only bill. We are pleased that on first blush, DISCLOSE 2012 meets the goals of our draft bill.

The bill will create robust reporting requirements for Super PACs, corporations, unions and nonprofit organizations that decide to make campaign expenditures. It will also require reporting of transfers by those groups to others making such expenditures, to prevent the money laundering that makes it easy to hide huge campaign contributions.

DISCLOSE 2012 will also require ads to contain disclaimers by the top officials of such groups, similar to the stand by your ad mandates required of candidates. In addition, shareholders and members of outside groups will be informed of campaign spending, and lobbyists will be required to report their spending on independent expenditures and electioneering communications.

When the Supreme Court decided the Citizens United case, it hung its hat on the theory that systems were in place to ensure unlimited corporate and union spending would be disclosed on the Internet. The Court was, at best, naïve. Because the Court created a whole new kind of spending, there was no disclosure system in place. (And the moribund Federal Election Commission would never be able to create such a system through a rulemaking process.) DISCLOSE 2012 creates that system of transparency and as such should receive wide support from members on both sides of the aisle.

Early primary spending has demonstrated that previously unheard of expenditures will become commonplace and overwhelm the 2012 elections. At a minimum, voters have a right to know whether the Super PAC that paid for an ad they just watched is tied to a candidate, or was funded by corporation or union with very special interests. Candidates will know who is footing the bill for ads that support their candidacy, even if such ads are technically not “coordinated” with their campaigns. With DISLOSE 2012, the voters will know too.

Here is a statement from Ellen Miller on the bill, and see below for a redlined comparison of the version of the DISCLOSE Act that fell to Republican obstruction in the Senate in 2010.

We've taken the just-introduced 2012 version of the DISCLOSE Act and compared it to its 2010 predecessor (which didn't get cloture in the Senate.) This comparison is much rougher version that I would have liked to generate, but we had to scrape the 2012 version from a PDF and try to clean it up. That scraping and cleaning effort is far from perfect, so it may be difficult to read in parts.

Even with the mess, it's interesting to see what stayed the same and what changed. Once you get past the first 15 pages or so, all of which were struck out, it become apparent how the legislation has significantly changed. The black text is the original version; everything in red is what was added or deleted.

Redline of 2010 and 2012 DISCLOSE Act

Super PACs have been a hot topic in the news recently as reporters, advocacy groups, and the public try to follow the money flowing into the political system as the 2012 elections approach.

On January 31st MSNBC reported that Stephen Colbert's super PAC, Americans for A Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, was the first to submit its end-of-year report to the Federal Election Commission. The deadline for these reports was January 31st.

Colbert included his super PAC's filing on his super PAC's website, ColbertSuperPac.com, but this is not required. This kind of information can generally be found on the FEC website under Campaign Finance Reports and Data, but you have to know exactly what you are looking for.

The FEC portal includes a variety of search tools, including a searchable database of disclosure reports, downloadable copies of electronic filings, images of all financial reports, and other campaign finance data. However, these search tools suffer from a lack of a user-friendly interface. Several organizations, including the Sunlight Foundation, ProPublica, and the New York Times, have taken FEC data and put it in more user-friendly formats while focusing on information most relevant to the upcoming presidential election.

A search for Colbert's super PAC using the FEC's Disclosure Database search tool returns 13 filings, including the Year-End report displayed on Colbert's super PAC website. This report indicates that the super PAC has raised $825,475.46 since July 2011 and spent $151,521.01 as of December 31, 2011.

TPM published an article as the FEC deadline approached as well that focused on Newt Gingrich's campaign filing. The article cited several specifics regarding Gingrich's campaign spending, all of which are publicly available using the same online FEC portal. A search for "Newt 2012," the official name of Gingrich's presidential election campaign, under the "View Images of All Financial Reports" tab returns a list of documents filed. Viewing the PDF of the Year-End report shows all the numbers used in the article mentioned above.

It is necessary to emphasize again that these tools can be extremely hard to use, and you have to be very precise in your search terms. For example, a search for "Gingrich" using either search tool will return many results for other organizations related to Gingrich, such as "Friends of Newt Gingrich," but it will not return other better options.

The TPM article stated that the campaign had $2.1 million at the end of 2011 and owed over a million dollars in debt. The top level summary on page two of the Year-End report shows the $2.1 million the campaign has in cash and the $1.2 million it currently owes.

The article specified that the campaign's debt includes $1,666.66 to Rick Tyler - a former Gingrich aide who currently manages a super PAC in support of his candidacy. A search for "Rick Tyler" shows the $1,666.66 the campaign owes this former Gingrich aide on page 5166.

The debt also includes $350,000 for private jet flights. A search for "Moby Dick Airways," the private jet company that it has been reported Newt Gingrich uses, shows that the campaign began the quarter owing $451,946, incurred an additional $33,008 in charges this quarter, then made a payment of $133,008 to conclude 2011 with an outstanding balance of $351,946.

Lastly, the article says that the campaign paid $47,005 to Gingrich to buy a mailing list. A search for "Newt Gingrich" shows the campaign's $47,005 disbursement to the candidate for the express purpose of "list purchase" on page 4954.

Policy Fellow Matt Rumsey helped with the research for this post.

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"The News Without Transparency" shows you what the news would look like without public access to information. Laws and regulations that force the government to make the data it has publicly available are absolutely vital, along with services that take that raw data and make it easy for reporters to write sentences like the ones we've redacted in the piece above. If you have an article you'd like us to put through the redaction machine, please send us an email at mbuck@sunlightfoundation.com.

Last night's announcement came as no surprise -- that the President would formally align himself with super PAC run by former White House staffers.  The corrupting influence of money in politics, according to the President's public persona, is a threat wielded by rank-and-file lobbyists and insider trading. It's been about a year since the post Citizens United President Obama, who railed against the threat of dark money in the face of campaign finance regulation.

Messina's announcement did make one helpful clarification -- that the President still supports having a better disclosure law for outside spending. If that's true, he sure has a funny way of showing it. A State of the Union that doesn't even acknowledge that the floodgates have been opened, and continues to paint lobbyists as the problem (while continuing to accept bundled checks from their bosses.)

Now we know why disclosure and reform were absent -- they've been jettisoned, relegated to an awkward reassuring line in the announcement that the biggest checks are now welcome, despite the President's persistent warnings throughout 2010 that we should make no mistake in remembering how unlimited, often secret donations affect public service. Descriptive rhetoric was apparently insufficient, and thanks to Republican obstruction in the Senate (and absolute apathy towards the issue on their own) we'll get to live through the dark money arms race, rather than imagining it.

The announcement suggests that the President negotiated with the super PAC, and that his involvement is predicated on disclosure that meets the standard set by the law. That's a pretty low standard, since it's the law, and since it's the same law that Obama says he's committed to (silently) changing.

We will do so only in the knowledge and with the expectation that all of its donations will be fully disclosed as required by law to the Federal Election Commission.

"As required by law" may as well be written "quarterly, unreliably, and in a way that still permits anonymity". The technically legal presented as rigorously ethical. "We'll follow the law I railed against as ineffective" might be a better paraphrase.

The partisan lines around campaign finance disclosure are about to get rearranged, and it's unlikely that they'll become a more productive force for reliable disclosure, especially if Obama continues to use disclosure as a rhetorical shield (through the visitor logs) and especially if the partisan logic of unilateral disarmament continues to obscure the thousand other choices about transparency and accountability that are involved in creating a Presidential dark money machine.

 

In case you missed it, last night some-time South Carolina Presidential candidate and super PAC founder Stephen Colbert gave a great rundown of the new campaign finance landscape in our elections. Colbert and his team of very sharp writers have smartly illustrated just how out of control our campaign finance system is. In short, it’s crazy: A handful of billionaires pouring incredible amounts of cash is fundamentally changing what our democracy looks like. Colbert’s team doing a great job making sure this news gets outside the Beltway. Watch the video here:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
America's Biggest Super PAC Donors
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

As you’ll see above, Colbert makes the point that these billionaires are doing this out in the open. There’s a little bit of truthiness to that. Yes, super PACs disclose their donors, but there’s plenty we don’t know. That’s because the FEC has done absolutely no work to regulate this new influx of cash. And neither Congress nor the FEC has had the guts to require the real-time, online reporting that would give the public an actual sense of who’s trying to influence their votes. After all, we only just got the super PAC disclosures from last year (!) on Tuesday, and many of the crucial primary elections are already over -- the Republican field is down to just a few left standing. It might have been helpful for voters in those early primary states to know just who was trying to influence them before they cast their votes. And although it’s great that we can name the top 22 donors, there may still be other billionaires who are funneling their money to super PACs through 501c4s, nonprofits which don’t have to tell anyone who their funders are.

Sunlight’s been working on this issue for a while, so we’ve got plenty of info if you’re interested. (Who doesn’t love a little campaign finance disclosure to spice up your Friday?) Our one stop shop for everything you ever wanted to know about super PACs but were afraid to ask is here: http://sunlightfoundation.com/superpacs/. We’ll be continuously updating that page, so make sure to bookmark it and come back.

We also have draft legislation that we think can solve many of the disclosure problems around super PACs, the SUPERPAC Act. We’re writing it out in the open (the way we wish Congress would write legislation) and we welcome your feedback to make it stronger. You can comment on any particular section or on the whole thing. Check it out: http://publicmarkup.org/bill/superpac-act/

The SUPERPAC Act hasn’t been introduced, yet, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt for you to get in touch with your representatives and let them know they should be on the side of transparency, which they could do simply by introducing and/or cosponsoring this legislation.

You can also read more about it, like -- Lisa’s blog post that Colbert showed on-screen and Lee’s analysis of the 22 donors that gave 48% of the presidential super PAC money (with fun charts!).

Our reporting group has also been spending some late nights going through the documents released Tuesday -- and they’re the ones who are tracking the spending so we can give you detailed data.

Want to help shine a light on super PACs in your area? We’ve also got the super PAC sleuth project -- you can check to see if there’s a super PAC in your area, take a picture, and upload it -- and if you want to dig in even further, you can join our Little Sis group, too.

It’s not enough to hope that the 22 billionaires that we know about pick someone we like for our next president (or representative, or senator -- super PACs aren’t limited to presidential contests). It’s up to us to demand transparency and make sure that everyone knows just who is trying to influence our elections.

MPAA head lobbyist Chris Dodd threatened Congress and the President last week, suggesting that lawmakers should remember that they've been bought, and that if they want to continue to enjoy their piece of the entertainment industry's largesse, they should mind their leash:

"Candidly, those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake," Dodd told Fox News. "Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake."

The corruption here is blatant -- Chris Dodd thinks that his industry's contributions should be able to purchase congressional results. This isn't just money in politics buying access, or systemic corruption, or some theoretical statistical link -- Chris Dodd is threatening the Congress with his industry money.

That money buys votes and affects public policy is nothing new. Boehner wasn't handing out tobacco industry checks on the House Floor in 1995 as party favors, after all. But donors' influence over specific public policy decisions are usually left unspoken, or at least not publicly aired. Chris Dodd's sense of influence entitlement has strayed outside the bounds of normal Washington discourse, and perhaps thankfully so. Dodd is doing a fantastic time of demonstrating everything that's wrong with the system.

On top of the sweetheart mortgage treatment Dodd enjoyed as Senator, he parlayed his position as former Senator to become head of the MPAA, where his connections won him a high salary and influential position. His public pledge to forswear lobbying and related revolving door restrictions weren't even a speed bump on Dodd's path through the revolving door, since directing a team of lobbyists and managing political contributions don't count as lobbying under the law. (Common sense, of course, dictates otherwise -- he's a lobbyist.) Cashing in on connections is often par for the course, as is avoiding lobbying disclosure -- both are de rigueur for former Members of Congress looking for lucrative careers.

But as MPAA head Dodd's signature legislative effort (SOPA and PIPA) ran off the rails, Dodd decided to flex his campaign finance muscles, and threatened his former colleagues to get in line.

And that's where things get weird.

Because Senate Democrats have repeatedly told us that they are interested in protecting the integrity of our elections, and that public service and representation should be protected from the undue influence of money in politics. In fact, here's Senator Chris Dodd, talking about the Citizens United decision:

 "If corporations -- foreign as well as domestic -- are allowed even greater and more direct influence over our elections, our democracy as we know it will cease to exist. I won't stand for that. I urge my colleagues, and the American people, to join me in defense of democracy by supporting this amendment and other interim steps to mitigate the damage done by this decision."

Senator Dodd was concerned about corporations having greater direct influence over our elections, but as MPAA head, Dodd feels empowered to dictate public policy to elected representatives, and strongarm them into passing it.

But this shouldn't be awkward just for Dodd.

In his remarks, he's both threatening and imploring his former colleagues to stay on his side, and to understand that it's his job on the line. In other words, we paid you off, and if you want more industry money, you better toe the line. And by the way, we're friends.

This should be extraordinarily awkward for the rest of the Senate, and especially Dodd's colleagues.  Remember, Dodd was first elected to the Senate in 1980, and had various leadership and committee positions throughout his career. This isn't a one off backbench house Member. If a Senator with three decades of tenure behind him can do an about face and use campaign cash to dictate public policy, what about the rest of the Senate?

It's shocking to see Senators who usually rail against money in politics ignore the public threats from their former colleague. I haven't seen any public response at all from sitting Senators, while the public perception of the institution is taking yet another hit. While a public White House petition is calling for an investigation of Dodd, the rest of the Senate (and House) have just quietly ignored his threats, at least in public.

That shouldn't be enough. If the former colleague of all these Democratic Senators is going to accuse them of being bought, and threaten to withhold support, the least they can do is deny the influence of the MPAA's money on their actions. If it's not okay to publicly bully Congress with industry money, then somebody should say so.

And if we don't act, this is only going to get worse. All these outside influencers now have tools at their disposal to credibly threaten to spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars supporting or opposing candidates, while covering their tracks, if they so choose. If a Senator who has publicly committed to protecting the integrity of representation is willing to bully Members with his industry cash, we can expect this is just a small piece of the action.

We should pass lobbying reform, get real disclosure for super PACs, strengthen ethics enforcement bodies, and follow the money as best we can. And maybe we should be glad when the influential have such hubris that they tell us what they're really up to.