More political action committees are giving to the Democratic convention scheduled for next week than the Republican one, to be held in September, according to the recently disclosed lobbyists contribution data available online with the Senate Office of Pubic Records. At least six company PACs have given more than $436,000 to the Democratic National Convention Committee so far, whereas, the Republican National Convention has attracted only $55,000 from company PACs.
The convention host committees often have a list of corporate sponsors, but because they are organized as a 501(c)(3), they can receive contributions from corporations and ...
Continue readingMark Warner biggest recipient of lobbyist dough, new disclosures show (so far)
Mark Warner, who's running for Virginia's open seat to the U.S. Senate and will serve as the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, has received more than $206,000 from lobbyists since the beginning of the year, a Real Time Investigations analysis of recently released disclosure records show.
That makes Warner the top recipient of money contributed directly by lobbyists to congressional campaigns in 2008. Overall, Warner, the former Virginia governor who is seeking the seat now held by retiring Republican Sen. John Warner, has raised $18 million since he announced his candidacy in ...
Continue readingDid Congress write a prescription for Chantix?
Last week, some members of Congress called for an immediate suspension of a drug testing program administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs after ABC News and the Washington Times reported that one of the side effects a specific drug that helps kick the smoking habit could possibly be suicide.
The drug Chantix, manufactured by Pfizer, has been used in programs by the Department of Veterans Affairs as a smoking cessation drug. The ABC report revealed that, "mentally distressed veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are being recruited for government tests on pharmaceutical drugs linked to suicide and other violent side ...
Continue readingFollowing Hastert Through the Revolving Door
Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert's days raising money for his political campaigns might come in handy when he sits down with the clients of his new employer, law and lobbying firm Dickstein Shapiro LLP.
The firm has a long list of clients in the health care sector -- an industry that provided generous support for Hastert's during his time in Congress.
According to lobbying reports filed by the Senate Office of Public Records and the firm's website, Dickstein Shapiro's current and past clients include about a dozen pharmaceutical or health care companies. The health care sector has ...
Continue readingLegislation Languishes in Congress as Miners Fight for their Benefits
Glen Charles, who had been a miner in West Virginia for 42 years, was diagnosed as having black lung, for which he received benefits under the Black Lung Act up to the time of his death in August 2005. Under federal law, surviving spouses of miners who die from the disease are eligible to continue receiving those benefits. But soon after Charles died, his checks stopped arriving, leaving Emma Charles, his 75-year-old widow, financially unstable.
She had to file a claim to continue receiving his benefits, which the Labor Department's Office of Administrative Law Judges denied.
Under current law ...
Continue readingContract but no Contacts: McCain Campaign Official’s Firm Collects Millions from Saudis but no Meetings with Members of Congress
New Iraq FARA filings
The day after President Bush vetoed the 2008 Defense Appropriations Act, mainly because he objected to a section relating to Iraq, a little known New Jersey law firm filed lobbying disclosure forms on behalf of the Iraqi government requesting ...Presidential action to preclude Section 1083 from becoming law as to Iraq," documents show. The firm, Maggs & McDermott LLC, filed registration forms with the Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act on Dec. 29, 2007.
The new Iraqi government was afraid that those harmed by the previous regime, including prisoners of war from the first Gulf War or people ...
Continue readingWorking the phones for Where Are They Now?
Since we've not had too many volunteers making phone calls to verify if the information collected as part of our distributed research project is accurate, I'm making calls this afternoon.
Here's reviewing a few:
Ric Molen went from working as a Legislative Director in Sen. Conrad Burns' (R-Mt.), office to work as a lobbyist with Lent, Scrivner & Roth in 2005 and his clients include major defense contractors such as Qualcomm and CH2M Hill. Since the time, Molen has made campaign contributions of a total of over $9,000, according to campaign finance records from the Center for ...
Continue readingEarmarks Boost Small Kentucky Businesses
After it hired a lobbyist and its employees' contributed to a member of Congress' leadership political action committee, a
Over the last three years, Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., says he has earmarked at least $10.4 million in defense funds for Phoenix Products, Inc., a small company in McKee, Ky., that makes aircraft accessories, including custom V.I.P. interiors for Black Hawk helicopters that offer the finest leather," fabric, naugahyde and carpet, according to the firm's Web site.
In the 2008 Defense Appropriations Act that was signed into ...
Continue readingGovernmentDocs.org Debuts from CREW
Our friends at CREW are providing a fantastic resource for reporters, bloggers, citizens and government document junkies--GovernmentDocs.org: An online compendium of scanned images of documents acquired from government agencies through the Freedom of Information Act by (right now) a handful of nonprofit groups (including the correspondence logs collected through Real Time's FOIA project). Documents that once would have been filed away can have second and third lives online, where they can be read, annotated, tagged, and otherwise scrutinized by anyone who signs up to create an account.CREW also uses OCR technology to make the images word-searchable ...
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