Chris Zubak-Skees : Sunlight Foundation

Super Committee, Boehner speech protests linked to major labor group

by Chris Zubak-Skees

investigations

Sep 16, 2011 12:03 pm

Our DC, a SEIU-linked protest group that stopped the first Super Committee meeting, has been regularly delivering a pro-jobs message to congressional Republicans: with some 100 protesters outside House Speaker John Boehner's speech at the Economic Club of Washington yesterday, according to organizers, who said the protest was in support of the American Jobs Act.

Last Tuesday, it organized a protest at the first meeting of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, the so-called the Super Committee.

“Jobs! Now!” about 25 unemployed or underemployed protesters shouted outside the room, bringing the meeting to a brief halt. “Jobs! Now ...

Sunlight Live to cover the hidden influence in Obama jobs address

by Chris Zubak-Skees

investigations

Sep 7, 2011 12:40 pm

This Thursday at 7 p.m. President Barack Obama is set to address Congress and the nation when he’ll unveil his latest plan to create jobs. Already, a preview of the speech shows proposals consistent with the positions of influential groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO. Both groups have spent millions to influence elections and policies. With that in mind, the Sunlight Foundation will cover the speech with live video, data and commentary at sunlightlive.com.

Some of the glimpses into Obama's plan were provided by the president himself during a Labor Day ...

Super committee member Upton creates joint fundraising committee

by Chris Zubak-Skees

investigations

Aug 31, 2011 4:13 pm

Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., one of the members of the Joint Select Committee for Deficit Reduction, filed paperwork Tuesday with the Federal Election Commission to create a joint fundraising committee. Contributions collected by the committee will be split between Upton's campaign and leadership PAC.

The creation of a joint committee, the Upton Victory Committee, allows fundraising that benefits both Upton's political action committee, TRUST PAC (Team Republicans for Utilizing Sensible Tactics), which distributes thousands of dollars to Republican candidates, and his campaign, Upton for All of Us. FEC rules require that money given to the joint committee be ...

Vendor blamed in outage paid $1.4 million last year for services

by Chris Zubak-Skees

investigations

Jul 27, 2011 6:00 pm

Fireside21, a web services company fingered as a possible culprit behind the mass outage of congressional sites in the wake of Monday's televised presidential address, received over $1.4 million from House offices for web services last year, disbursement data shows. The total highlights the dominance of just a few companies providing congressional web services, a category in which five companies received 79 percent of the $5.5 million pie.

On Monday, speaking during a prime-time address, President Barack Obama asked viewers who favor a balanced deficit reduction approach to contact Congress. Several members' websites stopped responding to requests ...

Sunlight Live to cover Dodd-Frank anniversary hearing

by Chris Zubak-Skees

investigations

Jul 20, 2011 2:06 pm

This Thursday, one year after the president signed a sweeping new financial reform bill into law, the Senate Banking Committee will ask tough questions of regulators in charge of making it real. And Sunlight will cover it live.

President Barack Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Act (officially the “Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act”) into law on July 21, 2010. The final bill made massive changes to how the financial industry is overseen, in response to a devestating fiscal crisis that stemmed in large part, experts agree, from recklessness in the financial sector.

The Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group ...

And then there were eight Palin accounts

by Chris Zubak-Skees

investigations

Jun 21, 2011 4:58 pm

How many email accounts did Sarah Palin use as Alaska governor? Last week, the answer, tallied in an earlier story, was “at least six.” This week, it’s “at least eight.”

Long-time Palin watcher Andrée McLeod wrote Sunlight to point out another address hiding in plain sight. Gov.palin@yahoo.com, which Sunlight identified, turns out to be a separate account from govpalin@yahoo.com (note the lack of a dot), which we didn’t. We skipped over that, because some email providers — including Gmail — ignore the dot, treating those as the same account, but a quick test confirmed ...

Palin used six email accounts as governor

by Chris Zubak-Skees

investigations

Jun 15, 2011 9:03 am

On Friday, reporters in Juneau, Alaska, began to sift through and scan more than 24,000 pages of emails to and from former Governor Sarah Palin, just released in response to requests made when she was governor. But they had full coverage of just two of her email accounts--and perhaps not the most interesting ones--because Palin had at least six accounts: one for public contact, one for internal state business, one for anything confidential and others for a mix of state and personal business.

Palin’s use of private accounts has been previously reported, but the just-released emails--which Sunlight is ...