Public Citizen released a new report yesterday with some breathtaking figures in about lobbyist campaign contributions.
Major findings include that lobbyists and their political action committees have given over $100 million in campaign contributions to members of Congress since 1998 and that the top 6 percent of lobbyists -- those giving a total of at least $10,000 each over eight years -- gave 83 percent of all the money. Nearly three-quarters of all registered lobbyists had given no campaign money above the limit of $200. Many of the top recipients of the money are on the appropriations committees. Thirty-six members of Congress have received a half-million dollars or more from lobbyists and their PACs since 1998. Former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) have each received more than $1 million. Of the 36 members in the half-million dollar club, 21 are Republicans and 15 are Democrats.
Continue readingAre They Out Of Touch?
One of the things that drives the public nuts is when their elected representatives forget their roots. That's one reason that the golfing junkets, the fancy dinners, and trips on corporate jets that master lobbyist Jack Abramoff routinely provided Reps. Tom DeLay and Bob Ney (among others) drove people crazy.
Continue readingThe Data Tells The Story
Kudos to my colleague, Paul Blumenthal, who writes the terrific In Broad Daylight blog for us, for doing the analysis to answer the question I raised this morning regarding whether the Republican lawmakers who voted against oil and gas company interests yesterday got less money from those interests than their Republican counterparts who stayed loyal to their cash constitutents. The answer: Yup, they sure did! Check out his analysis of the money from this election cycle. We're going to dig a little deeper now and see what else we find out.
Continue readingHere’s What I Really Want To Know
There's a story in the New York Times that yesterday the House voted to take back some of the billions of dollars in incentives it had given to oil and gas producers, with lots of Republicans voting against oil company interests. Sounds like a man bites dog story, but is it?
Continue readingSpinning Doors
A couple of days ago, Political Money Line -- a high-priced political money research firm -- released an analysis (scroll down for a summary) of a new database that shows that 318 former members of Congress are now lobbyists. Seems like it could be really interesting information, but alas, you don't get much more than a headline from this fee-based service unless you are a subscriber. (And we're not subscribers.)
From an article in The Hill (also subscription based!) we get some highlights:
Continue readingDigitizing Personal Financial Disclosure Records
My colleague, Larry Makinson, moaned and groaned a couple days ago that the personal financial disclosure records for members of Congress were not available in electronic form. Well, Sunlight noticed that too and that's why one of the first grants we made was to the Center for Responsive Politics to create a searchable online database out of those paper records.
CRP has collected, scanned and posted PDF images of Personal Financial Disclosure reports for members of Congress since 1995. In case you don't know these reports show which members are the wealthiest, which own certain stocks, which members maintain (or have recently paid off) large debts, etc. In short, there's some really important information in those forms that might tell us how lawmakers vote, the earmarks they propose, and why. With paper records, analyzing this data is so...last century. Meaningful and timely analysis is practically impossible. (This is no accident...)
Comedy Comes to Congresspedia
Congresspedia now has links to the Colbert Report for each member interviewed in his "Better Know a District" series. You would never know that learning about your member of Congress could be so entertaining. Check it out, like Craig Newmark has, on the home page of Congresspedia.org.
Continue readingA Day Well Spent
The Sunlight staff spent yesterday at the Personal Democracy Forum conference (podcasts are available), a day well spent. After comparing notes this morning each of us came away with new information and new connections in the intersecting worlds of technology and politics. If you were there you know what I mean. Probably best of all we had a chance to meet some of our colleagues (like Josh Koenig at Trellon who is principally responsible for this website) and Michael Bassik of MSHC Partners who designed our Congresspedia web ads. (We'd never met even though Michael's office in just down the block from ours!). Alas, there were lots of folks there that I wanted to connect with, but didn't have a chance, like Mike Krempasky of RedState.org, Rebecca Donatelli of Campaign Solutions, Joe Green of Essembly.com and Jerome Armstrong, but knowing that we were all there gives me the excuse to call them up -- or email them -- to try to get together for coffee or lunch. And finally, there were some wonderful longstanding colleagues like David Donnelly, Allison Fine, and Nancy Watzman to brainstorm with about the future directions of Sunlight. All in all, quite the remarkable collection of people.
Continue readingIt’s What’s Legal That’s The Problem
It's often been said in Washington that the problem of corruption is not what's illegal, but what's legal and sanctioned by the system. A system of legalized bribery is how Washington operates. But things just might be changing. Today's New York Times report that the FBI's newly found focus on public corruption includes more than 2,000 ongoing investigations must be rocking Congress. And astonishingly, the FBI has established a new website where citizens can report their hunches about ongoing corruption in government.
Launching “Sunlight Labs”
I've long had the fantasy of one-click political influence disclosure. Imagine pressing one button and finding everything you need and want to know about a member of Congress, or a corporation, labor union or individual trying to influence her. Web 2.0 technologies - Web services, API's, XML, AJAX, RSS - now make that possible.
To speed up making this happen, this week we decided to create a small, informal "Mash-Up Lab." We are going to treat this as a pilot project for six months to experiment on our own and to provide ad-hoc technical support to nurture other mash-up projects -- some of which Sunlight has already nurtured, to realize a one-click future. These will be projects that strategically and tactically bring together nonprofit organizations, exemplary developers, and web-applications.
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