Would you talk to this man?
The San Francisco Examiner reports on a proposed bill by San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly that would require lobbyists to wear identification badges when they contact city officials. This seems kind of silly to me. Lawmakers know these lobbyists and should know when they are being lobbied. They don't need to read badges to figure out what is going on. If anything greater and more timely, as in immediate, disclosure to the public should be implemented and not some sort of cattle branding.
(Pictured above: The Open House Project's John Wonderlich, our lobbyist for Big Transparency.)
Continue readingInternational Sunlight
Riffing off of the estimable Nisha Thompson's Local Sunlight feature, there are a couple of Sunlight related stories happening across our northern border and across the pond in Europe. First, our friends in Europe are taking after our Congress and considering passing sweeping lobbying disclosure for the EU for the very first time:
The European Commission has proposed new rules that could require European Union lobbyists to register for the first time, as part of a new transparency effort spawned after news reports of Abramoff’s activities broke.
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A Long Time Coming
Governor Bobby Jindal swept into Louisiana's top job with a pledge to clean up the notoriously corrupt state and has made good by spending his political capital on the passage of sweeping ethics reforms set to permanently change the culture of the Bayou State. Jindal's arguments for the need for rapid ethics changes centered on the need to encourage businesses to invest in the state without requiring them to stuff the right person's pockets. But the part that most sticks out for us at Sunlight is this:
“This is huge,” said D. W. Hunt, a veteran lobbyist at the Capitol. “This is a sea change. This will seriously, dramatically change things. The meta-theme is the transparency.”
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Republicans Demand Campaign Cash for Votes
It looks like congressional Republicans have seen MAPLight.org - the insanely useful money-for-votes tracker - and they like the idea. (Also see: National Association of Home Builders.) That idea being that money equals votes and votes equal money and therefore interests that they vote in favor of should kick back some campaign cash to reward their votes:
With the House Democrats’ refusal to grant retroactive immunity to phone companies — stalling the rewrite of the warrantless wiretapping program — GOP leadership aides are grumbling that their party isn’t getting more political money from the telecommunications industry.
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Happy Birthday Jack!
Today is Jack Abramoff's 50th birthday. He'll be celebrating in a federal prison in Cumberland, MD.
In case you forgot what this was all about, or never followed the massive corruption scandal, the Washington Post has a feature on their coverage, which won the Pulitzer.
Continue readingComcast Blocks Public Access to FCC Hearing
The Federal Communications Commission held a much noted and anticipated hearing in Massachusetts on Monday on the issue of net neutrality. Seating was limited but the hearing was open to the public. Comcast, a foe of net neutrality, decided to take advantage of the limited seating by paying people to sleep in the seats so that net neutrality supporters and others who wanted to watch the hearing would be left outside in the cold. Nice.
In relation to my previous post on coal industry shenanigans, we also need to require disclosure of these types of deceptive practices.
Continue readingCoal Industry Spending Freely to Influece Congress
The coal industry is in the middle of a massive $40 million campaign to make sure that Congress, the presidential candidates, and the American people get to know that black rock in their stockings a little better - and to keep politicians from doing anything to threaten the burning of said unwelcome stocking guest in coal-fired power plants. If you've paid attention to the presidential race you probably noticed that a number of the debates were sponsored by a coal front group called Americans for Balanced Energy Choices and that those debates did not dare to feature a single question about global warming. CNN received $5 million dollars from the group. I'd say they got a good bang for their buck.
Facing a bruising fight over climate change, the coal industry is on the political offensive this election year to ensure that no matter who wins in November, so does coal.
Billions of dollars in corporate profits are at stake for the companies that mine, ship and burn the nation's most abundant domestic fuel.
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Ted Stevens Explains Earmarks
Noted without comment. This is Part I of Stevens' PR offensive against the anti-earmark brigades. You can check out Parts II and III at his Web site. The rest is in the extended entry:
LegiStorm Posts Staffer Personal Financial Disclosures
LegiStorm - an insanely useful site of congressional information including staffer salaries and other disclosures - has, for the first time, posted PDFs of the personal financial disclosures that some staffers are required to file. For every member of Congress, at least one staffer must file a personal financial disclosure. If a staffer is making the maximum pay, as some chiefs of staff do, they must file a disclosure. Staffers hold a lot of power on Capitol Hill and are often overlooked as recipients of undue influence from outside groups. LegiStorm notes this in their press release:
Continue readingMost disclosures are relatively mundane and appear to demonstrate those staffers have no discernible potential conflicts of interest, Friedly said. However, hundreds of staffer disclosures reveal ties to interest groups and lobbying firms, either as a past job, a spouse's work or a future employment agreement. Others reveal lucrative side jobs, adding as much as $100,000 or more to their federal pay.
Trent Lott: I’m Not Under Investigation
Last week, the Wall Street Journal wrote an exclusive article (I blogged about it here) detailing that a federal investigation into Mississippi lawyer Richard "Dickie" Scruggs' bribery of local judges had expanded to include former Senator and revolving door operator Trent Lott. The Sun Herald reports today that Lott denies being under investigation and that he has simply been interviewed as a potential witness:
"I may be called as a witness," Lott said, "but I've been assured that I'm not under investigation, and rightly so because nothing was done to justify that."
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