I've heard this defense somewhere before, and that time too it seemed to be both off-point and inaccurate: a spokeswoman for Rep. Jerry Lewis' team of defense attorneys said that the chair of the Appropriations Committee "complied with all legal disclosure requirements." Lewis was invited to get into the initial public offering of a new bank (an invitation that was not sent out to the general public); his initial investment of $22,000 is now worth almost $60,000, according to the Associated Press, which adds this interesting information:
Continue readingScandals Continue to Take Toll
If Jack Abramoff were a horror movie monster I would not want to be Rep. Robert Ney (R-Ohio), AKA Bob Ney. Last night, the former wonderboy of the Right Ralph Reed lost convincingly in the Georgia Lt. Governor Republican primary to Casey Cagle, 54%-46%. Reed saw his stock plummet as the lobbying and grassroots work he did with his buddy Jack Abramoff poured out of Senate hearings and court documents into the newspapers. The former head of the Christian Coalition, his eyes set on the Presidency, felled himself by showing his true colors. Mike Crowley at TNR’s The Plank writes that “Jack Abramoff can so far be officially credited with destroying three careers (Reed, Tom DeLay, and David Safavian).” Despite what some have said the money-in-politics scandals are taking their toll on Washington.
Continue readingDoolittle Family Cashing In on Donations
A story in today’s Roll Call (subscription required) notes that California GOP Congressman John Doolittle’s wife is earning more money than ever this year from fundraising activities on behalf of her husband.
It’s been reported earlier – including in a blog here last week – that she’s been collecting a 15 percent commission on all contributions to her husband’s leadership PAC. Julie Doolittle runs a fundraising business out of the family home in Oakton, Virginia – though it doesn’t advertise and she is apparently the only employee.
Continue readingBlogs and Federal Spending Database
It looks like Ellen beat me to posting about Sen. Coburn's hearings on a federal spending database. Aside from the bill's co-sponsors Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and OMB's Gary Bass, blogger/journalist Mark Tappscott gave testimony as well. Tappscott, who blogs at Tappscott's Copy Desk, voiced his support for the bill, and in his written statement declared his belief that a database of federal spending could start a new generation of blogs devoted to monitoring different issue areas.
Continue readingWhat You Don’t Know Can Hurt You
Senator Tom Coburn is holding a hearing this morning with the above title. The hearing is focusing on the nearly complete lack of transparency for federal spending decisions and his bill to remedy that. He says his bill would create a "google-like search engine" that will disclose all the recipients of federal funding. Could there possibly be a sane argument against this? The co-sponsorship alone (Sen. McCain and Sen. Obama) suggests that this legislation is significant.
A number of folks are testifying this morning, including Gary Bass, Executive Director of OMB Watch. OMB Watch is working on just such a searchable online database of all grants and contracts as a grantee of Sunlight. It's pretty certain that the database will be ready (look for it in the early fall) before Coburn's bill becomes law given the indefensible hurdles the bill faces. But the OMB Watch database will reveal how "what you don't know can hurt you" and hopefully give a push to enacting a Coburn-type bill down the road.
Continue readingReport from Sunlight North
I’ve just started this job with Sunlight a little over a month now, and one of our first projects, providing mini-grants of $1000 to $5000 to innovative people with risky or brilliant ideas about opening up government is already making me a little less morbid than I was about a year ago. Its nice to be reminded we’re a country teeming these persistent citizens, daydreaming at midnight, and over 20 different ideas have come in the door so far from Arkansas to Hawaii. If we can’t fund all of them, which we can’t even begin to, hopefully we can at least provide some boost, some direction, some connections to make something possible.
Continue readingMembers of Congress Beat the Market
Last week, Ken Silverstein, in reporting a story on Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Fla., and his sweetheart condo deal, began the piece this way:
A few years back, university researchers found that during the 1990 stock market boom U.S. senators beat the market by 12 percentage points a year on average. By comparison, corporate insiders beat the market by 5 percent, and typical households underperformed by 1.4 percent, the Christian Science Monitor said of the research. Financial experts . . . say the senators' collective achievement is a statistical stunner, too big to be a mere coincidence.Continue reading
Interstate Commerce in Campaign Contributions
In the older and simpler days of American politics, if you gave a campaign contribution to a candidate for Congress, you had every expectation that the money would support their campaign. These days that expectation is often wrong.
For the past few election cycles – particularly since the GOP won control of Congress in 1994 – there’s been a steady increase in what you might call interstate commerce in campaign contributions. You give to a Congressman from Kentucky, say, but the money eventually winds up in Florida or Michigan, or some other district with a tight race.
Continue readingWhat Good is Transparency When it Becomes a Form of Blindness?
Brent Cunningham of the Columbia Journalism Review poses this rhetorical question at the end of a post on transparency in journalism. What he is referring to is the push by many bloggers for journalists and their publishers to provide information regarding the author’s political background, affiliations, and biases toward the story. “A reporter covering a proposed smoking ban, for example, should tell readers whether she smokes,” Cunningham writes, “The assumption being that if she smokes, we can infer that her sympathies lie with opponents of the ban, and vice versa.” Cunningham, before posing his final question, concludes by stating, “To assume that we can know what someone thinks by identifying their personal traits, habits, and predilections is a dangerous notion, and really has nothing to do with clarity.” So, can transparency in the political sphere become “a form of blindness”?
Continue readingFriday Potpourri: Polls, Money & Ted Stevens
It’s Friday. There’s plenty of news in the air, but most of it on subjects – like the disintegrating Middle East – that don’t relate directly to money and politics. So it’s time for some end-of-the-week miscellany. Let’s start with polls.
Beware early polls – especially generic ones. The AP has a story today on an Associated Press-Ipsos Poll that shows that “Americans by an almost 3-to-1 margin hold the GOP-controlled Congress in low regard and profess a desire to see Democrats wrest control after a dozen years of Republican rule.”
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