President Barack Obama raised more than $43 million for his second inaugural, including seven-figure donations from some of the nation's biggest tech, defense and energy companies, a report filed on Saturday with the Federal Election Commission shows.
The top donor to the 2013 presidential inaugural was AT&T, which gave $4.6 million in equipment and services. That single donation equalled more than all of the inaugural committee's smallest donors (those who gave $200 or less than therefore did not have contributions itemized in the FEC report) combined.
Other members of the seven-figure check club: Microsoft, which gave ...
Continue readingBillionaire green dumps at least $750,000 into Bay State special election
The super PAC funded by a former hedge fund manager turned environmental activist has made its latest move in the Massachusetts special Senate election, donating $250,000 to another super PAC run by the League of Conservation Voters, which supports the primary campaign of Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., according to Federal Election Commission reports.
Tom Steyer, a billionaire based in San Francisco, has shaken up the race by giving at least $750,000 to the NextGen super PAC, to which he is the sole donor so far. Steyer's ire is aimed at Markey's opponent, Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass ...
In years before Waco explosion, fertilizer trade groups lobbied for lax oversight
The tragic explosion north of Waco, Texas, was preceded by years of lax oversight. As Reported by Bloomberg, OSHA had not inspected Adair Grain’s West Fertilizer Company facility since 1985. Mark Drajem and Jack Kaskey also reported that when other agencies—including the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency—did swing by, they found violations and issued thousands of dollars in fines. With a dubious track record, how did the Texas plant avoid regulation?
Part of the blame rests with Congress and the special interests that target it. Consider ...
Continue readingOpenGov Voices: Creating an Early Warning System for Political Activism
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of the Sunlight Foundation or any employee thereof. Sunlight Foundation is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information within the guest blog.
Adam Green is the CTO of UniteBlue.com -- a social network for progressives based on Twitter. UniteBlue connects and organizes political activists on a national and state level. You can reach. Adam at adam@uniteblue.com.
One of the great challenges for political activism in each of the 50 state legislatures is providing timely information on bills as they move through the legislative process. The data provided by the Sunlight Foundation Open States API is comprehensive, but combing through it to find the limited number of bills that activists have the time to focus on can be overwhelming. I have found over 88,000 bills in the current session alone. We are now developing an early warning system at UniteBlue.com that can assist our volunteers in filtering this information flow down to a manageable level.
While the entire process will take months to complete, in this guest post I’d like to propose a triage model that can be used as a first step. Triage is the medical model used in hospital emergency rooms and during disaster responses. A high flow of patients is screened using certain “signatures” to determine which ones need to be seen first, such as blocked airways or dangerous vital signs. The process of triaging the high flow of bills coming from the Sunlight data will follow a similar model.
Continue reading2Day in #OpenGov 4/19/2013
NEWS ROUNDUP:
- Oakland, CA, trying to stay out of San Francisco's open data shadow, has a new budget visualization website. Open Budget Oakland, put together by OpenOakland, launched this week with visualized budget data for 2011 - 2013 and will soon be updated to include budget blueprints through 2015. (Tech President)
- It looks like Mark Sanford has let his relationship issues get in the way of his ambitions once again. The NRCC cut ties with Sanford immediately after reports surfaced this week that his ex-wife had accused him of trespassing on her property earlier this year. Now they're being joined by a number of well funded outside groups. (Roll Call)
- Jamaica is taking steps to foster an open data community in hopes of sparking a start up culture and improving governance. Officials highlighted a number of steps being taken by the country at the "Developing the Caribbean" conference last week in Kingston. (O'Reilly Radar)
- The ethics probe into Rep. Michele Bachmann is slated to take an interesting turn. Her former Chief of Staff, Andy Parrish, is expected to testify that Bachmann's presidential campaign inappropriately paid an Iowa State Senator to work for her. (POLITICO)
- The Obama Administration's recently released open government self assessment shows progress, but also presents a rose colored view of some of the administration's actions. (POGO)
- Open Government Indonesia is pushing a new portal called "Lapor" to encourage citizens to report corruption by public officials. OGI is part of the OGP and is made up of a number of government agencies and NGO's. (Future Gov)
- France looks set to institute wide-reaching asset disclosure rules for public officials in response to recent corruption scandals. Rules have already been put in place for government ministers and a there is a law pending that would extend disclosure to members of parliament. (Transparency International)
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