That title sounds weird, but the whole process going on on the Senate floor right now is weird. In the... View Article
Continue readingGAO: Small Number of Lobbying Disclosures Are Wrong
The GAO is bound by law under the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 to file an annual... View Article
Continue readingDrug trial data at your fingertips
Unless you or a family member has suffered a serious illness, it’s unlikely that you’ve run across the site ClinicalTrials.gov,... View Article
Continue readingLocal Sunlight
Every week I climb into the depths of the local political blogosphere to find the Sunlight. I use this series... View Article
Continue readingGillibrand’s Sunlight Report Pulls Back the Curtain
Back when Kirsten Gillibrand was elected to the House of Representatives in 2006, she promised to post her daily schedule... View Article
Continue readingK Street Boom: At least 1,699 new clients in 2009
Lobbying firms and special interests have filed nearly 1,700 new registration forms so far in the first quarter of 2009, according to a review of lobbying disclosure forms available online at the Senate Office of Public Records. As the federal government pumps up spending and intervenes in the troubled financial markets, K Street firms appear to have had no shortage of new business.
Our first pass at a database of the registrations shows that some of the financial firms that have received funding under the Troubled Asset Relief Program including Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs and Fifth ...
Continue readingBloomberg: Dodd faces campaign cash shortage
Kristin Jensen and Jonathan D. Salant report that Sen. Christopher Dodd is facing a cash crunch as he gears up for his reelection bid:
The Democrat has less than half the campaign cash he had at a comparable point in his last re-election bid, when he faced far fewer hurdles. Last year, he emptied an account built up largely through financial-company employees' donations to pay for a presidential run; now, he has to replenish his coffers even as the firms his panel regulates struggle with losses and back away from their one-time champion turned critic....Dodd began the year with ...
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Timely disclosure fail
I'll be posting some info on where we are with new lobbying clients in the first quarter of 2009, but in the meantime (and with apologies to the sometimes work unsafe Fail Blog), thought I'd post one of the search results I came across while going through the Senate Office of Public Records lobbying database (click the image to see it larger):
According to the disclosure form, the effective date of registration was Jan. 1, 2002. It showed up on the Senate site on March 29, 2009, a mere 87 months late. I'm not sure whether this ...
Continue readingNPR: Charges against Stevens dropped
Sen. Ted Stevens testified that he and his wife had "lots of things in our house that don't belong to us" in his trial on charges that he'd failed to report tens of thousands of dollars worth of gifts from an Alaskan company that sought his favor; he was found guilty, but charged prosecutorial misconduct (claims that seemed to have merit). Now NPR reports that the Justice Department it will drop all charges against Stevens:
Holder's decision is said to be based on Stevens' age " he's 85 " and because Stevens is no longer in the Senate ...Continue reading
Read the Bill: The Commodity Futures Modernization Act
As part of the Read the Bill campaign, we’ve been writing a series of case studies highlighting bills that slipped... View Article
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