This week I have highlights from
Paying to not Play: Revisiting the Iron Triangle
In the mercenary culture of Washington, discretion is often the better part of valor. There wasn't much of the former when Mark Penn, who at the time was the senior strategist for the campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton and also chief executive of P.R. firm Burson-Marsteller, met with representatives of the government of Colombia. They sought passage of a trade deal that Penn's other boss, Clinton, had opposed on the campaign trail. Penn ended up a former top strategist. Over on Real Time, my colleague Anupama has unearthed a slightly more valorous lobbyist-turned-campaign official. Thomas Loeffler, a former member of Congress, a bundler for President George W. Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns, and now co-chair of the McCain campaign, is a registered foreign agent (that is, a lobbyist) for the government of Saudi Arabia. Before joining McCain's campaign, Loeffler and his firm's employees averaged almost ten contacts a month with U.S. government officials (including Sen. McCain) during which they would promote the interests of the Saudi government. Since Loeffler joined McCain's campaign, those contacts have altogether stopped. But the payments from the Saudi government haven't. The Saudis have paid Loeffler's firm $3.5 million, even though it's had just one contact with federal officials since Loeffler joined McCain's campaign. Running for the White House in 2000, Sen. John McCain described an iron triangle of "special interests, campaign finance and lobbying." And also, "money, lobbyists and legislation." William Safire pointed out the two sets of three corners, but note the one in common: lobbyists. Even those like McCain (and more recently Sen. Barack Obama), who decry their influence seem to end up in the middle of the triangle.
Continue readingContract but no Contacts: McCain Campaign Official’s Firm Collects Millions from Saudis but no Meetings with Members of Congress
watchdog.net
We are very excited to see a grant from Sunlight Network, our sister 501(c) (4) organization, begin to pay off so quickly. Aaron Swartz announced today the launch of watchdog.net via a post on his blog. His overall goal is to make it as interesting and easy as possible to pull people into politics. He's starting with:
Pull[ing] in data sources from all over -- district demographics, votes, lobbying records, campaign finance reports, etc. -- and let people explore them in one elegant, unified interface. I want this to be one of the most powerful, compelling interfaces for exploring a large data set out there.
But just giving people information isn't enough; unless you give them an opportunity to do something about it, it will just make them more apathetic. So the second part of the site is building tools to let people take action: write or call your representative, send a note to local papers, post a story about something interesting you've found, generate a scorecard for the next election.
And tying these two pieces together will be a collaborative database of political causes. So on the page about global warming, you'll be able to learn more about the problem and proposed solutions, research the donors and votes on the issue, and see or start a letter-writing campaign.
He's developing the site live, and he's looking for help in putting it all together. We hope you'll give it to him.
Continue readingNew Lobbying Disclosure Rule Upheld
I don't want to let this slip by.
The Hill reported on a U.S. District Court decision made on Friday that upheld a key provision of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 (HLOGA). In February, the National Association of Manufacturers had filed suit challenging HLOGA's disclosure provision requiring any organization actively participating "in the planning, supervision, or control" of lobbying efforts that ponies up more than $5,000 in a quarter to disclose their activities and expenditures. NAM argued that the disclosure clause is imprecise and impacts groups that it is not intended to target, and that it violates the First Amendment. They also said that they were worried that the law would also require it to disclose the names of its members.
In a 57-page opinion, Judge Kollar-Kotelly disagreed, saying the clause was "narrowly tailored to serve compelling government interests, and is neither vague on its face nor is applied to the NAM." You can read the judge's opinion by following a link provided by the Campaign Legal Center. The court decision clears the way for the new law to force disclosure of such coalitions' members to the public for the first time on April 21, according to The Hill.
Continue readingWell, Yes!
Rebecca Carr wrote a really good piece that appeared in the Austin American-Statesman over the weekend about PublicMarkup.org. We couldn't help but chuckle over the worried comment of the former president of the American League of Lobbyists, Paul Miller who appears to think that what we are doing with PublicMarkup might - horrors of horrors - allow citizens to have their voices heard on other issues.
"I don't think the way you advocate is to put everything online and say, 'All right American people, weigh in on that,' because then what's next?" Miller asked. "Are we going to let the American people decide our defense policy, our trade policy, our immigration policy?"
Well, we certainly hope so!
Continue readingNew Features at PoliticalBase.com
Launched back in October by CNET co-founder Shelby Bonnie, PoliticalBase.com is a site where you can do some basic research and talk about politics. Their blog is one of my daily reads.
Earlier this week, Political Base unveiled what's new at the site, including a weekly newsletter where they promise to provide a wrap-up of the most relevant stories, sophisticated analysis and expert opinions from their site. You can sign up for the free publication here. Political Base is also collecting contact information on the Democratic Superdelegates, and you can access that here. Hopefully they will encourage folks to contribute to Congresspedia's Superdelegate Transparency Project too.
The folks at Political Base do good stuff. You should check them out.
12th Annual Webby Awards
Earlier this week, The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences announced their nominees for the 12th annual Webby Awards, and MAPLight.org is one of five nominees for best Politics Website of 2008. MAPLight.org, a Sunlight Foundation grantee, is based in Berkeley, Calif., and uses databases to reveal connections between campaign contributions and legislative outcomes on both the federal and state levels.
Why Tuesday?, another site we like a lot, is one of five nominees fo best Political Blog. Our friends at Why Tuesday? raise awareness about America's broken voting system and to find solutions to increase voter turnout and participation in elections.
The Webbys have been dubbed the "Oscars of the Internet" by The New York Times," and are the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. In other words, it's a big deal. The Webbys are actually two awards, with the academy awarding a winner for each category, and Internet users from around the globe can register and vote for their choice in each category for a Webby People's Voice Award. Click here to vote. The academy will announce the winners on May 6th, with an awards ceremony set in New York City on June 9th and 10th.
Continue readingAnother Record Year for Lobbying
The Center for Responsive Politics reports (with data from their lobbying database):
$2.8 BILLION Corporations, industries, labor unions, governments and other interests spent a record $2.79 billion in 2007 to lobby for favorable policies in Washington ... this represents an increase of 7.7 percent, or $200 million, over spending in 2006. And for every day Congress was in session, industries and interests spent an average of $17 million to lobby lawmakers and the federal government at large. The drug industry spent more than any other, increasing its lobbying 25 percent last year.
Pretty soon this is going to add up to real money.
Continue readingAnother Way to Think About Campaign Finance Reform?
The Forum, a political science journal published by Cal-Berkeley, just published an interesting article by Michael J. Malbin, executive director of The Campaign Finance Institute (CFI), titled "Rethinking the Campaign Finance Agenda." The journal published Malbin's article as part of their special issue entitled "Has the U.S. Campaign Finance System Collapsed." In an email, Malbin wrote that the premise of the article stems from CFI's Project on Participation: Strengthening Democracy through Volunteers and Small Donors.
In the article Malbin argues that the focus of campaign finance laws should shift from attempting to check corruption by limiting contributions and certain expenditures to a more positive agenda of promoting competition and candidate emergence. He makes the case that limits have limits, and that CFI's ongoing research on the promotion of equality through small donors and volunteers shows promise. It's worth a read, even a skeptical one.
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