Ryan Singel of the Threat Level blog discovers a curious phenomenon: Between 2001 and 2006, high level executives of AT&T and Verizon contributed hardly any money at all to the campaigns of Sen. Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Starting in March 2007, they apparently discovered a real affinity for him, writing checks totaling some $48,500 to the West Virginia senator's campaign committee. Perhaps that's because Rockefeller had come around to their views:
Both companies are being sued for allegedly turning over billions of calling records to the government, while AT&T is also accused of letting the National Security Agency wiretap phone calls and its internet backbone. A federal judge in California allowed the suits regarding the eavesdropping to continue despite the government's attempt to have the suits thrown out on the grounds they will endanger national security. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reviewed that decision in August. The judges seemed reluctant to toss the cases, but have yet to issue a ruling. On Thursday evening, the Rockefeller-led Senate Intelligence Committee is marking up a bill to re-amend the nation's spy laws. While the text of the bill has not yet been released, the bill reportedly includes a way for the telecoms to escape the litigation against them.The legal immunity for telecoms was included in the bill. Ellen Miller had previously noted the industry's clout with Congress--"the telecom industry has spent $24 million lobbying Congress so far this year, and almost $52 million lobbying in 2006. In the two-year 2006 cycle, the latest cycle on record, the industry gave over $6.4 million dollars in political contributions to the House and Senate." Always worth remembering that those millions end up in the coffers of particular politicians at particular times. By the way, all the numbers cited here and above come from the invaluable OpenSecrets from the Center for Responsive Politics--the ultimate scorecard for following politics. Continue reading
Earmark of Aquarius Defeated
Just got word, via Ed Frank of Americans for Prosperity, that an earmark to fund a museum near Woodstock that was requested by both Sen. Charles Schumer and Sen. Hillary Clinton. Columnist Robert Novak noted some campaign contributions in connection with the earmark, which promised $1 million to the Bethel Museum. Novak wrote,
Bethel typifies the earmark epidemic because political insiders are often found pushing pork. The museum is funded principally by billionaire Alan Gerry's foundation, which has annual investment income of $24 million. Federal Election Commission records show that Gerry has donated at least $229,000 to political campaigns, and his wife, Sandra, has contributed $90,000 over the past 10 years (including $26,000 in the last election cycle to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, headed by Schumer). On June 30, the Gerrys gave the maximum $9,200 to Clinton's presidential campaign, three days after the two New York senators put the Bethel earmark into the Labor-HHS bill.Sen. Tom Coburn and Sen. Jon Kyl sponsored an amendment that diverted the funds from Bethel to the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant program. Incidentally, the Bethel Museum earmark is still up for grabs on EarmarkWatch.org, as are many others. The Earmark of Aquarius isn't the only sketchy one in there, and EarmarkWatch.org gives you the tools to find them. Continue reading
Wilkes Defense to Raise ‘Business as Usual’ in Washington
The prosecution has rested in the trial of Brent Wilkes, the contractor on trial for bribing former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham. The last paragraph of this Washington Post story notes that Wilkes' defense will be that he was merely playing by the rules of the Congressional Favor Factory (now open 24 hours a day!):
[Wilkes' attorney Mark] Geragos said in his opening statement that he plans to show that Wilkes was only doing business as it is normally done in Washington, not trading favors for contracts. He is set to begin calling witnesses on Thursday.If that's the case, I will be just as eager to read about the defense's presentations as I was about the prosecution's, which included details of expensive meals and trips to distant vacations spots, including Hawaii. If Geragos is looking for examples to back up his claim, he might want to check the Center for Responsive Politics' travel database, available here, to see that members of Congress and their staff took more than 30 trips to Hawaii since July 2005 (when federal agents made headlines by raiding Cunningham's home), 137 trips to Las Vegas, 23 trips to Jamaica, and 48 trips to Aspen, to name a few. Continue reading
10 Questions for the President
TechPresident is continuing its mission to create new innovative ways to communicate and interact with presidential candidates by launching 10 Questions. Here’s how it works: you submit a question via YouTube or other video services and tag it 10questions. Then, your video will be loaded to the 10 Questions site where it will be voted on by others in the online community. The top 10 questions will be submitted to the candidates, who will then answer the questions on their campaign sites. Citizens can then vote on whether the candidates actually answered the questions. This experiment in people-powered online democracy allows regular citizens to submit questions and, more importantly, to determine which questions the candidates should answer instead of a debate moderator.
Below is our question. Don’t forget to submit one and don’t forget to vote.
Disclaimer: Micah Sifry and Andrew Rasiej are consultants for the Sunlight Foundation.
Congressional Oversight of Blackwater Hampered by Lack of Documents
Nine months before Blackwater
One member who requested information to bring some oversight and accountability to the Blackwater found that neither the State Department nor the Defense Department complied with ...
Continue readingRon Paul and Real Time Transparency
My continuing joke about Ron Paul around the Sunlight office is that he would win in a landslide if all of his supporter’s MMORPG characters were allowed to vote. (That’s massively multiplayer online role playing game for those not hip to the slang.) All jokes aside, it appears that Paul’s supporters can sure raise a lot of money. In the 3rd Quarter of this year Ron Paul raised just over $5 million putting him slightly behind a former frontrunner John McCain, who raised $6 million. Paul has now set a goal of raising $12 million in the 4th Quarter and is using his Web site to show progress in achieving that goal.
Where Howard Dean had his bat Ron Paul has his Statue of Liberty. The Statue measures the amount raised so far, updating in real time, as Paul reaches his goal of $4 million in October. While Dean and others used these kinds of visuals tools to highlight fundraising during a key period this kind of fundraising transparency has never been done in real time over an entire quarter. Paul’s Web site also shows the names and hometowns of the donors. All of this data cries for one thing and one thing only: user generated content!
Paul’s Internet supporters instantly took all of this information and created their own site, RonPaulGraphs.com, which breaks down the fundraising into tons and tons of graphs. Here’s a couple of my favorites:
Continue readingOversight in the Dark
On January 29, 2007, Rep. Steve Cohen requested information on a private military company, Blackwater USA, from the Departments of State and Defense. Cohen had read some news articles about the firm, and wanted more information. Congress has broad authority to oversee the Executive Branch. What happens when a member, on his own initiative, tries to exercise that authority by inquiring about a controversial company? At RealTime, Anu provides the answer, which suggests that journalists may well have as good or better access to government information as members of Congress. No wonder members are often reacting to the latest headlines, rather than developing policies that would prevent such occurences (for example, perhaps it would be better if, in a combat theater, rules of engagement are uniform, not one set for soldiers and the other set written by the State Department).
Continue readingBudget Graph Shows How Money is Spent
TheBudgetGraph.com just released their 2008 poster that brilliantly shows where taxpayer dollars are spent in the Federal government. Not surprisingly, over one-third of the poster is made up of defense spending. The office/agency checking in with the lowest budget is also not surprising - the Office of Government Ethics with $12 million. See more numbers below or click through to check out the poster yourself.
Grants for citizen muckrakers
We’re announcing the availability of “mini-grants” of $1,000 to $5,000 to fund original ideas, tools, Web sites, and blogs that create a better, more dynamic relationship between members of Congress and the citizens they represent. See here for the full press release.
Continue readingAfflict the Comfortable and Comfort the Afflicted
A major new nonprofit investigative journalism effort was announced today -- ProPublica -- that will certainly have a huge salutary impact on the health of our media, and by extension the health of our democracy. This is a important development.
Continue readingProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that will produce investigative journalism in the public interest. Our work will focus exclusively on truly important stories, stories with "moral force." We will do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.
59063
