One day I am going to have to actually meet Howard Weaver. He's been on the edge of my life for years now -- he was money and politics database expert Larry Makinson's editor at the Anchorage Daily News in the early- 80's. Weaver is clearly an insightful guy for an MSM editor. Makinson was working with graphs and charts back then to display the relative influence of political donors in Alaska. (Maybe if Makinson and Weaver hadn't left that paper someone would have followed up on their initial leads. Veco was the top political donor there in 1984.) Weaver encouraged Makinson to create the first Open Secrets (for Alaska) and they teamed up together for the second edition. (BTW The Anchorage Daily News won two Pulitzer Prizes for Public Service while Howard was editor there. Makinson went on to give his talents to the Center for Responsive Politics for many years.)
Continue readingPossible Pocket Veto Holding Back Lobbying and Ethics Bill
Fearing a pocket veto of the recently passed lobbying and ethics bill Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Harry Reid are holding off on sending the bill to the President during the August recess. According to Roll Call, "Democrats are worried that Bush could decline to sign the bill in the constitutionally specified 10-day period, leaving lawmakers with no opportunity to overturn the pocket veto." The White House has voiced concerns over three aspects of the bill: the Senate earmark reforms do not go far enough, the requirement of candidates to pay charter rates rather than first-class rates when they travel is unfair, especially considering that it will apply to incumbent Presidential use of Air Force One, and that the revolving door provision is tougher on executive branch officials and Senators than it is on members of the House. Holding the bill is probably the best plan for Democratic leaders as the President does not have the votes to sustain a veto should he choose to veto come September.
In case you were wondering what a pocket veto is and wanted to know how it is used I pulled some useful CRS reports on the subject. The first is titled "Regular Vetoes and Pocket Vetoes: An Overview" and it provides a quick run-down on the difference between the two and the frequency of use by each President. For a more detailed examination about the history, use, and legal rulings on the pocket veto read "The Pocket Veto: Its Current Status". The pocket veto, historically, was only used at the end of the second session of a Congress. President Reagan broke with this tradition by issuing intersession pocket vetoes in 1981 and 1983. President Clinton issued three intrasession pocket vetoes during his time in office. If the current President Bush were to pocket veto the lobbying and ethics bill it would be considered an intrasession pocket veto.
Continue readingA Dose of Transparentium Required?
Received via email this morning....
Recent weather and gasoline issues are proof of the existence of a new chemical element. A major research institution has recently announced the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science.
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The new element has been named Governmentium. Governmentium (Gv) has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.
These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.
Insanely Useful Sites: GovTrack.us
GovTrack.us is a perfect choice to be our first review as an Insanely Useful Website. GovTrack is one of the original web 2.0 type sources for government information: both an excellent example of a new model of political information distribution, and a compelling story of Web-programming genius expressed as an ambitious civic undertaking.
Josh Tauberer, Govtrack's creator and proprietor, has gone far beyond building a simple tool to help track congressional proceedings; Josh's creation has become a fundamental fixture in terms of both government information and structured data, a result of his extensive knowledge of both advanced linguistics, and computer programming. Josh's willingness to volunteer his expertise also led to him helping to form and author the recommendations of the Open House Project, a separate Sunlight project.
Here's Josh Tauberer briefly telling the story of Govtrack: (click below to play)
http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/files/mp3/govtrack.mp3
GovTrack's user oriented design and creative combinations of different data sources have garnered praise from notable sources, including Peggy Garvin, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, and also help make GovTrack useful for a variety of different users.
There's a lot more to this review; click below to keep reading...
Continue readingEarmark Transparency Leads to More Earmark Competition
"It was not supposed to turn out this way." That is unless you understand the motivations of members of Congress. On Saturday, the New York Times reported that earmark disclosure, instead of reducing the appetite for earmarks, is increasing the competition among district and state-based companies and governments to get federal dollars for their projects. Members of Congress are also starting to realize that transparency is actually beneficial to them. For years members of Congress have sent out press releases announcing money they've secured for their district. Now, the information gets released for them. While some voters find earmarking to be an odious, wasteful system, more often than not district voters support earmarked money for their district. As Rep. Jose Serrano (D-NY) says, "Everybody hates earmarks. Everybody loves earmarks."
Continue readingSenate Passes Lobbying and Ethics Overhaul
The Senate just passed S.1, a bill that provides unprecedented online disclosure in both the House and the Senate. The vote was 83-14 and now goes to the White House for President Bush's signature. Once the bill becomes law it will mark the first time that the word "Internet" has appeared in the Senate Rules. I'll have more to say about this bill next week.
Continue readingSenate Showdown on Lobbying, Ethics, and Earmarks
Update: 80-17 in the affirmative, the bill has cleared the 66 vote threshold needed for cloture. Republican dissenters could only muster 17 votes against cloture. Those voting against cloture, I'm missing two names here, were Sens. Allard, Bennett, Brownback, Bunning, Burr, Coburn, Cochran, Cornyn, Craig, Crapo, DeMint, Graham, Inhofe, Lott, and McCain. The full Senate will vote at 1:50 pm to pass the bill. (The two names I missed were Sens. Ensign and Kyl.)
The Senate is debating S.1 now as some Republicans have declared their outright opposition to the bill and their intent to stop it. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) is leading the charge against the bill, along with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), claiming that the bill has gutted earmark reforms and is "business as usual." The bill, which changes Senate rules, requires 66 votes to pass cloture (the 2/3s majority requirement is based on the number of present Senators and thus is 66 and not 67 because of the absence of Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD)). So far, Sens. DeMint, Coburn, Trent Lott (R-MS), and Ted Stevens (R-AK) have voiced opposition to the bill. Other Senators who have publicly criticized the bill or who have been involved in strategy sessions with DeMint and Coburn include Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Richard Burr (R-NC). The cloture vote is happening now, I'll update soon.
Continue readingTed Stevens Threatens to Block Ethics Bill
What happens when you combine the last two posts by Bill and myself? You get a story like this one from John Bresnahan at the Politico:
"Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, whose home back in Alaska was raided by federal investigators Monday in a wide-ranging corruption investigation, has threatened to place a hold on the Democratic-drafted ethics legislation just passed by the House and expected on the Senate floor by week’s end.
The senator told a closed session of fellow Republicans today, including Vice President Dick Cheney, that he was upset that the measure would interfere with his travel to and from Alaska – and vowed to block it."
Sen. Stevens' is apparently upset that lobbyists will no longer be able to freely ferrett him from Washington to Alaska. He is concerned that he may have to use some of those millions of dollars which he obtained with Bob Penney and Bill Allen to actually - gasp - pay for his own travel.
Sen. Stevens could always just stay in Alaska.
Continue readingTed Stevens’ Home Raided
By now, you've probably heard that agents from the FBI and the IRS raided the home of Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, who has been under investigation for his links to Veco Corp., whose executives have been among his top contributors over the years (and top contributors to quite a few others as well. A pair of them have also pled guilty to bribing some state lawmakers. One of the issues federal agents are investigating is the role Bill Allen, the company's CEO, played in arranging renovations to Stevens' home, which doubled its size. Stevens says he paid for the renovations out of his own pocket. This raises a question I've thought of before but have never seen satisfactorily answered -- how many kinds of favors are there that someone can do for a lawmaker that don't necessarily leave a paper trail? If someone uses his time, connections, expertise and so on to help a senator hire the right contractor, it doesn't necessarily leave any kind of record. The senator gets a thing of value--perhaps the best price or the finest quality or the fastest service--thanks the efforts of this benefactor. Perhaps it's not the name of the company to hire, but a whispered stock tip that pays off handsomely or an invitation to be in on the ground floor of a can't-miss real estate development. In any case, our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense are asking Sen. Mitch McConnell to ask Stevens to recuse himself from his committee work. Don Surber notes that Alaska has a dubious trio of lawmakers. It's pretty indicative of the state of affairs of the North to the Future state that the Anchorage Daily News has a tab on this page that says, "More Alaska Political Corruption Stories," which takes the reader to this catalog.
Continue readingUnprecedented Disclosure in House/Senate Reform Bill
Update: The bill passed the House at 11:58 with a vote of 411-8.
The House and Senate Democratic leadership released their new versions of lobbying and ethics reform today containing unprecedented disclosure in for members of Congress and lobbyists. While this bill is not perfect (what bill ever is?) it contains numerous provisions to put more information about what lobbyists are doing and more information about members of Congress online in searchable databases. Below is a list of what is new that is disclosed:
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