If you’ve got something to hide and you don’t want anyone to find it, hide it in plain view. That’s an old idea, closely akin to another old saying: If you can’t dazzle them with BS, bury them with paper. Both, sadly, apply today. For here we are in 2006 and the United States Senate – unlike everyone else – still files its campaign contributions on paper, as if the year were 1956 and computers were expensive and suspect.
Today the only things expensive and suspect are the Senate campaigns themselves. They’ll be collecting their last-minute campaign dollars from people whose identities won’t be known until weeks after the election is finished.
Continue readingPulling the Local Strings from DC
If you’re looking for a spot-on analysis of how this year’s elections are going to be both nationalized and local, don’t miss today’s column by E. J. Dionne in the Washington Post:
The blogosphere has created central repositories of political information -- including news of very local developments that would otherwise go unnoticed on the national level -- that can speed the flow of intelligence to activists across the nation. And the recruitment of candidates is ever more the job of national party committees, not local officials or organizations. Continue reading
The Morning After
It's always useful to look at things the morning after they've passed. So what did we really get in the so-called "earmarks reform" rule change?
Here's the good part: All legislation of all types must have lists of all earmarks and the names of lawmakers who proposed them before their considered. That's terrifically comprehensive.
Continue readingJack’s Back and The Mayor of Capitol Hill Pleads Guilty
And you thought it was safe? Today, Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud and violate federal lobbying laws and to making false statements. Ney, formerly known as the Mayor of Capitol Hill, is the first lawmaker to plead guilty in the ongoing investigation into the activities of uberlobbyist Jack Abramoff. (Please read TPM Muck's Tribute to Bob Ney.) This guilty plea comes one day after the House passed a miniscule earmark reform, a lame replacement for lobbying and ethics reform. Not long ago the Washington Post wrote this, "Some lawmakers and political analysts believe that voters could punish incumbents during the November elections if Congress passes a minimalist ethics bill. The chances of such a backlash could rise, these critics say, if there are more indictments or guilty pleas later this year." Polls are already showing that individual lawmakers involved in the Abramoff scandal are suffering in their chances for reelection.
Continue readingEarmark Reform Passes
Well, it looked like the paltry earmark reform measure wouldn't pass earlier today, but pass it did. By a vote of 245-171 congressmen approved a measure that will shine some light onto some earmarks. As expected Republican appropriators voted against the measure along with the majority of Democrats who called the measure too little, too late. The Associated Press lede shows that the Congress has not exactly fulfilled their promises to enact sweeping ethics and lobbying legislation, "The House is taking a modest step to bring into the open special projects lawmakers slip into legislation, seemingly abandoning more ambitious plans to clean up lawmaker relations with lobbyists." Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., has asked the chair and ranking member of the Senate Rules Committee to come up with a similar rule as the House earmark reform rule.
Continue readingEarmark Exposer Updated
Carl of the Sunlight Labs has updated the Earmark Exposer (thanks, Ezra Klein, for the name) to include 477 HUD earmarks: Google Earth + HUD Earmarks + Labor HHS House Earmarks As you can see, Carl color-coded the bills, and included links to each. Enjoy browsing through, and tell us what you find. Tips and resources for citizen muckrakers on this page. We are still working on a simple report about the responses to the Labor HHS earmarks experiment.
Continue readingEarmark Reform Faltering
Members of the House Appropriations Committee appear to be balking at the prospect of change in House rules that would attach the names of lawmakers to the earmarks they've inserted into spending bills. As the Times article notes, this rather modest change would apply only to the House (not the Senate), and would exempt defense earmarks (where the real money is) from scrutiny. I've noted before that there are ways around the disclosure provisions proposed in the rules change, which potentially could make it harder to identify who's getting earmarks, because lawmakers could use obscure descriptions--any company incorporated in Harrison, N.Y., in 1923--to avoid the rule's requirement that they take credit for their earmarks. Still, with all it's limitations, this measure would shine a little light on spending bills already drafted but not yet passed--even a modest disclosure measure is better than none.
Continue readingTransparency Bill Passes Both Houses
Last night the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act passed both Houses of Congress on voice votes. This is a great victory for transparency in government and for the beginning of the end to the "Closed Door" government. Contracts and grants will be listed in this online searchable database so that all Americans can keep track of the government's spending. I certainly hope that transparent government will help reduce the distrust in government that exists among such a large portion of America. As Sen. Tom Coburn's website reads: "Transparency is the foundation of all accountability." But this victory, one that is especially sweet for the online community, should not be claimed to be something that it is not.
Continue readingWall Street Drifting – Slightly – Toward Dems
There’s an interesting story from Bloomberg News today on a shift toward Democrats in political giving this year by Wall Street. The story, by Michael Forsythe and George Stein, cites donation totals from 11 top securities firms, showing $3.1 million going to Democrats in this year’s congressional elections versus only $1.9 million to Republicans.
Bloomberg is certainly well plugged in on Wall Street and the story features interesting quotes from industry insiders. But if you read the story and got the impression that there’s been a real sea change on Wall Street, you’d be wrong.
Continue readingDebuting Sunlighters and the Sunlight Network
The Sunlight Network -- our sister 501 c 4 organization -- was launched yesterday with great fanfare. You should check some of the initial ways we hope to create a network of citizens who are engaging in accountability work. There's a pretty neat new project you can find there that you can work on immediately. We also launched a social networking site for Sunlighters -- the commmunity of folks who want to work with us on a regular basis. The primary purpose of that site is to provide a useful forum for distributed research and activism -- to figure out together the kinds of things it makes sense to work on jointly. It enables individuals to connect one on one, as groups, and work collectively on projects. Think of it as MySpace for people who want to demand more transparency from lawmakers.
Continue reading
59063
