At a meeting Thursday, tucked between a resolution condemning the recent terrorist attacks in Kenya and a panel on the ongoing civil war in Syria, members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will vote on the confirmation of 25 prospective diplomatic appointees, a number of them wealthy supporters of President Barack Obama.
Continue readingObama-Sharif meeting: A look at the Pakistani lobbying that came before
As President Barack Obama prepares to welcome the sometimes controversial Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to the White House on Wednesday, U.S. officials are quietly preparing to release some $1.6 billion in aid for the south Asian nation that had been frozen ever since U.S. forces captured and killed 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden living in comfort not far from the Pakistani capital.
That raid -- which resulted in widespread anger in Pakistan against the U.S. and suspicion in the U.S. against Pakistan -- is just one of a number of thorny issues between the two ...
Continue readingBiggest players in shutdown drama raised big bucks in Q3
Some of the biggest players in the shutdown drama also saw some of the biggest returns in the third quarter, Sunlight's new Real-Time FEC tracker shows.
Continue readingShutdown spells big gains for nation’s gross political product
While federal workers and beneficiaries are taking an economic hit, the shutdown seems to be proving a financial bonanza for the nation's political consultant class. Both Republicans and Democrats are churning out ads focused on the shutdown. Guess what? Each blames the other for it.
Continue readingOGP: Opportunities and Limitations
It’s been two years since the Open Government Partnership (OGP) was first announced. As Sunlight shares recommendations for the US’s OGP National Action Plan, we’re looking forward to attending and participating in the upcoming summit in London.
OGP has demonstrated explosive growth, with the initial 8 founding countries expanding to 60 in a very short time, and more likely to be announced soon. This rapid expansion is an affirmation of government officials’ desire to grapple with transparency issues, and demonstrates an appetite -- particularly from the public -- for “open government” and making it more accessible to the people it serves. OGP has been important in helping governments move in that direction, particularly Brazil’s passing a new FOI law and the US committing to implement the EITI.
OGP itself has been quite open in discussing its limitations, and no doubt there will be more of that at the next meeting. But it’s important, in advance of the upcoming summit, to offer a few observations about OGP’s structural limitations to provide context for the new national action plans.
Suggestions for the OGP National Action Plan
The Obama Administration is expected to release the second version of its Open Government Partnership National Action Plan this fall. The Open Government Partnership (OGP) is the primary multi-national initiative for open government, founded in 2011. The original US plan, released on September 20, 2011, covered a lot of ground, but also suffered a lack of detail and ignored several of the most pressing transparency issues. (Both money in politics and national security went uncovered.)
Given the US’s leadership role in the world (and in OGP), and the variety of issues the country faces, we hope the US National Action Plan will demonstrate how an administration can use transparency reform to help address some of the most fundamental challenges it faces.
The following are four Sunlight priorities for the upcoming US National Action Plan, and are priorities that we’ve often repeated to White House officials in our work.
Continue readingWho’s going to blink? Influence profiles of eight who could end the shutdown
If the government shutdown is going to be resolved, it's going to take compromise by some key players who so far haven't shown much willingness to bend. So who might influence these influentials? Sunlight decided to examine some of the monied interests behind key figures in the debate.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, in many cases the special interests are closely aligned with their beneficiaries' positions in the standoff, which largely revolves around the health care debate.
Here's a closer look:
Barack Obama
The president is the most prodigious fundraising weapon in the Democrats' arsenal. His campaign's success in ...
Closure of disclosure, part II: Political ad filings go dark
The government shutdown is turning into a major denial of service for journalists and other citizens interested in tracking the influence of big money on politics.
Not only is it preventing scrutiny of campaign finance records -- potentially leaving voters in at least one Louisiana special election with NO information on donors before they head to the polls -- it's also making it next to impossible to provide up-to-date information on political ad buys.
The shuttering of the Federal Communications Commission's website has severely hamstrung Political Ad Sleuth, a tool that the Sunlight Foundation and Free Press developed last year to track those buys at hundreds of TV stations across the country.
And there are plenty of them -- some of them attempt to capitalize on the shutdown itself.
There’s no summer vacation for education lobbying
Though the fall doesn't officially start for another couple of weeks, for most Americans summer ends when school buses begin running their routes and college football broadcasts return to Saturdays. While educational institutions from kindergartens to law schools are welcoming students back, there was no summer vacation in Washington, where their lobbyists have reported spending more than $43 million lobbying Congress and the executive branch so far this year.
It's easy to understand why. Altogether, the federal government spent $47.5 billion on elementary and secondary education in 2012, the last full year for which statistics are available ...
Continue readingAd spotlight: GOP family feud
The rift in the Republican party is turning into an air war.
Usually, video attacks are reserved for election opponents or members of the opposite party but as members of Congress returned home for their August recess, members of the GOP appear to be gleefully violating the late President Ronald Reagan's "11th commandment" -- the one that said you shoul never speak ill of a fellow Republican. What we've spotted so far:
Freedomworks is going after John Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican leader in the Senate leadership. The Tea Party-affiliated think tank is accusing the Texas Republican of betraying ...
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