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
Ron 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 readingBig Money Still Counts
My long time colleague and friend Nancy Watzman at Public Campaign writes over at the Huffington Post that despite all the talk about netroots and a democratization of fund raising via the Internet that when it comes to campaign finance for the presidential candidates big donors still significantly dominate. In the last presidential election, it was the early money -- raised from people giving a $1,000 or more that established the front runners.
Nancy quotes a Campaign Finance Institute (CFI) study that found in the first six months of 2007, the candidates received nearly three-quarters of their funds in amounts of $1,000 or more. For Giuliani, Romney and Clinton, the figure exceeds 80 percent. When it comes to small contributions ($200 or less), Obama is raised $16.4 million, more than the rest of the Democratic field combined, as well as the entire Republican field combined. As impressive as that is, he still raised three-fifths of his funds in amounts of $1,000 or more. Overall, in the second quarter of fund raising, there was an increase of 84 percent in small contributions over first quarter totals, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP).But still the small money is dwarfed by the big donors.
Continue readingMore Members and Candidates Under Investigation
Since the beginning of the 2005 Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham investigations the Justice Department has seen a beefed up Public Integrity Unit dig into a series of scandals involving congressmen, lobbyists, and other public officials. Roll Call reports today that the Justice Department and the Federal Election Commission are pursuing a new rack of investigations into the improper use of campaign funds by a number of campaigns. Thanks to the ever growing amount of money pouring into campaigns this cycle the Justice Department and the FEC are finding embezzlement, theft, and improper payments to be at an all-time high:
In an interview with Roll Call on Monday, Mason elaborated on his statements last week, indicating that half of the agency’s 10 embezzlement cases involve candidate committees, while three involve political action committees and two are political party cases. Of the five candidate committees, he said three belong to first-time candidates. The FEC investigations more than likely involve staffers or volunteers who appear to have stolen money from the campaigns.
Continue reading
Investigate Earmarks with EarmarkWatch.org!
Wondering who's getting all the earmarks? Who's giving them and why? Do earmarks meet pressing needs or pay off political favors? And which are pure pork? EarmarkWatch.org, an innovative new tool from the Sunlight Foundation and Taxpyers for Common Sense, lets you find out for yourself. Using EarmarkWatch.org, you can exercise citizen oversight of Congress. Dig into the 47 earmarks worth $166,500,000 that Rep. John Murtha inserted (and figure out which benefit campaign contributors). Or take a close look at the $100,000 earmark that Sen. David Vitter secured for an organization that promotes creationism in Louisiana schools. Or the $37 million in earmarks that include defense giant Northrop Grumman as a beneficiary. Right now, you can investigate earmarks from the House Defense Appropriations Bill and the House and Senate versions of the Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations bills. Using a host of online resources, you can find out whether recipients of earmarks hired lobbyists, made campaign contributions to members of Congress, or won federal contracts and grants. You can also add information to eamarks others have researched, or comment on what others have found. EarmarkWatch.org provides you with powerful tools to scrutinize and evaluate thousands of earmarks. To get started, create an account and pick an earmark.
Continue readingMore Earmarks Coincidentally Conferred on Campaign Contributors
The other day a good friend reminded me that transparency only works if people use the information. Brian Faler of Bloomberg News does just that.
The $2 million earmarked for the Samueli Institute for Information Biology, started by Broadcom Corp. Chairman Henry Samueli and his wife Susan, was inserted into the measure by Democratic Representative Peter Visclosky. The Samueli family has contributed thousands of campaign dollars to Visclosky, whose Indiana district is nowhere near either the Alexandria, Virginia, institute or Broadcom, the Irvine, California-based maker of chips for wireless phones and other devices.It's a good thing that earmarks allow members meet the needs of their districts. (In fairness to Visclosky, some to the money he's funneling to the Samueli Institute will be funneled by them to the School of Medicine Northwest of Indiana University, which is in Visclosky's district. It's also worth noting that stories like this are possible largely because of the new rules that the House of Representatives adopted in January, bringing more transparency to earmarks.) Continue reading
Suitably Flip Opens up Bundles of Hsu’s
Running names identified by the media as being part of Norman Hsu's network of donors through federal, state and even municipal campaign finance records, Suitably Flip offers the most comprehensive road map to following the money. Sadly, there's no way to be certain which of these contributions were truly bundled by Hsu, and which might have been independently. While the recently enacted Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 requires campaigns to identify bundled contributions totaling more than $15,000 from registered lobbyists, there's no provision requiring the same sort of disclosure about bundles from convicted felons, or anyone else for that matter.
Continue readingMAPLight.org Launches Presidential Fundraising Widget
Insanely Useful Site MAPLight.org is launching an awesome new widget for anyone to put on their blog or Web site. The presidential fundraising widget allows anyone to track fundraising by the presidential contenders while customizing the information to their own personal preference. MAPLight also announced that they are making FEC information available in an API and will soon be launching a widget on "Money and Votes". For now let's look at the presidential fundraising widget. I customized my widget with only long shot candidates like Mike Gravel and Ron Paul (you can make your widget at http://www.maplight.org/widgets):
Continue readingLegal Fees and Members of the House
This Sunday was the filing deadline for congressional and presidential second quarter FEC reports. Currently both the FEC and PoliticalMoneyLine are posting these reports in real time. Unfortunately, thanks to Mitch McConnell and other obstructing Republicans, we can’t view Senate campaign finance reports in real time because they aren’t filed electronically. If McConnell and his party would let the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act (S.223) pass we wouldn’t have to wait another couple of months to find out how much our Senators raised and spent. In the meantime, let’s take a look at which members of Congress are caught up paying legal fees.
Congresspedia reports that there are currently 10 members of the House of Representatives under investigation. Not all of the reports have been posted yet, so you will notice that Rep. William Jefferson, who is certain to pay exorbitant legal bills, is not yet listed. Some names that pop up that aren’t on Congresspedia’s list of members under investigation include Don Young and John Boehner. Former Reps. Mark Foley and JD Hayworth clearly saved some money in their campaign accounts for a reason.
Continue readingFriends of Mark Foley: $277,367
Alaskans for Don Young, Inc.: $242,306
JD Hayworth for Congress: $102,126
Hastert for Congress Committee: $59,884
Lewis for Congress Committee: $54,756
Friends of John Boehner: $52,938
John T. Doolittle for Congress: $50,584
Rick Renzi for Congress: $25,000
Alan Mollohan for Congress: $22,671
Tim Murphy for Congress: $6,585
Congressional Staff Need to be Transparent Too
Writing in the Washington Post, Paul Kane explicates the fine print on a fundraiser flier sent out by Sen. Charles Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and finds that the draw for prospective lobbyist fundraisers will be congressional staff members -- not members of Congress:
Officially, lobbyists are asked to give or raise $2,000 to be a "host" or $1,000 to be a "DSCC friend" in order to meet "individuals representing" Senate Democrats. That's code word for chiefs of staff and staff directors of committees, according to lobbyists who received the fundraising pitch. The image of the invite that was e-mailed to Capitol Briefing included the file name of "chiefs invitation". Continue reading
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