Murtha challenger trounces incumbent in fundraising; outraises Boehner and Pelosi too
While the ethics scandals that have multiplied around top fundraisers and earmark recipients of Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., have yet to involve him directly, he now faces a challenge from a different direction: A well-financed opponent.
William Russell, the Republican aiming to do battle with Murtha in the general election, trounced the longtime legislator with an astonishing $2 million in campaign contributions raised--more than House leaders John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi, more than double that of the next-highest grossing challenger, and nearly three times that of Murtha's haul of $712,000, the most recent campaign finance disclosures filed with ...
Continue readingTurkey’s influence over lawmakers surfaces in Ohio hearing
Labeling the killing of 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1923, many at the hands of Ottoman government, an act of genocide has been a controversial issue in Turkey, among some historians, in the U.S. Congress, and now in the unlikely venue of the Ohio Board of Elections, where recent hearings indirectly considered the government of Turkeys connection, if any, to Turkish advocacy groups in Washington.
Backed by lawyers from the Turkish American Legal Defense Fund, Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio, filed a false claims complaint against David Krikorian, who ran against her in 2008 as an independent and ...
Continue readingWhat I’m Reading This Morning
The former aide to an earmark opponent in Congress is filing suit against a client for whom he helped secure... View Article
Continue readingSo Many Earmarks
When we launched TransparencyCorps at the end of June, we ran a few small earmark campaigns, to digitize little batches of earmark request letters that legislators had posted on their websites. These campaigns wrapped up very quickly, and at the same time, the House decided to release earmark request letters en masse, and we didn't have to do our campaigns per-legislator anymore.
Given the demonstrated interest in earmarks, we decided to run a much larger campaign, for all the earmarks released by the House Appropriations Committee, starting with those for the Commerce, Justice, and Science Subcommittee. These were released in a single massive PDF, which I split up into individual 1- or 2-page request letters.
This campaign involved 1,183 letters, and we had the campaign run for 5,537 completed tasks. Total volunteer time, as measured on TransparencyCorps: over 472 hours. That's nearly 20 man-days. Here are the results.
Continue readingThis Week in Transparency – August 14, 2009
Here are some of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and allies over the past week:... View Article
Continue reading5,000 earmark requests databased
Our friends at Washington Watch have had some success in their effort to turn messy, un-formatted member earmark requests into usable, analyzable data:
We've collected more than 5,000 earmarks, input by people across the country who want to get a handle on how members of Congress and senators direct spending to special projects in their districts and states. (You can see how the annual spending process is going in our FY 2010 Spending Tracker, by the way.)
But there's plenty more to do, and the chance to win a Kindle for helping out.
Continue readingThis Week in Transparency – July 24, 2009
Here are some of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and allies over the past week:... View Article
Continue readingWashington Watch Releases Earmark Request Entry Form
For the first time in 2009, members of Congress had to release their earmark requests to the public. As we've documented before, this information is scattered over 535 Web sites in all kinds of different formats. Jim Harper and Washington Watch have now released a tool that allows volunteers to capture that earmark information for posterity, centralize it in a single location, and allow for all kinds of additional analysis and investigation. And, if you participate, you can win a Kindle!
Find out more here.
The more members we get entered, the more meaningful research we can do about ...
Continue readingWashingtonWatch Rolls-Out Earmark Crowd-Sourcing Tool
Jim Harper, Webmaster at WashingtonWatch.com, can use our help this weekend. WashingtonWatch is beginning a soft roll-out of its new... View Article
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