In a campaign that's supposed to be about an ailing economy, there's just one financial indicator that remains consistently robust: Call it the Gross Political Product.
The latest signal of just how profitable a business politics remains is available on Sunlight's Follow the Unlimited Money, which shows outside spending at nearly $465 million as of Sunday evening. That's more than the total for the entire 2010 campaign, the first that took place following the Supreme Court's landmark Citizens United decision, which allowed corporations and unions to give in unlimited amounts.
This cycle's outside spending ...
Continue readingFederal election commissioners versus the Federal Election Commission
In an odd twist even for a federal agency known for its fecklessness and divisiveness, some commissioners are challenging their own commission. Typically they merely oppose each other--along partisan lines.
Bizarrely, a group suing the Federal Election Commission submitted a statement supporting its case in court this week by Republican commissioner Donald McGahn. Which means McGahn is backing a suit against the body on which he serves.
The rigmarole started in June but came to a head Thursday, when a complicated case involving obscure aspects of campaign finance law landed at the Eastern District Court of Virginia. Judge T.S ...
Continue readingElection law? What election law?
A Republican lawyer wonders where the FEC enforcers are and a donor sneaks a reporter into a Karl Rove meeting for financiers. Are even the bankrollers getting fed up with the political big money game?
Continue readingFirst light on dark money: Bloomberg gun control group discloses donors
When Mayors Against Illegal Guns Action Fund, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's vehicle for pushing for tighter gun control regulation, ran ads Sunday morning calling on President Barack Obama and his Republican opponent, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, to offer plans to reduce gun violence, they became the first dark money group to publicly disclose its donors.
Bloomberg's group, a social welfare organization set up under section 501(c)4 of the tax code, is the first to comply with a U.S. District Court ruling requiring such organizations, which normally keep their donors secret, to disclose them ...
Continue readingLibertarian think tank: Get behind DISCLOSE (or something like it)
A bill requiring super PACs and other outside political groups to include the names of top donors on their ads will hit the Senate floor next month, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said Friday. Meanwhile, an unlikely source warned the Republicans who are expected to filibuster it that they are standing in the way of the inevitable.
Whitehouse's comments came in his home state at a conference of liberal bloggers, where he was on a panel about the effects of Citizens United, a 2010 Supreme Court case that opened the door for unlimited campaign spending by corporations and unions ...
Continue readingDemocrat, Republican political collectors ask FEC to OK texted contributions
The economy may be largely lackluster but the political sector is so flush with cash it appears on the verge of creating a whole new profession: Campaign contribution brokers.
That would be the result if the Federal Election Commission approves a bipartisan request that it made public late Wednesday afternoon. Filing on behalf of two campaign consulting groups, one Democrat and one Republican, the blue-chip Washington law firm Arendt Fox urges the FEC to approve a system for texting small contributions to political campaigns that would allow middlemen to collect as much as 50 cents on every donated dollar.
The ...
Continue readingThe News Without Transparency: Super PAC Donations Used as Campaign Weapon
Last month Politico reported that corporate contributions to a super PAC set up to support Democratic U.S. Rep. Howard Berman... View Article
Continue readingThe iPad Proposal: e-File for Favorite Things
The day of gadget envy reckoning is upon us as Apple unveils their latest iPad and it seems only natural that the Sunlight Foundation watch this media frenzy in regards to our policy proposals.
Continue readingSuper PAC disclosures: Simmons hedges his bets; PayPal co-founder hearts Ron Paul
Monday was the day that super PACs on a monthly filing schedule file financial disclosure reports with the Federal Election Commission. Sunlight Foundation's Reporting Group is watching as they go online to see who is writing big checks. Highlights so far:
- American Crossroads, which put super PACs on the map in the last election cycle with mega-donations to GOP candidates, took in just over $5 million in January, almost all of it from one man: Harold Simmons, a major Republican donor who also has written checks to super PACs backing three of the party's presidential candidates.
- The super ...
Lobbyist Bundler Data Includes Giving to Super Committee
Of the 12 members of the failed supercommittee that were tasked with cutting $1.2 trillion from the federal deficit, five... View Article
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