A grassroots movement with some big name support is calling for Washington’s favorite banker to cut his ties with the Fed. Some 30,000 signatures have been collected on a Change.org petition urging that the chief executive of embattled JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, resign or be removed from the New York Federal Reserve's board of directors. The petition creator, Simon Johnson, is the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. In the past Change.org waged successful campaigns on issues ranging form the Bank of America debit card fee, to working conditions in Apple’s Chinese ...
Continue readingRomney super PAC challenges FEC on disclosure
The Federal Election Commission is trying to get some of the country's top super PACs to be more open about where they spent their money -- and is getting shrugged off by the super PAC supporting Mitt Romney.
This year, the normally quiescent FEC dinged six of the nation's top 11 spending super PACs, some multiple times, for not disclosing the states in which they aired political ads during the presidential primary and caucus season, one of the requirements on spending reports related to elections. In response, the super PAC supporting Mitt Romney, Restore Our Future, challenged the FEC ...
Continue readingMost Memorial Day mentions in Congress come from non-veterans
Memorial Day routinely brings beach traffic and barbecues and, in Congress, a spike in mentions of the holiday established to honor America's fallen fighters, as you can see above in the illustration from Capitol Words.
But of the lawmakers who have mentioned Memorial Day most during the last 16 years, according to the Sunlight Foundation's tool for tracking the frequency of terms in the Congressional Record, none are active-duty veterans. Only one of the top ten, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, has logged any time in the military. The East Texas congressman served six years in the Air Force ...
Continue readingFEC likely to OK campaign contributions via text message
In a busy day at the Federal Election Commission, commissioners on Thursday appeared ready to approve a proposal to allow small campaign donations via cell phone carriers, and, in a separate case, said they would a consider whether a congressional challenger's ads for his plumbing company have to be treated as electioneering communications.
The three Republican commissioners were ready to give the green light to allow small, anonymous donations to campaigns via a text message aggregation service. But a Democratic commissioner, Ellen Weintraub, wanted some questions answered and said she was not ready to vote on it. The FEC ...
Continue readingDespite ‘unlikes’ over Facebook, Morgan Stanley still has friends in high places
The disappointing debut of Facebook’s IPO and Morgan Stanley’s seemingly unequal treatment of its customers in providing inside last-minute cautions about the social network giant has investors and regulators upset, and lawyers readying for business. But when the nation's lawmakers start making the inevitable inquiries (key House and Senate committees already are making noises) about the deal and its chief underwriter, Morgan Stanley will not be defenseless. The financial services giant has plenty of political capital from campaign contributions and a veteran lobbying team.
Morgan Stanley has heavily invested in lobbyists. In the last three quarters of ...
Continue readingCalifornia dreaming: Obama bags big political donations in Silicon Valley, Hollywood
For President Obama, there's gold in the Golden State. According to the California News Service, he's making his 15th trip to the state as president, trips that have included 35 fundraisers. Many of those have oscillated between two important fundraising constituences for the president -- Hollywood and Silicon Valley. With Obama's three fundraisers today and tomorrow, this time it's NorCal's tech community that is getting the chance to shower multi-thousand dollar checks to the president.
There are conflicting signs about which community can be a bigger fundraising draw for the president and his allies. The vast ...
Continue readingSuper PACs spent almost $1 million in Tuesday’s primaries
Super PACs and other independent groups spent almost $1 million in Kentucky and Arkansas, the two states that held primaries on Tuesday.
So far this year, super PACs have spent at least $16 million on congressional races, a fraction of what they've pumped into the presidential campaign. But the smaller amounts spent in congressional races have sometimes produced big results, pushing a few candidates to primary victories. So far, super PACs and other independent group have spent on 88 races.
In Kentucky the big spender was the Liberty for All super PAC,which run by a few twenty-something supporters ...
Private equity invests in lawmakers
Whether or not the much-in-the-news private equity industry has been the bane of the economy or a job creator, one fact remains uncontested: it has been very, very good for political fundraising, for Republicans and Democrats alike.
With $22 million contributed this election cycle alone, according to Influence Explorer, top recipients look like a who's who of powerful politicians. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Republican Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., have collected large amounts, along with Sen. Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat who recently served as chairman for his party's senatorial campaign committee and is himself facing ...
Continue readingBroadcasters sue to keep political ad files offline
The nation's broadcasters sued the Federal Communications Commission Monday over a rule that requires them to post political ads bought at some stations online.
At risk: a ruling designed to make information about political ad buys available via the Internet in time for the fall election. Sunlight has calls into both the FCC and the National Association of Broadcasters, the group suing the agency, for comment. So far, no response.
But Corie Wright, senior policy counsel for Free Press, and a longtime advocate of the ad buy rule, called the lawsuit "nothing more than an attempt by the NAB ...
Continue readingSuper donors provide bulk of money to super PACs
Super PACs have broken the $200 million mark in donations and $100 million in spending, with much of the money coming from a few donors with deep pockets whose largesse has changed the dynamics of political campaigning.
Some of the big players in the current cycle, many of whom have been big donors for decades, made their first super PAC contributions to support one of the major presidential candidates, then shifted focus to Congressional contests, with some pledging millions for tight races.
Harold Simmons, a major contributor to conservative super PACs, has been in the spotlight for his $13.5 ...
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