The private rocket that made history early this morning when it blasted the first commercially-launched payload for the international space station into orbit also was fuelled by a decade-long, multi-million-dollar political effort to pry funding from a sometimes skeptical Congress.
Since its inception in 2002, SpaceX, the company behind Tuesday's successful launch, has spent more than $4 million lobbying Congress and given more than $800,000 in political contributions, according to data compiled from Sunlight's Influence Explorer. Many of the company's campaign donations went to key members of Congress in charge of the budget for NASA, which ...
Continue readingDangerous medical device ‘loophole’ still wide open
Consumer groups are crying foul over bipartisan legislation to extend user fees for pharmaceuticals and medical devices. They say that the bill, which the Senate hopes to pass this week, is missing a provision that would close a dangerous loophole in medical device safety.
Right now, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not have the power to require medical device manufacturers to prove they've fixed known safety flaws before they put a new device on the market. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., both introduced bills earlier this year that would give the FDA this ...
Continue readingMillion dollar check club: Who’s writing big checks to super PACs
There's always been ways for big money to find its way into politics, but one of the changes ushered in by the super PAC era is the opportunity to flaunt it.
Instead of having to spread their influence around in donations to various committees, deep-pocketed donors can now show their influence with a flourish, writing seven figure checks -- like the $1 million one, filings with Federal Election Commission made over the weekend show, that the National Air Traffic Controllers union gave last month to Priorities USA Action, the super PAC backing President Obama's reelection bid, or the $2 ...
Continue readingSuper PAC spending crosses $100 million: Where did it all go?
Now that super PACs' spending in the 2012 election has just crossed the $100 million spending mark—more than twice the amount spent in independent campaign expenditures by all outside groups at this point in the 2008 election--Sunlight decided to reflect on what else voters might have gotten for all that money.
With $100 million, you could:
- Pay the annual tuition for 2,207 students at most expensive undergraduate education in the country—Columbia University;
- Snap up 632 median-priced single-family homes in metropolitan areas from the country's housing market;
- Fill the tank of the most gas-guzzling SUV—a Chevrolet ...
Facebook in Washington: Baby steps of a giant
Facebook, which has set off a frenzy of market speculation with its plans go public as early as Friday, isn't just raising its profile on Wall Street. As the social networking giant prepares for its initial stock offering, Sunlight decided to take a look at how Facebook is doing when it comes to political networking. Our finding: The company with the famously hoodied CEO is beginning to grow up, at least in the ways of Washington.
In the first quarter of this year, Facebook spent $650,000 lobbying Congress, according to a report filed with the Senate Office of ...
Continue readingJPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon met with Treasury Secretary on Volcker in March
Newly published meeting logs from the Treasury Department show that Jamie Dimon, CEO of embattled JPMorgan & Chase, had a private audience with Secretary Timothy Geithner to discuss the Volcker rule and other issues on March 6.
The logs also show that JPMorgan executives attended two other meetings that same month. Volcker was also on the table at another Treasury session the same day, this one a larger meeting with Deputy Assistant Secretary Lance Auer that also included representatives with other groups such as Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs.
The day before, JPMorgan representatives were also present at another group meeting ...
Continue readingTrying to track JPMorgan? Treasury Dodd-Frank meeting logs not up to date
Updated 4:22 p.m. The Treasury Department has now fixed the link to March meetings with outside groups concerning implementation of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. A spokesman also just called to thank us for alerting the agency to the missed deadline.
Something curious happened after we contacted the Treasury Department press office Tuesday to inquire why it had missed the April deadline for releasing information about meetings with outside groups around implementation of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law--meetings that often include financial heavyweights such as JPMorgan Chase & Company.
We did not get a response -- neither to our initial ...
Continue readingSuper PAC profile: Ending Spending aids Palin-endorsed Senate hopeful in Nebraska
A Florida-based super PAC that made more than $1 million in contributions in 2010, almost all of it underwritten by the former CEO of online brokerage TD Ameritrade, is emerging as a factor in Tuesday's Republican Senate primary in Nebraska.
In the three days before the election, the Ending Spending Action Fund has dumped almost $255,000 into the race to help Deb Fischer, a state senator who has suddenly turned an already-heated contest for the GOP Senate nomination into a three-way race. The group has not yet disclosed any donors this year, but in the 2010 campaign cycle ...
Continue readingJPMorgan better at hedging political bets than financial investments?
JPMorgan Chase & Co. may have lost a $2 billion dollar bet on the markets, but the investment giant's campaign contributions show a much more conservative approach, featuring mega contributions to both political parties -- and both of this year's leading presidential candidates.
The company and its employees have been generous donors to political campaigns. JPMorgan's political largesse has totaled more than $21 million since 1991, according to Influence Explorer. The Center for Responsive Politics lists the storied bank as one of President Obama's top 2008 donors; his haul that year made him the top recipient of JPMorgan ...
Continue readingJPMorgan not alone
With the news focused on JPMorgan Chase & Company's $2 billion "mistake" and company's lobbying campaign at financial agencies to permit the sort of trades that led to the loss, it's worth reviewing some other examples where industry have pushed hard to limit the reach of the Dodd-Frank financial law, arguing as JPMorgan did against a heavy hand because they could handle the risk.
The emphasis is on "some:" the list really is much longer. The law famously set in motion more than 220 rulemakings of which just under a third have been completed. Dominating the dockets of ...
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