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Tag Archive: Investigations

Biggest loser in Pennsylvania primary isn’t Santorum

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That sniffling sound you hear is not Rick Santorum's supporters bemoaning his decision Tuesday to pull the plug on his presidential campaign but the managers of the Keystone State's television stations counting the ad dollars they have lost. There are 46 of them, according to the Community Media Database created and maintained by Rob McCausland.

So far this year, the race for the Republican presidential nomination has brought a bonanza of ad dollars to broadcasters in states that have played host to early contests, the more so because of the rise of super PACs, political action committees that ...

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Brazil-U.S. trip part of larger PR strategy

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Dilma and Obama 2011

Warming up for a summit of hemispheric leaders in Colombia later this week, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff today wraps up a brief visit to the United States, where she met President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and leaders of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Despite the high-profile dance card, Reuters quoted some Brazilian officials as complaining that their president didn't get quite the reception she and her country deserves.  "There's a feeling that most people in Washington don't appreciate what's happening in Brazil," the news agency reported one official close to Rousseff as saying ...

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Super PAC fallout: Stories we like

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President Obama has stirred a lot of controversy with his comments about the Supreme Court, but you should hear what his 2008 opponent, Sen. John McCain, has to say about the justices.

The Arizona Republican's characteristically unvarnished assessment of the high court and its ruling overturning his landmark campaign finance reform bill are in an interview that National Public Radio did with him and the co-author of the legislation, former Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisc. NPR used excerpts for a series aired last week on money and politics, but has just made the full transcript available. It's a must-read ...

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Super PAC profile: State bankers target lawmakers over Dodd Frank law

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A group of state-based banking associations have launched a new Super PAC--known as "Friends of Traditional Banking"--to target lawmakers who they consider hostile or friendly to their concerns: namely, the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law.

"Everyone knows that traditional banks didn't cause the economic crisis, but that didn't stop Congress from heaping massive new regulations on them and their customers," reads the group's website. "The Dodd-Frank regulatory reform act...was supposed to target Wall Street abuses. It didn't. Instead it aimed squarely at traditional banks and their customers. When it all shakes out, it will reduce ...

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Play ball! How MLB teams rank in political giving

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It's opening day of Major League Baseball's 2012 season, so Sunlight has decided to take a look at which teams are the heaviest hitters when it comes to political giving.

Turns out the deepest pockets don't always correlate with most home runs.

Orioles statue

The Baltimore Orioles finished dead last in the American League East last year with a dismal record of 63 wins and 93 losses, but giving by their politically active owner, Peter Angelos, has made the Charm City team the champions of campaign giving.

Angelos gave more in the 2002 election cycle--some $2.1 million--than he ...

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The best coverage money can buy? New Philly newspaper owners are old hands at exchanging money for influence

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It had to have been a weird scene Monday at the headquarters of Philadelphia's two daily newspapers when some of the region's biggest political money men -- frequent targets of some of the journalists' aggressive coverage -- showed up to tell reporters they now own the place.

The sale of the Philadelphia Media Network, the corporation that owns the Pulitzer Prize-winning Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, is another sign of the continuing financial struggles of daily newspapers, and it raises questions about how much independent reporting about political influence will be possible in the nation's fifth biggest city ...

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New Sony president one half of SOPA power couple

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Nicole Seligman's newly official promotion to president of the Sony Corporation is the latest evidence of the powerful political connections that have been amassed by interests battling to stop online piracy, and enhances the status of what might be called SOPA's power couple.

Seligman, who as Sony's vice president and general counsel was an outspoken advocate for the entertainment giant's intellectual property rights, is the wife of Joel Klein, a former Justice Department top gun who in 2010 left his post as chancellor of New York City schools to hire on with another corporation that has ...

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Panel clashes on Citizens United, agrees on real-time disclosure

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A discussion about whether to limit money in politics, and how to do so, led to little consensus Tuesday morning among a panel divided between politicians who favor limits on political contributions and election law practicioners who find ways to legally get around or challenge them. But the politicians and lawyers could more or less agree on one thing: more disclosure of campaign giving. 

On one side of the argument was Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., sponsor of the legislation that banned unlimited contributions to political parties, presidential candidate Buddy Roemer, an independent pursuing the White House through Americans Elect, and ...

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Super PACs, other groups, fuel four-fold spending increase in 2012 presidential race

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Outside groups, including super PACs and nonprofit organizations, have spent almost four times more on the 2012 presidential campaign than comparable organizations spent at the same point in the 2008 cycle, an analysis of Federal Election Commission filings show.

Four years ago in late March, when Republicans had already wrapped up a wide-open battle for their party's nomination and Democrats were still engaged in a battle that would go on for months, spending on the presidential campaign by independent groups stood just shy of $22 million. Today, outside spending on the race for the White House has already topped ...

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Big financial interests chip away at Dodd Frank regulations

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Today the House plans to take up two industry-backed bills dealing with derivatives, the hitherto opaque financial instruments so crucial to the 2008 meltdown, under a procedure usually reserved for noncontroversial matters.

A coalition of labor and consumer groups, Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), believes the bills, which have bipartisan support, should be controversial and is urging lawmakers to oppose them. "Both proposed bills are unnecessary and potentially harmful attempts to micromanage the work of regulators in implementing the Dodd-Frank Act," the groups argued. "They amplify the views of the regulated industries which already have overwhelmingly greater resources to intervene ...

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