A Super PAC formed by campaign finance law challenger and Indiana attorney James Bopp Jr. intends to harness the fundraising efforts of Republican Party committees and candidates to raise unlimited contributions from individuals and corporations to be spent influencing elections in the 2012 campaign.
The concept behind Republican Super PAC, which will be introduced to party officials at a Republican National Committee meeting in Dallas this Wednesday, is for G.O.P. candidates and party officials at the national, state and local levels to steer contributions that they can't accept under federal or state election law to the newly ...
Continue readingCampaign disclosure foe James Bopp forms Super PAC
Attorney James Bopp, who's a key architect of the legal battle that's led to a flood of outside spending in elections, has registered a new independent expenditure only committee with the Federal Election Commission called the Republican Super PAC Inc.
The filing, which is signed by Bopp and lists him as treasurer, was dated May 11, 2011.
Bopp represented and then worked as a legal adviser to Citizens United, the political committee that was the plaintiff in the 2010 Supreme Court case that found that corporations could spend unlimited money on independent expenditures to influence elections. He was ...
Continue readingFreshman lawmaker works to repeal transparency effort in Dodd-Frank
Last week members of the Capital Markets Subcommittee forwarded legislation to repeal a portion of Dodd-Frank that requires big banks to disclose income information for all of its employees onto the full Committee on Financial Services for consideration.
The Burdensome Data Collection Relief Act, H.R. 1062 was introduced in March, 2011 and has a long way to go. But if the Act passes it will repeal Section 953 b of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which is meant to increase transparency by forcing banks to disclose the median income for its employees.
According to members ...
Continue readingMexican government hires lobbyists, lawyer to help nationals facing capital punishment
The Mexican consulate in Tuscon hired Arizona-based lawyer Gregory Kuykendall for legal service and advice for Mexican nationals charged with crimes that could lead to a death sentence and for those already sentenced, recently filed disclosures under the Foreign Agents Registration Act filing show.
Kuykendall is the director of the Mexican Capital Legal Assistance program, established by the Mexican government in September 1999 to provide guidance and assistance for the legal defense of their nationals in capital cases. The Mexican government has paid $3.5 million for this program for a period between June 2010 and May 2011.
According to ...
Financial regulation deadlines missed
In April, federal financial agencies missed every single rulemaking deadline--26 of them--mandated by the massive Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law, according to a recent report by the law firm Davis, Polk & Wardell.
And with the year anniversary of the law's passage coming in July, a huge number of deadlines--108--are coming up this summer, many of which agencies are also likely to miss because of the huge workload. Most of these deal with the regulation of the risky derivatives market, and fall under the responsibility of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
"It has ...
Continue readingAT&T cultivates key Latino lawmaker
Four days before Rep. Joe Baca, D-Calif., publicly praised AT&T's announced aquisition of T-Mobile USA, AT&T's Political Action Committee (PAC) sent him a contribution for $1,000, adding to $4,000 already donated since the start of the year for his campaign fund.
Those checks were only the latest in a long stream of contributions and other support that the company has sent the congressman, his family, and charities associated with him over the years, amounting to more than $330,000. This pattern of giving shows how a company can use several avenues to cozy up ...
Continue readingSenate wants to “check in” on mobile developments
Few electronic devices have become as personal and ubiquitous as the mobile phone. Or as contentious. A few weeks ago, researchers discovered previously unknown location tracking files on the iPhone. Before that, the country's second-largest wireless carrier (AT&T) agreed to buy the fourth (T-Mobile). Next week the Senate will hold two hearings to look at these issues.
On Tuesday, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., is calling Apple and Google to Washington to explain their privacy policies in a Judiciary subcommittee hearing titled "Protecting Mobile Privacy: Your Smartphones, Tablets, Cell Phones and Your Privacy."
The witness list for the hearing ...
Eight lawmakers signed a letter for Renco
Eight members of Congress signed on to a January letter asking the heads of the Treasury and State Departments to take measures to intervene on behalf of a U.S.-owned company in the middle of a controversial dispute with Peru. Until now, Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J., was the only known signatory of the letter sent to Secretaries Tim Geithner and Hlllary Clinton.
The missive, along with another from Rep. Spencer Bachus, came after the Renco Group, owned by billionaire mining magnate Ira Rennert, began a lobbying campaign spending more than $300,000 since November 2010 to influence Washington ...
Continue readingPrincess and the policy
There is a special role for princesses in international diplomacy and some like Princess Diana and Queen Noor of Jordan captivated the imagination of the world with their charm and humanitarian work, but others play a more formal diplomatic and public relations role and appear in foreign lobbying records.
Princess of Qatar, Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned, hired Fenton Communications in September of 2009 to assist her with a website and media outreach promoting her public education campaign, Foreign Agents Registration Act filings show. The contract with Fenton was terminated but the website is still up and running, describing her ...
Continue readingSunlight Live covers Bernanke press conference
Today Fed chairman Ben Bernanke will do something no other Fed chairman has done before: He'll hold a press conference immediately following an Open Market meeting. The Federal Reserve says the press conference is designed to "to further enhance the clarity and timeliness of the Federal Reserve's monetary policy communication." And Sunlight Live will cover it through our award-winning live blog platform. Joining us at 2:15 p.m. ET will be USA TODAY's financial reporter John Waggoner.
You should join us, too. Visit sunlightlive.com at 2:15 and follow the press conference in real time ...
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