Maxine Waters exploits FEC rules to raise big bucks from California politicians
Longtime Democratic lawmaker Maxine Waters has perfected an unusual tactic for fundraising over the years – getting candidates, including some of California’s most prominent political figures, running for state and local offices, to pay as much as $45,000 for her endorsement on election mailers. In this election cycle alone, Waters has raised 59 percent of her campaign’s treasury through these “slate mailers.”
The Los Angeles-area representative, who faces ethics charges in the House for intervening on behalf of a bank in which her husband had invested heavily, has found a way to take large sums of money from ...
States of Transparency: Colorado
The Open Government
Directive encouraged states to put valuable government data online. In this series we're reviewing each state's efforts in this direction.
This week: Colorado
Website: www.tops.state.co.us
File this under "Valiant attempts." When the state of Colorado created the government spending website TOPS (Transparency Online Project) in the fall of 2009, officials dutifully made every piece of data on the site downloadable. Unfortunately, while the idea is laudable, the execution is a little weak. The data is in XML format -- a handy format for computer programmers -- but isn't structured well enough to ...
Florida Senate candidate stands to benefit from Citizens United
Democratic Rep. Kendrick Meek of Florida is seeking to move congressional offices and grab his state’s senate seat, and if he wins this Tuesday’s primary, he’ll be one step closer. In an effort to make that happen, an independent group has come to the aid of Meek’s modestly-financed campaign—relative to his competitors—and has spent $245,000 placing ads to discredit his opposition, specifically Jeff Greene, a wealthy businessman who has self-financed his run for office.
The large amount of money dedicated to running ads is keeping with what is happening in other parts of ...
Minnesota disclosure rules work, Target’s contribution revealed
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Senator given $100K round of applause by musicians’ group
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., a lawmaker who moonlights as a classical pianist, was honored in June along with the likes of the co-writer of Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi." The senator was recognized not for his musical abilities, however, but for his support of the music industry. Alexander was the guest of honor at the National Music Publishers Association's annual meeting, an event attended by over 500 songwriters and music publishers -- and one that cost the organization over $100,000 to host, according to the "honararia" section of lobbying records filed with the Senate Office of Public Records.
Sen. Alexander ...
Gitmo detainee classifications remain detatched from identities
When the Guantanamo Review Task Force summary report was released in June — more than five months after its completion — it marked the latest step in President Barack Obama’s plan to close the detainee prison in Guantanamo Bay.
Without identifying them by name, the report split the 240 detainees in four groups: approved for transfer; subject of active cases or investigations; too dangerous to transfer but not feasible for prosecution; and Yemenis designated for “conditional” detention.
Andrea Prasow, senior counsel for the terrorism program at Human Rights Watch, says the report is not transparent enough because it fails to specify ...
Bauer, Obama’s new ethics point man, had double standards on 527s
At a May 3, 2000, press conference, Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., announced that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) had filed a lawsuit, prepared by its counsel, Robert F. Bauer, alleging that Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, was using a series of nonprofits and political committees (called section 527s, after the section of the tax code under which they're created) to circumvent campaign finance laws, extort money from donors, and evade disclosure. Kennedy and Bauer presented the charges, based for the most part on media reports about DeLay's fundraising tactics, as an unprecedented assault on campaign finance law ...
Continue readingOMB struggles to track $800 billion IT spending by government
IT Dashboard attempts to tracks billions of dollars spent by the federal government on information technology, but the website itself has out of date information and inaccurate ratings on the investment risks of some agency projects.
Federal investments for IT improvements have a tendency to run over budget, or in the worst of scenarios, fail to meet any projected goals. While the private sector has seen blinding technological advancement in a relatively short time, federal agencies have struggled to keep up, even with a government-wide IT budget of $79.5 billion for fiscal 2011.
With so much need for technology ...
Google requests AdWords service be exempted from FEC rule
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