David Kocieniewski of the New York Times gets an answer from Rep. Charles B. Rangel's spokesman, Emile Milne, on the Ways and Means chairman's book deal:
The Sunlight Foundation report also noted that Mr. Rangel did not list any royalties or advances he may have received from his book And I Haven't Had a Bad Day Since (MacMillan 2007). Mr. Milne said Mr. Rangel received no proceeds.
The omission of the book deal was not included in our count of missing information from Rangel's disclosures. Proceeds are money received through a sale or a loan. As ...
Continue readingEthics Panel to Clear Rangel?
House Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel predicted, on C-SPAN's Newsmakers program that aired Sunday, Feb. 1, 2009, that his multitude of ethics woes would soon disappear. "I think that next Tuesday you will see a break in this and as soon as the Ethics Committee organizes they ought to be able to dismiss this," National Journal's CongressDaily quoted the Rangel as saying.
If so, it's hard to imagine that the Select Committee on Ethics will have devoted anything more than a cursory glance at the various issues raised. Consider just one aspect, for which documents ...
Continue readingUpdate on Earmark Disclosure
Just spoke to Kirstin Brost, the press contact of the House Appropriations Committee, who was kind enough to tell me that while not all of the details of the new earmark rules have been worked out, when members disclose their earmark requests, they will include the name of the beneficiaries. (Our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense told us they had heard the same thing).
Still under discussion is whether requests will be disclosed in a standardized format or however members choose to release it.
Continue readingPresidential Library Reform bill…
...is one of the first bills introduced In the House. If passed, it would require quarterly reports on donors to presidential libraries.
Items like this and this demonstrate why this is useful.
Which reminds me -- how is the Clinton Foundation going to handle new donations? Will they periodically add to what they've already disclosed? And will the Bush Presidential Library Foundation release the names of any donors at all? Nope.
Continue readingWaiting for fine print on earmark requests…
Over on Sunlight's grown up blog, I noted this Roll Call story on new earmark disclosures that the chairs of the Senate and House Appropriations Committees agreed to. Looking at the Gavel Blog of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, it appears that the disclosures may be less than meets the eye. Taking the new rules in order...
Posting Requests Online: To offer more opportunity for public scrutiny of member requests, members will be required to post information on their earmark requests on their websites at the time the request is made explaining the purpose of the earmark and why it ...Continue reading
NY Times: Clinton Foundation Donor got help from Hillary
Digging down deep into the list of Clinton Foundation donors, the New York Times finds that a donor had gotten considerable help from Sen. Hillary Clinton:
An upstate New York developer donated $100,000 to former President Bill Clinton's foundation in November 2004, around the same time that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton helped secure millions of dollars in federal assistance for the businessman's mall project.Mrs. Clinton helped enact legislation allowing the developer, Robert J. Congel, to use tax-exempt bonds to help finance the construction of the Destiny USA entertainment and shopping complex, an expansion of the Carousel ...
Continue reading
Bailout money mystery
Associated Press reports that 21 banks that received funds from the Troubled Assets Relief Program aren't talking about what they've done with the money. No wonder this headline seems so plausible...
Continue readingUpdates to Clinton donors
Just a running commentary on what I'm finding.
Cool -- Muckety already has some of this data entered.
I wonder how many of these donors have lobbyists. Alltel certainly does, although skimming their reports (here's one) it doesn't seem that they have international issues. Also, wonder how many turn up in FARA filings...
Continue readingWall Street Journal profiles donors…
Clinton Foundation releases donor list;
...and, thanks to my Sunlight colleague Larry Makinson and DabbleDB.com, we've got it available in a database format. The source material is here, but I couldn't get into the first page (glad that Larry could).
It would be interesting to see what issues the donors are interested in, where they come from, what their own economic interests are, and whether these could potentially create conflicts of interest for Sen. Hillary Clinton, our next Secretary of State.
Contributors to the foundation include governments of Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Norway, Jamaica, Oman and Brunei have contributed, as have government ...
Continue reading