The Sunlight Foundation is looking for intrepid volunteers willing to wade, ever so meticulously, through records on foreign influence in... View Article
Continue readingQuestions surface over Stockman campaign contributions
On Feb. 21, of this year, campaign finance records show, a parent of a congressional staffer contributed $7,500 in $2,500 increments to the cash-strapped campaign the staffer's boss, Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas. At least, that's what is disclosed in filings from the Stockman campaign. Contacted about her large contribution to Stockman, Jane Dodd of Dover, Del. told Sunlight, "That wasn't me."
Continue readingGood enough for government work? The contractors building Obamacare
The Obama administration dreamed that its health insurance exchanges--the websites that were supposed to make it easy to buy health insurance--would function as smoothly as online consumer sites like Expedia or Amazon.com. But as head-scratching continues about how a famously web-savvy administration could have flubbed its Internet homework so badly, an examination by the Sunlight Foundation shows the administration turned the task of building its futuristic new health care technology planning and programming over to legacy contractors with deep political pockets.
One result: Problem-plagued online exchanges that make it all but impossible for consumers to buy insurance and ...
Continue readingKoch operative’s dark money group leading charge to cut spending
A Koch-affiliated dark money group is the newest organization to jump on train of shutdown ads and has a new wave of ads targeted at government spending and waste.
Continue readingDemocrats pull a page from last shutdown playbook
A Democratic super PAC is pulling a page from the 1995 playbook in hopes of turning the government shutdown into political gains.
Continue readingWho’s going to blink? Influence profiles of eight who could end the shutdown
If the government shutdown is going to be resolved, it's going to take compromise by some key players who so far haven't shown much willingness to bend. So who might influence these influentials? Sunlight decided to examine some of the monied interests behind key figures in the debate.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, in many cases the special interests are closely aligned with their beneficiaries' positions in the standoff, which largely revolves around the health care debate.
Here's a closer look:
Barack Obama
The president is the most prodigious fundraising weapon in the Democrats' arsenal. His campaign's success in ...
Democrats making shutdown an issue in swing races
Democrats are making a political bet that swing voters will make Republicans pay for the shutdown of the federal government.
Sunlight's Ad Hawk database, which tracks political ads and enables smartphone users to identify sources of money behind them, picked up four ads on Thursday by Democratic candidates or political action committees that tie GOP officeholders to the shutdown.
In Virginia, where voters go to the polls Nov. 5 to elect a new governor, Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe is linking his GOP opponent, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, whose outspoken opposition to the implementation of ...
Continue readingClosure of disclosure, part II: Political ad filings go dark
The government shutdown is turning into a major denial of service for journalists and other citizens interested in tracking the influence of big money on politics.
Not only is it preventing scrutiny of campaign finance records -- potentially leaving voters in at least one Louisiana special election with NO information on donors before they head to the polls -- it's also making it next to impossible to provide up-to-date information on political ad buys.
The shuttering of the Federal Communications Commission's website has severely hamstrung Political Ad Sleuth, a tool that the Sunlight Foundation and Free Press developed last year to track those buys at hundreds of TV stations across the country.
And there are plenty of them -- some of them attempt to capitalize on the shutdown itself.
Mortgages, health care and animals: What won’t get governed during shutdown
With the federal government in shutdown mode, so is one of its main products: rule writing. Federal bureacrats who develop the regulations to implement major laws--from the Dodd Frank financial reform law to food safety standards to the Affordable Care Act itself--are out on furlough. This prospect may not bother many on the Republican side of the aisle, where regulations are not particularly popular anyway and efforts to roll them back are common. But many of these rules affect the very fabric of daily life.
This list illustrates some of the issues that are important to many Americans and that will be on hold until the budget impasse is resolved. It's by no means exhaustive, and the devil is often in the details when it comes to regulation writing. Dig in to the list and click around to read agency proposals and comments submitted about these proposals, or do your own searches on Docket Wrench.
Continue readingBreaking the limit: How the stealthy wealthy engaged in checkbook lobbying
Striking down the limits on how many federal candidates and party committees an individual can shower with campaign cash--the main issues in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission--would not only open the door to bigger money in politics, it could also open the door to stealth lobbying campaigns on Capitol Hill by well-heeled donors. We know that because it already has happened, when limits were in place but not enforced. More than two decades ago, when Congress considered reforms that would put the brakes on hostile takeovers by corporate raiders, some of them used their checkbooks and their access to derail the effort without ever disclosing their lobbying efforts. Back in 1989, federal election law limited the amount an individual could give to candidates, parties and political action committees to $25,000. That year Texas billionaire and corporate takeover artist Harold C. Simmons contributed $45,500. That year Simmons, a staunch Republican now best known for seven-figure contributions to groups like Swift Boat Vets for Truth and American Crossroads, gave plenty to GOP pols. But, unusual for him, he also wrote $1,000 checks to Democratic stalwarts like Sens. David Boren, D-Okla., Paul Simon, D-Ill., and Max Baucus, D-Mont., as well as a $15,000 check to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Texas billionaire Harold C. Simmons
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