In honor of the snowquester, as the Washington Post's cheeky Weather Gang has dubbed the spring storm that so far has proven more effective than the Tea Party in reining in government, Sunlight has decided to take a look at the efforts getting underway by various groups to keep the actual sequester at bay.
Like the Atlantic snowstorm, this effort is starting slowly but likely to build.
The Sunlight Reporting Group is using two of our foundation's tools, Ad Hawk and Political Ad Sleuth, to keep an eye on this year's political ads. We'll be updating ...
Continue readingTV stations ignore ad disclosure requirements
A decade after a landmark campaign finance reform law mandated that TV stations collect the names of board members or executive officers of groups running political ads for federal candidates or any "national legislative issue of public importance," records show broadcasters often ignore the rules.
Continue readingShalesmanship: Ralph Hall’s Energy act might have benefited his own bottom line
Veteran Rep. Ralph Hall appears to be profiting from legislation he helped write. But the Texas Democrat-turned-Republican didn't want to discuss his profits from the Barnett Shale.
Continue readingAfter $100,000 inaugural donation, nuclear deal gets closer
It turns out there was a good reason, The Nation points out, that we reported extensively on the donors behind President Obama's second presidential inauguration. One of the corporate donors, Southern Company, is expecting a big benefit from the administration.
An executive with the Atlanta-based utility said last week that the company expects to finalize its long-awaited $8.3 billion loan guarantee from the administration by the middle of the year to help it build a new nuclear power plant with two reactors, the Wall Street Journal reported. The historic loan approval was made in 2010 -- to the ire ...
Continue readingReporter’s notebook: stumbling upon–plastics
Plastic. We weren’t looking for it, but thanks to Sunlight’s Scout alert system for tracking legislative and regulatory actions, we... View Article
Continue readingExxonMobil lobbies consumer agency on phthalates
Under heavy lobbying by ExxonMobil and other industry heavyweights, the Consumer Product Safety Commission is nearly a year late with a mandated report on the possible dangers found in chemicals used to create plastic products from raincoats to "rubber" duck bath toys to shampoo. A Sunlight review of the public record shows how outgunned consumer advocates are by industry.
Continue readingGun ads in Illinois primary a harbinger of things to come?
The gun debate is already emerging as an issue for the 2014 election cycle. In the weeks since the State of the Union address, which President Barack Obama used to make an emotional appeal for gun control, at least seven groups have either purchased airtime in major markets around the country or posted TV-ready ads to their Youtube accounts.
Continue readingPro-gun interests hire new lobbyists
Three pro-gun interests have hired lobbyists, according to registration statements filed with the Senate Monday and last week, in the face of a push by Congress to introduce new gun control measures in the wake of the December massacre in Newtown, Connecticut.
That includes two companies -- a Virginia firearms importer called Red, White and Blue LLC and Dick's Sporting Goods, a national chain that sells firearms, according to registrations filed Monday. Another group, the National Association for Gun Rights, has registered a lobbyist for the first time too, according to documents filed last week.
These registrations come on the ...
Continue readingObama visits GOP givers to make a point about sequestration
When President Barack Obama travels Tuesday to the historic Newport News Shipbuilding facility to make a point about the potential damage from the looming sequestration axe, he'll be making a political point in more ways than one.
In a sense, he's reminding Republican budget hawks that they could be biting a hand that feeds them. The employees and political action committee of Newport News Shipbuilding have given more generously to Republican politicians than to Democrats over the years, the company's profile on Sunlight's Influence Explorer shows.
A search for contributions to the president's campaigns by ...
Continue readingPlanned Parenthood targets Mitch McConnell
Planned Parenthood has become the latest big-spending political group to try to erode the political base of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., more than a year before his next election.
A new ad that surfaced this morning in Ad Hawk, Sunlight's searchable database of political advertising, paints the five-term Republican as opposing the interests of women. Because the ad does not explicitly call for a vote for or against McConnell, Planned Parenthood's expenditure does not have to be reported to the Federal Election Commission, but a contract on file in Political Ad Sleuth, Sunlight's database for ...
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