Maybe it's proof that money can't buy you love: President Barack Obama's administration is widely reported to be about to take Standard & Poor's to court, despite the fact that employees of the credit rating agency and its corporate parent, McGraw-Hill, have disproportionately favored Democrats in recent election cycles.
At issue: whether S&P helped fuel the nation's financial woes by giving overly upbeat ratings to shaky mortgage securities.
Sunlight's Influence Explorer shows Obama as the top recipient of contributions from S&P employees, followed by Secretary of State John Kerry, who just left the ...
Continue readingAt least $200K spent in DC on Super Bowl political ads
Sunday's Super Bowl was the country's top rated sporting spectacle--but viewers in Washington area got something extra: more political ads. Three groups spent a total of $200,000 to air political ads for DC-area super bowl viewers. For the first time this year, these ad contracts are available online, thanks to an FCC order that went into effect last summer.
Continue readingLooking for coders, data-visualizers, ‘someone who writes English’
More than 50 people braved the winter cold and dark to spend Friday night on the campus of Columbia University brainstorming for a bicoastal datafest that gets underway there and on the campus of Stanford University today.
Participants came from as nearby as down the hall -- some Columbia journalism students were in the room -- and as far away as London, home of Chris Taggart, who is here to show off and recruit assistance for is work at Open Corporates. Also mingling in the crowd, Sunlight Labs director Tom Lee, Jeremy Merrill of Pro Publica, Dante Chinni, founder of Patchwork Nation ...
Continue readingSuper Bowl blues: Safety concerns set off lobbying scrimmage
Updated: Feb. 2
America is settling in for this Super Bowl weekend against an unsettling backdrop of questions about football safety -- an issue that gained traction this week when, in an interview with The New Republic, First Fan Barack Obama raised doubts about whether parents should let their children play the sport.
That presidential play highlights an ongoing scrimmage on Capitol Hill between the helmet-making industry, which opposes federal regulations on the headgear, and interest groups who are pushing for them. The lobbying centers around a bill introduced by Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., in the last Congress that pushed ...
Continue readingNRA PAC did not raise much post Sandy Hook
While the National Rifle Association (NRA) has claimed that membership surged in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in December, there did not appear to be any corresponding flood in contributions to the organization's political action committtee.
During the last weeks of December following the shooting that left 20 children and six adults dead, the NRA Political Victory Fund reported collecting just over $4,000 in itemized donations from individuals, mostly in low amounts from people who had already contributed to the group's warchest during the course of the year. Another $9,600 came in ...
Continue readingTotal 2012 election spending: $7 billion
A new estimate from the Federal Election Commission puts total spending for the 2012 election at more than $7 billion -- $1 billion more than previously thought.
New FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub unveiled the latest estimate of the 2012 campaign's record-shattering cost at the agency's first open meeting of 2013, one that saw the departure of Cynthia Bauerly, one of the three Democratic commissioners. Though campaign spending was expected to break records after the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision that opened the door for unlimited contributions, the latest FEC estimate exceeds earlier expectations.
The FEC processed more ...
Continue readingAmong Hagel attackers: Shadowy group run by aide to Ron Lauder
As former Sen. Chuck Hagel, President Barack Obama's pick for secretary of defense, faces a Senate confirmation hearing today, he's under online attack from a group that's previously been criticized for a "mostly false" TV ad and "laughably bogus" polling. Though the group, Secure America Now, doesn't disclose its donors, and has yet to file a full year's tax return for either of its non-profit arms, Sunlight has learned it is run by a longtime political aide to Ronald Lauder, a cosmetics heir who has become a patron of Jewish causes and Republican candidates.
Temporary Massachusetts senator an active political donor
William Cowan, a Massachusetts lawyer who will take John Kerry's place in the Senate until a special election can be held to replace the Bay State Democrat, about to become the next secretary of state, has donated more than $36,000 to candidates for state and federal office, according to data downloaded from Sunlight's Influence Explorer.
All of the recipients of Cowan's largesse were Democrats with two notable exceptions: In 2002, he made a donation of $200 to Republican Mitt Romney. The 2012 GOP presidential nominee was then running what would turn out to be a successful ...
Continue readingGun lobby has some chits to collect on Judiciary Committee
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When National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre faces the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning in the first congressional hearing about gun control since the last month's massacre at a Connecticut elementary school, he'll be facing lawmakers who have strong feelings about his organization. Some of them have reason to feel grateful for the NRA's financial support; others have reason to resent its opposition.
Other witnesses scheduled to testify include Mark ...
Continue readingAnother delay in ethics probes of Reps. Schock, Owens
Thanks to a parliamentary quirk and a slow start getting organized, the House Ethics Committee will not be releasing information today about the ethics probes into two members of Congress.
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