In the three years since the Supreme Court's Jan. 21, 2010 ruling in Citizens United, the super PACs that decision helped to spawn have largely been seen as advertising machines. But an anniversary-eve analysis by the Sunlight Foundation show that they have created a class of super consultants.
Continue readingAd site snafu raises questions about FCC oversight
For the first time last year, the Federal Communications Commission began requiring certain TV stations to post political ad buy contracts online. Yet an apparent snafu at a Florida station that kept all buys made in the final month of the election offline until earlier this month raises questions about just how well that system is working.
Continue readingObama inaugural officials tight-lipped at press conference
Officials with President Obama's inaugural committee took questions from reporters Wednesday at the National Press Club but the answers were less than illuminating. Here's the rundown:
- Q. Why is the committee providing less information on donors than former President George W. Bush, and Obama himself did in earlier inaugurals?
- A. That was then. This is now.
"Each one of these is created anew every four years," Brent Colburn, communications director for the 2013 Presidential Inaugural Committee, said of the more parsimonious disclosure strategy. Because the PIC isn't legally required to report its donors to the Federal Election ...
Continue readingWho are the gun lobbyists?
As Congress grapples with the measures the White House today proposed to combat gun violence--including a ban on assault weapons, strengthing background check laws, and enhancing mental health services--there will be dozens of gun rights lobbyists at the ready, most of them paid by the National Rifle Association. Many have been through Washington's revolving door.
In 2012, gun rights groups hired ten outside lobbying firms to help bolster their reach, according to Influence Explorer. Over all, 42 lobbyists, of whom at least more than half are revolvers, including one former member of Congress, helped spread gun rights' groups message ...
Continue readingOn eve of big legislative battle, is gun lobby targeting kids?
If, as the old newsroom truism holds, it takes three to make a trend, then the National Rifle Association's much talked-about video, which juxtaposes a mention of President Barack Obama's daughters against a backdrop of menacing images of high-powered guns and people toting them, appears to be the latest manifestation of a bizarre new way that the gun lobby is choosing to engage its critics: by targeting their children.
School-age progeny of America's first families have generally been verboten topics in press coverage or political debate because of their age, vulnerability and the fact that -- unlike their ...
Continue readingNRA fights campaign finance reform, disclosure
On a March morning in 2002, the ink of President George W. Bush's signature on the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill hardly had a chance to dry before the attorneys for the National Rifle Association filed the paperwork for a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law.
In fact the NRA's lawyers were so quick on the draw that the group beat the law’s strongest congressional opponent, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to court. Because it filed first, the NRA had earned the naming rights to the high profile case. However, the NRA, which had backed McConnell, himself ...
Continue readingEight corporations donate to Obama’s inaugural so far
After lifting the lid on donations to his second inauguration and agreeing to accept corporate contributions, President Barack Obama only has eight corporate donors so far, according to an updated donor list posted on the inaugural committee's website over the weekend.
The two new corporate donors on the list: A subsidiary of Southern Company, one of the nation's biggest electric utilities and a major lobbying powerhouse, and United Therapeutics, a $1.5 billion Maryland pharamaceutical company seeking Federal Drug Administration approval for a drug treating a lung disorder.
The Atlanta-based Southern Company contributed $100,000 to the inaugural ...
Immigration lobby begins to flex muscle
This week, while much of Washington's attention is focused on the debates over gun control and Chuck Hagel's nomination as defense secretary, the pieces are beginning to move into place for another legislative battle that could make the other two look like a lobbying Little League (sorry, NRA).
What has all the earmarks of a well-orchestrated roll-out of the administration's immigration reform package began Sunday with a front page New York Times story. This is being followed up by an immigration event every day this week organized by proponents of more liberalized immigration laws:
- Monday: Los Angeles ...
Change (and a lot more) you won’t believe: Obama for America’s encore
President Barack Obama has made history in a lot of ways and now he's got another bullet point to add to the list: Since the Federal Election Commission was established in the late 1970s and started keeping records of such things, he's the first second-term president to continue fundraising after the last ballot of his political career has been counted.
Unless Obama wants to imitate John Quincy Adams and return to Congress after leaving the White House -- or run for local school board, as former President Bill Clinton once jokingly suggested he might do -- it seems pretty safe ...
Continue readingOscars of influence: Sunlight’s nominees
After this morning's announcement of nominees for this year's Academy Awards, there will be a month of balloting before the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tells us which 2012 films had the biggest impact on Hollywood. But the film industry's impact on Washington is already evident.
The envelopes, please.
The nomination for best tax break goes to...
Production companies behind the Academy Award frontrunners (or their parent companies) spent large sums to donate to politicians or lobby in 2012, and, as Sunlight reported last week, they were rewarded for their efforts in the 'fiscal cliff ...
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