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Tag Archive: Uncategorized

Do members of Congress headline fundraisers in exchange for floor votes?

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We at the Sunlight Foundation spend a lot of time looking over the political fundraising invitations that keep pouring into our Political Party Time website. So we were very excited to read a paper by Yale Political Science Professor Eleanor Neff Powell, who used our Party Time data to investigate an often underappreciated aspect of the political fundraising circle: headlining for others. By carefully analyzing the corpus of fundraising invitations that we’ve compiled over the years, Powell was able to uncover evidence of an economy of favors in the Washington fundraising circuit. Members of Congress who headline events for other members get something in return – votes for their legislation. Or, as Powell puts it:

Controlling for the ideological similarity of their past voting records, a Democratic Congressman is 5.5% more likely to vote for a bill for each fundraising event the bill’s sponsor has headlined for them in the past (Republican Congressmen are 2.5% more likely). These results show a strong relationship between fundraising assistance and subsequent legislative voting behavior and suggest potentially serious consequences for representation

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2Day in #OpenGov 4/30/2013

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NEWS ROUNDUP:

  • When the CFPB rolled out expanded access to its consumer complaint database recently the information lacked a certain amount of context. Now, the agency is working on a pilot project that would fill in some outstanding details on consumer complaints about credit cards that they hope can be expanded to all of the complaints in the database. (Tech President)
  • With a week left until election day the increasingly absurd race between Mark "Appalachian what?" Sanford and Elizabeth "Don't call me Colbert (but really, do call me Colbert" Busch keeps making headlines. Yesterday, it was revealed that the DCCC is spending to ensure victory  against the Zombie corpse of Sanford's political career which, despite being abandoned by the national GOP, is still managing to raise enough money to compete in the final week. (Roll CallRoll CallWashington Post)
  • Vice President Biden came out in favor of disclosure of a Senate Intelligence report on the use of torture or enhanced interrogation that is currently classified. He was agreeing with a sentiment expressed by Sen. John McCain at a joint event held on Friday. (Roll Call)
  • A national group of GOP donors supporting gay marriage is stepping up their efforts to persuade Republican lawmakers to switch positions on the issue. American Unity PAC and its lobbying arm American Unity fund are targeting state legislation, spending nearly $1 million in recent weeks in Rhose Island, Delaware, Indiana, West Virginia, Utah, and Minnesota.  (Washington Post)
  • The growing number of Senators that have recently announced their impending retirements can look to some former House members for cues on how to spend the money sitting in their campaign accounts. A number of recently retired lawmakers sent large sums to various charities, foundations, and educational institutes last quarter. (Roll Call)
  • Paul Singer, a major Republican bundler, is quietly inserting his influence into the immigration debate. He recently cut a six figure check to the National Immigration Forum, a group that works to get conservatives to support reform. (POLITICO)
  • The Supreme Court upheld a lower court opinion that said state government agencies are only required to respond to FOIA requests from residents of their state. A man from California and another from Rhode Island, who was a former resident of Virginia, sued the state for access to state records, but were denied based on their residency. (The Verge)
  • A new report suggests that the CIA has been delivering bags of cash to the offices of Afghan President Hamid Karzai on a regular basis for more than a decade. They payments reportedly help the government pay off war lords, fund diplomatic efforts, and likely provide a little extra lining for their pockets. The White House declined to comment after the story broke. (POLITICO, New York Times)

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Jon Stewart Eviscerates Congress and President Obama for Gutting STOCK Act

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All hail Jon Stewart and those clever Daily Show writers for very adeptly (and hilariously -- though not in a very safe for work way) reporting last night how quickly and quietly Congress and President Obama combined forces to gut major transparency provisions of the STOCK Act passed last year. In an election year, they rushed to pass this reform legislation (and garner public kudos for doing so), but now with less of a spotlight on their actions, they rushed to undo the bill. Readers of our blog know that Sunlight's lobbyist, Lisa Rosenberg, has taken the charge to inform you about this as it happened nearly two weeks ago. As she put it, the Senate's action to approve the removal of STOCK Act transparency provisions was an epic failure on Thursday, May 11, especially since they did so invoking unanimous consent. Then the House followed suit and rushed the vote in mere seconds the next day, as most House members had already left Washington for recess. The House also completely lapsed on fulfilling their "read the bill" rule to wait three calendar days to deliberate on the legislation -- to, you know, actually give citizens time to know what their elected officials were voting on before it was a done deal. (This would have also given the press more time to inform Americans of these shenanigans.)

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Citizen engagement matters for transparency initiatives. What makes it happen?

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As we begin to think about how to evaluate the impact of technology-driven transparency policies, we are keenly aware of the need to be honest and open about the challenges of implementation. This post is an attempt to practice the transparency we believe in by discussing one of the most formidable challenges facing organizations engaged in this work: Getting people to care. Our jumping off point here is a recent post from the engine room about 11 new initiatives that recently received an award from the Transparency International People Engagement Programme. As laid out by the engine room’s Susannah Vila, the challenges facing all of them sound remarkably similar.

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