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Citizens United: Minnesota's response
By Ryan Sibley Jun 10, 2010 3:03 p.m.The Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United v. FEC case has rendered 24 state election laws unconstitutional. The 5-4 ruling in favor of Citizens United reversed a provision of the McCain-Feingold act that prohibited any electioneering communication—defined as advertising via broadcast, cable or satellite that is paid for by corporations or labor unions. Many states have acted fast to counter corporations’ ability to spend endless amounts of money to influence elections by passing laws that force disclosure of all independent expenditures in near real time. The Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group has decided to report what each of these states is doing to respond to the highly-contested ruling. Today we're featuring Minnesota, the fourth state in our series:
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Citizens United: Colorado's response
By Ryan Sibley Jun 9, 2010 11:56 a.m.The Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United v. FEC case has rendered 24 state election laws unconstitutional. The 5-4 ruling in favor of Citizens United reversed a provision of the McCain-Feingold act that prohibited any electioneering communication—defined as advertising via broadcast, cable or satellite that is paid for by corporations or labor unions. Many states have acted fast to counter corporations’ ability to spend endless amounts of money to influence elections by passing laws that force disclosure of all independent expenditures in near real time. The Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group has decided to report what each of these states is doing to respond to the highly-contested ruling. Today we're featuring Colorado, the third state in our series:
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Citizens United: South Dakota's response
By Ryan Sibley Jun 8, 2010 10:02 a.m.The Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United v. FEC case has rendered 24 state election laws unconstitutional. The 5-4 ruling in favor of Citizens United reversed a provision of the McCain-Feingold act that prohibited any electioneering communication—defined as advertising via broadcast, cable or satellite that is paid for by corporations or labor unions. Many states have acted fast to counter corporations’ ability to spend endless amounts of money to influence elections by passing laws that force disclosure of all independent expenditures in near real time. The Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group has decided to report what each of these states is doing to respond to the highly-contested ruling. We’re going state by state, and now onto South Dakota:
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Citizens United: Arizona's response
By Ryan Sibley Jun 7, 2010 3:36 p.m.The Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United v. FEC case has rendered 24 state election laws unconstitutional.The 5-4 ruling in favor of Citizens United reversed a provision of the McCain-Feingold act that prohibited any electioneering communication—defined as advertising via broadcast, cable or satellite that is paid for by corporations or labor unions.Many states have acted fast to counter corporations’ ability to spend endless amounts of money to influence elections by passing laws that force disclosure of all independent expenditures in near real time. The Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group has decided to report what each of these states is doing to respond to the highly-contested ruling. We’ll go state by state, starting with Arizona:
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Net neutrality: Do campaign contributions tell the whole story?
By Bill Allison Jun 2, 2010 12:04 p.m.After 74 Democratic members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski warning that the FCC should not advance net neutrality rules without explicit direction from Congress, Free Press put together a page showing career campaign contributors from PACs, employees and lobbyists of interests that oppose the measure, intended to keep the Internet a level playing field.
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DCCC invokes Murtha to aid Critz
By Bill Allison May 5, 2010 2:57 p.m.A friend and colleague passes along the following email the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is sending out, signed by the widow of the late Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., Joyce Murtha: DCCC email
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Bad dates: ProPublica notes lack of accuracy in campaign finance data
By Bill Allison May 3, 2010 12:09 p.m.ProPublica's Sebastian Jones notes what for us has been one of the most maddening features of campaign finance data: the dates don't mean very much at all. Campaigns report when they receive money, and political action committees report when they donate it. In theory, those dates should match, but as Jones points out, they don't:
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How to easily set up a campaign finance database
By Luke Rosiak Mar 26, 2010 2:34 p.m.No one does federal-level campaign finance better than the Center for Responsive Politics, and for the last year or so, they've outdone themselves by making all of their databases--millions of records that a staff of human beings tirelessly cleans up--available, for free, in their entirety.
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SunlightLive covers health care summit
By Luke Rosiak Feb 25, 2010 1:43 p.m.The Sunlight Foundation has all hands on deck today providing context for today's bipartisan healthcare summit in real time. Stay tuned all day for updates.
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Potential Murtha successor Norm Dicks knows the favor factory
By Luke Rosiak Feb 10, 2010 3:56 p.m.The abrupt passing of Rep. John Murtha (D-Penn.) left many wondering who would replace the King of Pork as chair of the Defense Appropriations subcommitteebut anyone hoping his replacement might bring relief from a reputation for trading favors, rewarding campaign contributors and steering lucrative contracts to home districts would likely be disappointed by the pool of potential successors.
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Ruling may free corporate influencers from contortions
By Luke Rosiak Jan 25, 2010 4:25 p.m.The Supreme Court's Citizens United vs. FEC ruling undoes years of restrictions on the ability of corporations and labor unions to use their treasuries to attempt to sway elections.
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48 hours = six days?
By Luke Rosiak Jan 20, 2010 10:24 a.m.Disclosure of campaign contributions and expenditures hold candidates accountable -- but after the votes are in, it's often too late for the scrutiny of watchdogs (and opponents) to make a difference. That's why in addition to quarterly reports, candidates must report large contributions made in the final days of the campaign within 48 hours of receiving them.
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Texas politico rapidly rises to No. 1 overall donor, now No. 1 bundler
By Luke Rosiak Jan 6, 2010 1:52 p.m.What does the single largest donor in federal politics do when the maximum allowed by law just isn't enough? He collects contributions from others, becoming the single biggest bundler. What won't surprise you is that the person in question is a lobbyist. But what might surprise you is that he's based in Texas, and chances are good you've never heard of him.
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Fighting net neutrality, telecom companies, outside lobbyists, cluster contributions to members of Congress
By Bill Allison Oct 22, 2009 10:45 p.m.While the Federal Communications Commission considers the first steps toward ensuring net neutrality--making certain that broadband providers do not discriminate against high traffic sites--the telecom firms that would be affected by the rules and their trade groups have been swamping Congress with a one-two punch of campaign contributions from the companies and their registered lobbyists. Some 244 members of Congress were the beneficiaries of these contribution clusters--totaling more than $9.4 million--from January 2007 to June 2009, an investigative collaboration of the Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Responsive Politics has found. Telecom interests and their lobbyists engaged in more clustered giving than any industry save pharmaceuticals.
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