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Financial reform fundraising: Are lobbyists for Wall St. firms hosting hundreds of events for lawmakers?
By Anupama Narayanswamy May 11, 2010 1:31 p.m.Sam Geduldig, a lobbyist for high profile financial firms, banks and credit card companies who has the ability to "kill legislative threats to his clients," is listed as a host on 18 invitations to fundraisers for Republican members of Congress and their leadership committees, a Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group review of Party Time data from January 2009 to the present has found.
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A jobless recovery for lobbyists?
By Bill Allison Feb 12, 2010 6:38 p.m.Perhaps the most interesting tidbit from the Center for Responsive Politics illuminating analysis of lobbying in 2009, which found a 5 percent increase in the amounts that businesses, trade groups, unions, nonprofits, universities, state and local governments and, of course, lobbying firms themselves reported spending, was this bit:
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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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How data-dependent is health care reform?
By Bill Allison Oct 26, 2009 2:33 p.m.If the visualization of America's Healthy Future Act (also known as the Baucus Bill) -- immediately below is any indication, data is pretty important to health care reform plans. The word occurs 275 times in the text -- there are new data banks, data collected, data submitted and data shared.
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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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Murtha challenger trounces incumbent in fundraising; outraises Boehner and Pelosi too
By Bill Allison Oct 16, 2009 5:32 p.m.While the ethics scandals that have multiplied around top fundraisers and earmark recipients of Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., have yet to involve him directly, he now faces a challenge from a different direction: A well-financed opponent.
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5,000 earmark requests databased
By Bill Allison Jul 27, 2009 2:39 p.m.Our friends at Washington Watch have had some success in their effort to turn messy, un-formatted member earmark requests into usable, analyzable data:
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House Ethics Committee: Investigating PMA Group or not?
By Bill Allison Jun 3, 2009 6:06 p.m.Tory Newmyer reports in Roll Call:
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Murtha's earmark recipients: How hands off (or on) is he?
By Bill Allison Jun 3, 2009 4:17 p.m.Paul Singer reports in Roll Call on a tangled story that apparently involves the undisclosed hand of Rep. John Murtha but certainly involves his brother Kit (a retired lobbyist) and his former lobbying firm, five different companies doing business, directly or indirectly, with Defense (including one under federal indictment and one that allegedly wanted to outsource earmarked defense work to "China or someplace"), an earmark from the pre-disclosure era, some technical corrections added to the Tsunami relief bill that moved the funds for that earmark from one recipient to another (because the original recipient allegedly wanted to do the work in "China or someplace" rather than in Murtha's district), about $8.2 million of taxpayer money, and a whole lot of digging. Oh, and PMA Group makes a cameo appearance. Read the whole thing, but also consider this:
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Visclosky temporarily relinquishes reins of subcommittee
By Bill Allison Jun 2, 2009 9:27 p.m.Rep. Peter Visclosky, whose office has been subpoenaed for documents related to clients of the defunct lobbying firm PMA Group, has temporarily stepped down as chair of the House Energy & Water Appropriations Subcommittee. Lindsay Renick Mayer reports on Visclosky's woes, his top donors, and those of his replacement, Ed Pastor, who has taken less than a tenth as much in contributions from PMA Group and its clients (of course, I'm referring to contributions from their employees, family members and political action committees).
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Investment Ratings Tank for Home Loan Banks
By Sarah Dorsey Jun 2, 2009 3:14 p.m.They hold $1.3 trillion in assets and, chances are, you've never heard of them.
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Why there's so little spending data on Recovery.gov
By Bill Allison May 29, 2009 2:14 a.m.Because apparently, there's not all that much spending yet:
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Washington savvy firm gets stimulus bucks
By Bill Allison May 28, 2009 11:22 p.m.Number two of the 100:
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Roll Call makes PMA Group articles available online
By Bill Allison May 4, 2009 4:31 p.m.In conjunction with the appearance of Paul Singer on C-Span's Washington Journal this morning (his bit starts about 1:03:30 in on the video), Roll Call has put online its amazing body of work tracking the PMA Group, the defunct lobbying firm under federal investigation that, along with its clients, provided oodles of campaign cash to more than 100 members of the House while securing hundreds of millions in earmarks for its clients.
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