Making Government Transparent and Accountable
The Sunlight Foundation uses cutting-edge technology and ideas to make government transparent and accountable. Underlying all of our efforts is a fundamental belief that increased transparency will improve the public's confidence in government
The Sunlight Foundation Blog
-
In Broad Daylight: Cell, Cell, Cell…
Sen. McCain, can you hear me now? Sen. Stevens pays for his own lunch like a big boy. And Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah continues his annual tradition of earmarking funds for his biggest campaign contributors. That and more in today’s news:
The Atlantic’s Joshua Green takes a look at the Verizon and AT&T cell phone tower plans for Sen. John McCain’s ranch and determines that the defenses offered by the companies and the McCains are simply not sufficient. The excuse for the now-derailed permanent installation of cell phone towers at the McCain ranch in Sedona was that Cindy McCain had made an independent request for cell service. Of course, the rapid and costly effort undertaken by the two companies had nothing to do with her husband’s public role as a United States Senator and possible presidential candidate. Except that Verizon referred to the Sedona ranch, not as Cindy McCain’s ranch, but as “John McCain’s cabin.” Green writes, “So while Cindy McCain may indeed have requested the tower over the web like an ordinary millionaire rancher with spotty phone reception, Verizon was well aware that she was anything but that.”
Sen. Ted Stevens emphatically denied any wrongdoing as he took the stand yesterday in a federal corruption trial in which the senator is accused of filing false statements on his personal financial disclosure reports. Sen. Stevens stated outright that, “I don’t allow people to buy my lunch or buy my dinner; wherever I am, I pay my bills.” Prosecutors have sought to show that the Alaska oil company VECO, headed by Stevens friend Bill Allen, paid for renovations to Stevens’ house in Girdwood, Alaska and Stevens and Allen colluded to hide the expenses by filing false disclosures. Stevens’ examination continues today.
Utah Rep. Rob Bishop has an annual tradition: earmark hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in earmarks to ES3, a company operating at Hill Air Force Base and then attend an August fundraiser thrown by ES3 after the earmarks are secured. This year, Rep. Bishop secured $800,000 in earmarks for ES3 whose employees have generously donated $22,000 in August of this year to Bishop’s reelection bid. Over the past five years, Rep. Bishop has secured $9.8 million for ES3.Sunlight’s Nancy Watzman has the final disclosures for the party convention committees over at Party Time. Democrats raised $60,966,482 for their convention, while Republicans raised $51,229,299 for theirs.
Open Secrets now has lobbyist campaign contributions available in their lobbying database. The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 required the disclosure of lobbyist campaign contributions for the first time.
Open Congress‘ Donny Shaw continues his excellent series of posts comparing the legislative achievements of John McCain and Barack Obama by using actual data rather than stump speeches and press releases. Today, Donny is looking at the two candidates’ voting records. Hurray, factual data comparisons!
And for something slightly different, here’s a great article from Reason explaining, by way of Cindy McCain’s beer distributor fortune, how the government aids and subsidizes certain parts of the beer, wine, and liquor industry, in the process raising the price of that frothy cold one waiting for you at that happy hour around the corner.
-
C-SPAN Jumps to 21st Century for Conventions
C-SPAN announced today that it will host a large amount of convention coverage on its web site and on other platforms, including credentialed blogger posts, special Twitter hash tags, and embeddable video from both the Democratic and Republican convention. C-SPAN’s efforts will include:
— Real-time tracking of credentialed state and national political bloggers, aggregated on the websites, to enable users to follow the latest online convention news and analysis;
— Video clips from the network’s convention coverage, embeddable, to facilitate use by political bloggers and other convention watchers;
— Linkable access to the complete C-SPAN Video Library, allowing interested users to fully search all C-SPAN video content;
— Live coverage of C-SPAN television and radio networks;
— Blogger Tips and Online Convention Video Finder tools;
— Real-time feeds from Twitter users using the hash-tags #RNC08 and #DNC08
This is a huge turnaround from two years ago, when C-SPAN ordered the removal of all of their clips from YouTube, claiming copyright infringement. The copyright purge began after viewers posted the Washington Correspondents Dinner notorious routine by comedian Stephen Colbert. The clips were viewed nearly a million times before C-SPAN claimed copyright. Soon after they ordered all videos removed from other content providers, including Metavid.
It wasn’t until Nancy Pelosi became Speaker and started posting YouTube videos of congressional hearings (which use C-SPAN cameras) to her blog that the controversy truly erupted. Pelosi and group of technology, right wing, and left blog activists all pressured C-SPAN to liberalize their policy. On March 7, 2007, they acquiesced, allowing for all non-commercial sharing, posting, and copying of C-SPAN videos past, present and future.
The convention announcement marks a new moment for C-SPAN as a modern Internet information provider. Once a small cable channel with a dream; now with embeddable web video, Twitter hashtags, and aggregated blog posts.
-
Party Time at the Conventions
Today’s edition of The New York Times profiles Steven Farber, a very successful lobbyist, who helped secure the Democratic National Convention for Denver. According to The Washington Post’s The Sleuth column, it’s shaping up to be quite the party. Meanwhile, Farber is feverishly finishing raising the $40 million plus to fund the convention, and he is very well suited for the job. “In terms of lobbyists,” writes The Times, “few are more connected – both west of the Mississippi and in the corridors of power in Washington – than Steve Farber.” He’s the co-founder of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, which collected almost $13 million in fees during 2007, according to the Center for Responsive Politics’ lobbying database.
Back in January 2007, soon after the Democrats picked Denver to host the convention, Faber set a goal of raising $60 million. But that figure appears to be too ambitious. The Times reports that they are at least $11 million from reaching their goals. The typical tactic has been selling access to party leaders, members of Congress and their staff, and to possibly the soon to be occupants of the West Wing of the White House. As The Politico’s Jeanne Cummings termed convention fundraising, it’s an “oversized loophole in campaign finance laws.”
