It’s been a bad two weeks for Ways and Means Committee chairman Charlie Rangel. Last week, the Washington Post and the New York Times broke successive stories revealing the congressman’s below market value apartment rentals and his use of congressional letterhead to solicit contributions from corporations for the construction of the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York. While the apartment deals are causing a stir in Rangel’s Harlem congressional district, his clear violation of House rules in using congressional letterhead for fund raising appeals are getting the most attention.

Presidents, senators, congressmen, and governors often receive honorary centers at local universities and colleges after they have retired from office, so the future existence of a Charles Rangel Center is not an out-of-the-ordinary or unexpected occurrence for the second African-American congressman from Harlem. The use of earmarking, the clear violation of House rules in his fund raising appeals, and the conflicts of interest in the operation of his committee mark this Center in the pantheon of congressional monuments to vanity. (more…)

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GOOD Magazine has a knack for taking political stories or data and turning them into to clever images. In this case, they’ve taken lobbying data from Open Secrets and turned it into something of a middle school bulletin board (this also may work as it’s own form of commentary in equating Congress with a middle school).

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The Congressional Management Foundation has been doing the yeoman’s work on addressing the problem of constituent communications.  Through their Communicating with Congress project, CMF has been designing solutions for advocacy organizations and congressional offices, to help them create systems that can efficiently deal with massive advocacy campaigns.

Tim Hysom, from CMF, just wrote to the Open House Project google group, describing their latest initiative:

You aren’t alone.  Citizens, grassroots advocacy organizations, and
congressional offices are all equally frustrated with the current
state of affairs.  Citizens feel as though their voices are not heard
on Capitol Hill, grassroots organizations want Members of Congress to
understand the magnitude of support or opposition to pending
legislation, and congressional staff are overwhelmed by an exponential
increase in communications volumes without the proper tools and
systems to help them manage the flow.

This is your opportunity to help shape a better—more effective—method
for reaching out to Capitol Hill.

The Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) has been studying
communications to Capitol Hill for almost a decade and has put forth a
proposal which we believe would vastly improve the current system and
benefit all stakeholders. This new model for constituent
communications is detailed in a draft report by CMF, entitled,
“Communicating with Congress: Recommendations for Improving the
Democratic Dialogue.”  It also includes specific recommendations for
congressional offices, citizens, and advocacy groups that will help
improve communications to and from Capitol Hill.

You can leave comments on their draft plan on the CMF Web site.

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A large contingent of Sunlighters are heading to Austin this week for Netroots Nation, the 3rd annual gathering of Kos bloggers and others in the progressive blogosphere (that used to be called Yearly Kos). (Get ready for all of the #nn08 hashtag tweets!)

Try to connect with us if you are there. You can find us in the exhibit hall (along with folks from the Center for Responsive Politics,  National Institute on Money in State Politics and OpenCongress.org. We’ll be right up front, across from MAPLight.org’s booth, so you can’t miss us.

Sunlight colleagues are on a number of panels. Start your Friday morning off with one that is chaired by Sunlight consultant Micah Sifry, as he and his panelists discuss how the next administration can leverage the Web and the participatory transparent culture that goes along with it, to make our government work better.

That panel should inspire you to help improve our government. Join Sunlight’s John Wonderlich to find out how. He and OpenLeft blogger Matt Stoller will give you the scoop on the future of advocacy and what political influence should look like in a networked social environment. Their panel, “Lobbying Congress: Advocacy and Digital Empowerment” will be held on Saturday@ 1:30 p.m.

Right after that panel, come learn more about how to use the sites created by our ‘transparency posse’ during our workshop, “Insanely Useful Tools You Can Use to Keep Track of Congress and State Lawmakers” on Saturday @ 3pm. This will be moderated by Sunlighter, Paul Blumenthal.

While you’re in Austin, you might want to test how your political trivia smarts compare to Paul’s during a “Pub Quiz” organized by Dkos front pager AdamB to be held during Happy Hour on Friday at the local Champions Sports Bar. (Stop by our booth for more details.) Make sure to “study” beforehand by playing our new PoliQuiz game. We’ll release all of our answers in API format so they can be mashed up with relevant data. What else would you expect?!

See you in Austin!

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Blogger, e-government guru and fellow panelist at PDF, David Stephenson, writing at The Huffington Post profiles a speech he’s to give at this week’s Netroots Nation Conference in Austin. David makes the case that government should free up its vast stores of information to the Web 2.0 revolution. This would allow citizens to create “data visualizations,” cool graphics that also help to make information understandable for the rest of us. He quotes Edward Tufte, the so called da Vinci of Data (who’s thinking of Italy?) “Often the most effective way to describe, explore and summarize a set of numbers — even a very large set — is to look at pictures of those numbers.” David says that such graphics “highlight inefficiencies, break down barriers between programs and agencies, and (potentially) leverage “the wisdom of crowds” both within agencies and among the general public to find creative new approaches.”

David highlights Everyblock Chicago, Neighborhood Knowledge Los Angeles and the District of Columbia’s Citywide Data Warehouse as examples of local governments freeing their data to the public.

Sunlight couldn’t agree more that’s why many of our analyses also rely on strong visualizations to bring the story home.

Lastly, my blogging and that of other Sunlighters will be light for the next few weeks as we all seek some  summertime  R and R.

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Day before yesterday, The New York Times looks at Sen. Joe Lieberman’s growing estrangement from his (former?) Democratic colleagues. The Connecticut Independent’s high-profile support for the Iraq War and a bellicose demeanor toward Iran, as well as his enthusiastic endorsement of and active campaigning for Sen. John McCain’s presidential bid and his criticism of Sen. Barack Obama as the presumptive Democratic nominee, have all helped to put his relationship with the Democrats in quite the precarious spot.

The Times’ reporter happened to be interviewing the Connecticut Independent in his office on Thursday of last week when netroots activists delivered an online petition with 43,000 signatures to Senate Democratic leaders.  The petition calls on the Democrats to strip Lieberman of his rank and Homeland Security Committee chairmanship after the November election.

(more…)

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The Campaign Finance Institute (CFI) released figures today showing that the private donors to the two major party conventions have spent over $1.1 billion on lobbying the federal government since 2005. According to CFI’s latest tally, 146 organizations, nearly all business corporations, have spent on average $7.7 million per company in the past three years trying to influence Washington on legislation and regulations. As of today, CFI reports, 70 companies have given only to the Democratic host committee, while 39 have given only to the GOP committee.  So far, 37 corporations have given to both.

CFI released an earlier report last month that decries the fact that federal election law does not require timely disclosure of convention host committee fundraising records.  Current law only requires the host committees to report their contributions or expenditures 60 days after the nominating conventions are over.  Little good that does.

(more…)

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Some 76 members of Congress provide at least some disclosure of their fiscal year 2009 earmark requests online, citizen researchers have found. The majority posted their requests to their official congressional Web sites while 11 disclosed their earmark requests directly to the media–a complete list is available here.

We also learned that 46 members of Congress have foregone earmarks for fiscal year 2009. Ten members of Congress told researchers they will not disclose their earmark requests to the public, preferring to keep their constituents in the dark. Those are the findings of a collaborative study by citizen journalists organized by the Sunlight Foundation, and joined by our friends at Citizens Against Government Waste and Taxpayers for Common Sense — thanks to both organizations for their help.

To create more transparency about the earmarking process, we asked citizens to call their members of Congress and ask if they’d voluntarily disclose their fiscal year 2009 earmark requests. Sunlight has the full list, we’ll update it if more members release their earmark requests.

In the meantime, you can peruse the list to see who requested
$5,000,000 for Archer Daniels Midland to evaluate solid fats in the American diet, who asked for a $15 million earmark for defense contractors L3 Titan Group, MBDA, Raytheon and Boeing, or who requested some $300,000 to fix a parking garage in Punta Gorda, Fla. An important note: These members had the integrity to inform the public of what there spending requests were — we can question their priorities and criticize their choices, but we should acknowledge their openness.

There are 413 members who don’t want you to know what they’re asking for, who don’t want any criticism of their choices. They’re the ones who deserve the most criticism.

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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.”

(more…)

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In today’s edition, Roll Call profiles how members of Congress increasingly pimping their top aides as a way to raise campaign cash. The paper quoted one lobbyist as saying the main attractions were “the powers behind the throne.”

Twice over the past couple of months Democrats have used senior staffers as the draw for lobbyists to attend and write checks. In June, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee held a fundraiser featuring Senate chiefs of staff. Also in June, the DCCC held a $1,000 a head fundraiser featuring leadership staffers and committee staff as the draw. Chaired by Yelberton Watkins, chief of staff to Majority Whip James Clyburn, the event raised nearly $250,000, according to the paper. Republicans are “offering up staffers as fundraising bait,” too, according to Roll Call. They’ve held two fundraisers featuring chiefs of staff over the past year.

Roll Call quotes a lobbyist as saying the success of these events point to an irony in the lobbying reform laws Democrats enacted. “By restricting opportunities for lobbyists to mingle with staff, the law puts a premium on these types of fundraisers.”

Defenders of the practice note that chiefs of staff, at least, frequently carry a political portfolio on top of their policy duties. Top staffers for lawmakers of both parties are often on the campaign payroll and play an important year-round role helping their bosses fill their campaign coffers.

Others, including some lobbyists who attended last month’s DCCC fundraiser, said such events can put both solicitors and donors in an uncomfortable position. They ask professionals who are usually careful to keep their daytime conversations limited to legislative matters to engage over the give-and-take of campaign money.

“It did seem a little odd,” said one lobbyist who went to the DCCC event last month. Added another, “I have mixed feelings about it, but it works. It’s totally legal, but it probably pushes the envelope a little bit.”

A Republican lobbyist, who attended the NRSC event earlier this year, called the practice a “gray area.”

“It’s a little uncomfortable. Obviously there needs to be some separation between the money side of politics and the policy side of politics. That’s easy enough for Members of Congress because they’re also candidates. That dance gets a little more diffuse at the staff level,” he said. “But if both sides are doing it - it’s mutually assured destruction.”

This is how Washington works. Money gets you access to power. And real instantaneous disclosure would bring these practices to light more quickly and stop a lot of it.

Hat tip: Matt Stoller

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