Finance execs rule today’s mad world of political spending

Over the last 30 years, political contributions made by financial industry executives increased by 700 percent, according to new analysis by the watchdog Sunlight Foundation. Roughly 5,500 members of the finance, insurance, real estate sector gave $178.2 million to political committees and candidates during the 2010 election cycle, up from $15.4 million in the 1990 cycle.

DeGette, Polis ‘fracking’-disclosure camp up against big-money opponents in Congress

Colorado Democratic U.S. Reps Diana DeGette and Jared Polis are leading supporters of a move to force natural-gas drilling companies to disclose the chemicals they use to blast gas out of the ground in an increasingly controversial process called “fracking.” The two lawmakers were joined Thursday by 46 members of Congress in sending a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar asking him to back a proposal in which the Interior Department would require disclosure of all materials used in fracking operations conducted on public lands. The DeGette and Polis bloc faces strong opposition in Congress and, turns out, their main opponents are pulling down large donations from oil and gas companies.

Pouting GOP taking off at tea time in DC, furthering gridlock

Republicans lawmakers in DC are really mad that they lost the battle on health care. So for the last two days they have invoked a rule held over from ye olde colonial times, perhaps, that says all parliamentary business that…

Hugo Chavez’s state-owned Petroleos Corp set to spend on your U.S. election

Blogging on the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling is more of what we love about the web. It’s the kind of typical collective dissection we have now come to expect but that never really existed before: serious, speculative, arcane, funny,…

Democratizing federal contract process with sunlight

This is kinda cool.

Über transparency advocates the Sunlight Foundation is crowdsourcing a federal contract bid to redesign the economic stimulus oversight Web site, Recovery.gov, through it’s open source development lab.

Campaign contributions up, despite economic downturn

As the nation’s economy mires in recession, most Americans are anticipating lower earnings by making do with less — but not those who call Capitol Hill home.

Push for a tax break, get a 22,000% return on investment

The government transparency mavens at the Sunlight Foundation point to a new report documenting how multinational corporations got a staggering 22,000 percent return on the money spent to hire lobbyists to push for a one-time 85 percent IRS tax break on worldwide income.

The bill the corporate giants fought so hard for? The inaptly named American Jobs Creation Act of 2004.

Conventions highlight gaps in ethics laws

It was one of the chief vows of the Democratic Party as it took control of both congressional chambers in 2007: to sever the cozy relationships between lobbyists and lawmakers brought to light by the Jack Abramoff scandals.

No room for us at ‘widely attended’ Qwest party

A new dispatch from Political Party Time.org

We’re just back from a party thrown by Qwest CEO Ed Mueller at the Denver Art Museum’s Palletes restaurant. Designed to be a “widely attended event” under the new ethics law, according to the invitation, apparently it wasn’t so widely attended that they were prepared to allow me in. (To meet the “widely attended” loophole, the event must have at least 25 attendees who are not members of Congress, and there must be some official business for the lawmaker attending, among other conditions.)

Not so popular

We’ll be posting periodic dispatches from Political Party Time.org on DNC parties.

Those of you who followed our exploits on twitter.com/SFPartytime will know that as I suspected, I’m not so popular when it comes to convention parties.