NewsTrust - Campaign Reform - Most Recent Stories: News (Mainstream)

CNN Poll: Time to clean house in Congress?

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

CNN - Aug. 09 (Poll) - Need more evidence that Americans are extremely angry at Congress? Well, here you go: According to a new national survey, for the first time ever most Americans don't believe their own member of Congress deserves re-election.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.9 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

O'Donnell: Spending accusations are 'thug' tactics

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Associated Press - By Matthew Barakat, Ben Nuckols, Randall Chase - Dec. 29 (News Report) - Failed U.S. Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell said Thursday that accusations she misspent campaign funds are politically motivated and stoked by disgruntled former campaign workers.

NewsTrust Rating: 2.9 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Will Stealth Spending Decide the 2012 GOP Presidential Primaries?

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Politics Daily - By Walter Shapiro - Nov. 12 (News Analysis) - After a GOP wave election that put the "tsu" in tsunami, Republicans have reason to feel smug as they look toward 2012. High on the GOP's gloating list is the way that wealthy conservatives and right-wing business groups exploited the new permissive

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average - 7 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

When Campaigns Manipulate Social Media

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - Nov. 10 (Investigative Report) - Politicians and tech evangelists alike see social media as the key to a new type of politics: Campaigns and candidates can better engage citizens, facilitate grassroots organization, and craft legislation with the direct input of a Tweeting electorate. The inevitable results, optimists argue, will be a sort of "digital democracy," defined by a closer, more coherent relationship between the elected officials and their constituents. But social media, like any tool, can be used to erode democratic practices as well.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Corporate campaign ads haven't followed Supreme Court's prediction

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By David G. Savage - Oct. 27 (News Report) - Companies and unions have been able to avoid the transparency called for in the court's landmark ruling. Spending on next week's midterm election has been exorbitant.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average - 14 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Return of the Secret Donors

Sun, 17 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Jill Abramson - Oct. 17 (Special Report) - In this year’s midterm elections, there is no talk of satchels of cash from donors. Nor is there any hint of illegal actions reaching Watergate-like proportions. But the fund-raising practices that earned people convictions in Watergate — giving direct corporate money to a campaign and doing so secretly — are back in a different form in 2010.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.1 average - 9 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Disappointed Supporters Question Obama

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 15:39:57 -0700

New York Times - By Sheryl Gay Stolberg - Sep. 20 (Special Report) - It was billed as “Investing In America,” a live televised conversation between President Obama and American workers, students, business people and retirees on the state of the economy, a kind of Wall Street to Main Street reality check. But it sounded like a therapy session for disillusioned Obama supporters. In question after question in Monday’s one-hour session, which took place at the Newseum here and was televised on CNBC, Mr. Obama was confronted by people who said, in short, that they had expected more from him. People from Main Street wanted to know if the American dream still lived for them. People from Wall Street complained that he was treating them like a piñata, “whacking us with the stick,” in the words of a former law school classmate of Mr. Obama’s who now runs a hedge fund

NewsTrust Rating: 3.7 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Liberals becoming more disenchanted with Democrats, USA Today/Gallup poll finds

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 11:20:47 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Michael Muskal - Sep. 20 (News Report) - Liberals becoming more disenchanted with Democrats, USA Today/Gallup poll findsLos Angeles TimesThe latest USA Today/Gallup poll shows that fewer than one in five of those surveyed approve of the job Congress is doing, statistically the same as the ...Now that the Democratic Congress is back in session, its approval decline ...Los Angeles Times (blog)Poll Shows Approval Rating For Congress At Historically Low LevelsRTT NewsCongress Only Growing Less Popular With AmericansGallup.comall 12 news articles??

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The Influence Industry: Groups say time is now for public financing push

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Dan Eggen - Jul. 08 (News Report) - Two interest groups plan to spend as much as $15 million this year on a nationwide campaign in favor of new public-financing legislation aimed at limiting the influence of wealthy donors and large corporations in congressional races.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.3 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Ride Along with Mitch

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Weekly Standard - By Andrew Ferguson - Jun. 10 (Special Report) - He treats waste in government as a moral offense. “Government isn’t a business, and it shouldn’t be run as a business,” he said. “But it can be more like business. It has a lot to learn from businessmen.” Government operates without the market pressures that produce efficiency and increase quality. The challenge for government leaders is to produce those pressures to economize internally, through an act of will. “Never take a dollar from a free citizen through the coercion of taxation without a very legitimate purpose,” he said in an interview last year. “We have a solemn duty to spend that dollar as carefully as possible, because when we took it we diminished that person’s freedom.” When you put it like that, overspending by government seems un-American. When Daniels took office, in 2004, the state faced a $200 million deficit and hadn’t balanced its budget in seven years. Four years later, all outstanding debts had been paid off; after four balanced budgets, the state was running a surplus of $1.3 billion, which has cushioned the blows from a steady decline in revenues caused by the recession. “That’s what saved us when the recession hit,” one official said. “If we didn’t have the cash reserves and the debts paid off, we would have been toast.” The state today is spending roughly the same amount that it was when Daniels took office, largely because he resisted the budget increases other states were indulging in the past decade.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.4 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

A Quest to End Spending Rules for Campaigns

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By David D. Kirkpatrick - Jan. 25 (News Report) - For most of the last 35 years, James Bopp Jr. has been a lonely Quixote tilting at the very idea of regulating political donations as an affront to free speech. Not anymore.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Supreme Court rolls back campaign spending limits

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Mark Sherman - Jan. 21 (News Report) - The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that corporations may spend as freely as they like to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress, easing decades-old limits on business efforts to influence federal campaigns.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.1 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Who cashed in during 2008?

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Politico - By Kenneth P. Vogel - Sep. 04 (News Report) - The analysis... found at least 73 staffers were paid more than $150,000 during the 2008 election cycle, a two-year period spanning 2007 and 2008. CQ’s analysis didn’t include salaries paid to Senate campaign staffers, because those campaigns are not required to report their finances to the FEC electronically, making their records much more difficult to access and search.

NewsTrust Rating: Not rated yet - See Info » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

FEC dismisses complaint on Palin's clothes | adn.com

Wed, 20 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Anchorage Daily News - May. 20 (News Analysis) - This means that the FEC will allow political parties to buy candidates whatever they want at whatever cost, and that the candidates and their families may keep these purchases. Despite the fact that Governor Palin and the RNC claimed the clothing would be donated to charity, it is not clear this ever happened, and in any event, according to the FEC, the law does not require it.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Mormons admit larger role in California's Prop. 8 campaign

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

McClatchy - By Shane Goldmacher - Feb. 06 (News Report) - The Mormon church has revealed in a campaign filing that the church spent nearly $190,000 to help pass Proposition 8, the November ballot measure that banned gay marriage in California. The disclosure comes amid an investigation by the state's campaign watchdog agency into whether the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints violated state laws by not fully disclosing its involvement during the campaign.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.3 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Stinging Talk About Obama? Never Mind Now

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Jim Rutenberg - Nov. 08 (News Analysis) - That whole anti-American, friend-to-the-terrorists thing about President-elect Barack Obama? Never mind. Just a few weeks ago, at the height of the campaign, Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota told Chris Matthews of MSNBC that, when it came to Mr. Obama, “I’m very concerned that he may have anti-American views.” But there she was on Wednesday, after narrowly escaping defeat because of those comments, saying she was “extremely grateful that we have an African-American who has won this year.” Ms. Bachmann, a Republican, called Mr. Obama’s victory, which included her state, “a tremendous signal we sent.” And it was not too long ago that Senator John McCain’s running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, accused Mr. Obama of “palling around with terrorists.” But she took an entirely different tone on Thursday, when she chastised reporters for asking her questions about her war with some staff members in the McCain campaign at such a heady time. “Barack Obama has been elected president,” Ms. Palin said. “Let us, let us — let him — be able to kind of savor this moment, one, and not let the pettiness of maybe internal workings of the campaign erode any of the recognition of this historic moment that we’re in. And God bless Barack Obama and his beautiful family.”

NewsTrust Rating: 4.1 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Obama Accepting Untraceable Donations

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Matthew Mosk - Oct. 29 (News Report) - Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity, campaign officials confirmed. Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged. Instead, the campaign is scrutinizing its books for improper donations after the money has been deposited.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Obama rules the TV ad airwaves

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - By Steve Schifferes - Oct. 29 (News Report) - Mr Obama's extraordinary advantage in fundraising - he has raised nearly $660m, twice as much as Senator McCain - is being used to flood key states with TV advertising. He is likely to spend more than $100m on TV advertising in October alone, more than Senator McCain's entire campaign budget, which is limited to $84m because he opted to accept federal funds.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.6 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Block the Vote

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Rolling Stone - By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, Greg Palast - Oct. 18 (Investigative Report) - On February 5th, the day of the Super Tuesday caucus, a school-bus driver named Paul Maez arrived at his local polling station to cast his ballot. To his surprise, Maez found that his name had vanished from the list of registered voters, thanks to a statewide effort to deter fraudulent voting. For Maez, the shock was especially acute: He is the supervisor of elections in Las Vegas.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average - 12 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Obama's fundraising prowess exposes flaws in law

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Dan Morain, Doug Smith - Oct. 09 (News Report) - Obama's contributions have also exposed a loophole in the law, which does not require disclosure of the identities of donors who give $200 or less, making it impossible to determine whether they are legitimate without a federal audit.

NewsTrust Rating: Not rated yet - See Info » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

For McCain and Team, a Host of Ties to Gambling

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Sep. 28 (News Report) - A lifelong gambler, Mr. McCain takes risks, both on and off the craps table. He was throwing dice that night not long after his failed 2000 presidential bid, in which he was skewered by the Republican Party's evangelical base, opponents of gambling. Mr. McCain was betting at a casino he oversaw as a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, and he was doing so with the lobbyist who represents that casino, according to three associates of Mr. McCain. The visit had been arranged by the lobbyist, Scott Reed, who works for the Mashantucket Pequot, a tribe that has contributed heavily to Mr. McCain's campaigns and built Foxwoods into the world's second-largest casino. Joining them was Rick Davis, Mr. McCain's current campaign manager. Their night of good fortune epitomized not just Mr. McCain's affection for gambling, but also the close relationship he has built with the gambling industry and its lobbyists during his 25-year career in Congress.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Out of bounds! McCain misstates Obama sex-ed record

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

McClatchy - By Margaret Talev - Sep. 10 (News Report) - A new 30-second TV ad attacks Barack Obama's record on education, saying that Obama backed legislation to teach "'comprehensive sex education' to kindergartners." The announcer then says, "Learning about sex before learning to read? Barack Obama. Wrong on education. Wrong for your family."

NewsTrust Rating: 4.1 average - 18 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Two-party 'charade' must end, Ron Paul says - CNN.com

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

CNN - Sep. 10 (News Report) - Instead, Paul will give his seal of approval to four candidates: Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney, Libertarian Party nominee Bob Barr, independent candidate Ralph Nader and Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin.

NewsTrust Rating: Not rated yet - See Info » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Big Money Still Has Prominent Seat at Parties' Conventions

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Leslie Wayne, Michael Luo - Aug. 22 (News Report) - Craig Holman, a lobbyist for Public Citizen, a watchdog group, wants to shame House members into not attending these events, even if they seem to be technically allowed under guidance from the House ethics committee. "They came through last year in passing these ethics rules," Mr. Holman said. "They did a phenomenal job in passing one of the most phenomenal ethics laws we've ever had. I don't want them trampling all over that."♦

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Obama and McCain Lag in Naming 'Bundlers' Who Rake In Campaign Cash

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Michael Luo, Christopher Drew - Jul. 11 (News Report) - Mr. Obama, in particular, has made transparency a cornerstone of his campaign, even introducing a bill in the Senate last year that would mandate that presidential candidates identify their bundlers. But Senator John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee, has also railed against the influence of money on politics and been lax on the issue of bundler disclosure as well.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.3 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer