John Wonderlich, the Sunlight Foundation's* policy director, was similarly skeptical.

"It's very hard to get excited about government-wide tech plans, when the people who write them leave, and then we get new plans," he wrote on Twitter. In another tweet, he continued:

"There's the OGD" — that's the Open Government Directive — "the OGP commitments" — that's the Open Government Partnership — "vivek's old 25 point plan" — released by former Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra, who left federal government last year — "and now a new unified plan?"

What does it take for a politician to communicate with the American public? If you’ve been following the news lately, it’s speaking like a tenth grader, but is that accurate?

The Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit with a mission of creating government transparency, said it had analyzed the speeches of members of congress, and found that members now speak at a 10.6 grade level – down a full grade from the 11.5 grade level of political discourse seven years ago.

It's rarely wise to establish a new government agency. But the new five-member Federal Accountability and Spending Transparency Commission, which would be established under Republican Rep. Darrel Issa's Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, could be the exception.

[...]

"Data standards will be established that will break down many of the information silos that have undermined efforts to systematically examine government spending," vows Ellen Miller, co-founder and executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, one of the backers.

He told the newspaper The Hill that he had been talking with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, the sponsor of a much-needed bill requiring timely public disclosure of donors writing checks of $10,000 and more for election ads, plus “stand-by-your-ad” identifications from the five biggest donors.

The public has a clear and urgent need to know who are the hidden donors bankrolling the salvos of attack ads. But the Senate measure is reported stalled, with no Republican willing to join as a co-sponsor.

Mr. McCain could help drive the issue by defying his party’s monolithic dedication to unlimited and undisclosed political donations.

The brouhaha over the anti-Obama ads proposed to Omaha billionaire Joe Ricketts provides a case study on why transparency in campaign financing is more important than ever in the era of super PACs.

[...]

Congress should follow Scalia’s argument to its logical conclusion by passing legislation that ensures America’s mega-rich have to do their politicking out in the open.

But what’s rarely clear — to voters or anyone else — is who’s funding these Super PACs. Yes, we know Nevada casino mogul Sheldon Adelson funded a pro-Gingrich Super PAC. But such disclosure’s not required, nor is it easily determined. Super PACs have no obligation to speedily release their donors’ names, even though the Supreme Court in its 2010 Citizens United decision continued to hold that disclosure of contributors serves a larger good.

Fortunately, some legislators are trying to get super PACs to come clean [...] The Hill newspaper reports that McCain wants the DISCLOSE Act to apply to both corporations and unions. He’s right, and Whitehouse should make sure of that.

We urge Texas Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn to back this new disclosure law.

Messina was at the center of PhRMA-White House cooperation from Day One. The Sunlight Foundation reported that on April 15, 2009, Messina met with PhRMA officials, Senate staff and others at the headquarters of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Sunlight writes: "At the meeting, the groups decided to form two nonprofit entities to promote reform efforts, Healthy Economy Now and Americans for Stable Quality Care, that would be funded almost entirely by PhRMA."

Those groups spent more than $20 million supporting the law, and PhRMA-funded groups also spent millions to re-elect the Democratic candidates who voted for it.

For now, such concerns are unlikely to discourage the millions of investors eager to buy a piece of Facebook, said Bill Allison, editorial director of the Sunlight Foundation. But with shareholder activism growing as investors seek greater influence in managing companies, that could change. "There's potential for shareholders to push companies in a different direction," he said.

Congress is really dumbing it down.

A new Sunlight Foundation analysis of how our representatives speak finds we haven't come a long way, Baby -- in fact, "Congress now speaks at almost a full grade level lower than it did just seven years ago, with the most conservative members of Congress speaking on average at the lowest grade level."

From new analysis by Lee Drutman at the Sunlight Foundation’s blog.  You’ll never guess whose speeches score higher than the Declaration of Independence.

Congress's terrible approval ratings have finally been explained — turns out, America's elected representatives are so fucking irritating because they talk at roughly the level of sophomores in high school, which means they can't possibly be legislating at anything higher than a 7th grade level. We've put mental teenagers in charge of one of the most powerful countries in the world.

The Sunlight Foundation made the grim announcement this morning, when they released the results of their annual analysis of Congressional floor speech patterns.

Members of Congress talk like 10th-graders, according to a new Sunlight Foundation analysis released Monday.

The quality of speech in the Congressional Record this year has dropped almost a full grade level since 2005, to 10.6 from 11.5, with an even faster decline among more conservative members, according to the study.

Polarization has changed the way that members of Congress vote. But it turns out it may also be changing the way they talk.
Congress now speaks at a 10.6 grade level — a high-school student, halfway through sophomore year — down from a 11.5 grade level in 2005, according to a Sunlight Foundation analysis of the Congressional record.

The sophistication of federal lawmakers' speech patterns is on the decline, with members of Congress now talking, on average, at the level of high school sophomores. According to a new report by the Sunlight Foundation, Congress has fallen by almost a full grade-level since 2005.

The members speaking at the lowest grade levels tend to be freshmen Republicans.

As NPR noted on Monday, "Of the 10 members speaking at the lowest grade level, all but two are freshmen, and every one is a Republican." That measurement is for all speeches since 1996.

The public has a clear and urgent need to know who are the hidden donors bankrolling the salvos of attack ads. But the Senate measure is reported stalled, with no Republican willing to join as a co-sponsor. Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, and Senator Charles Schumer, a principal force behind the bill, must push to have it brought to a vote.

Mr. McCain could help drive the issue by defying his party’s monolithic dedication to unlimited and undisclosed political donations

“That’s clearly something they do to curry favor with members of Congress,” said Bill Allison, editorial director at the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan group that advocates for greater government transparency. “Clearly Facebook has something members of Congress want. They are taking advantage of a product they have to get closer to members of Congress.”

But what about what they say and, more specifically, how they say it? It turns out that the sophistication of congressional speech-making is on the decline, according to the open government group the Sunlight Foundation. Since 2005, the average grade level at which members of Congress speak has fallen by almost a full grade.

Dimon has met at least 10 times with regulatory officials since October 2010 to discuss implementation of the financial reform law, according to the Sunlight Foundation, which tracks meeting disclosures. Among those meetings was a sit-down with Warren in New York on Jan. 5, 2011.

Dimon also has met four times with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to discuss implementation of the financial reform law. And JPMorgan staff members have met 10 times with the Federal Reserve since September 2010 to discuss implementation of the so-called Volcker rule.

Dimon has met at least 10 times with regulatory officials since October 2010 to discuss implementation of the financial reform law, according to the Sunlight Foundation, which tracks meeting disclosures. Among those meetings was a sit-down with Warren in New York on Jan. 5, 2011.

Dimon also has met four times with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to discuss implementation of the financial reform law. And JPMorgan staff members have met 10 times with the Federal Reserve since September 2010 to discuss implementation of the so-called Volcker rule.

They also have an application programming interface for developers looking to play with the data itself. Sunlight Labs even put it to use during its 2011 Labs Olympics, which resulted in a Granicus-powered project called Talk of the Town.

The voters chose Mourdock, and they gave up the Lugar cash advantage.  Even in the flood of anti-Lugar cash, the Lugar ATM outspent Mourdock, and took in a heck of a lot from outside groups as well.  Ironically in proportion to spending, outside groups for Mourdock outspent Mourdock himself.  The Sunlight Foundation link above is a revealing read for those who are still befuddled with outside spending and the legal ramifications of anonymous spending.

Capitol Words, a project of the Washington-based transparency organization Sunlight Foundation, allows taxpayers to track what their senators and representatives talk about during speeches and debates.

According to the project’s data, so far this year, the Vista Republican has been mentioned by first and last name in 10 speeches in Congress.

It's rarely wise to establish a new government agency, but the new five-member Federal Accountability and Spending Transparency Commission, which would be established under Republican Rep. Darrel Issa's Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, could be the exception.

[...]

"Data standards will be established that will break down many of the information silos that have undermined efforts to systematically examine government spending," vows Ellen Miller, co-founder and executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, one of the backers. Unfortunately, while Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., has introduced a Senate version of the bill, he has no co-sponsors.

Furthermore, the firm itself did not donate that money. The ad cites a compilation by Sunlight Foundation, which finds that in 2008 the firm’s employees donated $189,184 to the Democratic presidential candidate. So far this year, however, the firm’s employees have given Mitt Romney the most money, at $45,668. Obama, meanwhile, has received $12,700. (Cruz is the second-most-popular candidate at $34,650.) In other words, Cruz works with a lot of fat-wallet Democrats. That doesn’t make him one.

PANEL TO TAKE UP PAY-TO-PLAY BILL. A bill sponsored by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, would remove partisan influence from government contracting by blocking public disclosure of a contractor's campaign spending, its supporters say. Not so, says a coalition of 14 good-government groups, including the Campaign Legal Center, the Sunlight Foundation, Common Cause, and the League of Women Voters. Full disclosure is the only way for the public to know when contracts are being awarded in cases of "pay-to-play" corruption, they say. "This proposal would allow contractors cashing government checks to buy influence through campaign spending and keep it secret from taxpayers and voters," said Meredith McGehee, policy director at Campaign Legal Center. The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is expected to take up the bill today.

A group of 14 government watchdogs and other organizations - including the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause and the Sunlight Foundation - are calling on senators to oppose a bill it warns would damage transparency by halting the disclosure of campaign spending by government contractors.

"This effort to keep the campaign money of government contractors in the shadows runs afoul of the honesty of our elections and the integrity of the government contracting process," the groups wrote in a letter today.

I'm talking about Transparency Camp, the Sunlight Foundation's annual two-day unconference for open government. (Full disclosure: Along with Andrew Rasiej, I helped set up the Sunlight Foundation and am one of its senior advisers.) Now in its fifth incarnation, TCamp has more than doubled in size from the 200 people who showed up back in the spring of 2009.

And it's matured in at least two other ways...

Under the billing as an "unconference," the Sunlight Foundation's annual Transparency Camp -- held at George Mason University's Arlington, Va. campus -- was created to provide an open forum for participants to drive solutions, share experiences and collaborate on furthering the goal of open government.

"Open government is about disclosure," Sunlight's communication director Gabriela Schneider said. "In the 21st century, it means immediate disclosure online." Data can be disseminated in different mediums with actual context once it's made available to the public and computers, according to Schneider.

Other super PACs are forming to aid just a single candidate, in states like IN, VA, ND and TX. Sunlight Foundation dir. Bill Allison: "It's a way for them to outsource the dirty work of a campaign" (Litvan, Bloomberg, 4/27).

Sunlight Foundation's Ryan Sibley has uncovered dramatic new numbers that point to the increasingly high  profile of Miscellaneous Tariff Bills (MTBs) in Congress and shine additional light on a long obscured area of influence-peddling, as highlighted in this April 16 Beltway Confidential post.

Sibley examined Senate lobbying records and found that at least 71 companies have spent an estimated $14 million lobbying members of Congress for specific MTBs. Another nine firms have registered to lobby for MTBs but have not yet reported expenditures on those efforts.

To date, super PACs have spent more than $94 million on independent expenditures, according to data from the Sunlight Foundation. The largest portion of that has come from Restore Our Future, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's allied super PAC, which has spent $42 million.

We believe there is nothing inherently corrupting about people donating to the candidates of their choice, or of speaking their minds on the issues of the day ---- and it is certainly no more corrupting when done as a group organized into a corporation.

What is needed to restore faith in our democratic institutions is not a muzzle, but more openness. Rather than silencing groups during election season, we would be better off with new laws requiring full disclosure of all campaign donations, with no loopholes.

Sunshine, not a government-enforced silence, is the best antidote to potential electoral shenanigans.

Bill Allison, editorial director of the Sunlight Foundation, which advocates for more transparency in government, said paying vendors through obscure entities could mask the hiring of an outside adviser with a controversial past or conceal behind-the-scenes financial dealings. "Knowing the identities of campaign consultants is important for public accountability," he said.

By the time you read this we will probably already have a few Scout alerts up and running. More later. This resource sounds 100% promising and if Sunlight Labs other resources are any indication, it’s going to be awesome. Btw, Scout is free to access and use.

Does making names and salaries available online curb corruption? In Maciag's article, Daniel Schuman, policy counsel for the Sunlight Foundation, asserts that the public information acts as a deterrent to corruption, and gives the example of Bell, Calif., where city officials were charged with malfeasance only after a series of reports revealed that they were receiving extravagantly large salaries. Would disclosure before the fact have prevented the abuses in Bell from occurring? Possibly, but it seems to me that sound systems of internal control and governance are far more effective in deterring public corruption.

Indeed, SB 2992 could yield a trial lawyers' feeding frenzy. If they believe they were fired for owning a gun — or if an attorney thinks he can make that argument stick — employees will be able to sue for punitive and non-economic damages, court costs and attorneys' fees, without caps to limit how large those awards might be. For what it's worth, Faulk received $14,000 from the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association between 2008 and 2010, and Bass received $8,000 in the same period, according to campaign finance data compiled by the Sunlight Foundation.

It's also worth noting that the act's passage comes just a few days after a survey from the Sunlight Foundation found that only 25 percent of all House Appropriations Committee hearings are archived online, despite the fact that current rules require all hearings to be streamed and made publicly available "to the maximum extent possible." If the DATA act makes it through the Senate, however, taxpayers may soon have greater access to federal spending records, and greater insight into where their tax dollars actually go.

Finally, as ExxonMobil PRomotes the value of school teachers – for whatever reason — it might instead consider another tack that would actually do more good for education in America…while saving it considerable corporate expense: Pull the millions it spends to prop up the politicians who propose to slash education programs and raise student loan rates in this country.

A cursory look at The Sunlight Foundation‘s Influence Explorer site, reveals which political party receives the vast majority of the company’s lobbying dollars.

Who backs CISPA, and who doesn't?
Unlike SOPA, several large tech companies are on board with CISPA, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and IBM. Other prominent backers include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, AT&T, and defense contractors. On the other side, the ACLU, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Market Coalition, Anonymous, Sunlight Foundation, a group of 18 House Democrats, and the Republican Liberty Caucus are among the odd collection of groups trying to kill the bill. The Obama administration opposes the bill as written. The bill's author, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich), says he's "open to change this bill right up until it comes to the House floor."

“The DATA Act will transform how we are able to monitor government spending online,” Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, said in a statement. “The DATA Act will increase transparency for federal spending data and expand when, where and how it is available online.

Along with the Sunlight Foundation and other watchdog groups, a group of technology companies led by Microsoft in the Data Transparency Coalition lobbied for passage in recent weeks.

The non-partisan Sunlight Foundation concurs, arguing that “broadcasters are not entitled to cherry pick the quality or type of information to be made public.” In an April 20 letter to Chairman Genachowski, Sunlight’s executive director Ellen Miller writes that broadcasters want to omit “information about whether a station accepted or rejected a request to purchase time, the date and time a political advertising message aired, and the class of time purchased.”

“The broadcasters also appear to suggest keeping offline — in effect hiding — information about ads purchased by non-profit organizations, including so-called ‘super PACs,’ that purchase ad time for electioneering communications or making independent expenditures.”

The nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation concurs, arguing that “broadcasters are not entitled to cherry pick the quality or type of information to be made public.” In an April 20 letter to Genachowski, Sunlight’s executive director Ellen Miller writes that broadcasters want to omit “information about whether a station accepted or rejected a request to purchase time, the date and time a political advertising message aired, and the class of time purchased.”

The broadcasters also appear to suggest keeping offline — in effect hiding — information about ads purchased by non-profit organizations, including so-called “super PACs,” that purchase ad time for electioneering communications or making independent expenditures.

The one donation reported last year by a Brooklyn outfit, the Tea Party Conservative PAC, offers the end of a string to the permanent Republican establishment here. It gave $3,255 to FreedomWorks. Dick Armey of Texas, former GOP majority leader and a millionaire lobbyist for big government contractors, chairs FreedomWorks. Brooklyn’s little gift was overwhelmed by individual donations of up to $250,000. Armey’s super PAC has raised more than $2.7 million, according to money trackers at the Sunlight Foundation.

Snowe had a fundraiser the week before she announced her decision. She had five scheduled from March 7-14, according to the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation's politicalpartytime.org web site. All of those were canceled, along with about a dozen other fundraisers scheduled or being planned beyond March 14, according to Snowe's campaign manager, Justin Brasell.

To address this problem, Congress should take immediate action by passing the DISCLOSE Act, recently introduced in the House (H.R. 4010). This bill goes straight to the problem: the lack of transparency for unlimited, secret super PAC money and the influence it has on our elections and our elected officials. This simplified bill, stripped of controversial non-transparency provisions a previous version contained, is a good solution to the “dark money” problem.

Several groups that advocate for government transparency have called for a stronger version of the law including the Sunlight Foundation (which called the House version "STOCK Act Lite") and Common Cause.

There is no better way to support democracy than to give people the information they need in order to make informed decisions. Taxpayers and stockholders alike deserve to know what corporate and union funds are being spent on elections.

The fundraiser broke no laws. Lawmakers from both parties hold fundraisers regularly, ranging from breakfasts to grand extravaganzas.

For instance, President Barack Obama's campaign fund has held or scheduled nine fundraisers in March, according to the Sunlight Foundation, a watchdog group.

But the CBS report on the trip to Florida appears to run counter to his frequent campaign pledges that he would remain independent of Washington's culture of influence.

Every citizen has a right to know when someone is spending money to influence the political process -- and any elected or appointed government official who believes otherwise needs to find work outside the public sector.

Yet this essential information -- which political donors are giving how much to whom and for what purpose -- remains largely concealed from the public. And few states make it easier to hide the source and purpose of political expenditures than Michigan does.

The need to assure more timely and comprehensive disclosure of such donations has grown even more urgent since 2010, when the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision inCitizens United v. the Federal Elections Commission struck down any limits on what corporations can spend to promote their own political druthers.

Presidential candidates have to file their quarterly campaign finance reports electronically. So do candidates for the U.S. House. Electronic filing allows voters and watchdog groups to see, in a timely fashion, who is making contributions to candidates and who might try to influence them in office.

In the Senate, however, it's different story. Senate rules still allow senators to file campaign finance reports on paper. For the most part, that's exactly what Senate campaigns do.

The Supreme Court put a giant "For Sale" sign on American democracy. The least Congress can do is identify the buyers.

Federal contracting records and campaign finance data provided by the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan group that promotes transparency in government, show that three other companies with federal contracts made contributions to Restore Our Future:

To address this problem, Congress should take immediate action and pass the DISCLOSE Act, recently introduced in the House.

This bill is an update to a previous version introduced two years ago in the last Congress, and goes straight to the problem: the lack of transparency for unlimited, secret super PAC money and the influence it has on our elections and our elected officials.

Bill Allison, editorial director of The Sunlight Foundation, a government watchdog organization, said, "When you see something like this, lobbyists, trade associations and labor unions, mingling (with lawmakers), getting wined and dined, you ask, 'What's the quid pro quo?' "
He said the special interests don't necessarily care which party is in power, "they're just looking to who can apply pressure to get done what they want done."
That's why incumbents have a huge advantage, he said. "They can get a favor right now. The fact that Fitzpatrick is a Republican is secondary."

In Illinois alone, a pro-Romney super PAC had spent $2.6 million as of midday Monday, more than eight times the spending by a super PAC aligned with his leading rival, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, data compiled by the non-partisan Sunlight Foundation show. In Louisiana, which votes Saturday, the pro-Romney super PAC is outspending the Santorum group by more than 2-to-1.

Got an extra $52 million in your petty cash slush fund? Want to buy an election? Well, you can and no one would be any the wiser unless Congress passes the badly needed DISCLOSE Act.

The presidential super PACs have spent already spent at least $70 million on campaign 2012, according to the Sunlight Foundation. According to the foundation: Restore Our Future has spent $36.5 million for Romney; Winning Our Future has spent $16 million for Gingrich; Red White and Blue fund has spent $6.5 million for Santorum; Endorse Liberty has spent $3.5 million for Paul, while two other groups have spent $452,000 for Paul; Make Us Great Again spent $4 million for Perry before he quit the race; Our Destiny spent $2.5 million for Huntsman before he quit; and the 9-9-9 Fund spent $418,000 on behalf of Herman Cain. In addition, American Crossroads has spent $1 million, and Priorities USA has spent $689,000.

"This is almost the opposite of grassroots," said Sunlight Foundation editorial director Bill Allison. "This is the very elite who tend to give to these organizations."

"What really concerns us is all these people have issues before the federal government. This is a great way for them to get access, to get noticed, to get influence," Allison said. "It's not so much the giving to the super PACs and what they're doing, it's what happens after the election when these people come to collect."

"It is a cardinal principle of campaign finance laws that citizens have a basic right to know about the expenditures being made to influence their votes and the donors funding these expenditures," the groups -- including the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, Public Citizen and the Sunlight Foundation -- said in a statement.

The Sunlight Foundation reported Wednesday that DeMint's decision to favor Club For Growth over a more traditional donation to the National Republican Senatorial Committee shows a trend suggesting that super PACs and third-party groups are quickly eroding the more traditional ways that campaigns are financed.

The Sunlight Foundation said Wednesday that, which tracks money in politics, praised the bill's return to the Senate. "We are pleased to see the Senate is aligning with the House on supporting a DISCLOSE Act that goes straight to the problem: the lack of transparency for unlimited, secret super PAC money and the influence it has on our elections and our elected officials," said Sunlight co-founder Ellen Miller in a statement.

Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, is one of a legion of good-government activists who welcomed the introduction of the Senate bill on Wednesday.

"We are pleased to see the Senate is aligning with the House on supporting a DISCLOSE Act that goes straight to the problem: the lack of transparency for unlimited, secret super PAC money and the influence it has on our elections and our elected officials," Miller said in a statement. "This simplified bill is a good solution to the 'dark money' problem. The updated bill also removes extraneous or controversial provisions, instead focusing on what the public demands -- transparency."

As the country enters what is expected to be the most expensive election in history, nine governmental watchdog organizations have asked the four GOP presidential candidates as well as President Barack Obama to voluntarily disclose the names of their bundlers and the amounts they raise. The groups include the Center for Responsive Politics, Public Citizen and the Sunlight Foundation.

This year's election seems tailor-made for Mr. Simmons. New rules effectively eliminate limits for those willing to take advantage of a string of federal court decisions and regulatory changes that together allow super PACs to take unlimited donations and advocate for a candidate or party, as long as they don't coordinate their spending with the presidential campaigns.

People who disagree with the changes say super PACs now have more influence than political parties and are less accountable. "Harold Simmons is unleashed to give as much as he wants—whether motivated to help Republicans or his business empire," said Bill Allison, editorial director of Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan government watchdog group.

There are 6 Sunlight Labs API in our directory, so it was strange to see the company suggest that governments don’t need APIs. But that’s not really what they’re saying:

To sum up, Sunlight is pro-API – we make our own, and we welcome them from the government when they enhance access to information (the FederalRegister.gov API is a particularly good example). However, the first step government should take, in nearly all cases, is to offer the data directly and in bulk. They’ll save themselves mountains of hassle, will better and more quickly serve entrepreneurs and developers, and will encourage the broadest possible use of their data by the public.

However, Sunlight Labs, an arm of the prominent transparency group Sunlight Foundation, suggests that APIs should be only one of the strategies for distributing government data -- and not necessarily the first choice. Sunlight did not connect their conclusions to VanRoekel specifically, but their thoughts do concern the technology VanRoekel champions.

APIs should be used to supplement, not displace, the availability of direct data downloads to the public, Eric Mill, Web and mobile developer for Sunlight, wrote in a March 21 blog entry on the Sunlight Labs Blog.

"You can't read his mind and what he's thinking, but it obviously gives the candidates more money and extends the process longer," said Bill Allison, editorial director at the Sunlight Foundation. "On the flip side, it gives him more influence with the candidates."

Simmons has vast holdings in regulated industries like nuclear waste disposal and chemical and metal manufacturing, which Allison explored in an article illuminating Simmons' history of political giving.

A trawl through campaign finance disclosures collated by the Sunlight Foundation shows more than 10% of  Forbes 400 rich list members have handed over cash to these action groups either personally or via their companies. It’s worth noting that all of these PACs are officially independent of any politician, but are generally linked to one presidential candidate or cause.

The DISCLOSE Act of 2012 is a good start toward reasonable campaign finance reform.

Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., and Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., are two of the key sponsors of the legislation (Bennet sat on the committee that led to the proposal), which aims to end anonymous campaign spending.

At least in theory, the new DISCLOSE Act should pass muster with the Supreme Court, which claimed to be in favor of disclosure in its Citizens United decision. As for the court of public opinion, lawmakers should pay close heed to polls showing that the public supports disclosure as a way to fight political corruption.

Members of Congress will have to overcome self-interest to pass this desperately needed legislation. That won’t be easy for those who remember who spent millions of dollars on their elections and who will be sorely tempted to continue swilling from the trough of unlimited contributions.

A heartening number of Democrats, including Merkley, have shown a willingness to resist that temptation and do what’s right for voters and their country. Republicans should join them.

There are several problems with this rotten mess. The first is that voters and watchdogs, including the press, often can’t tell who is paying for the mud-slinging, which erodes accountability. Donors and contribution amounts often are hidden.

But the ruling has changed the game, and Udall is absolutely right in saying we need transparency on where the money comes from since the limits on how much can be spent independently supporting or trashing a candidate have effectively been eliminated.

Udall, D-N.M., has signed on to legislation introduced by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., that would force so-called super PACS and other groups spending more than $10,000 in a 24-hour period to disclose expenditures and donors. The bill also would prevent the actual sources of funds from being obscured by third-party groups.

These would be excellent improvements and deserve bipartisan support.

A bill introduced in the U.S. Senate last week would shed some light on shadowy, anonymous campaign spending allowed by a two-year-old, controversial U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case.

The DISCLOSE Act of 2012 is cosponsored by 35 Senate Democrats, including Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash [...]

The super PACS need to be held accountable, and it’s up to Congress to lead the way.

The G-men who brought you the ground-shaking probation indictments now need to turn up the heat on lawmakers and other state agencies if they truly want to stamp out the patronage-hiring scheme that triggered the original investigation, government watchdogs told the Herald.

“The next step is going after the lawmakers,” said Bill Allison of the Washington, D.C.-based Sunlight Foundation.

“All too often we see a deference to elected officials. They always seem to get a break in these things. But if you can go after them and win convictions, and pressure them, they’re the ones who will know where else this patronage is occurring.”

The Sunlight Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based government transparency group, recognized them as "open government champions."

"These are everyday folks who are being more innovating and creating more public demand for government accountability," said Gabriela Schneider, the foundation's communications director.

The federal Disclose Act is back in play, and none too soon, as newly empowered super PACs strut their stuff in the ugliest Republican primaries in recent memory.

[...]

The Sunlight Foundation is marshaling support for the Disclose Act. Check it out. It'll need some help.

Jerry Couey and Alan Isaacson showed what ordinary citizens, exercising their lawful rights, can accomplish. It's why they were honored by the First Amendment Foundation in Florida, and the Sunlight Foundation in Washington, D.C.

They earned the honors.

The best way to start fixing the problem is for Congress to pass the DISCLOSE Act. DISCLOSE would create strong reporting requirements for super PACs and the groups that fund them. It will also require super PAC ads to contain disclaimers by their top officials.

There's nothing new about the influence of big money on U.S. politics. But it's time for the pendulum to swing back toward the center, and DISCLOSE would help immensely.