In his first order of business as his party’s presumed presidential nominee,[tag] Barack Obama [/tag]is instructing the [tag]Democratic National Committee[/tag] to adopt his[tag] policy against accepting donations from federal lobbyists or political action committees[/tag].

The change will make the party and the candidate have a consistent position. Obama often says banning the donations is one way to help keep him free of the influence of Washington insiders.

More at Yahoo News

Call me crazy but I don’t think these crooks should be able to use campaign contributions for legal fees. Somehow, I don’t think people meant for their contributions to be used that way. Of course, they’re rich republicans……nevermind. I hope Feeney goes down.

More at the Blotter

Campaign reform…….gotta happen before anything is going to change.

Want to find a great stock? Find a donor.

A political donor, I mean.

Here’s why: [tag]Companies that give money to political campaigns have better-performing stocks[/tag], according to a new study, than companies that don’t contribute. It’s no small gap, either. Corporations that give the most have beaten the market by 2.5 percentage points a year over the past 25 years.

“It doesn’t surprise me at all,” says Charles Gabriel, a longtime political analyst with Prudential Equity Group, a division of Prudential Financial (PRU, news, msgs). “Unfortunately, an investment in Washington pays off.”

What is surprising is how much companies get for so little money. The public companies that do give money, on average, fork out just $1,700 to $2,000 per campaign and support an average of 56 federal candidates in each two-year cycle.

Continue reading at MSN Money

I found this site today. They’re offering 1,000 smackers to anyone who can catch McConnell answering a question regarding the lobbying reform bill.

From the Sunlight Foundation:

Who knew a little bill requiring senators to file their campaign finance reports electronically could cause such a problem on Capitol Hill? Today, Senate Republicans under the stewardship of Minority Leader [tag]Mitch McConnell[/tag] tried their hand at a parliamentary trick to add poison pill amendments to S. 223. When Majority Leader Harry Reid tried to move S. 1, the [tag]Senate’ lobbying reform package[/tag], to conference committee Sen. Bob Bennett attempted to add S. 223 while reserving the right to add another amendment. Bennett likely wanted to slip in the same amendment that he tried to add to S.223 when it was in committee. That amendment would allow party committees, like the RNC or the DSCC, to coordinate campaign activities with candidate committees. Bennett’s amendment is widely opposed by the majority Democrats and would not only make S. 223’s passage impossible in conference or in the House of Representatives, but would endanger the entire lobbying and ethics reform package. Reid scuttled this parliamentary trickery by objecting to Bennett’s proposition. The Senate went into convulsions and recessed without advancing S. 1 to conference committee. (There are some conflicting accounts of exactly how this proceeded.))

Since the Senate minority is upping the ante with procedural tricks, the Sunlight Foundation has decided to up the ante on Mitch McConnell. Today, Sunlight announced the extension of the deadline for our campaign to get Mitch McConnell on the record responding to questions about the continued blocking of S. 223. Not only is the deadline extended but the prize money is doubled. You will now receive $1,000 if you are the first to submit a video of McConnell responding to questions about the bill. Check out What’s McConnell Hiding? for more details.

Criminal……this should be a crime. Period.

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: June 7, 2007

WASHINGTON, June 6 - It is no secret that [tag]campaign contributions [/tag]sometimes lead to lucrative official favors. Rarely, though, are the tradeoffs quite as obvious as in the twisted case of Coconut Road.

The $10 million earmark would help extend [tag]Coconut Road[/tag].
The road, a stretch of pavement near Fort Myers, Fla., that touches five golf clubs on its way to the Gulf of Mexico, is the target of a [tag]$10 million earmark that appeared mysteriously in a 2006 transportation bill [/tag]written by [tag]Representative Don Young[/tag], Republican of Alaska.

Mr. Young, who last year steered more than $200 million to a so-called bridge to nowhere reaching 80 people on Gravina Island, Alaska, has no constituents in Florida.

The Republican congressman whose district does include Coconut Road says he did not seek the money. County authorities have twice voted not to use it, until Mr. Young and the district congressman wrote letters warning that a refusal could jeopardize future federal money for the county.

The Coconut Road money is a boon, however, to Daniel J. Aronoff, a real estate developer who helped raise $40,000 for Mr. Young at the nearby Hyatt Coconut Point hotel days before he introduced the measure.

Mr. Aronoff owns as much as 4,000 acres along Coconut Road. The $10 million in federal money would pay for the first steps to connect the road to Interstate 75, multiplying the value of Mr. Aronoff’s land.

More at the New York Times