From the Hiding In Plain Sight Department, Aaron does good work with the lobbyist database. Here are some folks who have taken money from Bechtel lobbyists who work with Bechtel (thanks to Hoyapaul) — Aaron doesn’t specify a time frame:
House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi – $2,200
Speaker DiMasi’s Committee for a Democratic House PAC – $925.00
House Majority Leader John Rogers – $1,200
Senate President Robert Travaglini – $1,950
Assistant Senate Majority Leader Marian Walsh – $700
Steven Baddour, Senate Chairman of Transportation – $1,525
Joseph Wagner, House Chairman of Transportation – $1,800
Walter Timilty, House Ways and Means – $700
Attorney General Tom Reilly – $5,600
Chris Gabrieli – $525
Interesting that Marian Walsh is the one currently proposing the toughest legislative remedy: A blue-ribbon commission with subpoena power. I might suggest that she give that money back, if she wants to boost her cred on this. Same goes with everyone else, of course, but I’m not holding my breath. (Does Gabrieli need the money?)
This is the Big Dig culture, folks. We’ve got the receipts to prove it. Well done by Hub Politics — but why do we have to wait for a blog to do this stuff? (And why did we at BMG wait for a conservative one to do it? — Don’t answer that.) The data is all right there. Every time these cats open their mouths, the press should put a dollar figure along with their quote; you know, sort of a statistic by which we can measure them, like batting average. “Baddour has really hit his stride, batting a cool $1,525” — that kind of thing.
Update: One of the frustrating things about the database is that you only know the names of the lobbyists who gave the money, and not necessarily who’s the originator of the money. I came across this when trying to find out which legislators Microsoft might have been trying to influence in the open-document kerfuffle late last year. Hoyapaul correctly points out the mistake of equating money given by a lobbyist with a particular company that that lobbyist represents. I’ve reworked the original post to reflect this reality. My bad.
Seriously, you should reword your diary.
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These figures do NOT represent “taking money from Bechtel”. These donations are from full-service lobbying/consulting firms, of which Bechtel is but one of the many businesses/organizations they represent.
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Hub Politics may not understand this, but the “aformentioned registered lobbbyists” are major players in Boston lobbying on a whole host of issues. It is not surprising in the least that they make political donations to the one they are lobbying.
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To say that these donations are “taking money from Bechtel” is simply false and misleading, and I am tired of seeing this same sort of mistake perpetuated all over the place.
The full-service lobbying/consulting firms are making “political donations to the one[s] they are lobbying” — your words, not mine.
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So, if lobby firm Lobby R Us has Bechtel as a client and donates to Joe Senator, it’s not unreasonable to think that some of that revenue stream is coming from Bechtel. How much depends on exactly what Lobby R Us is spending its time lobbying for, but clearly more than $0.
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It’s muddied. Marian Walsh isn’t taking $700 from Bechtel, but Bechtel clearly has a role in Marian Walsh recieving money. Given that the amounts are fairly small, there’s no reason not to give them back, if only to stay above the fray. This is particularly key for Gabs and Reilly since they should be raising enough money that $525 and $5600 is small potatoes anyway.
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Of course, there is an easy way around this. Make it illegal for registered lobbyists to donate money to candidates. Then, this blatant funneling of funding goes away entirely.
These lobbying firms have more than one client. It could very well be that money directed to any one of these sources was not on behalf of Bechtel, but on behalf of another client.
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So, if Lobby R Us has Bechtel and Greenpeace as clients, and Greenpeace says, send a few bucks to Joe Q Senator, can we say that Sen. Joe took money from Bechtel?
If we’re not in the room with the lobbyist or somehow know the purpose of his visit, we don’t know.
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But that’s the problem. If you don’t know exactly where the money is coming from, the entire process is indeed tainted. There’s no presumption of “innocence” (i.e. lack of influence) in this case — certainly not considering what’s happened over the last 20 years or so.
businesses and organizations give money to politicians to help “raise their profile”, so to speak, with the ones receiving the donations, lobbyists give money to politicians NOT on behalf of anyone they represent, but rather in order to “raise their (the lobbyist’s) profile”. So it is like they are lobbying for themselves so they maintain access, which in turn gets them new clients, etc.
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So I disagree even with your contention that “some of the revenue stream” is coming from Bechtel. That simply is not in play here. This is not to say that Gabs, etc. shouldn’t return the money, but, contra Hub Politics, it certainly is no big story if they don’t.
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Unfortuntely, while I’m interested in your proposal to get around this by banning any contributions from lobbyists, I doubt such a proposal would fly under the current Supreme Court constitutional/free speech framework.
… and I fixed it. I should have known better, since I did some of this kind of snooping a while back. Thanks.
This is a little odd isn’t it? Searching the data base of actual contributors you will see that Bechtel and Modern Contintental have been giving directly to people overseeing the Big Dig for years. (I suppose this is misleading too because companies cannot give at all, it is coming from people who work for those companies.)
Can we really call them seperate entities, or a tag team?
Answer: until a couple of years ago, there was something called the Massachusetts Money and Politics Project, funded primarily with foundation money, that did this on a regular basis. Apparently the foundations lost interest, went off chasing some other soccer ball, so, no more Mass. Money and Politics Project, and all that research and institutional memory, gone. Your Vast Left Wing Conspiracy at work.
at least I dug up some info on Modern Continental’s Charles Madden!
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And here are a couple of items the boys at HubPolitics didn’t mention about the people they flagged. Morris Levy (Senior VP of Parsons Brinckerhoff) donated $500 to Mitt Romney, and $200 to Jane Swift, as well as to a few Dems. John A. MacDonald, the President of Bechtel, appears to have made exactly one donation that shows up in the OCPF database: $10 to Romney (maybe it’s not the same guy – seems a bit low for the Prez of Bechtel).
should be…
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A Few Numbers About Massachusetts Government.