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News Release Archive | Thomas Ferguson | Accuracy.Org

FEC Claims Missing Records on Key Funders a “Technical Problem”

July 18, 2012

THOMAS FERGUSON, thomas.ferguson at umb.edu
Ferguson is professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, senior fellow of the Roosevelt Institute, and contributing editor at AlterNet.

PAUL JORGENSEN, pjorgensen at ethics.harvard.edu
Jorgensen is a fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. He, along with Ferguson, recently wrote the piece “Cover Ups Are Worse Than Vanishing Data: The Facts About the FEC’s Data Downloads” which states: “Yesterday, as an effort in the Senate to mandate disclosure of campaign contributions to non-profit groups fell a few votes short, we published our account of how FEC files relating to similar contributions made during the 2008 election had gone missing from the big data downloads that the FEC makes available to researchers. These are important, because private, for profit groups and public interest groups use as them as the basis for the data presentations that scholars, journalists, and the public usually rely on.

“We’re glad to see that the FEC is restoring its files, but our claims were exact and true. We think the agency should simply admit this; cover ups are always worse than the original foolishness. As our article describes, the FEC’s big data downloads define the history of contributions; they are what people rely on when they calculate totals and other numbers, as well sort through patterns for individuals, groups, and contributors.

“These downloads are public and dated, so anyone can verify what’s in them. The 2008 contribution by Harold Simmons that we mentioned is in the January download. It is not in the July 8 download. The same is true for other contributions we discussed to Let Freedom Ring by John Templesman, Jr., and Foster Friess. More broadly, the entire set of “C9” files covering 501(c)4 that we discussed is gone from the July download, with the trivial exception we mentioned. Needless to say, we checked the FEC’s database many times ourselves and we indicated that the original record of contributions by Simmons (and others) could still be found, if you knew exactly where to look.”

Tagged With: FEC, Paul Jorgensen, Thomas Ferguson,

As Disclose Act Fails in Senate, FEC Quietly Removes Files on Big Ticket Donors

July 17, 2012

The Washington Post reports today: “The Senate failed Monday to advance legislation that would require independent groups to disclose the names of contributors who give more than $10,000 to independent groups for use in political campaigns.”

The just-published piece “Revealed: Key Files on Big Ticket Political Donations Vanish at the Federal Election Commission” by Thomas Ferguson, Paul Jorgensen, and Jie Chen states: “We have discovered that sometime after January of this year, the FEC deleted a whole set of contributions totaling millions of dollars made during the 2007-2008 election cycle. The most important of these files concern what is now called ‘dark money’ — funds donated to ostensible charities or public interest groups rather than parties. These non-profit groups — which Washington insiders often refer to generically as ’501(c)s,’ after the section of the federal tax code regulating them — use the money to pay for allegedly educational ‘independent’ ads that run outside conventional campaign channels. Such funding has now developed into a gigantic channel for evading disclosure of the donors’ identities and is acutely controversial. In 2008, however, a substantial number of contributions to such 501(c)s made it into the FEC database. For the agency quietly to remove them almost four years later with no public comment is scandalous. It flouts the agency’s legal mandate to track political money and mocks the whole spirit of what the FEC was set up to do. …

“We are on the outside looking in. We cannot say for sure who decided to make the deletions or why. But one fact is telling: the missing files include essentially all those of one type in particular — donors to the so-called ’501(c) 4′ ‘charitable’ organizations now in the eye of the storm over dark money.”

Ferguson said today that “It’s ironic that this article came out on the day that an effort to force disclosure of secret funds failed in the Senate.” Jorgensen observed that “campaign finance regulation is weak as it is; it’s vital that the FEC rapidly take steps to fix the situation we discovered.”

THOMAS FERGUSON, thomas.ferguson at umb.edu
Ferguson is professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, senior fellow of the Roosevelt Institute, and contributing editor at AlterNet.

PAUL JORGENSEN, pjorgensen at ethics.harvard.edu
Jorgensen is a Fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University.

Filed Under: Tagged With: corporations, Paul Jorgensen, Thomas Ferguson,

Will JPMorgan’s Dimon Get Serious Questions Today From Senate Banking Committee?

June 13, 2012

Los Angeles Times reports: “The ‘King of Wall Street’ returns to Capitol Hill today, this time to explain how JPMorgan Chase & Co. sustained a $2-billion hole in its ‘fortress balance sheet.’”

THOMAS FERGUSON, thomas.ferguson at umb.edu
Ferguson is professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, senior fellow of the Roosevelt Institute, and contributing editor at AlterNet. AlterNet has just published his “How Wall Street Hustles America’s Cities and States Out of Billions.”

He also recently wrote “Senate Banking Chair Calls Jamie Dimon to Testify: But JPMorgan Chase is His Biggest Contributor!”

Ferguson said today: “We obviously need clear answers about what went wrong with risk management at JPMorgan Chase. We have been told repeatedly that America’s banks were well hedged against disaster in Europe. But who now would put much stock in those assurances as investors run on Spain and Italy and we approach the fateful Greek election? But the Senators can’t stop there. They also need to ask some hard questions about the banks’ unwillingness to let our cities and states out of disastrous swap contracts they sold them. These have cost taxpayers billions of dollars. American bankers have benefited from from vast amounts of taxpayer assistance. Not just TARP, but super cheap Federal Reserve financing, Fed, Freddie, and Fannie purchases of mortgage-backed securities, and deposit guarantees as well as tax concessions granted by the Treasury in the wake of the 2008 disaster. For the banks to keep mulcting the people who bailed them out is unconscionable. [Senate Banking Chair Tim] Johnson (D-SD) in particular needs to stand up and represent, not his contributors, but his constituents and start asking the hard questions.”

Also see Ferguson’s piece on Congress and money in the Financial Times.

Filed Under: Tagged With: corporations, economy, Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan, JP Morgan Trading Loss, Thomas Ferguson,

JPMorgan is Biggest Contributor to Senate Chair Calling Them to Testify

May 21, 2012


THOMAS FERGUSON, thomas.ferguson at umb.edu
Ferguson is professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and a senior fellow of the Roosevelt Institute. He just wrote the piece “Senate Banking Chair Calls Jamie Dimon to Testify: But JPMorgan Chase is His Biggest Contributor!” about Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Johnson of South Dakota announcing his panel would call JPMorgan Chase Chair Jamie Dimon.

Ferguson said today: “Four years ago, the failure of Lehman Brothers precipitated a world wide financial collapse. Now policymakers in Europe are weighing whether to let not a bank, but a whole country — Greece — go down the drain. We have been repeatedly told that American banks have so carefully hedged their European exposures that there is no reason to fear contagion from such a disaster. The JPMorgan Chase case raises fundamental questions about these breezy assurances and whether American bank regulators truly understand what our Too Big To Fail Banks are really up to. We cannot afford another expensive policy failure by our money-driven Congress: Senator Johnson’s committee needs to start posing searching questions not in weeks, but immediately, before American banks and their regulators are once again overtaken by events.”

Also see Ferguson’s piece on Congress and money in the Financial Times.

See Johnson’s information from the Center for Responsive Politics at OpenSecrets.org

Filed Under: , Tagged With: corporations, economy, Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan, Thomas Ferguson, Tim Johnson,

Santorum: “Holy Owned Subsidiary”

February 8, 2012

THOMAS FERGUSON, thomas.ferguson at umb.edu
Ferguson is professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and a senior fellow of the Roosevelt Institute. He said today: “Now it’s Missouri, Colorado, and Minnesota in the holy trinity. Rick Santorum’s victories there last night are a warning that Mitt Romney’s leveraged buyout of the Republican Party is still in deep trouble. When he faces just one major conservative challenger, Romney loses; nowhere has the ‘Massachusetts Moderate’ managed to claim the allegiance of more than half of the tiny electorates that show up for GOP primaries or caucuses. Probably his Super PAC can bring him through Super Tuesday, but conservatives who know the story of the Golden Calf are unlikely to quit. For a generation the party establishment encouraged religious conservatives to flock to its standard. Now that is coming apart, as the GOP establishment reaps what it has sown.” Ferguson recently wrote the piece “The Devil and Rick Santorum: Dilemmas of a Holy Owned Subsidiary.”

FREDERICK CLARKSON, frederick.clarkson at gmail.com
Available for a limited number of interviews, Clarkson is author of the book “Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy” and editor of the “Dispatches from the Religious Left: The Future of Faith and Politics in America.” He is founder of the interactive group blog “Talk to Action.” He said today: “The question of separation of church and state has been a defining issue for Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum. But both are now engaged in a dangerous demagoguing of their policy differences with the Obama administration by declaring that he is engaging in a war on religion.

“Both gave speeches early in their quests for president that anticipates the current attacks. The both traveled to Texas to echo and answer John F. Kennedy’s famous 1960 campaign speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association that has been the model for how pols balance religion and public life for a generation. Both embraced the rhetoric of the religious right.

“Rick Santorum has made denunciation of Kennedy’s statement ‘I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute’ — a centerpiece of his campaign.

“When Santorum came to the Boston area last year, he denounced Kennedy before a Catholic audience. He blamed Kennedy for the alleged secularization of public life, calling Kennedy’s statement “radical” and that it has done ‘great damage.’

“Romney as a Mormon faced a similar obstacle to his candidacy that Kennedy faced in 1960. In his Texas speech in 2007 he sought to turn secularism into a bogeyman: ‘In recent years,’ he declared, ‘the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. … It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America — the religion of secularism.’” Clarkson recently wrote “A Tale of Three Speeches About Separation of Church and State.”

Tagged With: elections, Frederick Clarkson, Rick Santorum, Thomas Ferguson,