All posts tagged "Public Citizen"

For 12 years, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) has pushed for a ban on congressional stock trading, calling the practice “corrupt,” “unacceptable” and “wrong.”

The first time he and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) presented an amendment in 2012 that would prohibit members of Congress from playing the stock market, they only got 26 votes in support.

Now, Merkley is confident an amended version of the Ending Trading and Holdings in Congressional Stocks (ETHICS) Act has enough bipartisan support that it will come out of a markup meeting with the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Wednesday with the votes necessary to present the amendment for a vote....

The Federal Election Commission on Thursday defeated a proposal — introduced by a Donald Trump-nominated commissioner — that would have allowed some political donors to remain anonymous.

All three of the six-member FEC’s Democratic commissioners were unwilling to adopt a temporary measure proposed by Commissioner Allen Dickerson, which Raw Story first reported earlier this month.

Dickerson wanted to give any political donor the right to request the speedy removal of identifying information — such as one’s name, address, employer and occupation. He also wanted his FEC colleagues to quickly approve a temporary process for donors to withhold disclosure while the commission gave full consideration to the issue....

Wire fraud. Tax evasion. Money laundering. Sexual abuse. Child pornography. Since 1980, more than two dozen members of Congress have been indicted for such crimes, some spending years in prison.

But because of a series of legal loopholes, not a single former federal lawmaker who has applied for retirement benefits has ever lost their taxpayer-funded congressional pension, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management told Raw Story.

Pensions for congressional felons have cost taxpayers about $3.7 million between 2007 and 2022, according to research from the nonpartisan taxpayer research organization, the National Taxpayers Union Foundation. ...

Two Republican members of Congress violated a decade-old financial disclosure and conflicts-of-interest law by reporting personal financial transactions months late, according to federal financial documents reviewed by Raw Story.

Both Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA) and Rep. Ron Estes (R-KS) violated the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act when they were up to four months late disclosing several personal stock transactions valued at between $1,001 and $15,000 each.

The STOCK Act requires key government officials, including members of Congress, to publicly report within 45 days most purchases, sales and exchanges of stocks, bonds, commodity futures, securities and cryptocurrencies. ...

Public Citizen, a nonprofit citizens' advocacy group, has urged the Virginia Court of Appeals to uphold the privacy rights of seven users of the consumer review service Yelp. The Public Citizen Press Room said on Wednesday that a Washington, D.C. area carpet-cleaning company should not be able to find out identifying information about allegedly dissatisfied customers who gave the company bad reviews.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Citizen and the American Civil Liberties Union have told a federal district court that the presidential campaign of Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) should not be able to unmask an anonymous YouTube user who uploaded an offensive video attacking Jon Huntsman.