Newly published meeting logs from the Treasury Department show that Jamie Dimon, CEO of embattled JPMorgan & Chase, had a private audience with Secretary Timothy Geithner to discuss the Volcker rule and other issues on March 6.

The logs also show that JPMorgan executives attended two other meetings that same month. Volcker was also on the table at another Treasury session the same day, this one a larger meeting with Deputy Assistant Secretary Lance Auer that also included representatives with other groups such as Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs.

The day before, JPMorgan representatives were also present at another group meeting, this one to discuss the issue of securitization, with Auer, Assistant Secretary for Financial Markets Mary Miller, and Tim Bowler.

The Treasury Department updated the meeting log records Wednesdayday after being prompted by an inquiry from the Sunlight Foundation that the agency's self imposed deadline for releasing records had passed. The agency typically releases records for the previous month at the end of the month, so the current release reflects March meetings. In the past the agency has usually met its own deadlines for posting this information.

Dimon has been a strong critic of the still unfinalized Volcker rule, meant to prevent proprietary trading by banks. He has argued that banks should be able to do the sorts of trades that led to an announced $2 billion loss for the bank last week as a way of hedging investments. The company has historically been a major donor to both Democrats and Republicans.

Newly published meeting logs from the Treasury Department show that Jamie Dimon, CEO of embattled JPMorgan & Chase, had a private audience with Secretary Timothy Geithner to discuss the Volcker rule and other issues on March 6.

The logs also show that JPMorgan executives attended two other meetings that same month. Volcker was also on the table at another Treasury session the same day, this one a larger meeting with Deputy Assistant Secretary Lance Auer that also included representatives with other groups such as Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs.

The day before, JPMorgan representatives were also present at another group meeting, this one to discuss the issue of securitization, with Auer, Assistant Secretary for Financial Markets Mary Miller, and Tim Bowler.

The Treasury Department updated the meeting log records Wednesdayday after being prompted by an inquiry from the Sunlight Foundation that the agency's self imposed deadline for releasing records had passed. The agency typically releases records for the previous month at the end of the month, so the current release reflects March meetings. In the past the agency has usually met its own deadlines for posting this information.

Dimon has been a strong critic of the still unfinalized Volcker rule, meant to prevent proprietary trading by banks. He has argued that banks should be able to do the sorts of trades that led to an announced $2 billion loss for the bank last week as a way of hedging investments. The company has historically been a major donor to both Democrats and Republicans.

I recently made a mistake that turned into an object lesson on the limits of technology but also – and more importantly – on the limits of government openness. Earlier this year, in trying to figure out how many House staffers had gone on to become lobbyists over a two-year period, I naively relied on the ability of computers to match names. We have some sophisticated matching software, but it is not perfect. As a result, my recent post, “Almost 400 House staffers registered to lobby in last two years” improperly identified a number of staffers as lobbyists because they had the same name or almost the same as a registered lobbyist when, in fact, these were two different people.

The good folks at Legistorm noticed this for us, and so we decided to do an internal Sunlight audit, and our capable intern Breanna Edwards, under the supervision of our reporting team, provided it, using the Center for Responsive Politics’ Revolving Door website, LinkedIn, and official lobbying reports.

Of the 377 House staffers we originally identified as having gone on to lobby, Breanna was able to be certain or almost certain that 219 (58%) were indeed matches. She also identified 21 (6%) as almost certainly false positives (that is, the name match was correct, but it was clearly a case of two people with the same name). The remaining 137 matches our computers identified (36%) could not be confirmed definitively either way, at least just based on those three sources.

Breanna explains the challenges:

We decided to go about this project in a simple and straightforward way, using three tools: the Center for Responsive Politics' “Revolving Door”, LinkedIn and lobbying reports. I put all of the names through these three tools in almost all instances to be thoroughly sure of my results, though sometimes two out of the three tools, or at the very least one of the tools did not necessarily yield any results.

Center for Responsive Politics' Revolving Door is a neat tool that records which federal employees have become lobbyists, consultants and strategists, usually providing information on where they worked, the positions they have held for their employers and how long they were there. It's a really easy tool to use. One simply has to enter in the subject’s name into the given field and see if there is a record. If they did have a detailed record, that made my job easier. However, this database isn't completely foolproof. Sometimes the information Sunlight had did not match what CRP had, sometimes they only had parts of the information I was given, sometimes they didn't have any information on the subject at all. If the Center for Responsive Politics' information didn't exactly match what I had, or if there was something in the information that I was unclear about, my next step was to double-check LinkedIn.

The great thing about LinkedIn is that people self-advertise a lot there (of course, that is how it was meant to be used) and so there was little doubt that the individuals I was looking for would definitely put most, if not all of their employment history on there.  The trouble of course, is actually finding them and being sure that it was exactly the same person. I found some individuals with ease and, as expected, they gave the information I needed which was a green light. Among other individuals there were multiple people to choose from, all with some part of the employment history I was looking for, but none with the exact sequence I was looking for. I either took that to mean that we were looking at completely different people, or, if it was so blurred I could not tell, marked it as uncertain. In other cases, I just simply could not find the individual. That was when I turned to the lobbying reports.

 Though they sometimes gave some great results, the lobbying reports were the absolute last resort, Only people who make a certain salary are even listed on lobbying reports, which severely limits the number of individuals who even turned up in the search. Another issue: Even when these individuals were listed, a good number of them either did not know how to fill out the form correctly or chose not to fill it out correctly. So while I did manage to procure a few confirmations using this method, the reports really did not help that much.

The main problem was names. The funny thing about names is that there are only so many of them. There are few unique names, as names are not identification numbers. The fact that many individuals with the same or similar names seem to have worked in the same or extremely similar offices did not help our effort. It was nearly impossible to distinguish these people. Other times they simply did not appear, but of course, just because they were not in any databases, didn't mean that the information we had was false. All these factors made us unable to confirm  some of our findings.

 

The takeaway lesson ought to be clear: it’s much more difficult than it should be to match congressional staff names with lobbyist names. To do this kind of research, we are at the mercy of what individuals choose to report, especially when they have relatively common names.

This makes it very difficult to have a good understanding of how the revolving door works. There are good reasons the public might want to know which lobbyists have insider connections, and who they are using those connections to help. There are also good reasons the public might want to know which offices have former staff working for various outside groups that are trying to influence legislation.

 

A simple solution Here is a simple proposal to improve transparency and disclosure around the revolving door:

1. Lobbyist registration forms list the names of lobbyists working on a particular issue.  In order to be able to determine whether they have spun through the revolving door, each lobbyist should be identified by a publicly accessible unique identification number.

2. Upon registering, each lobbyist should also be required to list every position that he or she has held as a federal, state, or city employee. Currently, registrants are required to list all “covered” legislative and executive branch positions their lobbyists have held for the last 20  years only when the registrant begins representing a new client, but not on subsequent forms.

Doing this would create a simple, searchable, and centralized way to identify which lobbyists formerly served in government, and which didn’t. There is no reason why it should be as difficult as it currently is to verify whether individual public employees have gone on to become lobbyists.

Of course, there is much more to do on the issue of lobbying reform. We support the Lobbyist Disclosure Enhancement Act, introduced by Rep. Mike Quigley as well as the Real-Time Online Lobbying Disclosure Act. For a full list of our lobbying reform proposals, click here.

   

NEWS ROUNDUP

RELEVANT BILLS INTRODUCED

• None.

HAPPENING TODAY 5/16

• FCC Oversight. Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation. 2:30 pm. 253 RSOB. Full Committee Hearing.
• Hatch Act: Options for Reform. House Oversight and Government Reform. 9:30 am. 2247 RHOB. Federal Workforce, US Postal Service, and Labor Policy Subcommittee hearing.
• Tax Exempt Organizations Oversight. House Ways and Means. 10:00 am. 1100 LHOB. Oversight Subcommittee Hearing.
• Knowledge and Innovation: Understanding Public Access to Research. Brookings. 2:00-3:30 pm. Brookings Institution, 1775 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036.

SCHEDULED FOR TOMORROW 5/17

• Homeland Security Department Ethical Standards. House Homeland Security. 9:30 am. 311 CHOB. Oversight, Investigations, and Management Subcommittee hearing.
• Digital Diplomacy: A New Era of Advancing Policy. CEIP. Thurs. 9:00-10:30 am. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1779 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036.
• Does Electronic Reporting of Emissions Information Generate Environmental Benefits? Resources for the Future. Thurs. 12:00-1:30 pm. 1616 P Street NW, Washington, DC 20036.
• Webinar: All Points of the Compass - Global Legal Collections, Research, and Reference Services at the Law Library of Congress. FedLink/LoC. 2:00-3:00 pm.

Do you want to track transparency news? You can add our feed to your Google Reader, or view it on our Netvibes page. You can also get 2Day in #OpenGov sent directly to your reader!

Something curious happened after we contacted the Treasury Department press office Tuesday to inquire why it had missed the April deadline for releasing information about meetings with outside groups around implementation of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law--meetings that often include financial heavyweights such as JPMorgan Chase & Company.

We did not get a response -- neither to our initial query nor to a follow up call Wednesday; but, lo and behold, the web page where the information should be available now bears a note that says it was updated May 16. That would be hours after we made our call. Coincidence? Don't pop the champagne corks yet, however. At the time of this posting, the link to the most recent meetings does not work. Click there, and there's simply a message that says: "There are no items to show in this view of the "dfa3_12 list."

That means that curious reporters and others who want to know how often JPMorgan & Chase representatives--or any other outside groups--met with Treasury Department officials in March will have to keep scratching their heads.

The Treasury Department already has a policy of delaying release of information about meetings, posting at the close of each month about the previous month. So the most recent release, which should have been posted at the end of April, should provide information about meetings that took place in March. The agency is due to update the logs again at the end of May.

After passage of the Dodd-Frank financial law, the main federal financial agencies all made a voluntary promise to provide the public with information about which outside groups are meeting with agency officials to discuss implementation of the law. Each of these agencies--the Treasury Department, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), makes this information available on their websites--although in varying formats, released on different schedules, and not always in an easily searchable format.

Read all about it

A Florida-based super PAC that made more than $1 million in contributions in 2010, almost all of it underwritten by the former CEO of online brokerage TD Ameritrade, is emerging as a factor in Tuesday's Republican Senate primary in Nebraska.

In the three days before the election, the Ending Spending Action Fund has dumped almost $255,000 into the race to help Deb Fischer, a state senator who has suddenly turned an already-heated contest for the GOP Senate nomination into a three-way race. The group has not yet disclosed any donors this year, but in the 2010 campaign cycle, $1.16 million of the slightly more than $1.18 million raised by ending spending came from broker-turned-philanthropist J. Joe Ricketts.

Ricketts, who retired as head of TD Ameritrade in 2008 and left the board of directors in 2011, is a prolific political giver who had donated $500,000 to another one of this year's most active super PACs, the Campaign for Primary Accountability. Sunlight's Influence Explorer shows that he also has given to the presidential campaigns of just about anyone who was running for the GOP presidential nomination this year: Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, and Gary Johnson.

The Nebraska Senate race has attracted more than $2.4 million in outside spending, Sunlight's Follow the Unlimited Money tracker shows, with much of it focused on the contest between Attorney General Jon Bruning, the favorite of the party establishment, and state Treasurer Don Stenberg, who has the backing of various tea party-affiliated groups. 

But with a week to go before the election, conservative rock star Sarah Palin weighed in on Fischer's behalf. The first expenditures by Ending Spending came days after her endorsement. The winner of the GOP primary will face former Sen. Bob Kerrey, who is attempting a comeback to keep the seat in Democratic hands when incumbent Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., retires at the end of the year.

Read all about it

If the early campaign-season barrage of negative advertising is any indicator, the 2012 election is going to be a decidedly uncivil one. According to the Wesleyan Media Project, 70% of advertising in the current presidential campaign has been negative – as compared to just 9% at this stage four years ago.

But just how well do these negative ads work? Historically, political science research has had a hard time uncovering much evidence for their effectiveness. But recent research is more and more finding that they do indeed move voters.

A recent survey by Arizona State professors Kim L. Fridkin and Patrick J. Kenney finds that the more “uncivil” advertisements voters see about a candidate, the more negatively they evaluate that candidate, as long as the ads are also seen as relevant.

Additionally, the researchers find that some voters are more sensitive to attack ads than others, and that attack ads are generally more effective in deflating challengers than incumbents. Their article, “Variability in Citizens’ Reactions to Different Types of Negative Campaigns,” was published last year in the American Journal of Political Science and makes for some fascinating reading.

To assess the impact of negative advertising, the scholars surveyed 1,045 citizens across 21 different 2006 Senate races both before and after the election.

They also had a team of researchers code the ads in those races on two dimensions: civility and relevance. They found that overall, 47% of the ads were “uncivil” and 12% were “irrelevant.” They defined civility as “an explicit use of harsh, shrill, or pejorative adjectives.” (e.g. “After all these years, can’t he offer more than smears and distortions?”) Relevance described whether the ads focused on the candidate’s record (e.g., “The Senator voted to give tax breaks for companies that move overseas”) or not (e.g. “My opponent parties with Playboy playmates”).

In general, the more voters were exposed to ads that were both uncivil and relevant, the more their evaluation of the candidates declined.

“What is impressive,” Fridkin and Kenney write, “is that the relevance and civility of advertising exert a strong impact on candidate evaluations, even controlling for party and ideological proximity.”

The researchers also found that negative press coverage independently reduced the favorability for incumbents, though not as clearly for challengers (presumably because challengers don’t get as much press coverage).

Unsurprisingly, the majority of respondents said they do not like negative ads. Overall, 82% of respondents either agreed somewhat (35%) or strongly (47%) that “some negative advertisements are so nasty that I stop paying attention.”

But some were less bothered by attack ads than others. In particular, the researchers found that the following traits were all independently associated with a higher tolerance for negative political advertisements:

• strong partisanship (both parties)
• following campaigns closely
• conservative political beliefs
• being a man
• being young
• a lack of political sophistication (i.e. inability to adequately place both parties on an ideological scale)

Interestingly, the voters who dislike the ads the most are also the most likely to be swayed by them, while those less bothered are also less likely to be affected. Those who have more tolerance are also less likely to see the ads as irrelevant and uncivil in the first place.

One encouraging sign, however, is that the research did find some support for a backlash effect. “When incumbents stray away from relevant messages and produce and disseminate irrelevant and uncivil messages,” Fridkin and Kenny wrote, “citizens react by lowering their evaluations of these incumbents.” In other words, voters get mad when incumbents unleash irrelevant attacks. So enough may be enough. But then again, they don’t punish challengers as harshly, according to the research.

Then again, with super PACs now around to run negative ads, candidates can worry less about the backlash. Research by Deborah Jordan Brooks and Michael Murov of Dartmouth (which I wrote about last week) finds that attack ads are much more effective when done by independent groups, precisely because they shield candidates from the backlash

If Fridkin and Kenny are correct, then there is one antidote to the effectiveness of attack ads: a bunch of highly partisan, active voters without much political sophistication, especially young conservative males. These individuals appear to have built up a resistance to attack ads. But then again, imagine an electorate filled with them.