CONGRESSIONAL TRAVEL UPDATE. USAT. “Four years after Congress imposed restrictions on travel funded by outside groups, federal lawmakers are frequent fliers again, taking 415 privately funded trips between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30 — a nearly 75% jump in the number of trips they took during the same period in 2010, records show.”
COMPLIANCE ISSUES. Ted Kassinger, Ramesh Nagarajan, and Jonathan Singer bring you their top ten compliance issues leading up to the 2012 elections here.
CAIN INTERNAL INVESTIGATION. Story here. “Mark Block, chief of staff for the Cain campaign, announced the campaign was hiring an investigator to check out claims that a private Wisconsin-based firm owned and run by Block and his No. 2 picked up the tab for as much as $40,000 in campaign expenses for the Cain campaign earlier this year.”
CAIN AND THE NRA. Story here. “In the lucrative and sprawling world of Washington, D.C.-based trade associations, the controversy dogging former National Restaurant Association head and current GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain is both commonplace and highly unusual.” Here’s a report on another legal angle to the developments.
SUPER PAC RESCUE. The Times. “A new ‘super PAC’ co-founded by Gov. Rick Perry’s onetime chief of staff has begun running campaign ads in Iowa and South Carolina, marking the first advertising by a major super PAC in the Republican presidential primary and serving as a reminder of the Texas governor’s formidable financial resources despite his recent slide in the polls.”
THE CHAMBER HIRES. Story here. “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a powerful business interest organization, is beefing up their political shop with the hiring of a new Senior Political Strategist and the promotion of a political affairs staffer.”
CAMPAIGN LEGAL FEES ADD UP. Roll Call. “The campaigns of current and former lawmakers paid tens of thousands of dollars last quarter to defend Members involved in ethics inquiries, hire investigative firms and settle lawsuits brought by staffers, according to a Roll Call examination of Federal Election Commission filings.”
WAIVER EXTENDED DUE TO ECONOMY. New York has extended a waiver on a post-employment ethics rule due to the economy. More information is online here. According to a memo on the bill available at the link, “State officers and employees involuntarily terminated because of reductions in the state workforce should not be prohibited from reentering the workforce where opportunities are available.”
HAVE A GREAT DAY.