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Paul Blumenthal

Contributor

Paul Blumenthal is the Senior Writer at the Sunlight Foundation. A regular blogger for the site, Paul touches on a wide variety of transparency-related subjects including congressional corruption, the bank bailout, lobbying disclosures and the news of the day.

Previously, Paul worked for Rock the Vote as a researcher and blogger and interned with the Campaign for America's Future, the Drug Policy Alliance and Shrum Devine & Donilon. Paul is a graduate of the NYU Gallatin School for Individualized Study, but maintains that he learned everything he ever needed to know from growing up in Washington, D.C. Paul can be found on Twitter: @SunFoundation

The Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling allowed this election to be the costliest and least transparent midterm in recent history.
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel left the White House to pursue a bid to be the next Mayor of Chicago. Who visited Emanuel while in the White House, and what could that meant for his future -- and the White House's?
The Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling opened up a massive hole in the disclosure regime governing campaign spending. And it affected the number of independent groups disclosing to the Federal Election Commission.
If you could create your own system of campaign finance laws that encourages and prioritizes transparency and disclosure, what would they look like?
The Sunlight Foundation recently sent a letter seeking cosponsors for H.R. 5258 and S. 3335, which would require the creation of a centralized database of earmarks and earmark requests.
The Arkansas Senate primary between Sen. Blanche Lincoln and Lt. Gov. Bill Halter is acting as a testing ground for express advocacy advertisements allowed under the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling.
Sunlight Labs announced the release of TransparencyData.com in April. The site makes searching, obtaining and downloading government data so much easier than it has ever been.
The one significant change in disclosure that goes to the root of the public fears of lobbying would be immediate disclosure of lobbyist contact with lawmakers, government officials and government offices. There an informational valley here that creates extreme distrust and fear.
The "Cycle of Transparency" demonstrates the specific actions and the variety of actors that need to work together to create the open, transparent government we seek--a useful tool in thinking about how to make governments more transparent.