It’s a tough day for the credit card industry. In spite of all the lobbying spending ($9,170,573 in 2009) and... View Article
Continue readingWe Don’t Need No Education
Today marks the end of the 60-day review process for the stimulus lobbying rules imposed by President Obama. On March... View Article
Continue readingDownloading House Lobbying Disclosures
The Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 mandates that lobbyist that meet specific requirements are to register with Clerk of the House of Representatives and the Secretary of the Senate. Being the great body that they are, the House provides a searchable database and bulk download of the registration forms. Sure a searchable database is nice, but we can have the most fun with access to the entire data set. The disclosure forms are provided in XML format, divided by year and reporting period (quarerly, semi-annually, annually), and archived.
In order to download the disclosure archives, an HTML form must be submitted for each file. This can be a huge pain as the files are large and involves non-trivial human effort whenever files are released or updated. We've written a Python script that simulates the form submissions and automatically downloads all of the archives. In addition to the script, we've uploaded a recent download of the archives to Amazon S3 for easier distribution.
The simple download script can be found on GitHub and the archives can be downloaded from S3.
Continue readingThe Grim State of Affairs for Car Dealerships
BusinessWeek, in a good piece on the falling fortunes of car dealerships asks the following question, “Why has Congress not... View Article
Continue readingListing “Earmarks” in Lobbying Disclosures
Most lobbyists seeking earmarks for clients are likely trying to operate slightly on the sly. At least you’d think. That’s... View Article
Continue readingConnecting Links: Criticism of Obama’s Stimulus Lobbying Rules
The criticism of President Obama’s lobbying rules continues as more lobbying and industry groups — surprise, surprise, lobbyists don’t like... View Article
Continue readingThe Lobbying Power of the Groups at the Presidential Health Care Pow-Wow
Today, President Obama held a public event with a number of leading health industry trade associations that have previously been... View Article
Continue readingShould lobbyists be required to disclose anything?
That seems to be a question raised from The Next Right‘s Soren Dayton. Dayton is taking the position that lobbyists... View Article
Continue readingThe Insufficient Lobbying Disclosure Act
Yesterday, John Wonderlich wrote an important post here about Sunlight’s meeting with the White House (with a bunch of other... View Article
Continue readingWhite House Lobbying Meeting: Public Debrief
Colleagues Daniel Schuman and Lisa Rosenberg and I just returned from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where a meeting was... View Article
Continue reading