Launched last week by Madrid based nonprofit, Civio, Quién Manda (Who Rules?) takes on the task of monitoring the goings on of Spanish public officials and influential corporate leaders. The platform has been designed to keep an eye on the unmonitored, and rarely recorded interactions that Spanish politicians are having behind closed doors, tinted car windows and somehow frequently right in front of the lens of a camera.
The team at Civio has tasked themselves with tagging photos a la Facebook with as many high profile names as they can. Each individual and corporation that gets tagged receives a profile that collects all tagged photos and displays the power connections that have been identified, along with links to social media accounts and any available biographical information. The system currently has over 100 tagged photographs, identifying over 2500 relationships.
Extra! Extra!! Get your real time campaign finance data here!!!
As fundraising for the 2014 congressional contests heats up and filing deadlines loom this week, the Sunlight Foundation is unveiling a new tool - the Real-Time FEC tracker - that will allow users to search, sort, filter and get alerts for campaign finance reports as they land at the Federal Election Commission.
Good enough for government work? The contractors building Obamacare
The Obama administration dreamed that its health insurance exchanges--the websites that were supposed to make it easy to buy health insurance--would function as smoothly as online consumer sites like Expedia or Amazon.com. But as head-scratching continues about how a famously web-savvy administration could have flubbed its Internet homework so badly, an examination by the Sunlight Foundation shows the administration turned the task of building its futuristic new health care technology planning and programming over to legacy contractors with deep political pockets.
One result: Problem-plagued online exchanges that make it all but impossible for consumers to buy insurance and ...
Continue readingOpenGov Voices: How VT Diggers is tackling state campaign finance
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of the Sunlight Foundation or any employee thereof. Sunlight Foundation is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information within the 
guest blog.
In 2010, I began reporting on campaign contributions in Vermont. That year, we had an open seat in the governor’s office and there were five candidates in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. I was shocked to discover that the only information available from the Vermont Secretary of State’s office came in the form of unsearchable PDF scans of spreadsheet forms. The secretary requires that candidates use a form available in Excel on the state website. Candidates fill out the form and submit it in paper format to the secretary. It is then scanned and posted on the website.
In spite of the fact that there was no easy way to search the information, I began scouring the web for information about people, advocacy groups and businesses. I soon discovered that many businesses, political action committees and unions had direct financial connections to the candidates. I wrote a series of investigative stories about contributions from out of state, from businesses and wealthy individuals to candidates of the two major parties in statewide races.
We revealed that paving and signage companies donated thousands of dollars to a candidate for lieutenant governor who had served as chair of Senate Transportation and who owned a road construction and engineering firm. We also tracked a donor who contributed four times to Peter Shumlin, using four different LLCs. The Associated Press picked up our story about David Blittersdorf’s contributions and the more than $4 million in state tax subsidies that he garnered for his company’s solar projects.
As a result of these stories, news organizations and others pressured the secretary of state to develop a searchable campaign finance database in 2011. Though the secretary has said he is willing to take on the project, he has been unable to obtain funding. This fall, the secretary put out an RFP for the project, which would be completed in 2015 (at the earliest).
Continue readingWho’s going to blink? Influence profiles of eight who could end the shutdown
If the government shutdown is going to be resolved, it's going to take compromise by some key players who so far haven't shown much willingness to bend. So who might influence these influentials? Sunlight decided to examine some of the monied interests behind key figures in the debate.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, in many cases the special interests are closely aligned with their beneficiaries' positions in the standoff, which largely revolves around the health care debate.
Here's a closer look:
Barack Obama
The president is the most prodigious fundraising weapon in the Democrats' arsenal. His campaign's success in ...
There’s no summer vacation for education lobbying
Though the fall doesn't officially start for another couple of weeks, for most Americans summer ends when school buses begin running their routes and college football broadcasts return to Saturdays. While educational institutions from kindergartens to law schools are welcoming students back, there was no summer vacation in Washington, where their lobbyists have reported spending more than $43 million lobbying Congress and the executive branch so far this year.
It's easy to understand why. Altogether, the federal government spent $47.5 billion on elementary and secondary education in 2012, the last full year for which statistics are available ...
Continue readingAd spotlight: GOP family feud
The rift in the Republican party is turning into an air war.
Usually, video attacks are reserved for election opponents or members of the opposite party but as members of Congress returned home for their August recess, members of the GOP appear to be gleefully violating the late President Ronald Reagan's "11th commandment" -- the one that said you shoul never speak ill of a fellow Republican. What we've spotted so far:
Freedomworks is going after John Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican leader in the Senate leadership. The Tea Party-affiliated think tank is accusing the Texas Republican of betraying ...
Continue readingInfluence Profile: New Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos
Updated: 6:12 p.m.
In a town where he now owns one of the biggest megaphones, Jeff Bezos has kept a low political profile.
The Amazon founder, who on Monday announced that he's buying the Washington Post, has made relatively few political contributions, most of them in the other Washington -- Washington state, where he makes his home. But Bezos has made up in size what his influence profile lacks in quantity.
Last year, he gave $2.5 million to Washington United for Marriage, a group that successfully defended a state law allowing same-sex nuptials, singlehandedly underwriting one-fifth of ...
Continue readingA-Rod’s political picks
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani made his reputation as a take-no-prisoners prosecutor, but he's showing an uncharacteristic soft spot for at least one alleged miscreant who happens to wear pinstripes.
Turns out that Alex Rodriguez, whom Giuliani is urging fans not to boo when the New York Yankees slugger returns to the diamond tonight after a long injury rehab and under an enormous legal cloud, is one of hizzoner's political benefactors.
Rodriguez, who faces a potential lengthy ban by Major League Baseball over charges that he's a repeat user of performance-enhancing drugs, maxed out in ...
Continue readingTale of the tape: Political giving by the Fed frontrunners
The Federal Reserve's Open Markets Committee opens two days of meetings Wednesday amid growing speculation about whom President Barack Obama will nominate to steer the nation's financial policy after Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's term ends early next year.
The two presumed frontrunners, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and Fed Vice-Chair Janet Yellen, both have active rooting sections. And there's plenty of handicapping about which one is in a better position to win favor of the president -- and the senators who must confirm the appointment. From our perch at Sunlight covering the political influence game, however, there ...
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