A look at Sunlight's influence trackers shows that, on the controversial issue of global warming, the courts and the agencies are not the only place where the action is.
Continue readingThe money behind the Keystone XL pipeline
Lots of campaign and lobbying spending preceded today's vote in which Mary Landrieu, a vulnerable southern Democrat and chair of the Senate Committee on Energy, looked to silence critics who say she hasn't done enough to advance a vote on Keystone XL.
Continue readingThere’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 readingTools for Transparency: Stay Educated through Foursquare
Fousquare, a location based application for smart phones, has been growing in popularity at an exponential rate. In 2010 the... View Article
Continue readingIntroducing TransparencyData.com
Today we're releasing TransparencyData.com, a new service from the Sunlight Foundation, and technically the most challenging thing we've ever done. TransparencyData lets you query and download bulk data about transparency. We're launching with two datasets that have never been merged before, and without an unprecedented amount of access.
We've merged all of OpenSecrets data with all the data from FollowTheMoney.org allowing you, for the first time, to get a clear picture of campaign contributions at both the state and federal level. Before now, there were two datasets: the OpenSecrets data focusing on federal data, and the FollowTheMoney data, focusing on state data. Now, finally, you can use TransparencyData.com to query, filter, and download this data.
Continue readingLook for Sunlight @ Netroots Nation
A large contingent of Sunlighters are heading to Austin this week for Netroots Nation, the 3rd annual gathering of Kos... View Article
Continue reading
59063
