As many as 600 individuals appear to have exceeded the $117,000 that they were legally allowed to give directly to federal candidates, political parties and political committees in the last election cycle, records examined by the Sunlight Foundation suggest. But our most troubling finding may how difficult it is determine with legal certainty exactly how many campaign scofflaws there are, or how much over the limit they gave. Like our former Sunlight colleagues, Paul Blumenthal and Aaron Bycoffe of the Huffington Post, we have been curious about the number of donors who appear to have exceeded campaign spending limits, in an era when the Supreme Court has made it possible for wealthy individuals to give in unlimited amounts via super PACs. In addition to those who violated the overall limit for giving to federal campaigns, we identified as many as 1,478 individuals who may have given more than the legal limit of $70,800 to parties and committees and 507 who appear to have given more than the $46,200 legal aggregate limit to individual candidates.
Continue readingCaring For Our Nation’s Caretakers
If nursing hasn’t exactly been on your radar, then National Nurses Week 2013 is the time to take notice. To celebrate the hard work that nurses across the country have invested in keeping our citizens healthy, we want to show how some of our tools can be helpful to keep track of policy issues which affect our nation’s caretakers.
Continue readingWhat Ezra Klein gets wrong about big vs. small money in politics
Over at Bloomberg View, columnist Ezra Klein yesterday decided to throw some cold water on the small donor solution favored by many campaign finance reformers. His argument: complain as you like about the power of big corporate donors. Small donors might be worse. They are highly partisan! Klein gets his spark of insight from a remark by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). On Monday, the senator offered a fundraising confessional at a Yale University conference on money, politics and inequality. “When I send out a fundraising e-mail talking about how bad Republicans are, I raise three times as much as when I send out an e-mail talking about how good I am,” Murphy said. “People are motivated to give based on their fear of the other side rather than on their belief in their side.” (I was also at this conference, as a panelist). From this observation, Klein then slips into a two-sizes-fits-all approach to campaign funding: There is big money, and there is small money.
Continue readingOpen Data Executive Order Shows Path Forward
Today, the White House is issuing a new Executive Order on Open Data -- one that is significantly different from the open data policies that have come before it -- reflecting Sunlight's persistent call for stronger public listings of agency data, and demonstrating a new path forward for governments committing to open data.
This Executive Order and the new policies that accompany it cover a lot of ground, building public reporting systems, adding new goals, creating new avenues for public participation, and laying out new principles for openness, much of which can be found in Sunlight's extensive Open Data Policy Guidelines, and the work of our friends and allies.
Most importantly, though, the new policies take on one of the most important, trickiest questions that these policies face -- how can we reset the default to openness when there is so much data? How can we take on managing and releasing all the government's data, or as much as possible, without negotiating over every dataset the government has?
A timeline of immigration policy in the United States
As the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday begins readying a sweeping bipartisan immigration bill for floor action, it's worth remembering why the issue stirs up such heated emotions in the U.S. Congress. A look at some of the landmark legislation enacted over the past century shows that the nation has spent much of its history arguing over who should be allowed to become an American.
How to make sense of immigration lobbying
The real immigration fight is now about to begin.
As the Senate Judiciary Committee begins working on the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013, we still think the best field guide to the fight about to erupt over the 844-page bill remains our March 25 analysis, entitled “Untangling the webs of immigration lobbying" Here is the network analysis we produced back then (click for the interactive version):
Figure 1. Immigration Lobbying in Congress
Click here for our interactive network guide to the most active interests, what issues they care about, and how intensely they are lobbying
2Day in #OpenGov 3/8/2013
NEWS:
- Now that Mark "I'm back!" Sanford has revived his political career all eyes are likely to turn to the race in Massachusetts to fill John Kerry's seat. After early polls suggest that the young GOP candidate may be competitive against the Democratic nominee Karl Rove's American Crossroads is looking to spend money on the race. It remains to be seen if other outside groups will join them. (The Hill)
- The insurance industry is lobbying hard for the federal government to approve more disaster aid for states that boost their building codes. The BuildStrong Coalition hopes that Congress will pass legislation before the summer storm season begins. (The Hill)
- Support from Washington, DC based groups wasn't enough to push Elizabeth "I lost to that guy?!" Colbert Busch over the finish line and into the House of Representatives. Despite this outside spending advantage, Colbert Busch was thoroughly trounced by her deeply flawed opponent Mark Sanford. (Public Integrity) Continue reading
TransparencyCamp 2013: Wrapping Up the Best Year Yet
Every year at about this time -- just days after our hallmark community event, TransaprencyCamp -- we kick up our heels, shake our heads, and think, “That was our best event yet.” But this year, we really mean it. TransparencyCamp 2013 was different from its predecessors. Not only was it our largest TCamp to-date -- with a chart-topping 500 participants from over 25 countries and 33 states* -- but it was also our strongest. More than a reunion of old friends fighting the same fight, this TransparencyCamp was a veritable democratic laboratory, with scientists from different backgrounds, countries and creeds coming together to share their experiments, find collaborators, and bring new ideas back home for testing and tweaking. We’ll have some more reflections and behind the scenes views in the days ahead, but first, we wanted to share with you a closer at the weekend.
Continue readingPlease Vote for Sunlight’s “Civic Hacking in Pursuit of Democracy” Video
Here’s an appeal for our readers: please help Sunlight spread the news of the great work civic hackers do as far and wide as possible by voting for our storytelling video in the Looking@Democracy contest organized by the Illinois Humanities Council with support from the MacArthur Foundation. (Voting ends May 16.) We couldn’t wait to tell this (previously) untold story through a short video to demonstrate how the nascent movement of civic hackers are creating apps and tools using open government data to make their communities better. These men and women are equipped with laptops, open data and creative ideas to positively reconstruct the way we relate with government.
Continue reading2Day in #OpenGov 5/6/2013
NEWS:
- Jonathan Soros, son of famous financier George Soros, spread his political money around throughout 2012 and early 2013. He gave to young House democrats, poured money into his own hybrid PAC, and supported New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's push for public financing of campaigns. (Roll Call)
- A new project from Freedom House and the International Center for Journalists is drawing attention to the continued violence against journalists in Mexico. The crowdsourced mapping project offers a safe and anonymous way to report attacks against journalists bloggers, and others. (Tech President)
- What is Open Data? Palo Alto, CA CIO Jonathan Reichental attempted to outline some of his central ideas at an event late last week, covering topics like machine readability and accountability. (Government Technology)
- Despite a recent GAO Report that lacked any strong conclusions about the effect of the political intelligence industry, the practice is making news in Washington. A small Washington firm, Height Securities, is under scrutiny for an alert it sent out to clients on April first about a coming government decision related to medicare. (Washington Post)
- The sequestration is having an impact on the Library of Congress' efforts to digitize millions of books, images, maps, and more. (New York Times)
- Members of Congress normally deal with some strong disclosure rules related to gifts that they receive, but they're allowed to get waivers for special occaisions. Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) recently made use of the exemption when celebrating his wedding. (Roll Call)
59063
