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.
Tom Meagher is the co-founder of Hack Jersey and the data editor at Digital First Media's Project Thunderdome in New York City. 
His team builds interactive news applications, supports computer-assisted reporting projects in local newsrooms and offers training. He served as the data editor for The Star-Ledger in Newark, and he lives with his family in suburban New Jersey. Reach him at @ultracasual or @hackjersey.
Wrapped by the hanging air quotes of New York City and Philadelphia, New Jersey's history of invention and investigative reporting tends to get overlooked. Even within the state, the two disciplines haven't acknowledged each other much. In recent years, there've been hackathons at local colleges or tech groups, but the Garden State's journalists never really mingled with programmers or dipped their toes into building news applications. Until now.
This winter, Hack Jersey held the state's first news hackathon and attracted dozens of journalists and developers to learn from and compete with one another. Sponsored by the NJ News Commons, Knight-Mozilla's OpenNews and many other organizations, the hackathon revolved around a simple (and maybe obvious) idea. By bringing coders and journalists together to use public data and solve problems, we could sow the seeds for an amazing new community here.
Continue readingLobbying Disclosure in Menendez Case: Too Little, Too Late
The scandal surrounding Senator Robert Menendez continues. This time it’s not front page grabbing allegations involving prostitutes and private jets,... View Article
Continue readingOpen Access to CRS Reports
Former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said that “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”... View Article
Continue readingContent strategy in a social world – Internet Advocacy Roundtable
At Sunlight we make no secret about using technology to make government more accountable and drive the transparency message further.... View Article
Continue readingLobbying and declining corporate tax burdens
According to a report today in the Washington Post, most companies in the Dow 30 have dropped their tax rates by at least half in the last four decades. The article notes a few factors: the corporate tax rate of today (35%) actually is lower than the corporate tax rate of 1971 (48%); Large U.S. companies today are increasingly multinational companies and so can keep corporate profits overseas; Companies have become increasingly aggressive in their tax strategies. But here’s another factor: Lobbying. Changes in reported tax rates
| Company | 2007-2010 decline | 2007 rate | 2010 rate | 2007- 2009 lobbying (in millions) | Estimated tax reduction (in millions) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exxon Mobil | -1.1% | 41.8% | 40.7% | $81.92 | -$565.32 |
| Verizon Communications | -7.9% | 27.4% | 19.4% | $77.58 | -$1,005.51 |
| General Electric | -7.6% | 15.0% | 7.4% | $73.17 | -$1,082.70 |
| At&T | -40.4% | 34.0% | -6.4% | $70.96 | -$7,359.95 |
| Altria | +0.2% | 31.5% | 31.7% | $63.31 | none |
| Amgen | -7.1% | 20.1% | 13.0% | $58.33 | -$377.16 |
| Northrop Grumman | -11.4% | 32.9% | 21.5% | $57.56 | -$296.08 |
| Boeing | -7.1% | 33.7% | 26.5% | $56.99 | -$321.5 |
| Median among 200 companies | -0.6% | 31.8% | 31.6% | $5.48 | -$13.08 |
2Day in #OpenGov 2/27/2013
NEWS ROUNDUP:
- Rockstar, Inc., the maker of Rockstar Energy Drink, has hired a team of influence rockstars to make its case in Washington. Rockstar isn't pulling punches for or its first foray into the influence game. The company signed on a team from the Podesta Group that includes at least 7 former congressional staffers. (Public Integrity)
- The SEIU is opening its wallet to support the idea of comprehensive immigration reform over the airwaves. The $300,000 ad buy is the latest in a series that the union plans to air as the debate continues in Congress. (Roll Call)
- A new report from US PIRG showing that many states made progress in how they make spending data available online over the past few years. There is still plenty of room for improvement though. PIRG only handed out 7 "A" and 9 "B" grades. (Government Technology)
- The LGBT rights lobby has made some significant strides in the past few years, including a high profile hearing in front of the Supreme Court yesterday, and they've spent accordingly. The Human Rights Campaign dropped more than $1.3 million on lobbying last year and its PAC has given to key lawmakers, including Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) who announced her support for gay marriage on Sunday. (Public Integrity)
- Organizing for Action is looking to raise as much money as humanly possible, but they're also butting into a battle for campaign finance reform currently raging in New York. On Tuesday they contacted 744,000 members in New York endorsing reforms that would include public financing of elections in the state. (Huffington Post, POLITICO, New York Times)
- Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is getting into the political game with a new 501(c)(4) that will be supported by a number of other tech executives and led by Joe Green, founder of Causes.com and Zuckerberg's former roommate. The organization will focus on maintaining the US's economic competitiveness and its first issue will be immigration reform...(The Hill)
- Opinion: ...Meanwhile Micah Sifrey, a technology advisor to the Sunlight Foundation, is urging Facebook to "start taking its own civic responsibilities more seriously, especially as it comes to how Facebook implicitly influences political processes all over the world." He suggests that the company should start Facebook.org as a place to aggregate everything the company does " that affect the civic arena."(Tech President)
Finding the Leaders Behind the Data
We recently took a look at the wide variety of municipal IT structures in an effort to gain a better... View Article
Continue reading2Day in #OpenGov 3/26/2013
NEWS ROUNDUP:
- Some of the more pragmatic Republican fundraisers see big money making opportunities as some members of the GOP begin to embrace the idea of gay marriage. In recent elections some deep pocketed Republicans kept their wallets closed due to the party's position on the issue. (POLITICO)
- The Congressional Hispanic Caucus is upping their fundraising pace as they pick up seats and influence in Congress. The Caucus' PAC has been raising larger sums of money recently and it's members have seen their clout increasing with the current immigration debate. (Roll Call)
- The budget that Congress sent to the Department of Agriculture last week bears a brand of influence from meatpackers, Monsanto, and other big farm industry players. (POLITICO)
- Michelle Bachmann is being investigated by the Office of Congressional Ethics for allegedly misusing campaign funds. The former national field coordinator for the Congresswoman's 2012 presidential campaign filed a complaint with the FEC alleging that Bachmann's leadership PAC was improperly used to pay campaign staff. (Washington Post)
- A new pro-Rand Paul PAC was registered using MyPAC, a service of DB Capitol Strategies that lets customers spend $700 to set up a hybrid PAC. Hybrid PACs can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to run independent ads and donate directly to politicians. (Public Integrity)
- San Francisco might be feeling a little left out of all the good press that New York City has gotten recently for their open data portal and data driven governance strategies. In an attempt to put the spotlight back on their city the Mayor and Board of Supervisors president are planning to remind everyone about a law they recently passed to create a "chief data officer." (Tech President)
Untangling the webs of immigration lobbying
As Congress inches toward major immigration legislation, a new Sunlight Foundation analysis (based on almost 8,000 lobbying reports) offers a comprehensive and interactive guide to the web of interests with something at stake.
As legislation continues to take shape, a wide range of sectors will continue flooding Congress with their lobbyists, trying to make sure that their particular concerns are fully addressed. The visualizations we present can help to better understand who these interests are, what they care about, and how intensely they are likely to lobby to get what they want.
Pro-CISPA Lawmaker Deletes Retweet about Money Received from Pro-CISPA Groups
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), a co-sponsor and major supporter of the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), deleted a retweet of an analysis of contributions to lawmakers from pro-CISPA companies.
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