[Peace-discuss] Political contributions info -- processed

[Bill Strutz]

David Pogue's latest column features two sites,
http://maplight.org/
http://www.opensecrets.org/

-- both of which process information about political contributions, and
correlate it to legislative actions.
BTW, "map" stands for "money and politics".

Very interesting. Here is a copy of the column.

           -- Bill Strutz
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*Following the Money Trail Online*

The first step to solving a problem is recognizing that you have one.

That's what I keep telling myself, anyway, to avoid becoming depressed by
Maplight.org <http://maplight.org/>.

It's a new Web site with a very simple mission: to correlate lawmakers'
voting records with the money they've accepted from special-interest groups.

All of this is public information. All of it has been available for decades.
Other sites, including OpenSecrets.org <http://www.opensecrets.org/>, expose
who's giving how much to whom. But nobody has ever revealed the relationship
between money given and votes cast to quite such a startling effect.

If you click the "Video Tour" button on the home page, you'll see a
six-minute video that illustrates the point. You find out that on H.R.5684,
the U. S.-Oman Free Trade Agreement, special interests in favor of this bill
(including pharmaceutical companies and aircraft makers) gave each senator
an average of $244,000. Lobbyists opposed to the bill (such as anti-poverty
groups and consumer groups) coughed up only $38,000 per senator.

Surprise! The bill passed.

If you click "Timeline of Contributions," you find out that -- surprise
again! -- contributions to the lawmakers surged during the six weeks leading
up to the vote. On this same page, you can click the name of a particular
member of Congress to see how much money that person collected.

Another mind-blowing example: from the home page, click "California." Click
"Legislators," then click "Fabian Nunez." The resulting page shows you how
much this guy has collected from each special-interest group -- $2.2 million
so far -- and there, in black-and-white type, how often he voted their way.

Construction unions: 94 percent of the time. Casinos: 95 percent of the
time. Law firms: 78 percent of the time. Seems as though if you're an
industry lobbyist, giving this fellow money is a pretty good investment.

A little time spent clicking through to these California lawmakers' pages
reveals a similar pattern in most of them.

(A few, on the other hand, appear to be deliciously contrary. Jim Brulte has
accepted over $67,000 from the tobacco industry, but hasn't voted in their
favor a single time. Is that even ethical -- I mean, by the standards of
this whole sleazy business?)

For some reason, Maplight.org doesn't reveal these "percent of the time"
figures for United States Congress, only for California. You can easily see
how much money each member has taken, but the column that correlates those
figures with their voting record is missing.

Now, not all bills exhibit the same money-to-outcome relationships. And it's
not news that our lawmakers' campaigns accept money from special interests.
What this site does, however, is to expose, often embarrassingly, how that
money buys votes.

I probably sound absurdly naive here. But truth is, I can't quite figure out
why these contributions are even legal. Let the various factions explain
their points till they're blue in the face, sure -- but to cut checks for
millions of dollars?

Maplight.org isn't always easy to figure out, and not all of its data is
complete. In fact, it's not even evident from the list of bills which ones
have already been voted on -- a distinct disappointment, since the juicy
patterns don't emerge until the vote is complete.

On the other hand, it's painstakingly non-partisan. And it uses very good
data; for example, the information on contributions comes from the Center
for Responsive Politics (the nonprofit, nonpartisan research group behind
OpenSecrets.org), and each special industry's interests (for or against each
bill) are taken exclusively from public declarations of support or
opposition (Web sites, news articles, Congressional hearings and so on).

Spend a few minutes poking around. Check out a couple of the people you
voted for. Have a look at how often their votes align with the interests of
the lobbyists who helped to get them elected.

And be glad Maplight.org makes it so easy to spot those correlations.
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