Comments on: Visualizing Contributions to the 110th Congress—House Edition (Take 2) http://computationallegalstudies.com/2009/04/09/visualizing-contributions-to-the-110th-congress%e2%80%94house-edition-take-2/ Fri, 20 Aug 2010 22:12:58 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: James Coffman http://computationallegalstudies.com/2009/04/09/visualizing-contributions-to-the-110th-congress%e2%80%94house-edition-take-2/comment-page-1/#comment-306 James Coffman Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:14:28 +0000 http://computationallegalstudies.com/?p=570#comment-306 How's'bout a graphic representation of the monies recvd. relative to how favorably they vote when issues effecting those contributors are before them, whether on the floor or in committee? Another interesting sidebar promulgation along those lines would be the aforementioned stats relative to their public posturing. One of our State's Senators has a history of making hay on the local news about Big Pharm and defense spending. When you look at a list of her contributors, the amounts that she receives and her record of favorable votes in their regard it represents a true Alice in Wonderland perspective. One thing that I have noticed is that the party affiliation looses more and more of its significance relative to voting records as the amount of the contributors donations increase. That's why the smart players always bribe, er... I mean contribute to representatives from both sides of the aisle. It would seem that the Willie Lynch letter has made the rounds in Congress and they've all learned an important lesson. Keep us all divided and fighting amongst themselves and we hardly have time to watch them filling their pockets. How’s’bout a graphic representation of the monies recvd. relative to how favorably they vote when issues effecting those contributors are before them, whether on the floor or in committee? Another interesting sidebar promulgation along those lines would be the aforementioned stats relative to their public posturing.

One of our State’s Senators has a history of making hay on the local news about Big Pharm and defense spending. When you look at a list of her contributors, the amounts that she receives and her record of favorable votes in their regard it represents a true Alice in Wonderland perspective. One thing that I have noticed is that the party affiliation looses more and more of its significance relative to voting records as the amount of the contributors donations increase. That’s why the smart players always bribe, er… I mean contribute to representatives from both sides of the aisle.

It would seem that the Willie Lynch letter has made the rounds in Congress and they’ve all learned an important lesson. Keep us all divided and fighting amongst themselves and we hardly have time to watch them filling their pockets.

]]> By: Colbert, Open Secrets, Open Data, and Visualizations | All about MICROSOFT http://computationallegalstudies.com/2009/04/09/visualizing-contributions-to-the-110th-congress%e2%80%94house-edition-take-2/comment-page-1/#comment-64 Colbert, Open Secrets, Open Data, and Visualizations | All about MICROSOFT Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:26:50 +0000 http://computationallegalstudies.com/?p=570#comment-64 [...] be mashed, mixed, and visualized. Already we are seeing visualization pop up. Check out these from the University of [...] [...] be mashed, mixed, and visualized. Already we are seeing visualization pop up. Check out these from the University of [...]

]]> By: Jason Holt http://computationallegalstudies.com/2009/04/09/visualizing-contributions-to-the-110th-congress%e2%80%94house-edition-take-2/comment-page-1/#comment-46 Jason Holt Fri, 10 Apr 2009 13:38:54 +0000 http://computationallegalstudies.com/?p=570#comment-46 Excellent graphs! I build something similar to this that would allow campaigns to visualize a graph of their contributions from individuals. Since we had voter info (and in some cases age, sex, etc) for most people we ended up grouping by party, location (city,zip5,zip5+2), employer, spouse information. If you're interested the link is: http://www.aristotle.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=232&Itemid=161 Charles Stewart @ MIT has some good resources on historical committee assignments. You might have to piece things together for different, but it seems pretty strong. http://web.mit.edu/17.251/www/data_page.html If you're looking for more recent data (109,110,111) you could also just pull it from GovTrack in XML http://www.govtrack.us/data/ -jjh Excellent graphs! I build something similar to this that would allow campaigns to visualize a graph of their contributions from individuals. Since we had voter info (and in some cases age, sex, etc) for most people we ended up grouping by party, location (city,zip5,zip5+2), employer, spouse information. If you’re interested the link is: http://www.aristotle.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=232&Itemid=161

Charles Stewart @ MIT has some good resources on historical committee assignments. You might have to piece things together for different, but it seems pretty strong.
http://web.mit.edu/17.251/www/data_page.html

If you’re looking for more recent data (109,110,111) you could also just pull it from GovTrack in XML
http://www.govtrack.us/data/

-jjh

]]> By: Campaign Contributions to the 110th Congress | FlowingData http://computationallegalstudies.com/2009/04/09/visualizing-contributions-to-the-110th-congress%e2%80%94house-edition-take-2/comment-page-1/#comment-45 Campaign Contributions to the 110th Congress | FlowingData Fri, 10 Apr 2009 05:53:28 +0000 http://computationallegalstudies.com/?p=570#comment-45 [...] network graph shows common contributions between representatives in Congress: A relationship exists between two [...] [...] network graph shows common contributions between representatives in Congress: A relationship exists between two [...]

]]> By: mjbommar http://computationallegalstudies.com/2009/04/09/visualizing-contributions-to-the-110th-congress%e2%80%94house-edition-take-2/comment-page-1/#comment-44 mjbommar Thu, 09 Apr 2009 21:18:24 +0000 http://computationallegalstudies.com/?p=570#comment-44 Hey Drew, Yup, we've been looking at taking that analysis to a peer-reviewed environment. We have roll call, Poole Rosenthal scores, etc...One big problem is that getting this committee membership data over time is not built into the OpenSecrets or Sunlight APIs...You can get it by screen-scraping OpenSecrets or collecting it by hand, however. Hey Drew,
Yup, we’ve been looking at taking that analysis to a peer-reviewed environment. We have roll call, Poole Rosenthal scores, etc…One big problem is that getting this committee membership data over time is not built into the OpenSecrets or Sunlight APIs…You can get it by screen-scraping OpenSecrets or collecting it by hand, however.

]]> By: Drew Conway http://computationallegalstudies.com/2009/04/09/visualizing-contributions-to-the-110th-congress%e2%80%94house-edition-take-2/comment-page-1/#comment-43 Drew Conway Thu, 09 Apr 2009 21:02:02 +0000 http://computationallegalstudies.com/?p=570#comment-43 Have you considered doing any block modeling of the data? I would be interested to so how the donations are clustering; by committee membership, member seniority, legislative activity, etc? Have you considered doing any block modeling of the data? I would be interested to so how the donations are clustering; by committee membership, member seniority, legislative activity, etc?

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