FOLLOW THE MONEY! PHENOMENAL, COMPREHENSIVE RESOURCE FOR MONEY IN STATE POLITICS!!!! WOW!!!!

Check this out. Phenomenal research resource. Wow.

Bookmarked.

What isn’t Massachusetts in the table?

Suspicious.

It’s chock full of ammunition!!! Lots of exploring to do...

/mark

bookmark

Don’t know. Still checking the site out. Will look into it. Interesting find.

bmflr

Hi new visitor.

I took a quick look at this site, and the people behind it:

As a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, the Institute is led by a Board of Directors consisting of leaders in fields related to money in state politics, along with Executive Director Edwin Bender.

Jeff Malachowsky Portland, Oregon

A veteran of more than 20 years with nonprofit and public interest organizations, Jeff was a founding co-director of the Institute. He also was the founding executive director for the Western States Center and currently works as a consultant to foundations and grassroots programs while developing new nonprofit programs. Jeff serves as president of the Institute's Board of Directors.

Samantha Sanchez Former Executive Director, Institute on Money in State Politics Helena, Montana Samantha, who served as the Institute's first executive director, has studied and written about campaign-finance issues for more than a decade. Prior to that, she was a law professor and associate dean at Catholic University Law School in Washington, D.C. She serves as the treasurer of the Board of Directors.

Geri Palast Executive Director, Campaign for Fiscal Equality New York City, New York Geri, an attorney, heads up the Campaign for Fiscal Equality, a nonprofit organization working to reform New York state's system of school financing. She formerly served as the first executive director of the Justice at Stake Campaign, which focuses attention on money in judicial politics and encourages reforms to keep courtrooms free of special interests. She serves as the secretary of the Board of Directors.

Edwin Bender Executive Director, Institute on Money in State Politics Helena, Montana A former journalist, Edwin has served as executive director of the Institute since August 2003, after having previously served as the organization's research director. Through his work with the Institute and the Money in Western Politics Project of the Western States Center, he has developed state-of-the-art methods for collecting and researching state campaign-finance data.

Bert Brandenburg Executive Director, Justice at Stake Campaign Washington, D.C. Bert is the executive director of the Justice at Stake Campaign, a nonpartisan coalition of diverse organizations working to keep America’s courts fair and impartial. Before arriving at Justice at Stake, he worked in various policy and communications positions for the U.S. Justice Department, the Clinton-Gore presidential campaign and transition team, Congressman Edward Feighan and the Progressive Policy Institute.

Adelaide Elm Senior Advisor, Project Vote Smart Philipsburg, Montana Adelaide is a founder of Project Vote Smart, one of the largest and most widely respected sources of comprehensive, unbiased information on elections and public officials in the country.

Rosalind Gold National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Los Angeles, California As Senior Director for Policy, Research and Advocacy for NALEO's Educational Fund, Rosalind leads NALEO's policy analysis and research efforts on issues related to Latino political engagement and progress. During her years with NALEO, she has developed particular expertise in naturalization, voting rights, election reform and the U.S. Census enumeration of the Latino population.

Deborah Goldberg Managing Attorney, Earthjustice New York, New York Deborah is the Managing Attorney of Earthjustice’s new northeast regional office, where she supervises legal advocacy and litigation related to global warming and environmental health. Her arrival at Earthjustice in July 2008 marks a return to the practice of environmental law, where she spent the first decade of her legal career. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and thereafter served as a law clerk for then-Judge Stephen G. Breyer on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and the late Constance Baker Motley of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Before joining Earthjustice, she was the Democracy Program Director of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.

Keith Hamm Professor of Political Science, Rice University Houston, Texas Keith has conducted extensive research on campaign finance, interest groups, state politics and urban politics during his career. He was selected as a Fulbright scholar in 2006 and served as Research Chair for North American Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario.

Larry Makinson Sunlight Foundation Washington, D.C. Larry is a former journalist, author and one of the nation's foremost experts and pioneers in researching campaign contributions. Former positions include senior research fellow for the Center for Public Integrity and executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics. Larry now serves as a senior fellow for the Sunlight Foundation.

I note that Jeff Malachowsky writes a good bit for Commondreams.org - hey, now there's an unbiased site (snort)

http://www.alternet.org/story/79294/

More:

Jeff Malachowsky "is the founder the Western States Center and a founding co-director of the Institute on Money in State Politics. He also serves on the Board of the State Strategies Fund, a program of the Proteus Fund, which supports state-level strategies to increase civic participation in political life, empower underrepresented constituencies, and promote political reform." [1]

Director, State of Change Former Director, Center for Responsive Politics [edit]Resources and articles [edit]References ↑ Meet Our Advisors & Directors, State of Change, accessed July 8, 2007.

Western States Center? Now THERE is a place with an agenda:

http://www.westernstatescenter.org/

I also took a look at the Center for Responsive Politics via your own Sourcewatch

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Responsive_Politics

"Support for the Center comes from a combination of foundation grants and individual contributions. The Center accepts no contributions from businesses or labor unions."[2]

Major Funders

The Ford Foundation (currently under a three year grant of $1,000,000)

The Pew Charitable Trusts (currently under a two year grant of $550,000)

The Carnegie Corporation (currently under a three year grant of $450,000)

The Joyce Foundation (currently under a two-year grant of $350,000)

Contact The Center for Responsive Politics 1101 14th St., NW • Suite 1030 Washington, DC 20005-5635 (202) 857-0044 • fax (202) 857-7809 info@crp.org URL: http://www.opensecrets.org

I also found a non-profit mission with your same address:

http://www.taxexemptworld.com/organization.asp?tn=885449

ADVENT MISSIONS INC 833 N LAST CHANCE GULCH ST HELENA, MT 59601-3352 c/o Jackson & Rice.

So just who are you guys and who is paying for your "Public Service"? And what guarantee is there that your information is accurate?

ps: go ahead and edit your info - it's all saved and before and after screenshots make excellent debunking material.

:)

Hardly a credible source from the looks of the board members...far left...thanks but no thanks!

(eye roll)

Hardly a credible source from the looks of the board members...far left...thanks but no thanks!

(eye roll)

Check out how many of the 'objective sites' are connected:

This latest one, sourcewatch, fundrace/Huffington

You can find SOME information in there, but there is no guarantee that information has not been scrubbed.

(If any of the principals of these sites would care to offer proof otherwise, by all means please do so)

Sourcewatch Center for Media and Democracy 520 University Avenue, Suite 227 Madison, Wisconsin 53703 Phone: 608-260-9713 Fax: 608-260-9714 E-mail: editor@prwatch.org

The guy behind prwatch & sourcewatch?

http://www.prwatch.org/cmd/bios.php/John_Stauber

John Stauber founded the non-profit, non-partisan Center for Media & Democracy and its newsmagazine PR Watch in 1993 in Madison, Wisconsin. He has since served as the Center's executive director and has co-authored six books including the 2003 New York Times bestseller Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq. He is an investigative writer, public speaker and democracy advocate whose leadership on controversial public issues began in high school when he organized to end the U.S. war in Vietnam and for the first Earth Day. He has begun or worked with many non-profit public interest groups. He is a non-paid advisor to the following organizations:

Action Coalition for Media Education CoalSwarm Center for Food Safety Iraq Veterans Against the War Liberty Tree Foundation Media Education Foundation Organic Consumers Association

In collaboration with Sheldon Rampton, he has co-authored six books:

Toxic Sludge Is Good For You! Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry'' (1995)

Mad Cow U.S.A. (1997)

Trust Us, We're Experts! How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles With Your Future (2001)

Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq (2003)

Banana Republicans: How the Right Wing Is Turning America Into a One-Party State (2004)

The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies and the Mess in Iraq (2006)

Stauber's articles, op-eds and interviews have appeared in scores of publications and websites. He has contributed research and writing to books by others including G.I. Guinea Pigs (1980) and Secrets and Lies (1999). As an investigator and author he has been featured, interviewed or quoted in the PBS News Hour, Washington Post, New York Times, Der Spiegel, International Herald Tribune, USA Today, Business Week, NPR's On The Media, CNN, NPR's On Point, CBC, Democracy Now and other news media.

Watch online a 2004 GNN.TV interview with John Stauber or a September 2006 interview during a book speaking tour, or a 2008 appearance on the PBS NewsHour

John Stauber's blog

John Stauber's email address is: john AT prwatch.org

Nice teeth, John.

Yep, and all the links pointing to it are progressive stuff

http://www.lindashoemaker.com/swaction_04_11_05.htm

One of the other guys is a journalist cum data miner, with apparantly anti-gun leanings (SHOCK!)

https://www.policyarchive.org/bitstream/handle/10207/5845/nraallycontr.pdf?sequence=1

No doubt a link will get back to the principals, so if they can demonstrate the objectivitiy and lack of creative editing in their data, then they will be a useful tool.

Absent independent vetting (not from another 'progressive' outfit, thank you very much) their information cannot be considered objective. And that's a shame, because there should be 100% transparency in any and all political contributions. Ya know, they talk about using information on contributions to educate kids, I hope they also encourage kids to question everything, including the sources of such 'information'

Looks like you have exposed this outfit with ease...LOL!

I took one look at the board members and googled a few of them and it was pretty clear.

Thanks for linking and posting the people behind this mask!!

Hey folks,

First time blogging, so be kind.

Let me answer just a few questions that you have posted here, in order of importance:

First, the data compiled by the Institute is simply the donor information filed by the 16,000+/- candidates/committees each election cycle with state disclosure agencies. It’s comprehensive, meaning all parties including third-party candidates, winners and losers. You can verify our information by going to state agencies and seeing what candidates file there. We show you which reports we have, which we don’t yet and where they are in our process.

Our data has been peer reviewed many times. Check out the amazing work being done with our data by Michael Malbin at the Campaign Finance Institute. (For those of you with partisan inclinations, check out Michael’s background. I consider Michael a de facto board member; he declined my offer to sit on the board because he saw a conflict in using our data and overseeing our work. He has attended three of my board meetings as a ‘national advisor.’ Read about those on our site under the About Us.) Peers have found our data falls within a margin of error of +/- 5 percent, with our data usually being more accurate than that offered by the agencies themselves, because we accumulate things like “small donors” reported lump sum, loans and loan repayments, things like that, in the same place. If you look at C&E reports in all 50 states, you’ll see that information is spread all over the place in the forms.

Our database for all 50 states dates to the 2000 election cycle. In Washington state, it dates to the 1990 election cycle; we’re just now processing the 2008 reports. They should be up in a matter of days if the aren’t already.

You’ll see some states on the map that are white. That means we either don’t have the data yet — remember we’re working with state agencies in all 50 states, which have 50 different reporting periods, 50 different forms, 50 different disclosure laws, etc. We have six people acquiring these reports. They are dedicated individuals who have no agenda other than providing the public with public information that has been locked away for too long.

We use a methodology developed by Larry Makinson when he first began this work more than 20 years ago as a reporter in Alaska. Our coding system, based on the Commerce Department’s Standard Industry Code, is close to theirs, so if you want to see what the Banking industry is giving at the federal level, you can look at Banking at opensecrets.org, and at Banking at followthemoney.org and be confident the names and codes are parallel.

Besides the donor data for candidates, you’ll notice we also collect donors to the major state party committees as well as ballot measure committees. We’ve just begun looking at the Independent Expenditures; reporting is a nightmare, but we’ll crack it with time.

You’ll also notice that we’re moving our data out to other groups using widgets and APIs. On our site, check out the Committee Analysis Tool, which is an API that uses the committee assignments compiled by Project Vote Smart. You can look at committees and filter our data by assignment and industry, to see which insurance companies, for example, gave to Insurance Committee members in Illinois. We’ll be doing more of this type of aggregation to and mashing as we get access to other sources of data.

Two of our newest tools are LobbyistLink, which is a first-its-kind database of registered lobbyists in the states with their firms and clients, which we correlate with campaign donations, and a GIS mapping project. The former will be on-line shortly; the latter will also as soon as we get some geocoding problems worked out. (Too inaccurate for our tastes.)

What else?

Ah ha. Board members. Yeah, they have backgrounds. They’ve done impressive stuff, whether you agree with that or not. My annual board retreat, where we invite national advisors to help us develop our agenda, has been attended by liberal and conservative alike.

Like I said before, the data is verifiable. Let me say that again, the data is verifiable with the state agencies, many of whom link to our site. (We’ve actually worked with state agencies debugging their new systems and advising them on what the public wants from their disclosure systems. You’re welcome.)

I love this one: Anti-gun bias. Don’t know where that comes from. We live in Montana, folks. Two women on my staff are avid hunters, as am I (Got an A and B tag for deer this season as well as an Elk tag and upland bird. Fish, too. Last year I made a hundred pounds of sausage from my takings.) One was a competitive shooter at the national.

I could go on, but I think I hit my blogging limit. More coffee required.

Let me just say that in our quest for what we’ve dubbed “Full Circle Transparency” — comprehensive information on our electoral and public policy systems, from candidate conflict of interest statements, to political donors, lobbyists and clients, to committee assignments, legislative tracking and ultimately, contract and subsidy information — we’ve achieved a lot. We have plans to do much more.

I might suggest that before you pass judgment on us, you click on the safety of that gun and spend more than a few minutes actually looking at our reports and data. (My scope time hunting is way more than my shooting time....)If the RNC and the DNC both use our data — and they do, my IP analysis shows — then we’re doing something right.

Have a nice morning, folks. And keep making noise; democracy ain’t pretty, it’s a debate that doesn’t end.

You can direct questions to me at edwinb at statemoney dot org. My phone is 406 449 2480.

Edwin Bender (not the catchiest screen name, I know, but transparent and accurate.)

Forgot to note a couple of reports posted on our site that used our data:

Broadening the Base: The Case for a New Federal Tax Credit for Political Contributions
by David Rosenberg
Published by American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Jan. 2002

and from the Heritage Foundation:

What Do Union Members Want?
by James Sherk, Aug. 30, 2006

A detailed examination of union spending in states in which political donations are voluntary reveals that union leaders choose to spend far more on politics than their members would prefer.

Someone asked who funds our work; it is posted on our web site. I’d love to diversify that base to reflect some more conservative types. You folks just let me know who in your community wants to fund transparency work. I’ll be happy to follow up.

Thanks,

Ed