Ask HN: Is There a Crunchbase for Policitians? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is There a Crunchbase for Policitians?

51 pointsthreesevenths16 comments

As the title implies, is there a site that tracks associations, lobbyists, etc of politicians?

OpenSecrets, besides tracking contributions it has a bunch of other info like the revolving door section. https://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/

https://littlesis.org/

LittleSis* is a free database of who-knows-who at the heights of business and government

* opposite of Big Brother

We're a grassroots watchdog network connecting the dots between the world's most powerful people and organizations

Their Oligrapher tool is pretty cool, even if it does act like a Six Degrees Of [Clinton|Bush] engine

You can always request this data directly from the SEC or the FEC for the raw reports. In my experience, the regulation is does not provide enough transparency. The three main issues I can think of right now are the following:

- Citizen's United. No need to elaborate.

- It is incredibly hard to marry lobbying and fundraising data. The company names are not the cleanest.

- Extent of enforced disclosure in the Lobbying Disclosure Act: lobbyists do not need to say which bill they are trying to influence, or which official (political or bureacratic) they are trying to influence / contact.

Both acts have tiny loopholes. I don't remember the exact quantities, but if you're donating an amount smaller than X to a politician, it does not need to be reported. And if less than Y% of your time is spent attempting to influence politicians / government agents, you don't need to report this.

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/

Has a fair amount of data about current MPs including expenses claimed and voting history.

https://www.opensecrets.org/

Not that I'm aware, but there are a ton of trade trackers: https://www.quiverquant.com/sources/senatetrading https://www.barchart.com/investing-ideas/politician-insider-... https://www.smartinsider.com/politicians/ https://www.capitoltrades.com/politicians

there is https://www.capitoltrades.com/trades that tracks the trades of legislators and politician.

However I don't know of anything that goes in depth of what you are proposing. I think a clean UI that shows something as basic as politicians voting records can make voters more informed.

Is this information public knowledge? could it the extraction of information be automated or would it require journalism and looking through paper trails?

It would be great if it could have an archive of opinions around specific topics too. And perhaps a way to get insight into the background/motivations of donors. Like on Crunchbase you can visit the websites of funds that invested and get an idea of their goals/ambitions.

Probably the best generically accessible option for the lay person is OpenSecrets, and then there may be state or municipal level projects for a jurisdiction you care about.

You can also use the Federal Register as well, but that requires a little inside alchemy to navigate for many.

There used to be this project: https://www.mysociety.org/2019/06/26/placing-everypolitician...

Long time ago, I saw this project: https://github.com/everypolitician/everypolitician-data

I haven't used it, so I don't know about the quality of the data

I found the profiles in ballotpedia.org to be useful in the past.

You might be looking for https://www.govconnex.com and their competitors

You are thinking of https://www.legistorm.com/.

Thank you everyone for your answers and awesome sites to look through.

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