Szelena,

I am affected currently by the power outages in NJ, so I’m having a little trouble keeping up in a timely fashion. I can give this more thought when I have power and a regular schedule again. But the first idea I presented was that we could target conservative groups with the idea that federal employees give a lot of money to the party that promises them more government spending. This is fairly clear and honest in my view. It will work with conservatives. The key is to present the data as a phenomenon of equating money with speech and building a election and legislative process that feeds on large amounts of money as opposed to merely blaming big government.

I actually think that in general we should start targeting our audience on a campaign specific basis. It’s very difficult when trying to educate people to talk to all sides simultaneously (Prof Lessig does this well, but he still reaches a narrow audience). That does’t mean distorting anything for either side, but just addressing the sorts of things that are important to them. Once we have their attention, we can broaden their vision of how many other ways the money is corrupting to the whole process.

There are several excellent articles already up here which identify specific problems. We don’t need to reinvent those ideas. Just wrap the most salient point(s) into a graphic or easier bullet-ed explanation. And we have several graphics already that are excellent as well. This Re-mix campaign just doesn’t seem right to me in several ways.

Thanks,
Mark

Deborah and Mark, this is helpful feedback about how people might interpret the information we present, and it could be useful to think about for when we craft future campaigns. The convention for reporting contributions to candidates is to aggregate donations based on employer [which is why the information we present looks the way it does, because we are simply adopting that same standard]. Are you suggesting that we present the information differently? Are there other ways to present direct contributions – which I want to be clear, is different from and accounts for more $ in the election than outside spending – that you think would be more helpful?

Mark, I couldn’t agree more! This was exactly the issue that we DC Rootstrikers struggled over last weekend when discussing our use of the infographic. Some could definitely see this as “playing at the fringes of truth” as it “hardens the data in a way that is dishonest.” If we are going to have any credibility or gain the trust of our audience, it is critical that we be honest and aboveboard about everything we publish.

“Our current graphic gives an idea of something happening that is not happening. We should not confuse people; we should educate them.”

Thanks to Suzanne and Szelena for answering my question regarding the nature of these numbers and this campaign. Suzanne’s link to Open Secrets led me to this explanation.

" NOTE: The organizations themselves did not donate, rather the money came from the organizations’ PACs, their individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals’ immediate families. Organization totals include subsidiaries and affiliates. "

For me this explanation was deeply disappointing. For example Microsoft is a ’big contributor" by this odd measure. I have worked for Microsoft and I can tell you that the diversity of views at this company mirrors society at large (at least to my understanding of both). Lumping its employees together is not only deceptive from this standpoint, but it flies in the face of concerns over corporate person-hood. By making Microsoft responsible for the contributing behavior of all of its employees, this campaign tends to reinforce the notion that the corporation and and its associated people are one and the same. I would greatly prefer that we were not doing that.

Szelena’s link provided a better argument for the undue influence of one group of people. Calculating group contribution effects as Open Secrets and MapLight do, the Federal Government becomes the most valid example of a real problem. I say that because federal employees have a direct vested interest in the spending habits of the government. While some other government policy matter may be of interest to Microsoft and indirectly to its employees, it is a true and direct source of corruption for government employees. Now some may find this distinction partisan (it really isn’t), but I would support a campaign directed to those concerned about the growth of government that emphasized how money in politics opens a channel for entrenched government workers to buy their own job security. Conservatives will understand this immediately and we will not be playing at the fringes of the truth.

Of course this then begs the question of who’s right about the numbers. Our own graphic shows $2-million+ and Open Secrets shows $600k+. Perhaps the graphic is not the way to express this problem to people. It hardens the data in a way that is dishonest – in my view.

I also think that we could make hay of Goldman-Sachs contributions. That’s because the Goldman-Sachs is full of rich people – i.e. members of the political donor class. The total number of Goldman-Sachs employees is dwarfed by Microsoft and other non-financial companies we might list. So the views of its employees are much more likely to reflect GS’s motives as a corporation. There are probably other companies where an alignment exists among the employees, as it does for Federal employees, for certain policy outcomes. I would support single issue articles and efforts to share such ideas that carefully articulated those cases. But I do think it’s important that we be honest about what we are saying. Our current graphic gives an idea of something happening that is not happening. We should not confuse people. We should educate them.

And I agree with Richard Murphy that when we report this info from ACTUAL campaign contributions we leave out the money flowing into social-welfare groups and SuperPACs. Conservatives are appalled that Obama has out-fund-raised Romney, but that difference is an illusion when we look outside the direct contributions. And in these outside contributions we see the greatest distortion where one wealthy person can effectively neutralize millions of ordinary citizens.

Why don’t you show the $44.2 MILLION that Mr. Sheldon Adelson, owner of the Sands complex in Las Vegas and elsewhere has contributed. You don’t show Romney’s top 5 contributors, all in the millions, with Adelson way ahead of anyone else in the list, though the next guy, Harold Simmons at $22.0 MILLION, is not a paltry amount either. Trump is a biggie too, but I cannot get that figure. See the following website.
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/10/romneys_top_5_campaign_donors_1.html
The Right is trying to buy the occupant White house. I wonder what Romney has promised these guys. What they want is denoted, somewhat.

I was one of the debaters with Robert on the helpfulness – or not – of this Presidential contribution infographic. At a minimum, for Obama’s top contributor, it should read “US Government Employees.” To paraphrase some comments from others on your Twitter feed, “We need to provide context, not JUST data…. This graphic would be a lot more credible if that was clear.”

Who Are You Really Voting For? You should know. #rootstrikers http://t.co/FFmJdbUD via @rootstrikers

Who Are You Really Voting For? You should know. #rootstrikers http://t.co/MEqbF3k0 via @rootstrikers

Mark, we get our data from MapLight, so you can find out more from them about how the data is calculated. However, as a simple point of clarification, these numbers represent individuals affiliated with these organizations, not a single individual. The article here might help: http://www.rootstrikers.org/how_uncle_sam_became_a_top_donor

And again http://t.co/GBUH0NfA?

Mark, this is where I get “my” info. (although I am not associated with this blog) http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/

A note at the bottom of the page states:
“All the numbers on this page are for the 2012 election cycle and based on Federal Election Commission data released electronically on Thursday, October 25, 2012.”
So I presume is it mostly accurate.

Who Are You Really Voting For? You should know. #rootstrikers http://t.co/6pg7pbdv via @rootstrikers

Who Are You Really Voting For? You should know. #rootstrikers http://t.co/Y2F69LYk via @rootstrikers

Who Are You Really Voting For? You should know. #rootstrikers http://t.co/Y2F69LYk via @rootstrikers

I just wish to make clear that I won’t post anything anywhere that I cannot independently verify or even understand. I genuinely would like to hear from someone about the meaning of these graphics and the accuracy of the data. Is there someone associated with this blog who can answer? It has occurred to me that a US Rep’s election cycle is 2 years and therefore $10k would be possible from a PAC source or $5k from an individual. A senator then might be able to get $30k from a PAC or $15k from an individual. But of course the date spread indicated above would only accommodate two years of eligibility. Finally, in the interest of accuracy, please excuse my use of the words “half-billion-dollar” when I meant “half-million-dollar” in my post three posts down from this one. Apparently Goldman Sachs has been on and off of Obama’s top ten list. Their supposed contribution was $500k. Still don’t know what that means.

http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/contriblimits.shtml

Who Are You Really Voting For? You should know. Pick your funders... #rootstrikers http://t.co/JlkWZTfe via @rootstrikers

I don’t know if these graphics are right or not, but I’m glad to see someone is trying to find out who is propping up the candidates. I know that Wall Street will do their very best to prevent the government from exposing the corruption that all this superPAC money promotes. They have a vested interest in greed & corruption.

Who Are You Really Voting For? You should know. #rootstrikers http://t.co/MEqbF3k0 via @rootstrikers

Strange campaign finance discrepancy between this @rootstrikers infographic: http://t.co/YHQmGyhg vs. @opensecretsdc: http://t.co/AuupEAmb

Who Are You Really Voting For? You should know. #rootstrikers http://t.co/MEqbF3k0 via @rootstrikers