All posts by Jay Pinho

About Jay Pinho

Jay is a data journalist and political junkie. He currently writes about domestic politics, foreign affairs, and journalism and continues to make painstakingly slow progress in amateur photography. He would very much like you to check out SCOTUSMap.com and SCOTUSSearch.com if you have the chance.

Show me the money

Media, Politics, Technology, , , ,

Wired is on it:

Ask politicians whether campaign contributions influence their decisions, and they’ll tell you certainly not.

Ask any citizen, and they’ll likely give the opposite answer.

With that in mind, we’re re-introducing a web-based embeddable widget — for anybody to use — that lists the top 10 donors and their contributions to any member of the House and Senate, their opponents, and the presidential candidates. Wired updated the widget in conjunction with Maplight, the Berkeley, California-based nonprofit dedicated to following money and politics.

“Corporate influence in politics has gone off the charts, and it’s more important than ever for voters to understand who is financing candidates,” said Evan Hansen, editor in chief of Wired.com. “Maplight has done the hard work of compiling the data. At Wired, we’re happy to help get that information out to the wider public, and share it as broadly as possible with this web-based embeddable widget.”

The widget is free to steal and comes with a Creative Commons license. The widget displays a shadow outline of the politician adorned with NASCAR-style logos of some of the top donors giving that candidate money.

Maplight pulls down up-to-date campaign-financing figures from the Federal Election Commission, which are fed into a database so the widget stays current.

“In just a few weeks, voters will confront a ballot filled with candidates whose campaigns have been paid for by wealthy donors. People deserve to know the truth about whose interests their candidates are really representing,” said Daniel Newman, president and co-founder of MapLight. “We’re proud to work with Wired to give voters a tool they can use to draw back the curtain on the moneyed influence plaguing our political system.”

Related articles

Pre-debate jitters

Politics, , , , ,

Andrew Sullivan has them:

What Obama has to do is show how he is the change, how the GOP is determined to block it, and how he needs re-election to get it done. In the first debate, he was so defensive, so determined to protect his record, so eager not to look smug, he let Romney make the arguments for change. And that’s what excited voters. If Obama allows Romney to offer change versus more-of-the-same, he’s toast. Instead he has to remind us that he has changed the direction for America but that he needs more time to change it some more.

To wit:

more infrastructure investment in energy (cleaner carbon and non-carbon), transportation, and education, all designed for future growth; a shared long-term Grand Bargain – in more revenues and less entitlement and defense spending – to get us back on fiscal track; and a preference in all policies for building the middle class. I’d also favor a new policy: commit to break up the biggest banks, as Jon Huntsman suggested in the primaries. If I had my druthers, I’d also eliminate every tax deduction past a certain percentage of income.

It’s harder to represent change when you are the incumbent. But when you’ve been stymied by the House GOP for two years, you have a decent excuse.

Drone strikes and the New York Times

Media, Politics, , , , ,

Public editor Margaret Sullivan pings the Times for its fuzzy coverage of civilian casualties resulting from drone strikes:

Some of the most important reporting on drone strikes has been done at The Times, particularly the “kill list” article by Scott Shane and Jo Becker last May. Those stories, based on administration leaks, detailed President Obama’s personal role in approving whom drones should set out to kill.

Groundbreaking as that article was, it left a host of unanswered questions. The Times and the American Civil Liberties Union have filed Freedom of Information requests to learn more about the drone program, so far in vain. The Times and the A.C.L.U. also want to know more about the drone killing of an American teenager in Yemen, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, also shrouded in secrecy.

But The Times has not been without fault. Since the article in May, its reporting has not aggressively challenged the administration’s description of those killed as “militants” — itself an undefined term. And it has been criticized for giving administration officials the cover of anonymity when they suggest that critics of drones are terrorist sympathizers.

Felix Baumgartner attempts to make history

Miscellaneous, Technology, ,
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrIxH6DToXQ]

The skydiver is mere minutes away from skydiving from a world-record 23 miles up:

Skydiver Felix Baumgartner is making his ascent to the edge of space, where he plans to jump into the biggest free fall of all time.

In a capsule hanging from a helium balloon, Baumgartner is working his way to 120,000 feet (about 23 miles) — more than three times the cruising altitude of the average airliner.

With nothing but a space suit, helmet and parachute, Baumgartner hopes to be the first person to break the sound barrier without the protection of a vehicle.

The thin air at that height provides so little resistance that after just 40 seconds, he is expected to be free falling faster than 690 miles per hour.

“Don’t Swap Horses Midstream.”

Humor, Politics, , ,

Honest Abe gets the SuperPAC treatment:

Folks:

Yesterday General Sherman took Atlanta.

That means we’re just one step closer to ending this wicked war and rebuilding our great nation.

Still, we’ve got a lot of work to do and not a day goes by where I don’t see the toll this conflict takes on our president.

I know he’ll be there for us even in the darkest of hours.

Will you be there for him?