E.M.: Yeah, it's some, it's a very exciting process. In part I find it exciting because there is no formal agenda so sessions are not boring. This is, you know a two day event because the people who are leading the sessions are people who are passionate about their work and they're very hands-on kind of sessions and people are encouraged to come and go in the sessions. If you find it boring just leave because there will be something else that will be interesting for you.
R. K.: Now what about business? So far you've talked entirely about government. What about business and business connections? Is that something else that you kind of exclude from your work or where does that fit in?
E.M.: Well Sunlight creates, and I haven't really talked about all the data sets that we create, as you know many organizations create data sets about campaign finance or about lobbying or some sites do budget related work and what Sunlight has contributed to the field is the ability to literally mash together these data sets so one of our most popular data sets is called Influence Explorer and this is a data set where you can come to the website and you can type in the name of any company, any individual, any member of Congress, and I believe any state official as well, and then see what the data set creates. So if you type in "General Electric" for example, what you will learn is that they are the biggest lobbying force in the nation's capital and you can see their campaign contributions at the state level and at the federal level. Because we bring in other data sets including government contracting, you can see how many government contracts they've received. You can see whether they've ever been cited on a contract or misconduct data list. You can see whether they've been, whether they currently serve on advisory committees with the federal government. So, what Influence Explorer provides is a virtual set of data that is built around corporate names, business names, political names and entities. So you can see what a profile of individuals and corporations actually looks like.
R. K.: Well besides General Electric, what are the next two or three other top lobbying forces?
E.M.: I would have to go look at Influence Explorer and tell you that.
R. K.: Is it easy to find that?
E.M.: Influenceexplorer.com. It is and you can look at this by people or organizations or politicians or industries. We also have real-time Federal Election Commission data there as well.
R. K.: And you can sort it based on the most influential...
E.M.: No...
R. K.: - and things like that?
E.M.: That would be a judgment call, "most influential."
R. K.: Oh really?
E.M.: But you can, well absolutely, because -
R. K.: Yeah that makes sense, sure. So how did you decide, you said General Electric, they're the biggest lobbying force, so what do you base that on?
E.M.: They actually spend the most money on lobbying. So they are the biggest lobbyist expenditure -
R. K.: Okay.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
1
