Visualizing how a dirty Congresscritter turned campaign contributions into earmarks
Gabriela from the Sunlight Foundation sez,
It comes as no surprise that Indiana Democrat Pete Visclosky's favorite word to say in Congress is "Indiana." While staying out of the spotlight in Washington, he has been a champion for his Northwestern Indiana congressional district, bringing home millions of federal dollars to create jobs and win fans. Since the decline in manufacturing, new jobs have become essential for this Rult Belt region and Visclosky, from his position on the House Appropriations Committee, has sought to get as big a piece of the federal pie as he can for his constituents.Vis-a-Visclosky: Or How I Learned to Take Campaign Contributions and Turn Them Into Earmarks (Thanks, Gabriela!)This hard work bringing home federal dollars has made Visclosky a national news name as his connection to a lobbying firm, the PMA Group, which represented many of the recipients of federal money earmarked by the congressman, has brought him under investigation by the FBI. In the past two weeks, Visclosky's offices and campaign committess have been subpoenaed and he has reliquished control of the Energy & Water Appropriations Subcommittee to Rep. Ed Pastor.
All of this is due to the connection between campaign contributions flowing from the PMA Group and their clients to Visclosky's campaigns and the millions of dollars in earmarks to PMA Group clients that Visclosky secured in his post on the powerful House Appropriations Committee.
After studying campaign contribution data for 1998-2008 (compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics) and earmark data for FY2008 and FY2009 (from both Taxpayers for Common Sense and Legistorm), the connection between those PMA Group clients that contributed money to Visclosky's campaigns and the earmarks they received is clearly evident. The visualization -- created by the Sunlight Foundation's terrific designer Kerry Mitchell -- shows how connected the earmarks are to the receipt of campaign contributions.
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I'm imagining a new Schoolhouse Rock interpretation of this process a-la "How a Bill Becomes a Law."
That's pretty good ROI, a $750 contribution yeilding $1.6M in earmarks...
And on another note, this is "terrific" design? orly?
Sorry, "yielding".
So "campaign contributions" are de facto, but not de jure bribes. Is anybody surprised by this?
This only shows a correlation but it shows no context. Are there other companies that contributed but received no direct benefit? What about companies that didn't contribute but did receive benefit via earmarks?
What does any of this have to do with the Mastercard logo?
@jimh
To be fair, they said the designer was terrific. Kerry may be a swell person, but everybody craps one out once in a while.
Micah, it's a sorta visual pun. "Vis-a" and a Mastercard logo... geddit?
I'm with JIMH, that's an insane return on your investment?! I'm always stunned at how cheap it is to buy off politicians. It's rather puzzling actually.
man, if I was General Atomics, I'd be pissed.
People who are surprised by this just haven't been paying attention. This is not an isolated case. Earmarks are a big problem in government, and they have led to a corruption of our government on a tremendous scale. But they are a symptom of a larger problem: government has too much money and too much influence over people's lives and business.
#5 is right. There's no context here, and someone has found some numbers that, admittedly, look bad, but this graphic was clearly made by someone who has no real working idea of the appropriations process. Remember: you can choose numbers to prove anything.
And again: I'm not saying that this guy *is* on the up and up, what I'm saying is the sunlight foundation is essentially presenting nothing in a poorly designed graphic.
OED:
ear-mark, n:
1. A mark in the ear of a sheep or other animal, serving as a sign of ownership.
2. transf. and fig. A ‘stamp’, mark of ownership, identifying mark.
3. The mark of teeth in the ear.
ear-mark, v.
...
3. To set aside (money, etc.) for a particular purpose. So {sm}ear-marking vbl. n. (also concr.). Also fig.
Merriam Webster has pretty well the same definitions - neither recognises the use of the word as a noun in the context of OED use 3 of the verb.
Even in the verb sense, the difference in usage is marked, too: Googling for South African websites, I get things like "Cape Town earmarks R900m for electricity distribution infrastructure upgrade" (obviously and clearly a necessary expenditure - they've been having rolling blackouts), "EU earmarks R3bn for Africa", etc.
Googling for UK websites, unless they're talking US politics, it's used in the context of large stimulus packages, international aid and infrastructure upgrades.
But in the US context, the usage seems to imply corruption, and some fairly specific actions within the country's political system.
Does anyone have a clear definition of this?
Regardless of the extent of this influence, either direct or indirect, it is unacceptable. This is why i remain committed to the idea of banning private donations and nationalizing the election process (i.e. taxpayer funded elections).
I'm having fun tracking exactly where stimulus-related money is being spent using recovery.org. Not directly related but...
If you define a politician's job like a lawyer's -- doing everything possible for his constituency/client, this guy is doing exactly the right thing.
The criticism seems to come from that extreme American distrust of anything done by the federal government. Apparently the American people want to elect a president/king who does nothing domestic, and let each state decide everything else, including going to war.
Most think the solution is campaign finance reform or publicly-funded elections. 6 of 7 states with publicly-funded elections got them via ballot initiatives, the source of most reforms. See http://Vote.org/initiatives for other examples & references.
As my Mom said, if you want something done right you have to do it yourself. Ballot initiatives let us do it ourselves when "our" representatives won't. The best project for NATIONAL ballot initiatives is at: http://Vote.org
Earmarks are a big problem in government, and they have led to a corruption of our government on a tremendous scale. But they are a symptom of a larger problem: government has too much money and too much influence over people's lives and business.
That's not a government problem, it's corporate meddling in government. Set campaign funding limits and publicly fund them. Unfortunately so many people try to claim that being able to buy politicians is some kind of right of free speech...ungh.
#13 it's because of how the american process works.
Legislators can, and do, add many unrelated earmarks to popular bills in order to make sure they get through.
Seldom will a president veto a bill that his party worked hard to get passed because of an additional (many times hidden) earmark or two or fifty.)
Its this entire process of waiting until the last minute and attaching an earmark to an unrelated bill that is what many refer to as earmarking.