I am Solomon Kahn, Harvard Fellow, visualizer of who gives money to US federal politicians. Ask me where your politician raises money from, and I'll make a screencast showing you! Part II AMA!

Do you feel any responsibility to make it clear that contributions from company X are actually contributions from employees of company X?

It seems that a lot of people confuse those two and are left with the impression that corporations are making direct contributions to candidates.

That confusion is due, in part, to the way Open Secrets and others frame it.

Yes, I do, and I will try to be more clear in future videos.

The challenge with this is that there is a spectrum of when we don't care about the company relation versus when we do care. We don't care what company your college friend who donates $200 works for, but we do care about the company affiliation when the entire c-suite gives the maximum donation to a politician in charge of the regulators of their company.

Who is your favorite politician, and where do they get their money?

My favorite politician is Teddy Roosevelt, but unfortunately we don't have data going back that far!

What about Ron Paul?

Here you go, Ron Paul! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqOSjijkSls

Can you do Dianne Feinstein?

ask this as a top level question

Oklahoma here. Where does Jim Inhofe get his funding? Also thanks for helping me get through differential equations!

Here you go! Inhofe raises a lot from the energy and financial industries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cR9Se7Q3Nb4

Are you a crunchy or smooth guy when it comes to peanut butter preference?

On sandwiches, smooth. When eating out of the jar with a spoon, crunchy.

My school is in Jim Boehner's district, so I'd like to know where he gets his funding?

Do you mean John Boehner?

What are your ideas on campaign finance reform?

I think we should create a viable way for politicians to run for office while representing the people of their districts, instead of needing to please the funders of elections before they can feasibly run for office.

This means some sort of public funding of elections: whether to match and amplify the donations of small money donors, or to give people a certain amount of money each election cycle they can donate to the politicians of their choice. I'm flexible about the method, but I don't think any of us should be flexible about the end result.

What do you think of Rand Paul's idea to have any government contracts for any business include a clause that they will not lobby or finance campaigns?

I'm not familiar with the specifics of his proposal, so can you explain a bit about how it would work?

I would support corporations being unable to donate money to influence political campaigns.

Would Paul's prohibition limit the company only, or also include the people employed by those companies?

I believe it's just at the idea stage at this point, but specifically I was referring to his commentary on Chris Matthews recent (5/29/15) interview on Hardball. It's in response to Chris Matthews question, which happens in this video at 8:17.

I like the idea.

Have you came up with any good ideas on where to get the funding? Taxes on corporate donations??

The actual amount of money involved with these ideas is quite small, compared to what the US spends each year. If we decided to actually fund elections this way, the cost would be very manageable.

Does Jeb Bush have to list all the money he's getting right now and from where despite him saying that he's "not a candidate" yet?

No, he does not. Also, the plan seems to be for that money to be considered "independent" even though he was raising it for a super pac to support his presidency.

The thinking is that the FEC might fine the politicians who have been doing this (it's not just Bush), but that even if they do get fined, the fines would be much smaller than the amount of money they have been raising.

Do we get angry about this?

Yes, we do.

I'm from Nevada, and curious where our leaders get their money from. Also, did the amount and sources of money for Harry Reid change dramatically when he became majority leader?

Here you go, Harry Reid! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDpvCxvKeas

What about Scott Walker?

Unfortunately, Scott Walker is like Jeb Bush. They are currently pretending like they aren't running for President in order to raise ridiculous amounts of money that is not subject to FEC regulations.

After they've raise huge amounts of money for SuperPACs, they will launch their campaign, and those SuperPACs will be considered independent of the campaign.

They believe they will either be able to pass this as legal (which is quite questionable), or if the FEC fines them, it will be less money than they raised, so they still end up ahead.

Which candidates for president offer you the most and least concern as to the sources of their funding?

How do Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders score relative to the others?

Are there any surprises?

I made some videos the other week on this topic.

Here's Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu7vHxxDHrw

Here's Rand Paul: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWBoUPv51fg

The Hillary Clinton and Bernie sanders presentation was interesting. I think you should bring up the fact that Vermont is a lot smaller than New York. That might be one of the bigger reasons why Bernie Sanders isn't raising as much money.

You're right I didn't mention that. Also, Clinton's first election was competitive, and her opponent also raised a lot of money. These screencasts aren't scripted, so sometimes I miss important things.

Luckily, after this tool is launched, everyone can do this research, so I don't need to worry about not being corrected :)

How has your tool changed since your last AMA? What are some new particularly interesting insights you've uncovered?

Since the last AMA I've been hustling to try and include small money donations, but I haven't yet been successful in getting the data. I'm still working on it, and will definitely have that data included before I launch.

As far as insights, I've been spending all my time trying to include small money data, so nothing new, but I'm hoping we can find some interesting things during the screencasts today.

In your Ron Paul video you show that the FEC website has the small money data summary or are you looking for the detail behind the small money data

I want to import that data in bulk into my system, for every candidate for the last 25 years. Getting it one candidate and one election cycle at a time would take way too long :)

I could pretty easily script that entire process

It's not as simple as you might think, but if you want to give it a shot, I will gladly accept the data you scrape!

Do you have a list of every person you want data for?

Every candidate record from this database: https://github.com/Solomon/opensecrets_to_postgres

What about Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell? Would be interesting to see how much of a common donor base they share.

Here's Rand Paul: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWBoUPv51fg

Here's Mitch McConnell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5n2oOtiyZI

Does your tool work on only the federal level or state/local levels as well?

For this project, it sits on top of federal data, but the code is going to be open source, so you can take the visualization framework and stick it on top of state or local data.

Awesome! Great to know! One other question about the software itself: Which language did you use?

It's a ruby on rails application, and on the front end, uses d3.js, backbone, and a lot of plain old javascript.

The Kickstarter pledge levels make it seem as though you're only creating visualizations for politicians who have someone "sponsor" them. But the video seems to suggest you want to make visualizations for all politicians. Which is it? I'm not asking as a "gotcha" question, I'm genuinely confused.

This tool will have access to over 24,000 politicians. The visualization framework is a program which you build once, and then it works for any politician, so not only the ones who get sponsored.

Anyone can look at any of those 24,000 politicians, without restriction.

Even though your last name is spelled differently, does anyone do the KHAAAAAAN! thing to you?

Yes.

Joe Crowley of NYC?

Here you go! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiZ3D-Nh5U8

Also, you live in my district :) He's my congressman also.

How far back does your data go?

Back to 1990.

Will you fix your software licensing? You claim that your software is open source. But your license here is not an open source license:

• https://github.com/Solomon/opensecrets_to_postgres/blob/master/license.md

The CC by SA NC license is NOT Open Source. See:

• http://opensource.org/definition

• http://opensource.org/licenses

Please release your code under an Open Source license such as the GPLv3, or stop claiming that you are releasing it under an Open Source license. Will you correct your licensing?

The reason I licensed that repo as Creative Commons, was because that's what OpenSecrets requires. That repo is not the repo for this project however, it's just a repo for the database creator.

Before I launch this tool, I'll do some additional research into the different versions of open source licenses.

Mr. Kahn, your new project sounds like a great idea. I plan on donating in return for the amazing opportunity you provided me through Kahn Academy. If you dont mind, do you know how many videos, or hours of video there are on total on the Academy?

You are confusing me with someone else :)

Would you say Americans overall understand that large organisations can buy influence in the political system? And if so, has there been an outcry to change this system.

Yes, I think that most people in American are upset by how much money is in politics, and I think everyone knows that money can buy influence.

I think that normal people feel powerless to change the system, because the game is rigged against them. The current people in power are the ones benefitting from the current system, and they would need to be the ones to change it.

One encouraging thing is there are some politicians, on both sides, who know the system needs to change. Also, there is a strong grassroots movement to fight against the influence of money in politics.

Is your work dangerous in today's climate of politics and technology?

Dangerous to whom?