{"id":435,"date":"2003-09-05T19:19:12","date_gmt":"2003-09-06T00:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alevin.com\/?p=435"},"modified":"2003-09-05T19:19:12","modified_gmt":"2003-09-06T00:19:12","slug":"wanted-web-enabled-database-to-fight-political-corruption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/?p=435","title":{"rendered":"Wanted: web-enabled database to fight political corruption"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m on the board of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.campaignsforpeople.org\">Campaigns for People<\/a>, an organization dedicated to reducing the influence of money in Texas politics.<br \/>\nA major ethics reform package passed this last legislative session, thanks in part to pressure from thousands of citizens on the CFP activist list, and tireless lobbying by CFP and a coalition of over 60 groups representing 3 million Texans. The ethics bill, HB1606, tightens loopholes that candidates used to avoid disclosing contributions electronically, and strengthens processes to investigate ethics complaints against office-holders.<br \/>\nCFP is seeking a coder for a pro-bono project that is helping to nab corrupt lawmakers.<br \/>\nCFP has compiled a database of campaign contributors in the Houston and San Antonio area.  The data can be used by citizen groups to research the influence of money on legislation.  The Sierra Club &#8212; to give one example &#8212; is using the data to identify politicians who took large campaign contributions from road contractors, and then allocated plum construction contracts to their campaign donor buddies.<br \/>\nCFP would like to make this database viewable and searchable on the web, to make it easier for citizen groups to research campaign contributions. The organization is running on a very slim budget, so the work would need to be done pro-bono.<br \/>\nIf you are interested, please contact Fred Lewis, CFP President, at flewis@onr.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m on the board of Campaigns for People, an organization dedicated to reducing the influence of money in Texas politics. A major ethics reform package passed this last legislative session, thanks in part to pressure from thousands of citizens on the CFP activist list, and tireless lobbying by CFP and a coalition of over 60 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/?p=435\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Wanted: web-enabled database to fight political corruption&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-austin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prDRq-71","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}