Research Tools

new 10/15

see web of dec main, also funders etc

see dark $ tools

TOOLS:

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see productivity

https://boingboing.net/2022/09/04/eight-useful-website-tools-you-many-not-know-about.html

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12 25 stats on bills detailed

2024

PRO PUB

TOOL SCOTUS

Did you know? Every year, the Supreme Court’s nine justices fill out a form that discloses their financial connections to companies and people.

We have a database that allows you to search for organizations and people that have paid the Supreme Court justices, reimbursed them for travel and given them gifts: https://propub.li/3GyKA3R

site/ tool: https://www.climateofdenial.org/

pols

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does not tell you how many ppl searched but how popular over time

geo !

Google Trends

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8 24 new tool hot NGO

Nonprofit Explorer Adds Trending Nonprofits Feature — ProPublica

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dataviz:

BBB

https://influencemap.org/report/The-Reconciliation-Bill-and-How-Corporate-America-is-Engaging-40b368ddbd6134be670d01085b898ac5

This briefing analyzes the 20 largest, US-based companies with InfluenceMap Organization Scores over 65, indicating broadly positive positioning towards climate change policy.Despite their apparent support for climate action, the majority of these companies are not publicly endorsing the Build Back Better Act. Their inactivity is accompanied by the highly active opposition of US industry associations, where many remain members.

7 of the 20 companies appear to have partially engaged on the bill – for example, by supporting some but not all of the climate provisions it contains. Their engagement stops short of endorsing the bill in its entirety or commenting on the fiscal measures needed, in part, to pay for its climate provisions.
Only one company - Salesforce - has endorsed the full suite of climate policy provisions in the Build Back Better Act. However, the company remains a member of the US Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable, and National Association of Manufacturers (where it serves on the Board).
InfluenceMap did not find evidence of engagement with the Build Back Better Act from the 12 remaining companies.

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Learn how to navigate and edit LittleSis during this introductory training to using the research database.

We also recently released two new research how-to guides to sharpen your research chops.

Did you know that you can easily discover the people and groups fueling politicians and political institutions? This new guide to using the Federal Elections Commission database shows you how to create precise search requests to discover who is holding the reins in your own backyard.

The past several years have seen a marked increase in organizing efforts among U.S. college students around climate and environmental justice issues but more pressure is needed. This new guide shows you five ways to research your university’s fossil fuel (and other) investments and includes video walk-throughs of key research databases.

And of course we have our standing Map The Power: Research for the Resistance toolkit that walks you through how to build actionable research on powerful people and organizations using publicly available data.

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corporate accountability site:

https://www.corporateaccountability.org/

https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/

https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/bannon-calls-for-ban-on-nike-and-apple-products-in-the-united-states/

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TOOL:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3, 2020 — With the digital-dominated 2020 election shifting into high gear, OpenSecrets is releasing a new searchable, sortable online ads database that provides comprehensive details about political ad spending on Google and Facebook.

OpenSecrets is tracking over 80,000 online political advertisers, more than four times the number of committees registered with the Federal Election Commission. Each advertiser has its own profile, which includes:

Its total spending on both Facebook and Google ads over time
Information about and links to each of the Facebook and Google pages where it runs ads
Its total Facebook ad spending in each state

Online ads are at the center of strategies to misinform and deceive voters ahead of Election Day. This section will help users identify the online forces behind political messages and better understand their affiliations with political groups. Mysterious “dark money” organizations, industry groups and fake news websites are among the advertisers pouring millions into ads to influence voters.

OpenSecrets used machine learning to group numerous Facebook and Google pages into one distinct profile, allowing users to see the full extent of each advertiser’s political spending. Our partners at the Wesleyan Media Project and the NYU Online Political Ads Transparency Project contributed substantially to the data collection for this project, which was made possible by support from Democracy Fund and Media Democracy Fund.

Visit the new Online Ads section here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSYhXn3t1bM

Issue One and the Center for Responsive Politics host an hour-long seminar about the paid political advertising policies on Facebook, Google, Snapchat, Twitter, and other social media platforms ahead of the 2020 election.

Guests: Michael Beckel, Issue One, Research Director Anna Massoglia, Center for Responsive Politics, Researcher Background: Issue One recently released a report, "Digital Disaster: The failures of Facebook, Google, and Twitter's political ad transparency policies" https://www.issueone.org/digital-disa...Issue One is the leading crosspartisan political reform group In Washington. We unite Republicans, Democrats, and independents in the movement to fix the broken political system. www.issueone.org The Center for Responsive Politics is the nation's premier research group tracking money in U.S. politics and its effects on elections and public policy. www.opensecrets.org

819 tool doc archive

https://www.desmogblog.com/koch-network-database

TOOL:

OpenSecrets,

Underlying the drama surrounding the impeachment hearings and calls between Presidents Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, there is newfound attention to issues involving the decades-old Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and the information it discloses.

Consider these developments the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) uncovered in recent months involving Ukrainian actors:

Networks of shell companies, limited liability companies and other secretive entities reported millions of dollars in U.S. lobbying and influence spending on interests tied to Ukrainian politician Yulia Tymoshenko.
On the eve of the Ukraine 2019 presidential election, a delegation of Zelensky campaign representatives orchestrated a secretive influence campaign during which they reportedly paid Trump International Hotel’s BLT restaurant $1,912 to dine with “around a dozen unknown others.”
A little known U.S.-based attorney quietly poured six figures into foreign influence operations for President Zelensky, hoping to be rewarded with a job in his administration.

The breadth and scale of conflicts of interest make it more vital than ever to expose the connections between money, governance and policy. Moreover, the escalation in FARA-related activity –– and enforcement –– is unprecedented. In the past fifty years there were only seven FARA prosecutions. In 2018 alone, more than 20 individuals were charged with criminal prosecutions. Investigations and reports that draw on CRP's Foreign Lobby Watch data—by OpenSecrets, the press and civil society—are revealing the relationships and activities of people wielding inordinate influence over policy, and bringing transparency to these networks.

**Foreign Lobby Watch (FLW)** is the essential resource for exploring these patterns. FLW digitizes and curates the FARA data into an accurate and easily accessible format. And CRP is adding features to make it the most comprehensive tool available. By integrating the data with CRP's domestic lobbying archive FLW provides deeper access into who is in these networks of influence, donations to lawmakers made by lobbyists, details about their political ad spending and the lobbying activities of foreign companies.

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7/20

https://climateinvestigations.org/climate-lawsuit-index-complaints-with-links-to-footnotes-and-referenced-documents/

https://climateinvestigations.org/exxon-and-friends-still-funding-climate-denial-and-obstruction-through-ipaa-fti-energy-in-depth/

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https://www.counterextremism.com/extremists/james-mason

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/06/25/ucsf-adds-fossil-fuels-to-industry-documents-library

Today, UCSF Library launched a new Fossil Fuel Industry Documents Archive featuring over 1,000 internal documents from the fossil fuel industry illustrating strategies to cast doubt on climate science and delay policy action. The documents were collected over two decades by the Climate Investigations Center.

UC San Francisco's Industry Documents Library (IDL) is a unique resource. It gathers and organizes internal documents from companies that privatize profits and socialize costs, risks or damage to health or environment.

Real science is often inconvenient for profits, so such companies spend money on politics, disinformation, doubt-creation and attacks on science and scientists, sometimes via “independent” think tanks or front groups often covered here on DeSmog.

mashey

FEC docs

https://www.propublica.org/article/users-guide-to-democracy-how-to-follow-the-money

https://influencemap.org/index.html

https://influencemap.org/filter/List-of-Companies-and-Influencers ***

https://ballotpedia.org/Influencers includes gerry

https://transparencyreport.google.com/political-ads/library

MIC https://www.alternet.org/local-peace-economy/who-making-killing-killing

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/congress-trump-score/bob-goodlatte/

https://projects.propublica.org/represent/members/G000289-bob-goodlatte

6/18

advanced donor lookup

https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-lookup/advanced

https://www.propublica.org/nerds/propublica-congress-api-lobbying-registrations-and-more

5/18

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https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-lookup/

https://www.opensecrets.org/races/special-elections/

5/4/18

t recent filings, current candidates running in House and Senate races nationwide have raised more than $1 billion in the 2018 cycle with six months still left to go.

157 candidates running for the U.S. Senate have raised an average of $2.3 millionwhile 1519 candidates running for the House of Representatives have raised an average of just under $446 thousand.

ads, heat map

https://www.opensecrets.org/ad-data/

legislation

http://www.outdooralliance.org/legislative-tracking/

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/joe_wilson/400433

https://projects.propublica.org/trump-town/

4/18

2,684

Appointees

194

Are Former Lobbyists

130

Worked at Conservative Think Tanks

263

Worked for Trump Campaign Groups

https://dirtydeputies.org/

https://thinkprogress.org/dirty-deputies-fill-trump-administration-9e78a260e62b/

The Trump administration has recruited officials to fill its top energy and environmental staff positions from fossil fuel lobbying groups, Koch brothers-funded think tanks, and climate-denying lawmakers’ offices, according to a new database from the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Launched Monday, the project tracks political appointments to energy and environment positions and their past affiliations. Of the more than 100 political staff working on energy and environmental issues, close to one-third have ties to the fossil fuel industry and petrochemical billionaires Charles and David Koch, according to the tracker.

11/17

8/17

https://www.propublica.org/nerds/item/nonprofit-explorer-update-full-text-of-nearly-two-million-records

7/17 new tool:

http://www.exposedbycmd.org/2017/07/26/poison-papers-expose-decades-collusion-industry-regulators-hazardous-pesticides-chemicals

https://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/

http://individual-contributors.insidegov.com/

added FEC data

http://realtime.influenceexplorer.com/outside-spenders/2016/#?ordering=-total_indy_expenditures&cycle=2016

http://conservativetransparency.org/about/

http://www.opensecrets.org/elections/

great $:http://conservativetransparency.org/

searchable: http://politicalmoneyline.com/?src=rc-post

https://www.propublica.org/nerds/item/introducing-fec-itemizer-a-tool-to-research-federal-election-spending 8/15

http://www.politicalmoneyline.com/noaccess.aspx 12/14 free trial

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http://www.journaliststoolbox.org/

Green:

http://www.journaliststoolbox.org/archive/2015/03/

agriculture: http://www.journaliststoolbox.org/archive/agriculture/

ad buys

https://www.opensecrets.org/ad-data/

12/16

The Federal Communications Commission has made it easier for researchers, journalists and citizens to track dark campaign contributions by expanding its online political ad database

While the Federal Election Commission may be hopelessly gridlocked along partisan lines when it comes to campaign-finance regulation, another arm of the government isproviding journalists and citizen watchdogs with an important new tool for understanding who is trying to influence the election and how much is being spent to do so.

On June 24, theFederal Communications Commission began requiring the nation’s radio broadcasters and cable television stations to upload all of their political ad contracts to a public online database. TV broadcasters have been doing so since the last presidential election. The FCC’s decision to expand its online public file is important in the context of campaign 2016 because it vastly expands the field of vision for reporters and citizen monitors who are trying to track the efforts of dark-money groups to influence the elections.

Dark-money groups refer to political organizations masquerading as social-welfare non-profits. Since the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in *Citizens United*, they have become popular venues for big political donors who’d rather remain anonymous. Because of their tax-exempt status, such groups never have to make public the sources of their funding. And because they are considered corporations, they can, thanks to Citizens United, raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections. Unless outside groups’ expenditures come within 60 days of a primary election or 30 days of a general election, they never have to be reported on campaign-finance disclosures.

For those who would like to try some political watchdogging at home, here’s a how-to guide.

But the TV (and now radio and cable) stations that take the groups’ money do have to provide the FCC with copies of invoices, contracts — and, most significantly, a form identifying officers and board members of the actual people behind mystery-meat groups with names like “Americans for A Better America.” Such anodyne monikers could be a front for seasoned political operatives who have spun off a 501(c) to help politicians for whom they used to work. Or they could be hiding a coalition of, say, your local sludge producers who are trying to influence a municipal referendum on putting a dump in your backyard.

By adding radio and cable providers to its online database, the FCC is making it much easier to investigate advertisers in lower-budget local races, in which such groups can have a big impact. Before Friday, searching these ad records would have meant making an in-person visit to each station and rifling through drawers of paper, a task so daunting that very few citizens, academic researchers or news organizations would undertake it.

Initially, only radio stations in the nation’s top 50 markets will be required to participate in the database; the rule will apply to all radio stations in 2018. But every cable outlet with more than 1,000 subscribers must begin uploading files now.

For those who would like to try some political watchdogging from your home computers, here’s a how-to guide:

1. Surf on over to the FCC’s new, improved public files site: https://publicfiles.fcc.gov

https://publicfiles.fcc.gov/

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