Comments on FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: Special Interest Money Means Longer Odds for Publi...

So many Sneaker heads and members of Kanye's fan b...

2010-03-14T23:11:26.897-04:00

So many Sneaker heads and members of Kanye's fan base asked the question ''Where can I buy the Kanye West Air Yeezy Online?''For each of these colourways only 3000 pairs were made each and they pretty much sold out within the time you woke up, could have a shower and drive down to the stores.

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2009-10-10T08:47:30.137-04:00

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I think that getting money out of National politic...

2009-07-08T16:37:28.179-04:00

I think that getting money out of National politics will never happen. However, it is not difficult to conceive of a less "influential" model of campaign contribution. For instance, what if Senators and congressmen (and women) received money only through a party contribution pool. I'm not suggesting that the money be allocated based on an individual or committees objectives but rather based on a measurable formula. Such a formula might consider the population density of the constituency and the geographical size, as well as other factors less prone to subjective interpretation which could easily be leveraged and sold.
Targeting "friendly" local politicians would thus be more difficult, and harder to read by the lobbyists as a "quid pro quo" arrangement. Admittedly, I'm not talking about saving reputations, but rather diluting cause and effect itself.
Too naive? What do you think?

What's the DW-NOMINATE score for freshman senator ...

2009-07-01T22:14:55.249-04:00

What's the DW-NOMINATE score for freshman senator Jeanne Shaheen?

Does the fact that a senator is up for election in...

2009-06-29T22:52:36.929-04:00

Does the fact that a senator is up for election in the next congressional cycle factor into your model at all?

Tony C: The people selling the ads will respond to...

2009-06-24T09:48:16.648-04:00

Tony C: The people selling the ads will respond to higher demand by raising prices too.

Fair point. But I believe the legislation under consideration provides for vouchers for reduced-rate TV buys. (Also, rising prices would make it more expensive for businesses too.)

I don't think the state level results you are talking about will translate to the national stage, because companies like Microsoft or Proctor & Gamble or the banks don't much care who is governor of Utah or mayor of Seattle, but they do care who the senators and congressmen are.

But there are plenty of state-level businesses to which state-level decisions are extremely important. And it would be far less expensive to buy influence on that level. So I'm not sure why the scale would not translate to the federal level, where both the stakes and the costs (and possibly the number of organizations fighting for influence) are higher.

I will retract my adamant language and just say I am highly skeptical.

Skepticism is a vitally important part of any process. The more the better--as long as it combined with an openness to consideration that someone else may have a valid point. I hope we both fall into that category (if only more of those in Congress also did, on both sides of the aisle).

dsimon: Okay I am swayed, but not convinced. I am...

2009-06-24T07:22:29.156-04:00

dsimon:

Okay I am swayed, but not convinced. I am suspicious of anything short of coercion (legislation) that claims to circumvent the laws of pricing.

So I will make these last two arguments, neither of which is a certainty, but which I see in practice: The people selling the ads will respond to higher demand by raising prices too. Look at the Super Bowl ads that sell for five times the cost per viewer as a normal broadcast. For various reasons, but primarily just because there is limited space and the network charges whatever the traffic will bear.

Secondly, a city council seat or mayoral seat or state senator seat has very little impact on a Fortune 500 company. Their lot is cast at the federal level over taxes and big government supply contracts. There are a few state level taxes and regulations to worry about, but the real meat is federal taxes, subsidies, grants, and contracts.

I don't think the state level results you are talking about will translate to the national stage, because companies like Microsoft or Proctor & Gamble or the banks don't much care who is governor of Utah or mayor of Seattle, but they do care who the senators and congressmen are.

I haven't verified your evidence, but it sounds plausible so I will retract my adamant language and just say I am highly skeptical. I love money, but in my thirty years experience in business, money almost always finds a way to corrupt, and I don't think pumping more money into the system is the answer. I think it will get stolen and abused.

Most people, however, are at least reluctant to break the law, and only a tiny percent will risk even a week in prison just to save some money. A law with a lockup clause has teeth, and people will obey it.

Tony C: Are you proposing to have elections financ...

2009-06-24T00:12:44.492-04:00

Tony C: Are you proposing to have elections financed by taxes on $10 a voter?

I'm not proposing how it will be financed. I'm only saying that it would be cheap on an eligible voter per year basis to match just about all the money that's in the system right now. And it wouldn't be that much harder to swamp private money with public money.

The stakes are so big that they will escalate until it is impossible to escalate further.

That has not happened in states that have public campaign financing. Once the media is pretty swamped with candidates using public money, the additional private money becomes much less effective. Also, private entities can be prohibited from coordinating with participating candidates, so they run the risk of running ads that will hurt their preferred candidate.

I don't think more than a handful of elections will ever be voluntarily funded by citizens at a level that can beat big business

But it's already been done at the state level, where one would think it would be even cheaper for big businesses to buy local candidates. Instead, there are many candidates who participate in public campaign financing who can tell lobbyists to take a hike--or listen to them without fear of reprisal if they say no to them on legislation.

The fact that politicians are cheap now doesn't mean they will be cheap forever; the day legislation is passed to fund at level X, the lobbyists will be offering 1.25 * X.

See my point above: the available supply space for ads is limited. If public money can take up much of the ad space, then there's just not much more room for private entities to dominate the field. And whether a candidate chooses to participate in the system or chooses to be "traditionally" funded can itself become a campaign issue, usually to the detriment of the "traditional" candidate.

Most of the major good government groups support the Fair Elections Now Act presently in Congress. It's worth a try, especially since just about anything would be better than what we have now. If it doesn't work, we can always change it.

@Juris: "the correlation between lobbyist spending...

2009-06-23T21:01:33.279-04:00

@Juris: "the correlation between lobbyist spending and votes is hardly coincidental and is a terrible mark against the democratic process." Wow, you entirely missed Marcus's point even though you were able to quote him correctly. His point was, of course, that there is NO EVIDENCE whatsoever that the correlation pointed out by Nate is in fact causal. Nate was even forthright enough to admit that the causal arrow is unknown is his analysis.
IF your point was that lobbying money corrupts the political process, that's been said better by others here.
What HAS NOT been mentioned here, no surprise, is a constitutional way to correct that condition. Until and unless that is done, CAUSALITY will always be the central argument in cases like this as was very correctly pointed out by Marcus.

dsimon: ..we cannot get business money out of pol...

2009-06-23T18:26:46.221-04:00

dsimon:

..we cannot get business money out of politics, but we can reduce its impact so that politicians don't need to depend on it.

Perhaps I don't understand what this legislation is supposed to do. Are you proposing to have elections financed by taxes on $10 a voter?

How do you think business and PACs will respond? Right now, they get their politicians cheap; look at the x-axis on Nate's chart. It only goes up to $120K for a six year cycle, that is averaging $20K per year. And what are they expecting for this piddling sum? tens of millions, even billions, in cost savings and tax savings.

The stakes are so big that they will escalate until it is impossible to escalate further. Right now you can buy a politician's vote for a few tens of thousands, but that is just because the pol has no decent offers for the principled vote. All a public financing option will do is raise the price tag; and the businesses (or lobbyists) will pay it. If they have to make it a million, on most issues it will be worth it and they will pay it.

I don't think more than a handful of elections will ever be voluntarily funded by citizens at a level that can beat big business; and if the funding is mandatory but PACs are not outlawed, the PACs will raise their game to match. Lobbyists earn millions for a good reason; because businesses are willing to pay millions for favorable legislation. Why? Because it can pay off in high multiples of the cost. The margin on favorable legislation, government contracts and market protectionism is through the roof. The fact that politicians are cheap now doesn't mean they will be cheap forever; the day legislation is passed to fund at level X, the lobbyists will be offering 1.25 * X.

I love your work!

2009-06-23T17:59:25.500-04:00

I love your work!

we already have a Supreme Court ruling that Congre...

2009-06-23T16:59:09.095-04:00

we already have a Supreme Court ruling that Congress cannot keep money from business out of elections; it is a free speech argument.

So unless a citizen-financed campaign can outgun the Fortune 500 and multi-billionaire backed PACs, (and Obama's did, but was the first ever) politicians will keep choosing the business-backed option over the citizen-backed option.

That's exactly what citizen financed campaigns can do: swamp private money with public money. All of the money in the 2008 election came to $8.78 per eligible voter per year. (That includes all presidential spending, all House and Senate spending, all national party committee spending, and all 527 organization spending.) So it won't be all that expensive, and it's a payoff I think most people would take. If you make it worth it to the politicians to opt into the public system, then they will act in their own self-interest and do so. (To paraphrase from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: If they paid me that much to stop robbing them, then I'd stop robbing them!)

You are correct that limiting expenses runs into First Amendment problems, but the legislation under consideration does not impose a limit. But it doesn't need to do so. When businesses realize that they're getting less bang for their bucks because their money is less of the total pool, their expenses might decrease--though we'll have to see what actually happens.

Maine and Arizona have had public systems on the state level since 2000, and Connecticut got it this past cycle, and all have had substantial levels of participation even though it's voluntary on the part of the candidates. So many candidates are already choosing the citizen-backed model over the business-backed model--and winning with that model.

As a matter of pragmatism instead of idealism...

I think this approach is entirely pragmatic. It is has happened on the state level, and momentum is growing (I've been told it would have passed in Maryland last year if the leader of the state Senate had brought it to a vote). The House legislation has 55 cosponsors even though no one has taken the lead to make it a high profile issue.

Again, I think it will take a while. But I think it will happen. Not this cycle, but not too many cycles away--if we keep working at it. You're right that we cannot get business money out of politics, but we can reduce its impact so that politicians don't need to depend on it. And that, to me, would be more than enough.

dsimon: Except, we already have a Supreme Court r...

2009-06-23T15:56:28.218-04:00

dsimon:

Except, we already have a Supreme Court ruling that Congress cannot keep money from business out of elections; it is a free speech argument.

So unless a citizen-financed campaign can outgun the Fortune 500 and multi-billionaire backed PACs, (and Obama's did, but was the first ever) politicians will keep choosing the business-backed option over the citizen-backed option.

As a matter of pragmatism instead of idealism, strict accounting and transparency can be passed as law and enforced. We cannot get business money out of politics; so the best we can do is know how it is spent.

Tony C: The real solution is complete transparency...

2009-06-23T15:41:21.302-04:00

Tony C: The real solution is complete transparency strongly enforced over where every single dollar of campaign contributions are spent and who gets the checks

I think the real solution is citizen-funded campaigns, which would replace private money with public money and break the real or perceived influence of special interests on legislation. The implied influence is just as bad as actual influence; if people think results can be bought, who will even bother to engage? The very presence of private money in campaigns is corrosive to the public trust that's essential to a functioning democracy.

Terrific presentation on the issue by Prof. Lawrence Lessig at http://blip.tv/file/2191084.

I've been told by a couple of representatives that the public campaign financing bill presently in the House would pass today if it were brought to a vote. The problem is in the Senate. I think it will happen, but it will take a while.

I think your analysis is sound, but it fails to ta...

2009-06-23T12:32:25.144-04:00

I think your analysis is sound, but it fails to take into account the Barack Obama factor. If he wants it, we'll get it. If not, we won't.

HCB: Anonymous Contributions: A laudable idea tha...

2009-06-23T08:57:13.069-04:00

HCB: Anonymous Contributions:

A laudable idea that would backfire in practice. After a few minutes of thought, politicians would love it. The anonymity would provide them cover and they wouldn't have to reveal anything except total contributions. Perfect!

In the meantime, in practice, there are far, far too many ways to allude to having made contributions, and in ways that make it absolutely certain to the politician who made it.

Politicians aren't stupid, and neither are lobbyists. The lobbyists will find a legal way to tell the politicians when a donation has been made. For example, the lobbyist might say, "in light of the events of the day, you can probably see how important we think this is." Then the politician checks his bank account and sees about $10K more deposited that day than is usual, and knows who has buttered his bread. Even if you have it all on tape, good luck proving anything illegal transpired. The politician doesn't know for certain who contributed, and you have made it illegal for him to find out. So the identity is just his conjecture, but he will be 99.9% certain it was not some random $10K donation for no reason.

In the meantime, we the people will be officially kept in the dark about who is contributing what and to whom, because by law all of that is anonymous!

The real solution is complete transparency strongly enforced over where every single dollar of campaign contributions are spent and who gets the checks; for salaries, for expenses, for materials, for every dollar.

More light; not less. The problem is that politicians use campaign contributions to get personally rich, one way or another. There are supposed to be restrictions on how they are used, but these are weakly enforced by the FEC.

That is why campaign contributions (CC) from PACs carry such weight, the politician has complete control of how that money is spent, thus there are indirect paths from CC to personal wealth, so a CC is essentially a bribe to the politician.

In addition to the issue of reverse causality that...

2009-06-23T08:42:11.601-04:00

In addition to the issue of reverse causality that others have noted (Medical PACs support senators they think are on their side), and countervailing lobbying (which you acknowledge), you are also failing to account for senatorial influence.

Your two big outliers - Baucus and Reid - should have a big fat dummy variable in the model for being the individuals with the most influence over pending medical reform legislation. (Baucus chairs the finance committee, Reid is majority leader)

If the goal is influencing decisions, then Strategic lobbyists would allocate funds to senators based on a combination of "likelihood to influence" and "position of power". If the goal is rewarding closely aligned senators, then strategic lobbyists ought to allocate funds to senators with clearly articulated positions in their favor.

The model could really use an instrument...

I think the model proves something unintended - th...

2009-06-23T07:54:24.001-04:00

I think the model proves something unintended - that less information is better. The model assumes the recipients of lobbyist largesse know the amount and source of the largesse. Most lobbyists and representatives say the money given has no effect on anything the representative does since he or she votes his or her "conscience." So - instead of more extensive reporting and analysis, provide that all contributions have to be anonymous. There can be absolutely no way a recipient can trace the source of the gift.

The Insurance Industry only wants to insure strong...

2009-06-23T06:14:32.485-04:00

The Insurance Industry only wants to insure strong,young, and genetically 'superior' people- so they can keep their costs down- if you are older, have health problems etc- either they reject you or charge you $700 or more a month.

I hear someone here calling the progressive ideas for change in health care as Fascist? Actually the Fascists in Italy, Nazi Germany, and Spain had universal coverage- but in Nazi Germany you only received health care if you where an Aryan- or non Jew. Actually universal health care in Germany goes back to the time of Bismarck in the 1870s

Soviet Russia and present day Russia have universal health care, - as does France and most of the rest of Europe. The countries of Europe as a whole have a lower infant mortality rate then the USA, lower rates of heart disease and cancer. They have far better preventive care- and have a higher quality of life and longer lifespan. And there is a balance for most citizens on health care availability- something increasingly lacking here.

If it where not for the Government we would have no FDA, no VA- No National Park system- talk about 'waste in Government?' LOL

Teddy Roosevelt who was a republican and very progressive busted the big business trusts and heavily regulated them, started the FDA to protect our health- and wanted to preserve our environment.

It makes me laugh when I hear someone ignorant enough to call progressives 'fascists' the only fascists around are the conservatives and far right- which make up the Republican party- who have used 'Plantation style Laissez Faire economics' the last 40 year through racism, cultural warfare and fear.

Nice shout-out for this article by Nate in Krugman...

2009-06-23T05:17:39.745-04:00

Nice shout-out for this article by Nate in Krugman's NYT blog:

"The medical-industrial complex and the public option

Fascinating statistical work by Nate Silver. It doesn’t support the crude view that it’s all about special interest money, but suggests that the money is making the odds substantially longer."

@Marcus et al., who wrote "I don't think this has ...

2009-06-23T04:54:21.423-04:00

@Marcus et al., who wrote "I don't think this has been mentioned before," if you'd read earlier comments you'd realize that it has actually been mentioned before.

The issue of causality when it comes to lobbying has always been there. But whether the money moves votes or votes move money or the anticipation of votes moves money, the correlation between lobbyist spending and votes is hardly coincidental and is a terrible mark against the democratic process.

And this has been known, like forever. The classic book on this subject by E. E. Schattschneider, The Semisovereign People, was written 50 years ago. Classic and discredited counterarguments about "plural" and counter-balancing interest group have been around just as long. But on something like health care, except for an occasional breakthrough such as Medicare in 1965 (after a huge Democratic electoral landslide), the moneyed interests have won and the people's interest has lost.

The lobbyists spend their money the way they do for a reason, and not because they are just good citizens. The "people," whose views on this subject are fairly well crystallized by now, typically get outspent and outorganized by the interest groups. Nate's analysis is intended to show the unseemly correlation between Congressional votes and lobbyist spending. For that purpose, it's right on target.

I don't think this has been mentioned before, but,...

2009-06-23T03:07:48.777-04:00

I don't think this has been mentioned before, but, to put it briefly, this analysis is interesting - but only that. The potential statistical issues mentioned in a number of the comments are secondary to the real issue: that the data given here, except under pretty unreasonable assumptions, cannot give any information about causality. The results given are what could be called 'summary statistics' - indicators that something interesting is probably going on, and that further analysis is warranted.

To actually draw some causality out of this data, one has to be able to claim that the independent variable is just that: independent. If, for example, PAC money were randomly given to certain senators and not to others, and we were to observe their voting afterwards, or if senators voted randomly, and then PAC contributions were made after the vote, then we could make claims about causality.

This is essentially the core focus of modern applied statistics in fields such as economics and political science - such conclusions are simply very difficult to make with any real certainty.

- Tiro

The Maxwell Evans Report

Fox News Interpretation: The top graph shows that ...

2009-06-23T02:06:45.192-04:00

Fox News Interpretation: The top graph shows that Republicans are actually least likely to be influenced by lobbysists.

PorridgeGun: Honestly, these people are moronic. ...

2009-06-23T00:51:48.153-04:00

PorridgeGun: Honestly, these people are moronic. When the public are telling you to quit faffing about and pass real health care reform, regardless of your personal views and political contibutions, you get behind it 100%.

Except issue polling such as this oftentimes fails to capture how soft support for certain policies really is. Sure, most people support a "public option" when asked by a pollster, but how many people care enough to really make it an issue? I'd wager the members of Congress received far more mail, email, and telephone calls about the bailouts than about this. This is all beside the fact that I don't believe support for a public option is really as strong as these polls imply.

Additionally, saying no to a public option might be far less harmful to a member of Congress's reelection prospectives than saying yes and then having to vote for the measures necessary to pay for whatever policy is passed...even among those who supposedly support a public option.

Davy: Conversely, I think this is why Americans have such a low opinion of congress even if they have a high opinion of president. They know the game is rigged.

Does this imply that Americans believe the 'game' isn't rigged when it comes to the president's policies? And also, why do individual members of Congress typically receive high marks from their constituents? Is it simply that they prefer their corrupt representative to everyone else's?

Juris: They haven't articulated much of a principle beyond that of supporting a free market -- despite the fact that this free market has been a failure at holding down costs and assuring coverage.

The logical response to such a critique would be that a public option would be an even worse failure. I don't buy that argument, but simply showing that our system has flaws doesn't necessarily mean there is a better option, much less that the options being proposed are better.

pudge: Like most statistics, this is meaningless because you aren't taking -- and really can't take -- some of the most important information into account

I feel like this is a rather standard argument from those who really don't understand statistics. Although it is true that statistics can be done poorly such that important information is left out and that statistics are often abused for whatever purpose, a properly done statstical analysis can provide plenty of useful information. Perhaps if you understand the enormity of the odds against seeing something considered highly stastically significant occur by mere chance, you wouldn't be so quick to judge.

PeteKent: One last point that I forgot to include...

2009-06-23T00:10:08.405-04:00

PeteKent:

One last point that I forgot to include above: ss I wrote above (which again was not addressed in any response), isn't it just slightly premature to pontificate on the consequences of healthcare reform when we still don't know what version is going to be considered for passage? We don't even know if there is going to be a public plan. If there is, we don't know if it will require physician participation (probably not, in my view). We don't know if it will be subsidized. We don't know what reimbursement rates it will offer. Doesn't that kind of blow a huge hole through any analysis you or I might attempt?

Again, we need to get over the scare tactics, innuendo, and ideology, and focus on the facts first.