
Campaign contributions and voting positions - SlyShy
http://ismycongressmanbought.com/index.php
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hammerdr
There is also a logical fallacy that campaign contributions necessarily
influence congress(wo)men. Contributions are given to people that others
support. Just because someone voted for industry X and was given contribution
money by industry X does not imply being 'bought.'

That said and taken into consideration, people that are outliers (like this
guy:
[http://ismycongressmanbought.com/my_cong.php?con=Sodrel,%20M...](http://ismycongressmanbought.com/my_cong.php?con=Sodrel,%20Michael)
and this guy:
[http://ismycongressmanbought.com/my_cong.php?con=Chocola,%20...](http://ismycongressmanbought.com/my_cong.php?con=Chocola,%20Chris\)\[1\])
should be viewed with a suspicious eye.

[1] Both happen to be Republicans. I was just viewing my home state (Indiana)
where most politicians are Republicans. I am by no means trying to imply one
party is better than the other. I am also a Republican.

~~~
tbgvi
Agreed, contributing to someone's campaign doesn't mean I'm trying to buy
them.

More likely is that the candidate already supports a cause I care about, and
I'm contributing to their campaign so they can get elected and continue
supporting my cause.

If you want to see who's bought then look for people who voted one way on an
issue and then switched their vote after getting contributions from the
affected industry.

~~~
hugh3
_If you want to see who's bought then look for people who voted one way on an
issue and then switched their vote after getting contributions from the
affected industry._

Which is unlikely to happen all that often. If I've got deep pockets and want
to influence politics I'll focus on helping folks who already agree with me to
get elected rather than trying to bribe those who don't. It's just a better
bang for your buck.

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notmyname
Quite interesting, but I'd love to see a key to the colors used.

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prawn
FYI:

[http://ismycongressmanbought.com/my_cong.php?con=%3Cblink%3E...](http://ismycongressmanbought.com/my_cong.php?con=%3Cblink%3EHello%20HN)

