
Financial Disclosure Reports Database - pzxc
http://clerk.house.gov/public_disc/financial-search.aspx
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tylercubell
It might be interesting to create an index from this data and compare it to
other benchmarks like the S&P 500. I'd call it the HoR 500 and it would be the
top 500 publicly traded companies owned by house members. I have a feeling
like exploiting non-public information would be irresistible to many of them
so maybe this index would outperform the market.

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pzxc
A moderator changed the title from the more descriptive "House of
Representatives Personal Finances" to the on-page but less-descriptive title
"Financial Disclosure Reports Database", and apparently at the same time hit
this submission with a penalty because it immediately dropped from #5 on the
front page to #31 on the second page, right below a submission that has the
same number of upvotes but is 8 hours old instead of 1 hour old.

So looks like show's over on this one folks -- now that it's on the second
page and has some kind of penalty (and a less descriptive title), it's
unlikely to get any more upvotes or comments. A shame, I was really looking
forward to all the discussion that could happen around this. :(

~~~
dang
The post didn't fall in rank because of a title change. Rather, it was flagged
by several users, including a moderator, presumably because they felt it was
off-topic politics.

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bengali3
Interesting, im guessing this is from the STOCK act? "It would greatly expand
financial disclosures and make all of the data searchable so insider trading
and conflicts of interest would be easier to detect"[1]

Remember, before this, members were immune to insider trading rules.

Id be curious what the stock returns are since these folks are now no longer
immune to insider trading regulations. And considering its merely 'ranges'
that need to be disclosed, this makes nailing this down a little harder. Even
so this doesn't mean charges would be pressed easily as i'm sure some leeway
would still be given as a 'courtesy' to gov't officials.

[1]
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/04/16/177496734...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/04/16/177496734/how-
congress-quietly-overhauled-its-insider-trading-law)

[2][http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-
office/2012/04/04/fact-s...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-
office/2012/04/04/fact-sheet-stock-act-bans-members-congress-insider-trading)

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corbyhobbs
I'm a product manager for a site called FindTheBest that actually features
this data for both the House and Senate on our Members of Congress topic. We
visualize the range figures for each member over the past few years as well as
compare them to other members from that state. I get the data from
OpenSecrets, which does a pretty good job of liberating the data from those
heinous PDFs.

Here's a visual of Charlie Rangel's net worth for instance: [http://members-
of-congress.findthebest.com/w/frh9TfuVVs1](http://members-of-
congress.findthebest.com/w/frh9TfuVVs1)

And a visual of NY congressmembers: [http://members-of-
congress.findthebest.com/w/8zrc97p8ddr](http://members-of-
congress.findthebest.com/w/8zrc97p8ddr)

If you want to check out the topic as a whole you can go to [http://members-
of-congress.findthebest.com/](http://members-of-congress.findthebest.com/).
I'd welcome any feedback you may have.

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comex
> It is unlawful to use the information contained in these Financial
> Disclosure Statements for (A) any unlawful purpose,

Shocker!

~~~
jjoonathan
Maybe it means that the crimes "stack." You know, like how robbing someone has
penalty A, robbing them with a knife has penalty A+B, and robbing them with a
gun has penalty A+C (with C>B)?

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casca
The format seems to depend on how the representative submits the information.
For example, [http://clerk.house.gov/public_disc/ptr-
pdfs/2014/20000780.pd...](http://clerk.house.gov/public_disc/ptr-
pdfs/2014/20000780.pdf) should be easy to parse out whereas
[http://clerk.house.gov/public_disc/ptr-
pdfs/2014/8213924.pdf](http://clerk.house.gov/public_disc/ptr-
pdfs/2014/8213924.pdf) would be harder.

It's odd that there isn't a single spreadsheet with all the data on it, but it
probably wouldn't take more than a few days and a few interns to generate
that.

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andyhnj
Interesting. The guy who used to be my House rep (before some redistricting)
has more records in this system than anyone else in my home state (NJ). Not
sure if he's more actively investing, or if he's just doing a better job of
submitting the right paperwork.

It's interesting to see what kind of stocks he's got, tech and otherwise. On
the tech side, he's got some obvious choices (Apple, Google, and Cisco). For
non-tech, I see some local NJ companies, and companies with a large presence
in NJ.

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raisedbyninjas
Sounds like a candidate for Sunlight Foundation API.
[http://sunlightfoundation.com/api/](http://sunlightfoundation.com/api/)

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pzxc
Senate version: [https://efdsearch.senate.gov/](https://efdsearch.senate.gov/)

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yock
PDFs? Range values? If I had to guess, I'd say they really don't want us to
have this information.

~~~
publicfig
Government work is still incredibly document driven and releasing information
in PDFs tends to not only make sense given traditional workflows but also
technological sense. We're far away from the days where PDFs threatened to
bring your computer and connection to a halt. The range values make sense, as
if there were no range values, and someone was found to be even minority off
on what their contributions were, they could possibly be liable for that
difference in accountability.

