The Brian Lehrer Show

Please limit comments to your findings from the campaign finance filings. You can post questions about the project, and we'll do our best to answer them.

We will remove comments that are off topic. Thanks for taking part!

What if we summarize pages? That way someone could take the comments and do an analysis of (or estimation of), say for example, how many of Clinton's contributors are self-employed. Or how many of Giuliani's contributors are from New York in ratio to the rest of the nation?

Oh, and can we get a deadline for this Brian?

Thanks for the challenge NYC -

this is fun.

To start - here are some famous names who donated to Hillary Clinton's campaign this quarter -

Bette Midler

Amy Yasbeck

Tovah Feldshuh

Alexander Baldwin

Lynn Redgrave

Sharon Lawrence

Marlo Thomas

Khandi Alexander

Marua Tierney

An unrelated point - why are Homemakers considered Unemployed? I may not get paid, but trust, I'm employed!

1. One of the Hillary Clinton campaign's payees is SUPER-sketchy: More than 400K paid out in the past quarter to one "Financial Innovations Inc." for "printing" services, more than 200K of that was paid out in one day! Almost none of the other expenditures on the list are nearly as large. Google results are scanty, but as I understand, they make promotional items for the campaign. But how can that be SUCH a large expense? It seems all the travel and food service for the quarter doesn't even add up to so much. Google results DO show that the company made some large contributions to the DNC a few years ago..

2. Who's the staffer with the chutzpah to ask to be reimbursed for spending $1 on a parking meter in DC?

3. Campaign paid 10K to ASCAP, I assume to use a song (Celine's?). However, they also paid 99 cents to iTunes, presumably to download one song for a particular event?

4. The Hillary Clinton campaign apparently rents an office in Little Rock for $5,000/month from the William J. Clinton Foundation! I suppose the money goes to a good cause, but it seems they don't pay nearly as much for any of their other offices elsewhere.

Rudy? Free love? Who'd a thunk it?

FREELOVE CONSULTING GROUP

3830 VALLEY CENTRE DR # 705 PMB 552

SAN DIEGO, California 92130

08/02/2007 TRAVEL/PRINTING 305.24

08/22/2007 FINANCE CONSULTING 5000.00

Also, interesting that Hillary has 23 pages of dispursements while Rudy has 7.

Rudy: 3056 Itemized Disbursements

Hillary: 11,126 Itemized Disbursements

Too bad the "total disbursement amount" function doesn't seem to work.

Ron, 10k to ASCAP... Why do the Clintons use campaign songs by a foreign artists - Fleetwood Mac and Celine Dion? Aren't there any great American musician and songwrtiters?

here's Giuliani by State

http://query.nictusa.com/pres/2007/Q3/C00430512/A_STATE_C00430512.html

More detailed reports for both candidates here:

Giuliani

http://query.nictusa.com/pres/2007/Q3/C00430512.html

Clinton

http://query.nictusa.com/pres/2007/Q3/C00431569.html

Here are both candidates Q3 payees in descending order by amount. I saved them as WORD docs and uploaded to mediafire for download.

http://www.mediafire.com/?1y6w3txpnfx rudy

http://www.mediafire.com/?30feznt2bq9 hillary

So far, I've gone through only the first 3,000 of Giuliani's contributors, but I've found some interesting things. (Sorry, I don't have the stamina to keep track of the actual numbers for these):

First, an awful lot of people in the oil and gas and mining industries are contributing lots of money.

Second, lots and lots of doctors and others in the health/pharma industries are big contributors.

Last, a famous contributor ... Professor Steven Calabresi, one of the founders of the Federalist Society. If Giuliani's elected guess who's coming to the Supreme Court!!!

Here are quick links to the filings for October:

GIULIANI

Contributions:

http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/dcdev/forms/C00430512/306848/sa/ALL

Expenses:

http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/dcdev/forms/C00430512/306848/sb/ALL

CLINTON

Contributions:

http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/dcdev/forms/C00431569/307570/sa/ALL

Expenses:

http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/dcdev/forms/C00431569/307570/sb/ALL

I suppose I may be missing the obvious, but why did Guiliani pay these 8 individuals $9.11 each?

ARCARO, PATRICIA

BLUE, KAREN

DELLARIPA, MIKE

GILBERT, DENNY

JONES, JOANN

MALESKI, DAVID

NARCISSO, ANTHONY

PUTKOWSKI, CHRISTAL

Are these staffers donating their time and efforts, and taking only this symbolic pay amount? If so, is this a wise move for a candidate who says that he is not running on 9/11 alone?

Ok, I guess I am not going to make such a good reporter ... A quick check of Google revealed, as I predicted, the obvious answer to my question above. Guiliani returned this amount to donors who had contributed the money to avoid appearing as if he was capitalizing off the attacks. I promise to do my research before I post again.

-Star Jones, a self-employed lawyer in Manhattan, gave Hillary $750

-Calvin Klein, a designer in Santa Monica, gave her $2300

Student support:

Rudy: 57 students for $43,330

Hillary: 266 students for $472,798

I wonder if they all registered to vote?

Why don't you use a wiki for this? Using a comment thread like this is totally the wrong tool for this kind of project.

Both would bomb Iran and lie about stealing oil there and Iraq.

It's disgusting.

Why not do a hypothetical on Ron Paul and Mike Gravel?

Helpful web sites that help you, "to track government and legislative information, campaign contributions and the role of money in politics."

http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/resources

hey Jim/Brian/anyone else:

The CBC has a new show called "Search Engine" and they have their own version of a crowdsourcing project.

It's called MOB DOCS and actually ends up becoming an audio documentary. AND they pay :)

http://www.cbc.ca/searchengine/blog/2007/09/mob_docs_assignment_1_what_doe.html