Curious about Legislata? Here's a quick video to show how it can help you:
1. Keep up with what matters to you
2. Let you have your internal notes and community news in one place
3. Get through your inbox faster while getting more out of it
youtu.be/7IkhH2-Ljxg
Movies suggest that lobbyists get their power from their campaign donations. For #mapoli that's almost certainly not true. For the top recipients of donations from lobbyists, they represent a small fraction of overall receipts.
- Spilka: 7%
- Michlewitz: 5%
- Healey: 1.4%
Who were the biggest spenders in #mapoli lobbying? Many that you would expect, but some you wouldn't. You can check out the full data here: legislata.com/blog/unlocking…
It includes:
-donations by lobbyist
- donations received by candidate
- each individual lobbying activity, including what bills were lobbied on and to what elected officials,
- client spending
-the top 50 lobbyists by earnings in 2023 and the first half of 2024.
The big takeaway? Lobbying can be lucrative, with about 75 lobbyists earning more than any state elected official.
It raises the question of why we as the public don't pay our elected officials and their staff more. It's important work and they have other career options.
Looking to talk to freelance and local journalists in #mapoli about what you’d want in a Substack-like platform for the policy world. DMs open and please share this for reach!
The late night flurry of deal-making (and not) in #mapoli yesterday highlights why we built our app.
Politics is not simply about percentage points in polls. It's a job for real human beings who only have so many hours in the day. We're trying to help them be more efficient.
During August, we'll be settling on our next set of features to build to do this. Please let me know what your biggest pain points are so we can focus on those.
There's a lot of talk about the differences in models between @FiveThirtyEight, @NateSilver538,
@TheEconomist, and others. Next week I'll be holding a discussion about what all of these may be missing this year. Like or reply for an invite.
To be clear, I think these are all good-faith and extremely intelligent analysts, so this won't be bashing anyone. Instead, it'll be a breakdown of why 2024 is hard for quantitative models and how a qualitative model can help us look at what matters most.
We have the full transcript of this @SpfldCouncil meeting on our app. A real focus on how inflation affects the budget. Part of our Massachusetts bundle of transcripts and automated info feeds. You can request access here: app.legislata.com/offices/10…