Opinionator

Monetary Relationship Metric by Ralph Lagana, Jr.

October 6, 2013

I came across “Courts Must Weigh Big Money Influence” in The Hartford Courant this week. The op-ed piece reports that the Supreme Court will hear arguments for McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, a petition to make it easier for individuals to make large monetary donations to political candidates. This is not anything new to those who even loosely follow the news, as the legal formation of super PACs brought to the public forefront the undue influence wealthy donations can have on candidates. McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission is merely another step in working to make it even easier for big money to buy influence over politicians. 

Mary Sanchez, who wrote the op-ed piece, correctly notes that if this case does take the wrong turn it will lead to an even larger separation between those with money and those without it. Democracy will suffer because the wealthy can further tighten their hold on a politician’s ear. 

I realize I’ve not written anything new or particularly insightful to this point. And, as I read Ms. Sanchez’s article this morning, I felt largely the same about her conclusions. Yes, letting more money flow from individual investors, large amounts of money that most Americans cannot rightly consider parting with, to politicians would erode our democracy. Where I things took a turn for me was at the end of the article. 

Ms. Sanchez wrote, “There is a reason why the dictum ‘Follow the money’ has been so useful to journalists, scholars, detectives and others sniffing out malfeasance and abuse of power.” It’s dubious anyone would disagree with this dictum. We know money is an incredible influencer. Those who study history know that almost any notable event in history where significant change occurred was somehow tied to economics and money, no matter how seemingly altruistic. 

So, given we understand the influence of money and the need to be resolute in our guard against its unchecked powers, why can’t we pull back the curtain a little more on who has given it and who has gotten it? Before you say, “We already know who makes donations and how much political candidates accept” consider what follows.

Anytime you read a politicians name in print, invariably you are given his or her party affiliation. This is done because it immediately frames for readers and viewers what the politician’s stance on many issues is likely to be. Hearing a congressman is a republican or a democrat conveys quite a bit in and of itself in terms of the political influences the person is under based on party goals, beliefs, and past practices. But, that’s only one main influence.

The other key influence comes, of course, from donations. Therefore, wouldn’t it be wise, and as far as I can tell perfectly legal, to also label every politician with some as yet unmade monetary relationship metric that demonstrates what type of monetary influence individuals have over a politician via their donations? 

Here’s an example. Congressman X is a republican. Typically, we see his name in print as follows: Congressman X (R –state Y). Under a new labeling practice, one that will help us broaden our assessment of a politician, beyond his or her party influences, we’d see something like this: Congressman X (R-state Y, MRM) The MRM would be politician X’s Monetary Relationship Metric, an active link that could be followed to a site that quickly displays a interactive analysis of the candidate’s donation trail and relationships. I know donations are tracked and can be discovered, but not easily and not –as I believe- properly, i.e. tied to a politician the same way their party affiliation is tied to them.

Regrettably, not being particularly techno-able, I’m not one to figure out exactly how to pull this off or what this would look like. If pressed to generate something, I see myself beginning with something like the images to the right. One is a word cloud, essentially a cloud of names which visually demonstrates the popularity of a name or search by its size. This would make it easy for anyone to instantly understand who the biggest contributors to a candidate are and therefore which contributors are likely to hold the biggest influence. That’s a simple approach, and still not terribly satisfying.

The second and far more complex, but also far more useful, method would look like the In the picture you can see the word “cool” surrounded by a hub of related words. The hub is color coded to show parts of speech and meaning. The more relevant or used versions of the word are also closer in proximity to the main word. Clicking on a related word along the hub automatically opens up, like unfolding spider legs, word relations and more information about how words in English relate and influence one another.

image on the left from VisualThesaurus. 

This would be the ideal method for expressing donations and influences on politicians. One could click on a specific donor along the hub of names surrounding a candidate and learn who they are, what they do for work, how much and often they donate, and what their particular issues might be. These investors would in turn receive a Monetary Relationship Metric (MRM) of their own, one that shows how influential they might be to a particular candidate. 

It’s not an exact science of course, but anyone who knows anything about money and its influence hardly needs to prove the science to know it’s true.

I would love to see this happen. 

Just remember, you read it here first.