I finished up my conversation cascade analysis and writeup for the r/conservative scrape project. It's nice to have a completed writeup, post it online and feel a sense of closure. While there is a lot more that I can and will do with that project. I want to work on something else.
I had heard about the lobbying disclosure database, and started brainstorming about what I could feasibly build on top of the dataset that is analytically interesting and potentially politically valuable.
Idea: Scrape and parse lobbying disclosure PDFs (e.g., from the Senate’s Lobbying Disclosure Act Database), extract issue areas, and use NLP to cluster by policy theme. Build a network map showing which firms are targeting which issues
I think I am likely to run in to roadblacks here. I can build data science scripts and some rudimentary software engineering. But empahsis on the rudimentary. I wish I had a SFW best friend or something that wanted to code bullshit with me all the time.
There is a rest API: https://lda.senate.gov/api/redoc/v1/#section/About-the-REST-API
I have my key. There is a request throttle of 120/minute.
Gotta go pick up my car from the shop. apparently having brakes is really important.
I spent the last few days reaching out to some mentors and applying to jobs. I also wrote some poems.
I have been reaching out to some mentors. One of my political data professor mentors said: "what I don't want you to do is convince yourself you are less and less employable the longer you go without political work. Everyone is out of work. You're not special in that regard." My dad said: "I won't bore you with all the times I lacked good work, but know that post 9/11 was way worse. The economy will rebound and people like you will have an easier time getting work again. You're doing everything right."
I worked all my caregiving jobs throughout the week. It's good honest work and I care about my disabled buds. But I have invested so much and risked so much for my education because I like doing political science. I want to do it full time, and be able to live well off of doing it.
Anywho... I applied to a political/policy research job focused on CA policy, and it gave me the idea to refine the scope of this project to a CA-focused analysis. I think it is always a good idea to do the opposite of scope creep . scope shrink? scope erosion? vision revision?
OK so I have some porotype worked out in my jupyter notebook analyzing 2025 lobby filings on antitrust. The output of my research shows that, with regards to antitrust, the main filers so far this year (2025) are the NFL and Underdog sports holdings INC. Gonna do a brief write up on findings.
I really want this same thing but for the tax credits that the economic security project is interested in....gonna try but not sure if any matches will be in the df from this year. don't wanna overload my daily requests...OK there were only two results for the specific tax credits the org is interested in (the EITC and CTC).
Gonna stop computering for today and leave writeup for tomorrow.