A holiday surprise from our friends at Cards Against Humanity

By The Sunlight Foundation

We are thrilled to be the recipients, once again, of Cards Against Humanity’s largesse. But beyond feeling grateful for their contribution of $250,000 to generally support Sunlight’s operations (a rare thing in this day of grants that exclusively fund specific projects), we are excited Max Temkin and company used this opportunity to raise awareness of how much money pervades America’s political system.

Beginning on the ninth day of Cards Against Humanity’s “Ten Days of Kwanzaa or Whatever,” people who bought their special set of holiday cards received a long scroll identifying who had contributed to their senators—on double-sided paper! And those clever folks at Cards Against Humanity didn’t want to leave folks out who live in places like D.C.—where residents pay taxes but are not represented in the U.S. Senate—so these recipients received a print-out detailing the campaign contributions given to incoming-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. We think he’d appreciate the paper disclosure, since he’s never been much of a fan of passing the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, a bill that would mandate electronic filing of campaign finance reports for timely transparency.

We’ve watched with great delight as CAH’s mystery gift package recipients shared their surprise at receiving an itemization of the campaign contributions their senators received. And if you want to know what motivated CAH’s donation to Sunlight, check out their typically satirical infographic.

Who knew understanding campaign finance could be so much fun? And speaking of fun, we hope you’ll check out the song and video CAH commissioned from the very-talented Jonathan Mann, known as the “Song a Day” guy on YouTube. He positively transformed some of Sunlight’s talking points into a very catchy tune. I bet you’ll find yourself singing along during the rest of the holidays.

From all of us at Sunlight, we wish you a peaceful and harmonious holiday season! And if CAH has made your heart grow three sizes this day, please consider making a tax-deductible gift to Sunlight.

The Sunlight Foundation is a non-profit, nonpartisan organization that uses the power of the Internet to catalyze greater government openness and transparency, and provides new tools and resources for media and citizens, alike.