Sunlight Foundation

Press Articles & Mentions Archives

March 2009

• Agence France Press - Obama holds first White House 'online town hall'

  WASHINGTON (AFP) — US President Barack Obama fielded online questions from the public Thursday in a live White House webcast, tackling topics such as jobs, education, health care and even legalizing marijuana.

• CNN - Questions pour in for Obama's online town hall meeting

  During the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt reassured anxious Americans through his famous fireside chats over the radio.

• SkyNews - John Wonderlich interviewed about online government participation

  John Wonderlich, the Sunlight Foundation's policy director, is interviewed about Obama's media presence and the administration's goals for transparency and participation.

• CNN - Campbell Brown Endorses Read the Bill

  CNN's Campbell Brown endorses Sunlight Foundation's Read The Bill campaign:

• Politico - GOP licks chops over Dem stumbles

  Three days after Barack Obama became president, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made a prediction: Democrats would make big mistakes that would play into the Republicans’ hands going into the 2010 midterm elections.

• The Washington Post - Some Activists Barred From Government Work

  Nonprofit and public interest groups are scrambling to adapt to President Obama's stringent new ethics guidelines, which are so sweeping that they have blocked the ability of many sympathetic activists to get hired by the new administration.

• Yuma Sun - Sunshine Week: Senate should make campaign contributions transparent

  Imagine if Google worked this way: You type in a search term, and, at Google headquarters, an army of workers in the search department printed out the contents of every responsive Web page, then hauled them in wheelbarrows to a results department, where another army of workers typed the contents of those pages back into their computers.

• National Journal - Foreign Influence Remains Hard To Track

  The American corporate, professional, and ideological interests that pour billions of dollars into K Street make headlines almost every day. Yet the media seldom cover the foreign governments and overseas special interests that hire Washington's influence industry to affect government policies in the United States.

• Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch - Clear the Muck

  Unlike their counterparts who run for the House -- not to mention candidates for president -- candidates for the U.S. Senate submit campaign-finance reports on paper, rather than electronically. They submit the paperwork to the Senate Office of Public Records, which then trucks it over to the Federal Election Commission, which then pays clerical staff to enter the information into electronic databases.

• Wired - Officials Hoard Valuable Databases Funded by Taxpayers

  Government agencies across the country are sitting on gigabytes of valuable digital data that could be mashed, mixed and re-organized in crafty ways by Web 2.0 entrepreneurs and public interest groups engaged in everything from government oversight, to providing practical information to Americans.

• National Journal Congress Daily - Holder Shifts Rules On Freedom Of Information Act Requests

  Attorney General Holder on Thursday sent a memo to the heads of all executive branch departments and agencies telling them to apply a presumption of openness when fielding Freedom of Information Act requests.

• CNN Money - Recovery.gov tries for citizen accounting

  At first glance, it seems the government's online attempt at tracking where and how stimulus money is being used isn't delivering on its promise of unparalleled transparency

• Washington Times - Treasury cleared way for AIG bonuses

  The Obama administration and one of its key allies in Congress belatedly acknowledged Wednesday that they were responsible more than a month ago for clearing the way for large bonuses to be paid inside taxpayer-supported companies like AIG, undercutting the White House's attempts to distance itself from a growing political embarrassment.

• Nashua Telegraph - Senate should make donor money transparent

  Imagine if Google worked this way: You type in a search term, and, at Google headquarters, an army of workers in the search department printed out the contents of every responsive Web page, then hauled them in wheelbarrows to a results department, where another army of workers typed the contents of those pages back into their computers.

• Winston-Salem Journal - Making contributions transparent

  Imagine if Google worked this way: You type in a search term, and, at Google headquarters, an army of workers in the search department printed out the contents of every responsive Web page, then hauled them in wheelbarrows to a results department, where another army of workers typed the contents of those pages back into their computers. Crazy? Indeed, but that's exactly how the Senate handles its campaign-finance reports.

• Business Week - Obama: Feeling Our Financial Pain?

  The man elected to lead the U.S. out of its financial crisis has experienced some financial pain himself.

• Philly Daily News - OpEd: Gov't. Watchdogs.com

  IF YOU do the math, you quickly see why a senator from Missouri can't personally answer phone calls from each of her 5.9 million constituents.

• St. Petersburg Times - Obama skirts own ban on employing former lobbyists in White House

  As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama refused contributions from lobbyists. As president, he signed an executive order forbidding lobbyists from holding White House jobs dealing with policy matters they recently handled in their lobbying careers.

• Pacific Daily News - OpEd: Senators' paper reports insult public

  Federal election law requires candidates for the House of Representatives and the presidency to electronically file lists of their donors and their expenses. Unwilling to change with the times, senators continue to follow the practice they adopted in the 1970s. They file paper reports of their campaign disclosures with the Senate Office of Public Records, which in turn has them shipped to the Federal Election Commission, which must then spend about $250,000 and untold hours having the records typed in, line by line, to the Federal Election Commission's databases.

• The Standard-Speaker - Do public business in the open

  This is Sunshine Week, the annual effort to bring the activities of government at every level squarely into the public eye where they belong.

• The Standard-Speaker - State Senate records still in the dark

  Tradition is regarded with reverence in the U.S. Senate, but it’s time for senators to put away the quill pens and parchment when it comes to telling Americans how much money they raise for their election campaigns.

• USA Today - OpEd: Internet empowerment

  How powerful is the Internet in getting crucial safety information out to the public? In one case, that information went out 707 times per minute. That's how often, on average, people seeking information about salmonella-tainted peanut butter clicked on a website and widget sponsored by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over a six-week period a total of nearly 44 million hits.

• Hurchinson News - Group: Roberts trying to block campaign bill

  TOPEKA - A government watchdog group took aim at a Kansas U.S. senator Monday over the issue of requiring senators to electronically file their campaign finance reports.

• Columbus Dispatch - Huge bills often little read before quick votes

  WASHINGTON -- Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy is a freshman member of Congress, but the Columbus Democrat says that doesn't mean she should act like a freshman in college.

• The (Petersburg, Va.) Progress-Index - More News

  Tradition is regarded with reverence in the U.S. Senate but even that has its limits. It’s time for senators to put away the quill pens and parchment when it comes to telling Americans how much money they raise for their election campaigns.

• The Patriot Ledger - SPEAK OUT: Senate should make campaign contributions transparent

  Imagine if Google worked this way: You type in a search term, and, at Google headquarters, an army of workers printed out the contents of every responsive Web page, then hauled them in wheelbarrows to a results department, where another army of workers typed the contents of those pages back into their computers. Crazy? Indeed, but that’s exactly how the Senate handles its campaign finance reports.

• Salt Lake Tribune - Senate's paper filing method under fir

  The archaic process is the same every year: Senate candidates electronically track the contributions they receive, print out the forms and hand them to the Senate secretary, who hands them to the Federal Elections Commission, which hires someone to type up the data electronically again.

• The Patriot Ledger - SUNSHINE WEEK: Senate should make campaign contributions transparent

  Imagine if Google worked this way: You type in a search term, and, at Google headquarters, an army of workers printed out the contents of every responsive Web page, then hauled them in wheelbarrows to a results department, where another army of workers typed the contents of those pages back into their computers. Crazy? Indeed, but that's exactly how the Senate handles its campaign finance reports.

• The Knoxville News-Sentinel - Keep sunshine on officials' shoulders

  Today begins Sunshine Week, the time when corporate and individual members of news organizations remind the public of the vital role they play in gathering and presenting information about the operations of local, state and federal governments and their various agencies - operations that, in one way or another, affect the lives of all of us.

• Birmingham News - OpEd: Senators Jeff Sessions, Richard Shelby should support the Campaign Disclosure Parity Act

  Here's an opportunity for Alabama's U.S. senators, Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby, to increase government transparency while saving taxpayer money, paper and time, to boot. They should sponsor the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act (SB482), which would require senators to do like members of Alabama's House delegation already do - file their campaign finance reports in electronic format.

• St. Petersburg Times - Obama an advocate of open government, so far

  WASHINGTON — On his first full day of work, President Obama faced a roomful of senior staff and Cabinet secretaries and outlined his expectations for open government:

• Birmingham News - A chance to increase government transparency Senators should be required to file electronic campaign finance reports

  Here's an opportunity for Alabama's U.S. senators, Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby, to increase government transparency while saving taxpayer money, paper and time, to boot. They should sponsor the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act (SB482), which would require senators to do like members of Alabama's House delegation already do - file their campaign finance reports in electronic format.

• Republican-American - Local groups tap earmarks

  Joan M. Pesce needed money.

• National Journal - Financier Was Well Connected In D.C., Internationally

  When Texas financier R. Allen Stanford came to Washington in February 2006 to be feted at a celebratory dinner by a group called the Inter-American Economic Council, a few of his friends were in the crowd. They included lobbyists and such members of Congress as then-Reps. Bob Ney and Michael Oxley, both Ohio Republicans.

• The Washington Post - Rediscovering the Internet

  The crusade for government transparency and open data -- two of the biggest buzzwords in Washington since President Obama put them on his agenda -- has gained momentum over the past week.

• Chicago Sun Times - Obama's work cut out for him

  WASHINGTON -- The Obama White House's new tech chief is urging citizens to go online and police government spending for waste, fraud and abuse.

• Washington Times - Democrats dine with lobbyists, donors

  President Obama banned lobbyists from raising or giving money to his presidential campaign, but his Democratic colleagues in Congress aren't following suit. House leaders are set to dine Monday night inside the home of two lobbyists with donors who are paying $5,000 or more apiece to attend.

• Wired - Open Up Government Data

  Barack Obama rode into office with a high-tech, open source campaign that digitized the book on campaigning.

• New York Times - The Cobwebbed Chamber

  When will the Senate boot up and join the rest of us in the electronic data age? The chamber has barely moved beyond the quill pen era when it comes to disclosing vital information to voters about who’s financing senators’ election campaigns and in what amounts.

• New Republic - CORRESPONDENCE: A New Era of Corruption?

  The heart of Paul Starr's characteristically thoughtful and well-researched argument is that a core aspect of American democracy has long depended on one-newspaper-town monopolies and a lack of media choice. First, because dailies were monopolies, they could charge very high fees from advertisers. These created the slack out of which newspapers could afford to subsidize those parts of the paper that were important public goods--news and investigative reporting. But these high fees from advertisers are disappearing. Second, part of the democratic role of newspapers has been the political education of the distracted masses. On their way to local job listings and sports pages, readers would inevitably stumble over the front page local corruption story; or coverage of a war. This incidental exposure created a minimally-informed citizenry capable of checking the worst excesses of corrupt government. The dispersion of attention, begun with cable and talk radio and crowned by the Internet, has led to a more inert and uninformed general public. The most politically engaged members of society have used the new diversity of offerings to flock together and become better informed than they could possibly have been in the past. But they are also more partisan. Because of these twin effects, the demise of the 20th century business model of newspapers threatens to undermine the way our democracy functions and to introduce a new era of corruption.

• Federal News Tonight - Read the Bill

  Government Affairs Consultant Lisa Rosenberg sits down with Federal News Tonight to discuss the Readthebill.org campaign.

• News Channel 8 - Reading the Bill

  Sunlight's Government Affairs Consultant Lisa Rosenberg sits down with Federal News Tonight to discuss the Readthebill.org campaign.

• The Washington Post - Web-Savvy Obama Team Hits Unexpected Bumps

  The team that ran the most technologically advanced presidential campaign in modern history is finding it difficult to adapt that model to government. WhiteHouse.gov, envisioned as the primary vehicle for President Obama to communicate with the online masses, has been overwhelmed by challenges that staffers did not foresee and technological problems they have yet to solve.

• Time Magazine - Government should make data openly available and then let outside talent reimagine how it can be used online.

  President Barack Obama has pledged to make the U.S. Government more open and transparent. As a senator, he was off to a promising start by trying to expand the amount of government data offered up to public scrutiny. The most important aspect of his proposal (which has yet to make it into law) was not what information it required the Feds to provide but how they were supposed to supply it. All data on federal funding would have to be made available through "applications programming interfaces," a Web 2.0 tool for managing large amounts of data. The APIs would make it easy for third parties—citizens, civic groups, activists or lobbyists—to take the information and incorporate it into online maps and visual displays or "mashups" that compare it with other data. It would go a long way toward harnessing the Web to promote a rigorous public dialogue.

• Federal News Radio - Clay Johnson Talks About Transparency Camp

  Federal News Radio interviewed Clay Johnson, the director of Sunlight Labs, about Transparency Camp: