Earlier this month, the Pew Internet & American Life Project released its report "A Portrait of Early Internet Adopters: Why People First Went Online -- And Why They Stayed." No great surprises in this study but still worthy of a mention here.
The researchers found that social networking on the 'Net has always been a draw for online users. Back in the days before the Web, BBSs, Usenet, chat rooms and threaded discussions were the precursors of Facebook, Friendster, Myspace and the numerous other social networking sites of today. Pew's survey of several hundred longtime Internet users said social networking was the most appealing initial online draw for them. The report quotes one respondent as saying their first-time online experience was with a time-shared mainframe computer in 1972, and by 1976 they were social networking on it. The report's writer quotes another earlier Pew report: "...the beating heart of the Internet has always been its ability to leverage our social connections."
Continue readingPresidential Candidates Raise More than $100 million in January
From the Center for Responsive Politics data hounds:
Look up individual donors to the presidential candidates.The candidates competing to be your next president raised $3.3 million per day last month, according to reports that those still in the running and those who dropped out filed last night with the Federal Election Commission. January brought the field's total haul since fundraising began to $685 million, $586 million of it now spent. With $36 million in January -- the most any candidate has ever raised in a month while still in competitive primaries -- Sen. Barack Obama was the top fundraiser, by far. Sen. Hillary Clinton came in with about $14 million, plus $5 million from her own pocket. (Had she not lent herself that money, she would have had less to spend going into Super Tuesday than John Edwards.) Republican John McCain collected $12.6 million and reported a total of $5.5 million in loans and other debts. Summary figures for the candidates have been updated on OpenSecrets.org. The Donor Lookup, Fundraising Over Time and State/Metro data are also new. Updates to the site, including categorization of January contributors by industry and employer, will continue into next week as we analyze the data
Fundraising by state and metro area.
Fundraising over time.
Continue readingCongress’ Chief Admin Officer Orders Change to GOP Earmark Web Site
Breaking News from Roll Call (sub required):
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) is protesting a decision by Chief Administrative Officer Dan Beard to shut down a Web site designed to bring attention to the effort to enact earmark reform.
Boehner launched the Web site, earmarkreform.house.gov, on Feb. 12. The site features news links to articles about earmark reform, along with press releases from Republican leaders calling for reform and a link to Boehner's leadership Web site.
The CAO's office had given Boehner permission to use the domain name in August 2007. But Beard sent Boehner an e-mail message on Feb. 21 informing the Minority Leader that the Web site needed to be shut down and moved to a different location with a different domain name.
Boehner sent Beard a letter protesting that decision on Thursday afternoon, asking for "a detailed explanation of the events that led your office to make this dramatic reversal."
"Changing its address now will inevitably hamper the effectiveness of the new website, much to the convenience of the majority that runs the House," Boehner writes.
In the letter, Boehner notes that the decision comes after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) declined to support a Boehner-initiated call for a moratorium on all earmarks. It also comes after reports that out of the $263 million spent by House freshmen on earmarks, $237 million of that was spent by Democratic freshmen, Boehner writes.
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Another Ally
The Association of Government Accountants (AGA) has been around for almost 60 years advocating for the professional development of accountants working in federal, state and local governments. The association has kicked off their "Advancing Government Accountability" campaign, a push to educate the government and the public on the benefits of government transparency. The campaign is pushing government at all levels to provide the public with easy-to-use and understand guides on spending practices.
Yesterday, the AGA released the results of what they say will be an annual survey of public attitudes on government transparency and accountability. The survey results are no surprise. The public has "deep dissatisfaction" with both the availability of information and the way it's presented. Almost 60 percent of Americans are dissatisfied by the information the federal government provides on its spending. The poll found that 78 percent of Americans believe in transparency and accountability in spending is a good thing. (
Continue readingMaybe Paying Attention Makes A Difference
OMB Watch reports that EconomicIndicators.gov is back in business. Good news!
Continue readingHow Will The Next President Use Technology?
Mark Glaser, host of PBS' MediaShift blog, looks forward to the next president of the United States and wonders how he or she might use technology and new media to be more responsive to us. So he has kicked off a "group exercise" where he asks all of us to send in ideas for ways the next president can use technology to be more open and responsive. He has set up a Feedback Form for readers to leave comments and ideas. Throw your ideas in there!
Continue readingHelp with Congresspedia’s new SuperDelegate Project
Congresspedia has just teamed up with LiteraryOutpost.com, OpenLeft and DemConWatch to shed light on to the presidential nominating process with the new SuperDelegate Transparency Project. This project gives citizens the power -- via the Congresspedia wiki -- to collectively compile primary and caucus results -- congressional district by congressional district. The aim of this project is to compare where the elected delegates stand versus the pledges that the SuperDelegates have made. This is the only project currently tracking this kind of information at the district level.
But this project is really your project and it won't be successful without your help. Come collaborate and help compile the district-by-district results of the popular vote and pledged delegates. Add what you know about the SuperDelegates' position too.
This is a great opportunity for you to help bring transparency and accountability to the Democratic National Convention by providing citizens with information on how the SuperDelegates could affect the outcome of the nomination. Sign up here to get started.
Let's shine some light on the process!
Environmental Activists Using the Web
The Politico reports on a campaign by Friends of the Earth (FOE) in opposition to the America's Climate Security Act S.2191, commonly referred to on the Hill as the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act. (There's a split within the environmental movement whether this bill is the best way to address climate change legislatively but FOE thinks it does not go far enough and would be a windfall to the fossil fuel and nuclear industries.)
Politico says that FOE adopted the by-the-book strategy of taking out ads in Capitol Hill newspapers to try to influence the public. But then they also bought ads on liberal blogs and environmental Web sites hoping that they would generate buzz for their side on this divisive issue. FOE made a two-week buy on Daily Kos, MyDD.com, openleft.com and Tapped, among others. The hope was that the campaign would get the issue to bubble up in the debates on the blogs, knowing that these blog sites' readers include many engaged political activists. It worked...At least at generating buzz. The issue's prominence rose on Daily Kos after the ads went up, and the issue became a front page item there. No doubt they recruited hundreds, if not thousands to their cause.
Continue readingThe SuperDelegate Plot Thickens
We've been wondering ourselves about possible money connections between the SuperDelegates and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. And from the fast flying computers at the Center for Responsive Politics we learn some pretty interesting new facts about the money connections between Clinton and Obama and those SuperDelegates. Here are a few of their findings:
Elected officials who are SuperDelegates have received at least $890,000 from Obama and Clinton in campaign contributions over the last three years. Obama has given more than $694,000 to SuperDelegates from his political action committee, Hope Fund, or campaign committee since 2005. Of the 81 elected officials who had announced as of Feb. 12 that their SuperDelegate votes would go to Obama, 34 of them(40 percent) got money from from him in the 2006 or 2008 election cycles.
Clinton's PAC, HILLPAC, and campaign committee appear to have distributed $195,500 to SuperDelegates. Only 12 percent of her elected SuperDelegates -- 13 total -- have said they will back her.
Continue readingOur Mini-Grantees Rock!
Today, Sunlight is announcing new Mini-Grants as part of its commitment to support original ideas, tools, Web sites, and bloggers that further our mission of using the Internet to foster a more open government.
These new projects (scroll down for our Mini-Grantees) demonstrate the creativity of citizens in using the Internet to give the public the power to learn more about their elected representatives and to engage as communities in monitoring, conversing and connecting over the work of Congress. Each of the work of these new Sunlight grantees creates greater transparency for our elected officials. Their work will strengthen citizen participation in the democratic process.
Check out the work of Geocoder.us that provides free address look-up information based on the U.S. Census, so that users can enter any address or intersection and learn the longitude and latitude coordinates for that location, or the work of Knowledge As Power which will develop a legislator email management and constituent relations communications system to increase transparency between legislators and their constituents. Speechology.org will host a Web site that will archive video of key political speeches-including debates, State of the Union addresses, convention speeches congressional testimony and campaign advertisements-and facilitate online public critical analysis. And three additional grants -- Pacific Northwest Topic Hotlist, Richmond Sunlight and the Utah News Aggregator -- have developed innovative ways to create more transparency for their legislators closer to home.
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