Several of us from Sunlight spent the past weekend in the London environs sharing organizational stories, strategies, challenges, and blue sky thoughts with the good people who founded and operate mySociety.org.
As Micah Sifry said it later: It's not just that we keep hearing about mySociety whenever we meet people and tell them about Sunlight. It's that we definitely knew about mySociety when we were starting Sunlight and definitely knew that we wanted to take a similar approach: Broadly speaking, to use the web to open up citizen understanding of Congress and to open up feedback loops to produce a more responsive institution.
From TheyWorkForYou,WriteToThem,to HearFromYourMP, to the e-petition site produced for 10 Downing Street, mySociety has made extraordinary use of the web to connect citizens and their elected representatives in groundbreaking ways. While their effort differs in various ways from Sunlight because of the different ways our systems operate, their thinking has already inspired our work. And naturally, we are already conspiring to bring some of what they have done directly to the US.
Continue readingNew Fundraising Technique
I wonder just how transparent this will be.
Continue readingDisclosure of Bundlers Coming from Obama
ABC News' The Blotter reports:Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said Monday evening he would release new details on the levels of campaign contributions raised by "bundlers" for his presidential campaign, "something that no other candidate has done," according to campaign spokesman Bill Burton.
But it doesn't appear that the intended will be as complete as what Democratic candidate John Kerry or President Bush revealed in 2004 about those who raised the biggest bucks for their campaigns.
Update: I should have mentioned that this annoucement comes one day after Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun Times called Obama to task for his lack of disclosure.
Continue readingGrantees Musing
Some of grantees are stepping out...two of them have interesting pieces published within the past several days. The (Salida, Colo.) Mountain Mail ran a column today by Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, on the total disarray the budget process is in on Capitol Hill. In June, the paper published a very informative column Ryan wrote on mining reform, which the House passed last week.
Also last week, The Chronicle of Philanthropy published Gary Bass' piece "Advocacy is not a Dirty Word". In the piece, Gary, founder and e.d. of OMB Watch, makes the case that non-profit organizations, as well as the foundations that fund them, should engage public policy as advocates. It?s a message he more fully outlines in his new book "Seen but Not Heard: Strengthening Nonprofit Advocacy".
Continue readingA Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words
One of Sunlight's resident creative geniuses (yes, there are many of them) have taken all the Defense Appropriations Earmarks and made them available for viewing within Google Earth. (You can only view this using Google Earth which you can download from this page.) The regular Google Maps version is available here.
And as they say: a picture really is worth a 1,000 words. One of our policy wonks loved the flight simulator that allows you to fly over earmark locations. It allows you to fly your choice of two aircraft anywhere around the globe, with custom layers visible from the aircraft. The simulator is hidden within the latest version of the program, and takes some getting used to controlling, but is certainly an entertaining way to experience the Earth's actual geography-and to educate yourself politically at the same time.
Continue readingFoil the Attempt to Foul FOIA
Rebecca Carr's Secrecy File, which reports on developments about the growing level of secrecy in the federal government and how it impacts the public's right to know, tells us of an attempt to exempt certain information from FOIA in the pending Farm Bill. OpentheGovernment.org is on the case, lobbying furiously against it. Lend them a hand.
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Very Wobbly
When you get an article sent to you twice before 9 AM, and four times by noon, it deserves noting. Paul Krugman writes today about the nagging concern he has about whether the Democrats in Congress can stand up to the wealthy elite who finance their campaigns, spend billions on lobbyists, and offer lucrative future career opportunities. While he is ever the optimist, I think we know the answer. (In fact, he provides an example that gives us the answer in at least one instance.)
Krugman cites a poll saying that the public wants across-the-board change. Citizens who think America is on the wrong track were asked to suggest a phrase that best describes their concern. The most commonly chosen were "Big businesses get whatever they want in Washington" and "Leaders have forgotten the middle class."
Continue readingA Lesson in How to Use EarmarkWatch.org
The NYT ran a really good story on earmarks yesterday, using data from Taxpayers from Common Sense, the same data that's on EarmarkWatch.org.
Bloggers commenting on the NYT story are showing how they are using EarmarkWatch.org to investigate earmarks further.
For instance, blogger Susan Ohanian writes how she tracked Speaker Pelosi's earmarks, since she wasn't satisfied with the level of detail the Times presented in its article.
Earmarking: The Good, the Bad, the…..
Yesterday, President Bush followed through on his threat to veto the Water Resources Development Act (H.R. 1495), a bill that would authorize $23 billion be spent on dam, levee and waterway projects throughout the country. Because the projects are so numerous and widespread, almost every member of Congress has a special project included, this veto might not stand.
A few weeks ago, The Politico listed all the various players have lined up pro and con on the bill and a veto. Our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense say that the bill is ladened with earmarks making it fiscally irresponsible and applauded the president's veto. Maybe so. But this bill gives me a chance to make a point about earmarking. Just because a project is 'earmarked' doesn't mean it's bad, or wasteful, or a payoff to a political contributor. We've seen lots of stories about such questionable earmarks in recent days, but it's really, really important to remember that some earmarked funds really do go to critically important projects. Sunlight has been working with TCS on a new databases that will let you go through these earmarks easily and decide for yourself whether they are good, bad, or ugly.
Continue readingTheMiddleClass.org
Last week, I blogged about Why Tuesday?, the cool new non-profit working to increase voter participation. Why Tuesday? has its roots in the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy (DMI) , which is the home of another cool site, TheMiddleClass.org. They advertise the site as Your Toolkit for Holding Congress Accountable . I sure like the sound of that!
The goal is to assist citizens in easily finding out how members of Congress vote on specific bills that impact average Americans the most. The site explains, in plain English, how the legislation impacts America's current and aspiring middle class, gives the current status of each bill, and how each member stands on the legislation. Check out their new legislation tracking system...this sample deals with SCHIP. They've also got a page of widgets.
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