Gallup just released a new poll that shows that only 18% of the American public approve of Congress with 76% disapproving -- an all-time low. This poll was taken two full weeks after Congress passed the new ethics law which some have described as great victory. (We were very pleased with the online disclosure provisions but generally felt the bill didn't go broad or deep enough.) The numbers represent a significant drop in Congressional support over the past few months, down from a 35% approval rating in March.
I certainly would have thought that the new earmark disclosure requirements alone, which would allow the public to view the sponsors of congressional earmarks on the Internet, would have been something that the public would have noticed, and really liked. There were lots of other good things in the bill too, even though it didn't go nearly far enough to cleanse the Congress of even the perception of corruption. And clearly it didn't.
Continue readingCool New Features at OpenCongress.org
The crazy-smart folks at the Participatory Politics Foundation who do all the hard work at OpenCongress.org are ready to show off two new 'widgets.' One is for tracking bills and the second lets you track issues in Congress. The bill tracking widget allows you to display the status of any bill in the Congressional pipeline, as well as link to news and blog coverage of that bill.
The issue widget lets you select from one of more than 4,000 different issue areas, and display either the most recent bills or the most-viewed bills in that issue area for your community. We figure this ought to be pretty useful to folks who follow issues, rather than specific pieces of legislation.
Reporting Innovations
One day I am going to have to actually meet Howard Weaver. He's been on the edge of my life for years now -- he was money and politics database expert Larry Makinson's editor at the Anchorage Daily News in the early- 80's. Weaver is clearly an insightful guy for an MSM editor. Makinson was working with graphs and charts back then to display the relative influence of political donors in Alaska. (Maybe if Makinson and Weaver hadn't left that paper someone would have followed up on their initial leads. Veco was the top political donor there in 1984.) Weaver encouraged Makinson to create the first Open Secrets (for Alaska) and they teamed up together for the second edition. (BTW The Anchorage Daily News won two Pulitzer Prizes for Public Service while Howard was editor there. Makinson went on to give his talents to the Center for Responsive Politics for many years.)
Continue readingA Dose of Transparentium Required?
Received via email this morning....
Recent weather and gasoline issues are proof of the existence of a new chemical element. A major research institution has recently announced the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science.
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The new element has been named Governmentium. Governmentium (Gv) has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.
These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.
Visualizing Correspondence
Bill wonders what words turn up most frequently in the subject lines of letters members write most frequently about to the Office of the Secretary of Defense? Al Qaeda? Military contracts? National Guard? Body Armor? Not wanting to let our Labs' team have all the fun, he jumps onto the visualization bandwagon.
Continue readingBenefits in Admitting Failures
There was a really interesting article in the New York Times yesterday that had a headline attention grabbing headline of Foundations Find Benefits in Facing Up to Failures. I had two reactions: "how refreshing" and "well, sure."
Sunlight deliberately set out to be experimental - to throw ideas and projects on the wall and see if they stuck and if they didn't, to stop and figure out why. This was key to our grant making strategy as well. When you hope to be on the cutting edge you expect some things not to work. So we figured we'd win some, lose some. That seemed right to us. Fascinating how risk averse some of the truly big foundations have been and unwilling to admit, until recently, that some things just don't work.
Continue readingDebates 2.0
Sunlight's senior strategic consultant, Micah Sifry, has a really nice op ed in the NY Daily News today, that pretty much summarizes my thoughts about CNN's YouTube debate two nights ago. (He has taught me well.) A big step forward BUT....
Imagine if the next time there's a presidential candidates debate on TV, you could go online to vote beforehand on which questions should be asked, and the top choices from the public were included in the mix. Imagine that during the debate you also could grade the candidates' answers, and see how your peers and the rest of the public were grading them, in real time.
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Legislation Web 2.0 Style
Senator Dick Durbin is crafting a bill online this week on universal broadband policy. I don't know if this effort is a first of its kind but I think it might well be.
Today I'm writing to invite you to participate in an experiment -- an interactive approach to drafting legislation on one of the most significant public policy questions today: What should be America's national broadband strategy? . . . There are two reasons I'm asking for your help and participation. The first is because I think we need more public participation and transparency in the way Congress crafts significant legislation. This is an approach to legislation that has never been tried before. If it's successful -- as I believe it will be -- it may become the way lawmakers approach drafting bills on other issues like education, health care, and foreign policy.
Now this is lawmaking in the sunlight!
Continue readingNews You Can Trust
One of Sunlight’s early goals was try to figure out how to improve the quality of reporting about what goes on in Congress, and so we are very pleased to announce a new grant to NewsTrust.net -- an organization that has developed an online news rating service to help people identify quality journalism -- or "news you can trust." Their members rate the news online, based on journalistic quality, not just popularity.
Their (still beta) Web site and news feed feature the best and the worst news of the day, picked from hundreds of alternative and mainstream news sources. Sunlight’s grant will provide an opportunity for a specific look at the U.S. Congress. Specifically, through the coming year, NewsTrust.net will search for quality journalism about our elected representatives, with a focus on accountability, corruption and transparency in Congress.
We hope you’ll jump right in. Sign up to contribute stories, get involved in evaluating them.
Read a good story on the U.S. Congress lately? Please submit it here, so others may learn from your research.
New Features on Congresspedia
Congresspedia has expanded its platform to include new features on policy issues and legislation, adding to its great wealth of information on members of Congress. These new resources complement its existing profiles on legislators. We think that the new features will give citizens access to insider information on issues and legislation, and offer opportunities to collaborate with policy experts. Here's a link to the portal home page.
Congresspedia now has:
* 14 new federal policy and legislative portals for experts and interested citizens to update and improve articles on various policy issues and on specific legislation. Here's a really terrific example on Telcom policy.
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