No one does federal-level campaign finance better than the Center for Responsive Politics, and for the last year or so, they've outdone themselves by making all of their databases--millions of records that a staff of human beings tirelessly cleans up--available, for free, in their entirety.
The only downside? The scale of CRP's research is so wide that we're talking dozens of frequently-updated tables with hundreds of fields. Downloading each CSV and importing into a database with fields properly named and sized is tedious and time-consuming.
The Sunlight Foundation has written a simple script that allows reporters and ...
Latest from Citizens United: Disclosure, Yes. Contribution limits, No.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today in favor of disclosure and against contribution limits for outside groups running... View Article
Continue readingAfter health care vote, members turn to earmark requests
[Note: this post has been corrected and revised]A
day after Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., and ten other House members
compromised on their pro-life objections to the bill to deliver the
necessary yes-votes to pass health care reform, [Begin
new:]On Monday, March 22, House members turned from the contentious
vote on the trillion dollar national health insurance reform to focus
on more mundane matters--like requesting $84,400 for local geriatric
health care education programs.
That was one of more than 170 earmarks requested by Rep. Bart Stupak,
D-Mich., one of 11 lawmakers who were closely targeted by the
Democratic ...
Bailout watchdog criticizes home loan program
A year after the $75 billion program to reduce mortgage payments under the Home Affordable Modification Program
(HAMP) went into effect, a recent audit report criticized
the outcome of the program as "disappointing." So far, out of the
million trial mortgage modifications, under which homeowners can have their mortgage payment reduced for three months, only 168,000 loans have been
permanently reduced falling drastically short of the 3 to 4 million
initial goal of the Department of Treasury.
According to the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program audit Treasury admitted its goals of the HAMP program have ...
Rep. Quigley Introduces the Transparency in Government Act: You Helped Make it Happen
Today Rep. Mike Quigley introduced the Transparency in Government Act, sweeping legislation that addresses issues ranging from making Members’ reports... View Article
Continue readingTransparency, the Internet and the Affordable Care Act
Last year, I looked at the instances of the word “Internet” in the Senate version of the health care reform... View Article
Continue readingReps. Quigley, Issa, and 17 Others Form ‘Congressional Transparency Caucus’
Representatives Mike Quigley and Darrell Issa announced the creation of the bipartisan “Congressional Transparency Caucus” today. This historic move provides... View Article
Continue readingCelebrating Transparency Heroes on Ada Lovelace Day
What better celebration of Ada Lovelace Day – celebrating the achievements of women in technology – could we have than... View Article
Continue readingTransparency Testimony Interrupted by Reconciliation Obstructionism
“Sunlight is the best of disinfectants…” Those were practically the last words out of the mouth of the Sunlight Foundation’s... View Article
Continue readingTransparencyCamp: Three Challenges
With TransparencyCamp kicking off this weekend, I want to issue a challenge to the entire open government and transparency community to help solve three big, easy problems. Starting this weekend, I'd like us to plan how we're going to solve these problems, and to have them solved them all by July 4th, 2010. We'll call it "Data Independence Day."
These ideas need full participation from as many people as possible and as many ideas as possible to get the best result. As such-- in conjunction with Phil Ashlock (who is awesome) over at TOPP Labs (who are awesome) we'll be working on these not only at TransparencyCamp here in Washington, DC but also at OpenGov West (which is awesome)
Here are the three big problems I want us to solve together:
Continue reading
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