Local Sunlight
Every week I climb into the depths of the local political blogosphere to find the Sunlight. I use this series... View Article
Continue readingBlogHer teams with Sunlight to get healthcare facts out
This week BlogHer.com, one of the top women’s online networks, is running a special series, “Beyond Mudslinging.” Blogher is inviting... View Article
Continue readingYou Gotta Speak the Language
A long time ago, my grandmother-- born and raised in Albany, Georgia-- went to Germany for my brother's wedding. She'd never been outside the country before and was excited about the trip, and of course, her grandson's wedding. While she was there though, she had a bit of a problem communicating-- see, she didn't speak German. Her solution to the problem was instinctive but not logical-- just speak English loudly and slowly. Increase volume until there's understanding. One person she encountered over there responded to her by speaking German loudly and slowly.
Her response:
Continue readingThis Week in Transparency – August 14, 2009
Here are some of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and allies over the past week:... View Article
Continue readingIs Government a Data Wholesaler or Retailer?
Imagine if Costco announced that they were going to take the Costco experience to Manhattan, and open up convenience stores across the the island. Further, imagine shopping at these new CostCo bodegas, all of 500 square feet, with your giant cart, selecting from what the CostCo bodega has to offer in this limited amount of space! At your local CostCo bodega you have to choose from either 400 rolls of toilet paper, 70 lbs of dehydrated mashed potatoes, or a 6 pack of giant boxes of cereal. That's pretty much all they could store in inventory at the CostCo bodega because they wouldn't have room in 500 square feet for anything else. And good luck carrying all that home!
Sounds absurd, doesn't it?
Continue readingOpenSecrets launches earmark mashup
Our friends at the Center for Responsive Politics today unveiled a new feature, long in the works, mashing up campaign contribution and lobbying data with fiscal year 2008 and 2009 earmark data compiled by Taxpayers for Common Sense.
Choose your representative or senators and view all earmarks sponsored. Where CRP or TCS has identified a beneficiary of the earmark, such as a municipality, university or defense contractor (indicated in bold, where identified), you can easily see contributions from that entity's political action committee and employees to the sponsoring lawmaker, as well as the amount of money the entity spent lobbying the federal government.
Continue readingApps for America 2 Technology Showdown
While the judging for Apps for America 2 rolls on, let's do a little technology breakdown of the submissions.
Continue readingDigital Democracy Contest
Today we launch the Digital Democracy Contest -- a free web-based game for high school social studies classes. Students compete in teams to investigate Congress using OpenSecrets.org and OpenCongress.org.
Continue readingThe Entries are In
As the submission deadline has passed, we've been taking a look at the entries. You should too. They're really great. In total, we edged out our first Apps for America by just a few entries, ending up with 47 entries.
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