Less than three percent Palin’s itemized PAC contributions from Alaskans
Less than three percent of the itemized money raised by resigning Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's leadership PAC came from Alaskans, newly filed campaign finance reports show. SarahPAC reported raising more than $730,000 in the last six months--less than half of the $1.6 million raised by Mitt Romney's PAC.
Both names have been mentioned as potential 2012 Republican presidential candidates, and the non-campaign, federal-level political action committee accounts are sometimes used to lay the infrastructure for a later bid, financing travel and winning over fellow politicians with donations to their campaigns.
The reports do not provide information ...
Continue readingSunlight Provides Comments to FEC to improve its Web site
Yesterday, the Sunlight Foundation filed comments in response to the FEC’s request for ideas on how to improve its Web... View Article
Continue readingWe won the Google/O’Reilly Open Source Awards
Last night at the Google Open Source awards, I won the "Best Community Builder" award on behalf on Sunlight Labs. While my name is at the top, I think that's a mistake-- I'm the "best community builder" because we have the best community.
This is only the beginning. In six months we've been able to do some amazing things-- 47 applications have been designed and inspired by our community, and developers are starting to wake up and realize that they're the key to making our government accountable, accessible and responsible. In a few months when Apps for America 2 is complete, with your hard work we'll have more applications that we can then use as justification to the government to release more data and make it easier for developers to work on the outside and on the inside.
Congratulations to you all!
Continue readingWhite House Refuses to Disclose Visits From Health Care Lobbyists, Execs
During the 2008 presidential primary campaign between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, then-Sen. Obama promised to hold open, televised negotiations... View Article
Continue readingRecovery.gov contract coming this week, board says
In a post today at Sunlight's Real Time Investigations, I report that the General Services Administration has promised to provide online a censored version of its $9.5 million contract with Smartronix, Inc. for the redesign of Recovery.gov.
The contract had been withheld, the Recovery and Transparency Board had said, pending a "protest period" where losing bidders on the contract could cry foul.
Two companies put in unsuccessful proposals and neither filed complaints, and the board chairman said last week that it would release the contract to pre-empt public records requests from watchdog groups--a recourse that could seem ironic for a board founded on transparency. (Incidentally, Sunlight had filed already filed a FOIA request for it the prior week.)
Sunlight Labs and its citizen-coder community worked on drafting our own proposal, you'll recall, on the project that eventually turned into the shrouded contract (worth more than $18 million if it's extended).
We turned our efforts elsewhere after it became clear that, due to a lack of time, resources and fluency in bureaucracy, submitting a bid would be a shooting for something we'd never win.
Perhaps the only conceivable benefit to submitting a futile proposal--and Sunlight would have to be a subcontractor in all this, not being on the approved-contractor list--would be the retention of petitioning rights. Any written petition from a losing bidder would have immediately stalled the contract--despite its urgent deadlines--until it could be considered, barring a special exception. What does a petition entail?
Continue readingLies Make Baby Jesus Cry (See Update Regarding Returned Check)
Update: I guess this is the clarifying press release: Baucus staffers say that the check was returned after it was... View Article
Continue readingTransportation Dept withheld documents detailing cell phone hazards
Texting or even talking on a cell phone while driving increases the risk of a deadly accident, according to analysis... View Article
Continue readingWashington Watch Releases Earmark Request Entry Form
For the first time in 2009, members of Congress had to release their earmark requests to the public. As we've documented before, this information is scattered over 535 Web sites in all kinds of different formats. Jim Harper and Washington Watch have now released a tool that allows volunteers to capture that earmark information for posterity, centralize it in a single location, and allow for all kinds of additional analysis and investigation. And, if you participate, you can win a Kindle!
Find out more here.
The more members we get entered, the more meaningful research we can do about ...
Continue readingThey Don’t Call It TARP For Nothing
You can’t see under it. While we might be a bit concerned about Recovery.gov’s reporting practice for a bunch of... View Article
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