Speaking of Change Congress, I was reading Japhet Els' posting about earmarks and wanted to weigh in here. (I just joined the Change Congress Google Group and will post this there, too.)
First of all, it is always easier to identify the problem than to solve it, no matter which policy arena you are playing in. But in this case, it's even hard to identify the problem. Is it that lawmakers get to decide where to spend government money and the process is too subjective? (If not them, would a government bureaucrat know the needs of a district better?) Is it that the private financing of public elections corrupts public officials absolutely (or partially), and so we can't trust the spending of government money to them because they simply can't make unbiased decisions? (I kind of think the latter is a big part of the problem if not the whole of it.) Is it because some lawmakers have private investments in companies that might execute the contracts to perform the work designated by earmarks or that they make decisions to benefit their own personal holdings. (See Dennis Hastert.). It's probably all of the above and more. (See Bill Allison's frequent blog postings on earmarks.)
Second, proposals for reform have to be realistic. (Yes, they can be idealistic and realistic at the same time.) It is simply not realistic to propose to ban earmarks, I mean, someone has to decide which bridges and roads need to be fixed, which universities are doing great research and need to be supported, which community health clinics deserve government money, and yes too, how many new bombers we need. And while I understand that calling for an earmark ban is useful as an organizing vehicle, as policy it doesn't make a lot of sense. Who would decide how to spend the money? And even if you suspend my disbelief, a history of reform efforts show us that such a "ban" would most likely drive the spending underground and make it even hard to track how Congress spends taxpayer money. The money will get spent.
Continue readingRemix Change Congress
Everyone loves Professor Larry Lessig's lectures. He's known for his impressive keynote presentations. (I know that sounds like an oxymoron but trust me in this case it's not). He always leaves the rest of us wondering how we can emulate his delivery skills. And mostly, we can't.
His recent talks about his latest project -- Change Congress -- don't disappoint. And now he's making it all available for remixing. Dig in here.
(Full disclosure: Larry serves on Sunlight's advisory board.)
Continue readingWall Street Comes to Washington
Politico seems to be suggesting that Wall Street has just discovered Washington. They've been here a long time.
“Wall Street Comes to Washington” is the title of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association event convening Thursday. Attendees will be entertained by media celeb Tucker Carlson and will hear from House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). They’ll have dinner with Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.), and they’ll participate in panel discussions about the ongoing credit crunch and the regulatory future for their industry.
This industry doesn't have trouble attracting lawmakers to their lobbying-fest. They represent Rep. John Boehner's fifth largest source of campaign funds; and Sen. Richard Burr's seventh largest. As for snaring Rep Joseph Crowley's? No problem. They are his largest contributor.
Continue readingSenate Hearing on Secret Law
Tomorrow morning, the Senate Constitution Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on Secret Law and the Threat to Democratic and Accountable Government. In Chairman Feingold's words:
Senator Feingold is talking about memos put out by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), a part of the Department of Justice. The executive branch needs guidance on how the law affects its actions, and the OLC exists to provide legal interpretations for rest of the executive branch. These opinions strongly determine the nature of executive branch activities, and therefore have an undeniable bearing on the public interest. (more)
So Much for That Reform
Every time I see one of these stories about the failure of "reform" efforts to deliver the goods I don't know whether to tear my hair out or say "I told you so." Politico reports that the new reports filed by lobbyists don't do very much to make it easier to track what's really going on, particularly when it comes to finding out the financial backers of the shadowy coalitions that popup in various high-profile policy debates - usually using lots of expensive TV ads to stir up the grass roots.
According to Jeanne Cummings:
....this first round of reports, which does include some of the more modest new disclosure requirements, represents an inauspicious beginning to what was supposed to be a new age of enlightenment about K Street and Congress.
Duh.
Continue readingFix the FEC
It's wonder no one ever thought of launching a Fix The FEC campaign before. Thanks to CREW it's been done and you can pitch in to help.
There are so many things wrong with this agency that it would be hard for me to even know where to begin, but CREW is focusing on the lack of commissioners which puts the agency's oversight of the current campaigns at a complete standstill, as in nonexistent. And guess who they are blaming? Yup, none other that Sen. "No-Electronic-Filing-for-Senators" Mitch McConnell. The full background is here.
Use their tool to write to Sen. McConnell and tell him what you think about his holding up a vote on the FEC nominees that have a majority supporting them for their appointment. McConnell has a bad habit of stopping the Senate in any attempt to assure better accountability for its work.
Continue readingFooling Some of the People All of the Time
Here's another arena in which a little bit of transparency (as a means to oversight) would go a really long way. In what looks like a really terrific book -- Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: A Long Short Story -- investor David Einhorn tells the story of corporate malfeasance and government looking the other way. (Wonder why? Read the book but I suspect this might have something to do with it.
Einhorn says:
The story you are about to read exposes the grim realities of unchecked corporate misconduct by a bad company and the failures of proper regulatory oversight. . . . The story I am telling is one that has been surprising and unexpected - even to me. I think it is important and needs to be told. This book reveals some serious problems in the regulatory landscape that I am in a unique place to discuss. I care that the SEC and other regulators seem to have stopped enforcing laws against corporate malfeasance. I care that company officials can lie with impunity on public conference calls. And I have been appalled that the government officials overseeing the lending programs that Allied has defrauded are so indifferent and unwilling to act even when presented with clear evidence of abuse. The overall lack of law enforcement is startling.
Continue reading
Disclosure Responsibliity on Government in IG Reform
I'd like to elaborate on an important point about the IG reform measure that just passed the Senate.
The measure includes a requirement that the Inspectors General post their reports on their Web sites. This requirement places the responsibility of disclosure on the agencies themselves, rather than on citizens looking form information. The wording of the mandate takes the language of the Freedom of Information Act, which puts the onus on citizens to request information, and uses it to set a standard of full disclosure of IG reports.
That the government should take responsibility for openness, or make disclosure the rule rather than the exception, is one of Ellen's spotlight ideas; a completely open government would render FOIA unnecessary.
We're happy to see such a specific requirement pass the Senate in the spirit of full digital access.
The Inspector General of each agency shall...that is subject to release under...the Freedom of Information Act...post that report or audit (or portion of that report or audit) on the website of the Office of the Inspector General;
Continue reading
Mass of Attention
Boing Boing is quoting a talk by Clay Shirky on what they're calling the "cognitive surplus", or the amount of human thought not taken up by necessary pursuits. (I think I'd call it "discretionary cognition", for a financial comparison). They calculate the human-thought-hours taken up by wikipedia, and find:
So how big is that surplus? So if you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project--every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in--that represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought. I worked this out with Martin Wattenberg at IBM; it's a back-of-the-envelope calculation, but it's the right order of magnitude, about 100 million hours of thought.
And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that's 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads. This is a pretty big surplus.
As we consider and build the tools that put political information online, we should remember that we're tapping into something unimaginably vast; we get to help shape the answer of the question "what would all of those people be doing if they weren't watching television?".
Even if only a small amount of that leisure time gets connected to politics and government online, and it is well connected to the substance of oversight and legislation, of politics and elections, then democracy is going to go through a fundamental change. TV can't compete, and the sheer amount of human attention moving online and getting involved in participatory media has enough weight to shift both politics and government. Even if one in 20,000 cares about a specific GAO report, that's enough to make a drastic change, assuming people's interests and abilities are led to those places where their attention matters. To those places where their attention is important, where they can have some effect, where they can add to their knowledge, or to where their knowledge can be helpful.
Continue readingIG Reform Passes Senate
Since coming across a CRS report on efforts to strengthen the Offices of Inspectors General (OIGs, and IGs), I've been interested in executive oversight structures and the laws that govern them. A section of PublicMarkup.org's Transparency in Government Act even covers IG report publication. It looks like the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) and Congress are also intently focused on the issue, as they've just passed a second version of a measure to strengthen Inspectors General.
POGO's blog explains that the Senate just passed S. 2324 (GovTrack, OpenCongress), after, according to POGO,
For more background on IG reform, see especially POGO's February report, Inspectors General: Many Lack Essential Tools for Independence.
an amendment offered by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) finally broke through the logjam that had blocked the bill's passage since last November.
Senator Lieberman is among those praising the measure, which still needs to be reconciled with the House version before going to the President.
S. 2324 would amend Title 5 of the US Code, significantly strengthening the independence and effectiveness of oversight by IGs.
Of particular interest to Sunlight is the provision that Inspectors General post copies of IG reports to their Web sites, (as long as they're subject to FOIA, and therefore not classified or otherwise unfit for publication). The text: Continue reading
59063
