Earlier this week, the Open Society Institute (OSI) announced they are launching a new fellowship program to support "idea entrepreneurs" across the globe. OSI hopes the Open Society Fellowship will generate new thinking on some of the most pressing questions of our day. The foundation list's journalists, activists, scholars, and practitioners as the pool they will draw their Fellows from.
This is a terrific idea. The fellowships will focus on four areas: National Security and the Open Society; Citizenship, Membership and Marginalization; Strategies and Tools for Advocacy and Citizen Engagement; and Understanding Authoritarianism, according to their press release. The fellows will work for one year on a variety of projects, including books, articles, documentary films, online media, and efforts to seed new campaigns and organizations. OSI is investing $2 million in the program through this year. The foundation will provide each fellow with a competitive stipend and communication assistance, and will incorporate them into the organization and its grantees.
Continue readingTwo Great Sites That Go Well Together
Following the money just got easier. MAPLight.org (a Sunlight grantee) and Congresspedia, a project of the Center for Media and Democracy and Sunlight, just joined forces to bring their data together so you can learn more about members of Congress all in one place.
Now, when you are looking up lawmakers on MAPLight.org’s Legislator pages, click on the new Congresspedia Tab (example) to get background and source information without having to leave MAPLight.org’s site.
This is another great step toward creating more merged data streams to make it easier than ever to shine Sunlight on Congress.
Contracting Transparency Please
What would you say if the Defense Department outsourced the arming of our allies in Afghanistan to a company run by a serial stalker and a licensed masseur? The New York Times reports that the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan's fledging military and police forces, AEY, Inc., has been sending 40 year old munitions acquired from former Soviet bloc countries that do not work. AEY, Inc., is headed by Efraim Diveroli, a young man who used his position as a defense contractor to try and weasel his way out of court appearances regarding stalking charges filed against him by a girlfriend who alleged abuse and was nearly convicted of felony battery. The entire story really must be read in total. The AEY story is reminicent of the great movie Lord of War, except the protagonist here, Diveroli, is a bumbling, corrupt fool and not a successful enabler of mass murder like the Nicholas Cage character.
Continue readingLocal Sunlight
This week I have highlights from
Tax Expert John O. Fox Asks Substantive Questions of Federal Candidates
If, like me, you're tired of hearing about landings at Tuzla, sermons from Jeremiah Wright and the other assorted nonsense that candidates for the White House feed us (I don't blame reporters--they have to cover the story put in front of them), here's a pleasant diversion. John O. Fox, who wrote an exhaustive (but not at all exhausting) critique of the federal income tax called If Americans Really Understood the Income Tax, has released his 10 Tax Questions the Candidates Don't Want You to Ask. Each question serves as a primer on federal tax policy, with links to references, data sources, and easy to understand explanations. Fox asks about the McMansion tax break, why the tax code ensures that the poor get the poorest childcare, and the tax treatment of pensions. He proposes some of his own solutions to the questions he raises -- it would be nice to hear how congressional and presidential candidates would do the same. He also offers some wonderful quotes on taxes throughout, including this one from former IRS Commissioner Sheldon Cohen: "The tax code, once you get to know it, embodies all the essence of life: greed, politics, power, goodness, charity." Indeed, and Fox's site proves it.
Continue readingOMB Watch Releases Top Five Open Government Questions for Candidates
When it comes to valuing openness and transparency in their government, the public is far ahead of most politicians as a new survey conducted by OMB Watch makes clear. The public is "clamoring" for a change in priorities. Last week, OMB Watch released the report [PDF] on the survey where they had asked the general public for their input on the top open government questions for candidates for federal offices. "Responses show that, more than anywhere else, Americans want greater transparency in the Executive Branch, particularly the White House," OMB Watch writes.
Continue readingThe Nice Polite Campaign to Gently Encourage Parliament to Publish Bills in a 21st Century Way, Please. Now.
It's quite surprising, but the UK's House of Commons does not put the text of its bills on the Web in a user-friendly manner, making it bloody difficult -- as they would say -- for British citizens to know what's really going on in Parliament when it comes to legislating.
Earlier today, our friends at MySociety.org, the U.K.-based nonprofit that builds Web sites to open up government and its services to benefit citizens, launched a campaign to convince Parliament to embrace the Internet Age.
The goal of the Free Our Bills campaign is to have Parliament put the text of bills online. The effort is titled "The Nice Polite Campaign to Gently Encourage Parliament to Publish Bills in a 21 Century Way, Please. Now." (We'll give it an award for simply being the best named campaign ever.) How polite and British. (American style would be something like "Just Do It.")
Continue readingFollow the Oil Money
So this is a cool new resource. One with a definite opinion about the role of money in politics.
Follow the Oil Money is a new website that tracks which oil companies are pumping their money into politics, who is receiving it, and how it correlates to key climate, energy and other votes. You can check out the connections via relationship graphs, or tables of information.
The folks behind the site are Oil Change International and the winners of Sunlight's 2007 Mashup contest, Greg Michalec and Skye Bender-deMoll. The data are from the Center for Responsive Politics, GovTrack.us, the Sunlight Labs API and the Federal Election Commission. They write:A few weeks ago, the House passed a bill that would fund clean energy and end some oil subsidies. Members who voted against this bill received on average more than 5 times more oil money than those who supported it. Overall, we found that members of Congress who voted for Big Oil took almost four times more oil money than those who voted in the public interest.
Follow the Oil Money isn't just a cool new tool. It presents some striking evidence to the potential connection between dollars and votes.
Continue readingA Challenge from Beth Noveck
Late last week, after the Sunshine Week Lessig lecture, the always thoughtful Beth Noveck -- law professor and director of both the Institute for Information Law and Policy and Democracy Design Workshop, and friend -- compared the Lessig speech to a June 2007 speech, by open-source-licensing crusader Eben Moglen.
Beth said Moglen is an optimist who is inclined to trust people's ability to collaborate and work together. She wrote that his take on government is revolutionary and evolutionary. Lessig is a pessimist, she says, full of dismay at the state of the body politic, yet wants to preserve the status quo ultimately. (I'm not sure I completely agree with the assessment of Lessig as pessimist but that's not the point I want to make right now.)
Beth says that the best approach is a mash-up of both approaches:"Lessig's orientation toward action and pragmatism with Moglen's boldness of vision." She advocates that we take a whole new look at government institutions and governance, and start using technology to empower citizens in order to fundamentally change the way government works.
Continue readingMarch Madness Hits Sunlight
In his spare time (no doubt while watching nonstop basketball this ?weekend), our Creative Director came up with a way to visualize the estimated net worth of the top 16 wealthiest members of Congress. |
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