The issue of SuperDelegates is really heating up. The group of citizen journalists, bloggers and activists convened over at the SuperDelegate Transparency Project (hosted by Congresspedia) have produced the only reporting on SuperDelegate commitments in the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination that is fully broken down by delegate, by state,congressional district and has full and transparent sourcing. No major news organization provides such detail or provides their sources.
The SuperDelegate Transparency Project is the only citizen-driven, grassroots effort bringing transparency to the SuperDelegate process. While major news organizations and political Web sites provide unsourced and conflicting delegate and SuperDelegate counts, STP has consistently provided delegate-by-delegate breakdowns of endorsements, all with fully transparent sourcing. The project, whichcounts more than 400 volunteers, is dedicated to bringing greater transparency to the Democratic nomination process.
Check it out and add what you know.
Continue readingGAO’s Oversight of NSA. Not.
Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, writing at Secrecy News, reports that the Congress has not used the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to perform any oversight of the National Security Agency (NSA), despite maintaining an office there to do just that.
Continue readingDespite multi-billion dollar acquisition failures at NSA and the Agency's controversial, possibly illegal surveillance practices . . .Congress has declined to summon all of its oversight resources such as GAO to address such issues.
Corporate Political Disclosure
Over the past few years a movement among shareholders and activist groups has formed to push companies to publicly reveal their political contributions. While corporations are banned from giving directly to candidates for federal office some states have not banned direct corporate contributions and other groups, like nonprofits, 527s, trade associations, and other political groups, also receive corporate money. The Financial Times reports that five companies are jumping on this transparency bandwagon:
Five large US companies, including American Express and Xerox, will bow to shareholder pressure on Thursday and agree to disclose all their political spending.
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Corruption Amidst the Stacks
The fundraising for presidential libraries continues to be a blind spot when it comes to disclosure and an open and transparent government. Unlike contributions to an electoral campaign, gifts to the libraries are unlimited and undisclosed, and they can take money from corporations and foreign governments. This is worth repeating: Presidential libraries have no restrictions on the size of financial contributions they can receive, and they are not required to report who their contributors are. Plus, they can receive gifts from corporations and foreign governments! It is illegal for political campaigns to receive contributions from corporations and foreign governments. And another egregious aspect of presidential library fundraising that all of this unlimited, undisclosed fundraising involving corporations and foreign governments is going on while the nation's chief executive is still in office...The most powerful man or woman in the world. As Sheila Krumholz, director of the Center for Responsive Politics and friend, said in testimony to Congress in February 2007, "The potential (for corruption with the libraries) may be far greater than in the campaign finance system."
Continue readingGovernment Adapts to Web 2.0
Grading the States
The Pew Center on the States released their new Grading the States 2008 Report they produced with Governing magazine where they give letter grades to each state based on how well they manage budgets, staffs, infrastructure and information, according to today's AP article. A panel of state government experts determined the grades. Pew has said they hope the rankings will give states objective information on how they can perform better in the future.
Continue readingHere’s a Cool Thing From WeMedia
There was a very diverse and interesting group assembled for the WeMedia conference last week in Miami. (I was there...that's my excuse for not blogging most of the week). One of the really interesting sessions was the one in which Ashoka, an international organization promoting social entrepreneurship, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, announced the launch of a new program to recruit journalist social entrepreneurs. (Full disclosure: The founder of Ashoka and I have known each other for more than 20 years and I worked with him there for a brief period.)
The Knight Foundation has given $3 million to Ashoka set up a program to find and incubate 30 socially entrepreneurial journalists. Like all Ashoka Fellows, these journalists will have a stiped that will allow them to focus full-time on their efforts to provide "lasting, visible, systemic change," as the foundation's press release stated. They are looking for nominations so send them in.
Continue readingLabeling Lobbyists
Would you talk to this man?
The San Francisco Examiner reports on a proposed bill by San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly that would require lobbyists to wear identification badges when they contact city officials. This seems kind of silly to me. Lawmakers know these lobbyists and should know when they are being lobbied. They don't need to read badges to figure out what is going on. If anything greater and more timely, as in immediate, disclosure to the public should be implemented and not some sort of cattle branding.
(Pictured above: The Open House Project's John Wonderlich, our lobbyist for Big Transparency.)
Continue readingInternational Sunlight
Riffing off of the estimable Nisha Thompson's Local Sunlight feature, there are a couple of Sunlight related stories happening across our northern border and across the pond in Europe. First, our friends in Europe are taking after our Congress and considering passing sweeping lobbying disclosure for the EU for the very first time:
The European Commission has proposed new rules that could require European Union lobbyists to register for the first time, as part of a new transparency effort spawned after news reports of Abramoff’s activities broke.
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A Long Time Coming
Governor Bobby Jindal swept into Louisiana's top job with a pledge to clean up the notoriously corrupt state and has made good by spending his political capital on the passage of sweeping ethics reforms set to permanently change the culture of the Bayou State. Jindal's arguments for the need for rapid ethics changes centered on the need to encourage businesses to invest in the state without requiring them to stuff the right person's pockets. But the part that most sticks out for us at Sunlight is this:
“This is huge,” said D. W. Hunt, a veteran lobbyist at the Capitol. “This is a sea change. This will seriously, dramatically change things. The meta-theme is the transparency.”
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