Blog : Sunlight Foundation

Boom Shaka Laka – Justice

by Paul Blumenthal Nov 5, 2007 4:28 pm

The San Diego Union Tribune, without whom this would not have happened, is reporting that corrupt contractor Brent Wilkes was found guilty by a jury on 13 of 13 counts related to his bribery of imprisoned ex-Rep. Duke Cunningham. The story of Brent Wilkes is perhaps one of the more telling tales of political corruption for our time. Here is a man who set up a series of bogus companies, many which appeared to be nothing but a name with similar addresses, and received million dollar contracts for important work including the bottling of water for troops in Iraq and providing “commercial cover for CIA operations,” despite having no background in air cover. This is the story of the atmosphere of corruption, embodied by the wanton abandon to cash in on political connections, which must have permeated Congress in the late-90s and early-00s.

Very Wobbly

by Ellen Miller Nov 5, 2007 4:02 pm

When you get an article sent to you twice before 9 AM, and four times by noon, it deserves noting. Paul Krugman writes today about the nagging concern he has about whether the Democrats in Congress can stand up to the wealthy elite who finance their campaigns, spend billions on lobbyists, and offer lucrative future career opportunities. While he is ever the optimist, I think we know the answer. (In fact, he provides an example that gives us the answer in at least one instance.)

Krugman cites a poll saying that the public wants across-the-board change. Citizens who think America is on the wrong track were asked to suggest a phrase that best describes their concern. The most commonly chosen were "Big businesses get whatever they want in Washington" and "Leaders have forgotten the middle class."

A Lesson in How to Use EarmarkWatch.org

by Ellen Miller Nov 5, 2007 2:10 pm

The NYT ran a really good story on earmarks yesterday, using data from Taxpayers from Common Sense, the same data that's on EarmarkWatch.org.

Bloggers commenting on the NYT story are showing how they are using EarmarkWatch.org to investigate earmarks further.

For instance, blogger Susan Ohanian writes how she tracked Speaker Pelosi's earmarks, since she wasn't satisfied with the level of detail the Times presented in its article.

Web Rule #1: Link to other sites on the Web (Updated)

by Paul Blumenthal Nov 5, 2007 12:58 pm

Update: Roll Call is reporting that this was an issue with the Internet company hired by dozens of congressmen to run their Web sites:

"Smith’s site started blocking blogspot domains three months ago after GovTrends re-designed it and blocked readers routed from certain sites that could pose security risks, using a “blacklist” generated by Web security company gotroot.com. The blocking snafu seems to have been put to rest, at least temporarily. GovTrends unblocked blogspot from linking to Congressional clients on Tuesday, according to the company’s vice president, Ab Emam. But Emam says they’ll be closely monitoring traffic and if spam increases or there is harm to the sites, they could start blocking again without warning."

The antithesis of this rule would be to block links from other sites on the Web. That’s what Rep. Adrian Smith is doing. Smith is currently blocking all incoming links to his Web site from the .blogspot domain. This is apparently because an anti-Smith blog, Smith Watch, has been heavily criticizing him and attacking his record in Congress. The blogger at Smith Watch was having trouble linking to Smith’s site and asked the tech folks at Blogger to weigh in; this is part of their response:

The problem isn't with your link. It's with THEIR server. It's rejecting (giving a 404) when the link comes from blogspot. … He's blocking requests when it comes from bloggers.

Ok, to explain. Whenever you click on a link, the browser sends off a request to the server...yadda yadda...included in that is the referrer of the page you came from. His Official Government Website, that WE pay for (well I'm guessing on that part), is throwing up a 404 when the referrer heading comes from blogspot.com. I tested from one of my test blogs and it doesn't work either, also uploaded a test page to googlepages (a different domain) and it works. So it really is blogspot they are blocking via the referrer.

… Congressman Adrian Smith is afraid of Bloggers!

I think the key here is that, yes, we do pay for these official government Web sites and Rep. Adrian Smith thinks that he can decide who can link to and discuss his role as an elected representative of the people of the third district of Nebraska. This is a truly terrible example of a congressman miserably failing in his use of the Web and appears to be an attempt to silence an online voice by nullifying their ability to link. As anybody who’s read anything about the Web (David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous springs to mind) will tell you, links are the glue that hold the Web together and allow communication across platforms and channels. Without links there is no Web. I’ll leave it to the reader to determine what this says about Congressman Smith.

Hat tip: Eric Nebraska at Daily Kos.

Debate Transcripts; Delicious Links

by John Wonderlich Nov 4, 2007 2:20 pm

(Cross-posted from the Open House Project blog and Google Group.)

One theme running through what we're doing here, in my mind at least, is to blur the line between the explicit and the implicit, or, put differently, to make evident those things which were only implied. Effective data availability is certainly a case of this. Every time there is government information that is publicized in that satisfying-due-diligence, html, doing-as-we're-told, this-is-the-full-extent-of-our-authorization, only available in a reading room at 2:30 PM on Wednesday sort of way, well, that's an example of the implied. That data is only public by implication, since there is a significant barrier to it's effective use, reuse, access, or timely updating.

I'm loving the conversation about debate transcripts that Josh just posted about, because it's a great example of information becoming increasingly public, even though it was in plain sight all along. All public televised debates are, by their nature, quite public. The transcript or video/audio, however, has been less available, so much that the battle over their fair use continues even now. Despite this struggle, innovative presentations of this most hotly contested, most scrutinized of public appearances are popping up with increasing frequency. Josh's post took the speaking time from the NYT and calculated the statistical correlation between candidates' time speaking and their poll ranking. I just came across this tool (application?) that allows for all sorts of user-defined analysis of the debate transcript. You can see, explicitly, how many times the candidates said a term of your choice, and the text from the transcript is available right along with it. This is the sort of thing that we're lucky enough to witness developing, as long as the data that drives this sort of innovative presentation stays open and available. (more after the jump.)

Earmarking: The Good, the Bad, the…..

by Ellen Miller Nov 3, 2007 3:38 pm

Yesterday, President Bush followed through on his threat to veto the Water Resources Development Act (H.R. 1495), a bill that would authorize $23 billion be spent on dam, levee and waterway projects throughout the country. Because the projects are so numerous and widespread, almost every member of Congress has a special project included, this veto might not stand.

A few weeks ago, The Politico listed all the various players have lined up pro and con on the bill and a veto. Our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense say that the bill is ladened with earmarks making it fiscally irresponsible and applauded the president's veto. Maybe so. But this bill gives me a chance to make a point about earmarking. Just because a project is 'earmarked' doesn't mean it's bad, or wasteful, or a payoff to a political contributor. We've seen lots of stories about such questionable earmarks in recent days, but it's really, really important to remember that some earmarked funds really do go to critically important projects. Sunlight has been working with TCS on a new databases that will let you go through these earmarks easily and decide for yourself whether they are good, bad, or ugly.

TheMiddleClass.org

by Ellen Miller Nov 2, 2007 5:06 pm

Last week, I blogged about Why Tuesday?, the cool new non-profit working to increase voter participation. Why Tuesday? has its roots in the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy (DMI) , which is the home of another cool site, TheMiddleClass.org. They advertise the site as Your Toolkit for Holding Congress Accountable . I sure like the sound of that!

The goal is to assist citizens in easily finding out how members of Congress vote on specific bills that impact average Americans the most. The site explains, in plain English, how the legislation impacts America's current and aspiring middle class, gives the current status of each bill, and how each member stands on the legislation. Check out their new legislation tracking system...this sample deals with SCHIP. They've also got a page of widgets.

Farm Bill and Farm Subsidies

by Ellen Miller Nov 2, 2007 2:23 pm

Air Congress highlights a short yet informative video from the free market Competitive Enterprise Institute on the 2007 Farm Bill and the pork Congress has weighted it down with. Here's another from the anti-hunger group Oxfam America making similar points. But if you are interested in the Farm Bill, your research should start with the Environmental Working Groups long-standing farm subsidy database.

The National Family Farm Coalition, an advocate for the family farmer and the American consumer, is right in saying that anyone who eats has an interest and a stake in the farm bill. NFFC has a very helpful resource that answers many of the questions regarding the bill and agriculture policy.

Global Warming Committee Brings Public into the Committee Room

by Paul Blumenthal Nov 1, 2007 5:16 pm

Update: You can watch Markey ask a question from the online community here and here.

More and more members of Congress are using the Web to reach out to public constituencies to bring them into the processes in Congress. We saw this back in August when Sen. Dick Durbin went to the blog OpenLeft to discuss crafting a national broadband bill with members of the public. Yesterday, Rep. Ed Markey, the chairman of the Select Committee on Global Warming and Energy Independence, posted a diary on the blog Daily Kos soliciting questions and concerns from the community to be used in a committee hearing on the California wild fires today.

By adding a public element to the hearing the committee was able to create buzz in the environmental community and further open committee operations, which are the backbone of legislative activity, to the public. This will hopefully become a more regular activity among committee chairs and other members as they seek to use the Web to bring thoughtful and intelligent members of the general public in to help provide information outside of the normal think tank/lobbyist channels.

Is There Electricity in the Air?

by Ellen Miller Nov 1, 2007 5:10 pm

Matt Mosk of the Washington Post writes today about the stalled bill that would require Senators to file their campaign finance reports electronically, two days after I had a piece published in the Lexington Herald-Leader. Maybe we can light a spark?

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