Check out this Bill Moyers expose on earmarking in Congress (unfortunately this is not the whole video). Steve Ellis, from Taxpayers for Commonsense, is interviewed and the Sunlight Foundation's earmarking data is used in a graph at the beginning of the video.
Continue readingComputer Glitch Prevents Searching for Individual Lobbyist Names
In the Senate the lobbying data is maintained by the Senate Office of Public Records (SOPR) which currently enters the lobbyist disclosure reports filed on paper into a database. Did you know -- I just learned this -- that electronic disclosure has been required for lobbyist reports since 1995, but still hasn't been fully implemented?! An apparent glitch in SOPR's computer system is currently preventing the public from searching for individual lobbyists, as well as for issues that interests have reported lobbying on in 2007. How beyond ridiculous is this?
It's absurd because whether the Democrats or the GOP control Congress, lobbyists often set the table. Industry lobbyists make sure that their clients' interests are tended to, no matter who runs the Congress. The Center for Responsive Politics analyzed reports filed last month and found lobbyists spending has topped $1.24 billion in the first six months of this year. For perspective, lobbyists spend a record amount of $2.61 billion throughout 2006. CRP's analysis found:
Continue readingAnother Kind of Surge
The Center for Responsive Politics has an fascinating analysis today that should be mighty disturbing to Republican candidates closely allied with President Bush's Iraq war strategy.
Since the start of the Iraq war in 2003, members of the U.S. military have dramatically increased their political contributions to Democrats, marching sharply away from the party they've long supported. In the 2002 election cycle, the last full cycle before the war began, Democrats received a mere 23 percent of military members' contributions.* So far this year, 40 percent of military money has gone to Democrats for Congress and president, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Anti-war presidential candidates Barack Obama and Ron Paul are the top recipients of military money.
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Local Sunlight
I have been keeping track of local blogs that do a great job of informing people about what is happening in Congress, state level, and local level politics. These blogs provide valuable information which I highlight each week to bring you news of transparency from around the country. Here is this week’s update on Sunlight in the states.
Continue readingWhere’s Our Harry Truman?
During the build up to World War II and throughout the war, Harry Truman built a reputation investigating overspending and profiteering involving defense contracts. Truman found that favoritism and not merit was the basis for the awarding of huge arms contracts, with the biggest companies with the political influence getting all the contracts. Truman visited military bases and armament plants, finding gross mismanagement of defense dollars. He enlisted other senators to go on tour with him, and this ad hoc watchdog effort soon led to a formal investigation. Becoming known informally as the Truman Committee, the investigation exposed waste and corruption throughout the war effort, saving the country $15 billion.
Matt Taibbi, writing for Rolling Stone, looks like a one-man Truman Committee, exposing in graphic terms what can only be described as the shocking corruption, sleaze and criminal mismanagement by private American companies contracting with the federal government to do work in Iraq. "How is it done?" Taibbi asks. "How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini?" He proceeds to show how sleazy yet politically connected contractors wasted what they didn't steal of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars meant to supply the troops and rebuild Iraq. Politically connected con men "went from bumming cab fare to doing $100 million in government contracts practically overnight," Taibbi writes. Contractor fraud in Iraq has been in the headlines since the early days of the war, but Taibbi's expose is especially graphic.
Continue readingC-SPAN Makes Video More Available
It looks like C-SPAN is now publishing a new index of its House and Senate floor proceedings -- The C-SPAN Congressional Chronicle. According to them the video recordings are matched with the text of the Congressional Record as soon as the Record is available. It only includes members who appeared on the floor to deliver or insert their remarks. The text included is what the member submitted. Each appearance has a video link where users can watch and listen to the actual statements. This is great progress!
We asked our grantee, Metavid, to check it out and tell us how far C-SPAN's new index advances the transparency of what happens on the floor and they reported back that this is a big step, providing a slew of additional timed "metadata" (bill data, index to congressional record) that they can use to enrich their archive. The C-SPAN site is using the Congressional Record with archivists manually syncing up the record with the daily proceeding at per speaker granularity.[1] The closed caption based search which Metavid uses allows people to zero in on matching sections of video quicker but the official record is generally more accurate. Using both should greatly enhance the Metavid search functionality and may help illuminate the revision and extension of remarks that lawmakers are always taking about.
Continue readingInvestigating What Went Wrong in Iraq (and Congress’ Blissful Indifference)
Some $9 billion managed by the Coalition Provisional Authority and intended for the rebuilding of Iraq has gone missing, journalists Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele report in Vanity Fair, and the U.S. government doesn't seem particularly interested in finding out where it went. Barlett and Steele describe the Wild Wild Middle East atmosphere, in which two guys with no experience can get millions from the C.P.A. to protect civilian flights in and out of Iraq, and Bahamanian P.O. Boxes are the business addresses of choice for those supposedly keeping the books. Perhaps the most disturbing bit among many was just how out of touch Congress was on the doings in Baghdad during the C.P.A.'s tenure starting in 2003:
Over the next year, a compliant Congress gave $1.6 billion to Bremer to administer the C.P.A. This was over and above the $12 billion in cash that the C.P.A. had been given to disburse from Iraqi oil revenues and unfrozen Iraqi funds. Few in Congress actually had any idea about the true nature of the C.P.A. as an institution. Lawmakers had never discussed the establishment of the C.P.A., much less authorized it—odd, given that the agency would be receiving taxpayer dollars. Confused members of Congress believed that the C.P.A. was a U.S. government agency, which it was not, or that at the very least it had been authorized by the United Nations, which it had not. One congressional funding measure makes reference to the C.P.A. as "an entity of the United States Government"—highly inaccurate. The same congressional measure states that the C.P.A. was "established pursuant to United Nations Security Council resolutions"—just as inaccurate. The bizarre truth, as a U.S. District Court judge would point out in an opinion, is that "no formal document … plainly establishes the C.P.A. or provides for its formation.""Confused members of Congress" seems like both a phrase that should be far more common in news coverage, and an inappropriately charitable description. In any case, it's an incredible story from two of the best investigative reporters in the business -- well worth reading (and don't miss the Q&A Continue reading
Department of Energy correspondence logs
This article in the Washington Post yesterday on the earmarking process cites letters sent to the Department of Energy written by members of Congress including Rep. Rahm Emanuel in support of projects at the Children's
We recently received the correspondence logs from DOE and there were at least 15 similar letters. Although none of these seem to have actually secured the funding, we have found that writing in support of a specific project is not unique to just one lawmaker or only to the DOE either. For instance EPA ...
Continue readingNew Database on Bundling
Bundling, that is the practice of one donor gathering donations from many different individuals in an organization or community and presenting the sum to a campaign, is as popular as ever by the major presidential campaigns. The poster child for questionable bundling to 2008 campaign so far goes to the still highly suspect actions of Norman Hsu. Bundling has in past cycles raised concerns too. President Bush's more infamous bundlers were Enron CEO Ken Lay and disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Taylor Lincoln at Public Citizen's Watchdog blog shows how this practice is fraught with potential scandal.
Thanks to Public Citizen and their new 2008 version of its White House for Sale databasee, it's now easier than ever to track the big bundlers for each of the presidential candidates. It also allows you to determine which bundlers are lobbyists. "With bundlers playing a bigger role than ever before in this race, anticipated to cost at least $1 billion," writes Katie Schlieper for Public Campaign. As she said, this is a great tool to use to connect the dots between donors, candidates, and policy priorities.
Continue readingTa Da. John Brothers
Maybe it was the bad head cold last week, or maybe I just wanted to see if he'd stay around(!), but I realized on Friday that I hadn't told everyone about the addition of John Brothers -- our new CTO -- to the Sunlight team. Sunlight is really really lucky to have John.
John has more than 13 years' experience in managing, developing and executing full life-cycle software development. Most recently, he was the Chief Architect at Core Concept, Inc, a technology management consulting firm. Previous to that, John was the Senior Director of R&D at nuBridges, where he managed the entire software development organization for this eBusiness transaction management company. Brothers also founded and was the CTO of Incanta, a broadband-based streaming media software startup.
John's job is to lead Sunlight's technology's team in creating Web applications and managing the daily operations of the Sunlight Labs, our in-house development team. He will also lead Sunlight's long-term strategic and infrastructure IT planning.
As we begin to deploy new Web-based tools, databases and information, John's expertise is going to take us up another notch. In short, fasten your seat belts.
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