After getting several outside requests for the option to sort LOUIS results by date instead of relevance, one of our talented data architects has added the feature. Keep your ideas for improvements coming.
Information Independence Day
President Lyndon Johnson signed the landmark Freedom of Information Act law on July 4, 1966. In doing so he declared: "A democracy works best when the people have all the information that the security of the nation will permit." Indeed, when members of the public have diligently pursued information under the FOIA, they have identified government waste and mismanagement and exposed significant controversies about government programs.
Continue readingSunlight Collects Value Added Information Resources
Where can I find information on the contracts awarded to Northrop Grumman Corporation? Once I’ve found that information, where can I find the campaign finance and lobbying information for Northrop Grumman Corporation? Have members of Congress have accepted private travel from Northrop Grumman Corporation or a related association? Is there a profile of those members of Congress? Can I edit that profile with what I might find? Did that member say anything about Northrop Grumman Corporation in the Congressional Record? Are they mentioned in a committee report? Did they benefit from an earmark?
Web sites presenting different kinds of political, civic, and legislative information are distributed throughout the internet. While broad Web searches can be effective, they can also be time consuming and lead to sites of questionable reliability. With the debut of Sunlight’s Insanely Useful Web sites page (always listed in the tabs at the top of every Sunlight page) we're developing a collection of value-added government information databases on the Web.
Continue readingDeMint Has a Point (Sort Of)
After taking over Congress last January, House Democrats passed a House rule, all by themselves, that required disclosure of earmarks. We have an analysis of the House rule here; of course, there were bumps in the road implementing it, but we're starting to see an unprecedented amount of earmark disclosure from the House. The Senate, by contrast, put its earmark disclosure measures in a bill, S. 1,, the Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act, meaning that, until the House and President sign off on it, the Senate effectively operates under the old, nondisclosure rules (although Sen. Robert Byrd, the chairman of the Senate Appropiations Committee, has adopted his own rules; you can see here and here how Byrd's rule is working.
Continue readingInsanely Useful Websites
Sunlight is starting to update and clean up (and eventually redesign) our Website and today we are posting the first installment: Insanely Useful Websites for government transparency. The sites listed here replace and dramatically update our old "resources" section.
How do you warrant a mention here? All these sites provide a broad range of information available to track government and legislative information, campaign contributions and the role of money and power in politics. Many of these resources apply the Web 2.0 ethos to sift, share and combine this information in innovative ways -- often times by mashing data together from disparate sources to maximize the usability of that information.
Get Momentum
So, this is neat.
Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age by Allison Fine (which Sunlight distributed widely as a "must read" to philanthropists when it was published)" has won the 2007 Terry McAdam Book Award from the Alliance for Nonprofit Management. The Alliance is a D.C based professional association of individuals and organizations focused on improving the management and governance capacity of nonprofits nationwide. The selection was heralded for its "energetic and entrepreneurial approach to building ownership and influence for activities that create social benefit caught the both the minds and hearts of this year's jury in an engaging and provocative way."
We agree.
Web 2.0 in a Chart
We talk frequently about "Web 2.0" here at Sunlight. (Yes, we know that's a "buzzword" but it's a handy way of describing the new "read-write" culture of today's Web.) We think a lot about what it means for how Congress presents itself to and interacts with the public. Sunlight's fascinated by (some might say obsessed) with how the interactivity and transparency potential of the Internet can change the relationship between lawmakers and their constituents. How citizens can use the Internet to hold lawmakers more accountable for their votes, their earmarks, who they meet with, and what they say when debating legislation. (To wit, see what Rep. George Miller announced yesterday.) We use Web 2.0 "criteria" for our grant making, making sure that organizations we fund use the Internet in creative, interactive, and as a two-way street in their overall strategy. Even the databases we fund (arguably very Web 1.0 tools) have to be developed with the capacity to be exported in formats that others can use to mash different data sets together.
Continue readingInvestigating More Earmarks
Writing in Roll Call, Paul Singer notes (subscription only) that one of Rep. Alan Mollohan's earmarks -- $1 million to acquire land to expand the Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge in Northeast West Virginia -- also happens to be in an area with which Mollohan has some familiarity:
...Mollohan owns two properties in Tucker County, near the boundaries of the refuge — one with a home and an adjacent lot, the other a lot with no building — that he lists on his financial disclosure forms as being worth a total of $550,000 to $1,100,000. With two ski resorts nearby and several housing developments along the same road, local officials say property values are skyrocketing in the area, and placing more land off-limits to development will simply increase the price of the existing lots.Continue reading
Investigating Earmarks
Americans for Prosperity are already digging into the lists of earmarks that the House has released so far -- here they note that Rep. Jerry Lewis requested $500,000 to refurbish a Washington, D.C., Metro station that's four blocks from his house, and here they note that, just as Rep. Chakah Fattah has been good to the Philadelphia Museum of Art (he requested a $100,000 earmark for it), PMA's board members have been good to him (a little over $10,000 in contributions). Oh, and his wife is a board member too.
Continue readingImmigration Battle Exposes Inadequacies of Lobby Disclosure
Yesterday, the Senate moved one step closer to passing S. 1639, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill, which has been less than popular with the public, and with those on the left, the center left, the center right and the right. Of course, some are supporting the bill, but sadly, lobbying records are no help in determing who might be supporting it.
Continue reading
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