Midnight Rulemaking
OMB Watch sez:
Saturday's New York Times has an article about the White House's new policy setting deadlines for any regulations agencies intend to finalize during the Bush administration. The policy, outlined in a memo sent by Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, says, "Except in extraordinary circumstances, regulations to be finalized in this Administration should be proposed no later than June 1, 2008, and final regulations should be issued no later than November 1, 2008."
Bolten issued the memo under the guise of reversing "the historical tendency of administrations to increase regulatory activity in their final months" — commonly known as midnight regulations. In reality, the memo may simply change when the clock strikes midnight in order to insulate potentially controversial rules from disapproval by a new administration.
Read OMB Watch's analysis.
Continue readingCrowdsourcing Parliamentary Video
Our friends at MySociety.org have a new crowdsourcing project that's really neat.
They have added video of debates in the House of Commons on their TheyWorkForYou.com Web site and are asking individuals to help match up each speech with the corresponding video clips. Wow. They are crowd sourcing all the work that the technologists behind Metavid have been doing themselves for C-SPAN coverage of Congress. Recently Metavid has added ways for you to help too.
TheyWorkForYou.com provides a randomly-selected speech from Hansard, the printed transcripts of debates in Parliament. You can search the video for the correct snippet. You then timestamp the video by hitting one button button.
MySociety.org has set up a "top timestamper" contest as well. Check it out.
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GAO on DOD
Last week, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report that details the extensive revolving door where former Department of Defense officials are now working for defense contractors, creating glaring conflicts of interest.
GAO's report found that in 2006, defense contractors employed over 86,000 former DOD employees who had left the agency since 2001. The report found instances where former DOD officials were working on contracts under the responsibility of their form agency, office or command. And they found nine instances where former officials are working on a contract "for which they had program oversight responsibilities or decision-making authorities while at DOD."
This isn't a newly recognized problem. A 2004 report by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) on the revolving doors between the government and large private contractors found "conflict of interest is the rule, not the exception."
Continue readingNetSquared Year 3
I’m in
Follow the minute by minute conference action as updated by N2Y3 attendees, bloggers and vloggers.
What's happening at N2Y3 will be updated by their dedicated bloggers and vloggers (tagged n2y3media). These posts will be unedited so a well balanced perspective is ensured.
Watch interviews with attendees on the NetSquared blip.tv channel, follow real time updates on the Net2 Twitter feed.
It’s all about the 21 Featured Projects.
Telecom’s K Street Buy
Glenn Greenwald's latest column illustrates how telecom companies are attempting to buy amnesty from Congress through a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign. He is dead on by calling the effort "a perfect microcosm for how our government institutions work."
By accessing the Center for Responsive Politics' lobbying database, Greenwald reports that in the first three months of this year, three telecom companies (AT&T, Verizon, Comcast) have spent a combined $13 million lobbying Congress. If they maintain this pace throughout this year (and what's to stop them?), the three companies will spend $50 million. Nonprofit groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are leading the fight against amnesty. Greenwald links to a post by Kurt Opsahl, EFF senior staff attorney, on his organization's Deeplinks Blog. Opsahl makes the point that "AT&T's spending for three months on lobbying alone is significantly more than the entire EFF budget for a whole year, from attorneys to sysadmins, pencils to bandwidth."Wanna place any bets on the outcome of this one?
Continue readingDepartment of the Interior Reconnects
You can't make this stuff up.
Earlier this month, a federal judge's ruling lifted a seven-year court order that prevented 10,000 federal employees in hundreds of offices nationwide to be connected to the Internet at their desks. he employees work for five agencies within the U.S. Department of the Interior, with the Bureau of Indian Affair being one.
The ruling came out of a class-action suit brought by Native Americans who charge the Interior Department has botched trust records and accounts dealing with their land. Employees will now be connected to the Internet and email at their computers, and will no longer be forced to leave their desks to use a set of limited number of computers and fax machines.
Sp much for government working in the connected age.
Hat Tip: Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
Continue readingBig PhRMA, Disclose Thyself
The Hill reports on what appears to be a “man bites dog” story, a reversal by the pharmaceutical and medical... View Article
Continue readingDay by Day
OpenSecrets.org has one of the most granular looks at fundraising by the Democratic candidates that you can get. Keep an eye on their new blog. Terrific stuff there.
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Hands on Budgeting
As we head into the general election period, American Public Media, the public radio entity best known for producing A Prairie Home Companion and Marketplace, has launched an instructive and fun online game titled Budget Hero. The game allows you to set the U.S. budget by cutting or raising taxes, and increasing or decreasing spending. You want universal healthcare? Add it to the budget. Increased funding for Social Security? Go for it. Bring the troops home from Iraq? Just do it. Obviously, all such decisions will impact your budget. In this sense, it is similar to the 1993 computer game Shadow President. But with Budget Hero, every major decision, such as to repeal the Bush tax cut and raise taxes on the rich are accompanied with a list of pros and cons and potential impacts.
The folks at American Public Media worked with the Congressional Budget Office and the Government Accounting Office to get the data correct. When you finish, the game allows you to compare your "budget" to other gamers. A serious and detailed review of Budget Hero can be accessed here. This is a fun tool that can teach you alot.
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