We've been wondering ourselves about possible money connections between the SuperDelegates and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. And from the fast flying computers at the Center for Responsive Politics we learn some pretty interesting new facts about the money connections between Clinton and Obama and those SuperDelegates. Here are a few of their findings:
Elected officials who are SuperDelegates have received at least $890,000 from Obama and Clinton in campaign contributions over the last three years. Obama has given more than $694,000 to SuperDelegates from his political action committee, Hope Fund, or campaign committee since 2005. Of the 81 elected officials who had announced as of Feb. 12 that their SuperDelegate votes would go to Obama, 34 of them(40 percent) got money from from him in the 2006 or 2008 election cycles.
Clinton's PAC, HILLPAC, and campaign committee appear to have distributed $195,500 to SuperDelegates. Only 12 percent of her elected SuperDelegates -- 13 total -- have said they will back her.
Continue readingOur Mini-Grantees Rock!
Today, Sunlight is announcing new Mini-Grants as part of its commitment to support original ideas, tools, Web sites, and bloggers that further our mission of using the Internet to foster a more open government.
These new projects (scroll down for our Mini-Grantees) demonstrate the creativity of citizens in using the Internet to give the public the power to learn more about their elected representatives and to engage as communities in monitoring, conversing and connecting over the work of Congress. Each of the work of these new Sunlight grantees creates greater transparency for our elected officials. Their work will strengthen citizen participation in the democratic process.
Check out the work of Geocoder.us that provides free address look-up information based on the U.S. Census, so that users can enter any address or intersection and learn the longitude and latitude coordinates for that location, or the work of Knowledge As Power which will develop a legislator email management and constituent relations communications system to increase transparency between legislators and their constituents. Speechology.org will host a Web site that will archive video of key political speeches-including debates, State of the Union addresses, convention speeches congressional testimony and campaign advertisements-and facilitate online public critical analysis. And three additional grants -- Pacific Northwest Topic Hotlist, Richmond Sunlight and the Utah News Aggregator -- have developed innovative ways to create more transparency for their legislators closer to home.
Continue readingWhat Economic Indicators?
The Bush Administration is getting quite good at death by budget, knocking off two federal open government programs in the last couple of weeks. Tony Soprano would be impressed.
Late last month, the administration submitted their 2009 budget, where it was revealed they eliminated the key provision of the Open Government Act of 2007 - the ombudsman whose job it is to oversee all Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. They pulled it off by moving the office from the National Archives and Records Administration to the Department of Justice where it is doomed to ineffectual exile. The second hit was on EconomicIndicators.gov, an award-winning web site full of current economic data at the U.S. Department of Commerce. The site will be put in mothballs effective March 1st. The administration said it was a budget cutting decision. The Web site has gotten a lot of attention for how easily it allows citizens to access the daily releases of key economic indicators and to cross reference the data among various bureaus and would send out e-mails to registered users whenever new economic data was released. Sure, Think Progress writes, the data will still be available but much harder - much much harder to access. Most of us wouldn't have the time to go and look at the individual sites and even know where to look for it.
Continue readingA Lover Spurned
The National Association of Home Builders, acting like a spurned lover, has announced that it's suspending its PAC contributions to all members of Congress. The Home Builders are a big contributor to members and congressional candidates, and spends heavy on lobbying. This could get interesting.
What caused the trouble? The Hill reports that the association's lobbying efforts failed to get a particular tax break provision (a provision that would help companies with losses to trim prior year tax bills) included in the economic stimulus package. Calling the step "extraordinary," the Home Builders' president said they were disappointed in both Congress and the Bush Administration for "not adequately addressed the underlying economic issues that would help to stabilize the housing sector and keep the economy moving forward."
In other words, as far as the Home Builders are concerned, Congress will be sleeping on the couch "until further notice."
Continue readingRethinking Campaign Finance Reform
Last week, Matt Stoller, president of Blog PAC, principal at Open Left, and Sunlight Foundation consultant, gave an interesting speech at the University of Connecticut Law School where he advocates a rethinking of the historic approach to campaign finance law, a system that has not kept pace with the Web 2.0 revolution.
Reformers usually think about changing the campaign finance laws to limit the influence of big money in politics. As we know, the lion's share of the money is spent on TV, radio, and for mass mailings, what Matt terms "spammy media." This, he says, should be regulated. But for the Internet, what Matt calls "social media" because of its infinite possibilities for consumption and participation, he suggests a deregulation scheme. Specifically calling for the establishment of a kind of two-tierd regulatory system that limits the "spam quotient" of modern campaigns and encourages the social context of politics.
Interesting... Check it out.
Continue readingMillennials Remaking Democracy
Fascinating piece from millennial makeover entitled Millennials Are About to Give America an Extreme Political Makeover.Right here in Hollywood, a dedicated group of over one hundred Millennials, gathered by mobilize.org, met the weekend before New Year's Day to finalize their own Declaration of Independence, entitled "Democracy 2.0." Citing a need to "upgrade" our nation's system of governance, the gathering identified the challenges that previous generations had failed to resolve, especially "economic inequality, America's role in the world, and the effect of money on the democratic process." But then, instead of condemning those in power for the nation's problems and walking away as Gen Xers might have done, or attempting to tear down the political system as some Boomers did, they asserted the need for their generation to fix each of those concerns. Their manifesto declared, "Our generation...is uniquely positioned to foster community engagement through social networks... It is our responsibility to use information and technology to upgrade democracy, transform communication, and advance political engagement and civic participation."
Thanks Micah for passing it along.
Continue readingEPA’s Wiki
It's a welcome change of pace to be able to say something nice about the federal government. Federal Computer Week reports on the Environmental Protection Agency's use of the Web 2.0 style to help local citizens in Washington State working to clean up Puget Sound.
Last November, EPA held its 2007 Environmental Information Symposium where they activated its Puget Sound Information Challenge wiki. Participants were asked to supply information that could help local groups working to restore the Sound. The Web site was up over the two days of the conference, and received 18,000 page views, 175 entries with everything from documents to decision support systems and a significant volume of e-mail, the magazine reports.
Continue readingLots Sunshine in Alaska
From Jacob Wiens at POGO:
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This week, the state of Alaska launched a website that tracks every state expenditure of over one thousand dollars, as reported on today's NPR Morning Edition. This makes Alaska the tenth state government to provide such a service to its taxpayers. On a side note, Alaska also has the lowest individual tax burden of any state in the U.S.Alaska calls its website "Checkbook Online." According to the state, this service "...is part of a national trend for governments to develop websites that allow constituents to view financial information in searchable formats. Such websites are widely considered to improve transparency into the financial operations of government."
New Ways to Look at the Money Behind the Presidentials
The Center for Responsive Politics (a Sunlight grantee) is displaying some cool new ways to view the role of money in the presidential election. Look here for the "Money Web." This shows you the links between candidates and donors, including the five top contributors and industries (including ties) to each of the candidates. Click on a bubble to start making connections among candidates, their top-giving industries and top contributors.
Here's a cool map that illustrates how much money is going to Republican and Democratic candidates from each state and which presidential candidate got the most.
If you want to see how a candidate's fundraising stacks up against another's week by week, or month by month, look here. On this map click on a state to see contributions from that state to each candidate, as well as money isolated by metropolitan area and top ZIP codes. (Note that the Web site is geteting some heavy traffic this afternoon. If you have trouble loading anything, try back later.)
Can You Hear Me Now?
Telecommunication industry giants AT&T, Microsoft and Verizon are lobbying hard to kill a data-breach notification bill in the Indiana statehouse, according to Chris Soghoian at CNET.com's Surveillance State blog. Many state legislatures are passing security breach notification laws as a response to the increasing number of governmental and corporate databases divulging personal identification information either by mistake or by criminal enterprise. The Indiana bill would set the state attorney general as the single point of contact for data breaches, who would then post a report on the breach on a Web site, setting a single place for citizens to go to find out about data breaches.
Soghoian reports that at a state Senate Committee meeting earlier this week, 10 lobbyists, most from the telecommunications industry, criticized the bill as setting up a system that would be vulnerable to online fraudsters. The bill's sponsors were the only people speaking in favor of the legislation. He said he expects the lobbyists will succeed at killing the Web site notification requirement in the bill. If money talks, and we know it does, then he is almost assuredly correct. By searching National Institute on Money in State Politics' database Followthemoney.org, you will see that during the last election cycle AT&T made over $172,000 in contributions to Indiana state office holders or candidates running for state office. Verizon made over $48,000 in contributions, while Microsoft gave $2,000. No matter the merits of the bill, the moneyed lobbyists have little fear of their voices not being heard load and clear.
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