Last evening, the Firedoglake hosted another installment of their Sunday Book Salons, where John Anderson took questions online about his new book Follow the Money: How George W. Bush and the Texas Republicans Hog-Tied America, released earlier this fall. In the book Anderson gives an overview of the connections between elite Houston law firms, Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, Tom DeLay and his K Street Project to Jack Abramoff. I haven't read the book yet, but last night's discussions makes me want to.
As an Austin American-Statesman review states, Anderson used previously reported or exposed facts to retell this story. By following Deep Throat's advice, Anderson shows the overarching network that put George W. Bush in the White House, DeLay out of a job, Abramoff in prison, and the GOP in the minority.
Continue readingWindfalls of War
Yesterday, the Center for Public Integrity released their new report Windfalls of War II, exposing how contractors over the past three years made a mint off the spoils of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. An earlier 2003 report, Windfalls of War (heavily researched by our Sunlight colleague, Larry Makinson) looked at Uncle Sam's spending on private contractors from 2001 through much of 2003.
In this new report, the Center says that the federal contract system for the two war zones is "marred by missing contracts, unidentified companies, a lack of competitive bidding and the absence of minority-owned companies as primary contractors." By the end of 2006, CPI reports, U.S. contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan have grown to $25 billion, while oversight has seriously deteriorated.
Continue readingWhat You See Is What You Get
Money and politics, united completely.
More Widgets!
Yesterday, I highlighted a new interactive and customizable widget that lets the citizen be the journalist, AskYourLawmaker.org. Here's another really interesting one.
Besides his day job at the Cato Institute, Jim Harper is the creative force behind WashingtonWatch.com, which places a value on changes to future federal spending, taxes, or regulation. The goal of the site is to convey the significance to average Americans -- in dollars and cents -- of proposed changes to the nation's policies. Jim's new widget allows bloggers to show the current state on pending legislation. It allows individuals to comment on the bill, and to even vote yea or nay on the legislation. It's very cool.
Continue readingBundlers
Lisa Zagaroli, writing for McClatchy Newspapers, reports on the growing importance of bundlers in presidential campaign fundraising. These "mega-fundraisers" are very skilled at using their business and personal contacts to raise large amounts of campaign cash for a specific candidate. Only a few presidential candidates have released any information on who is doing the bundling but we know that the bundlers usually have super access to the candidates. No presidential campaign has released both the names of their bundlers and the amount each individual fundraiser has raised. Each campaign has adopted varying degrees of disclosure on who is raising their big bucks.
On October 30, Congressional Quarterly reported that Federal Election Commission is working on new bundling rules. One proposal, which came out of the Congress, is to only disclose the bundlers who are federal lobbyists. The McClatchy report indicates that the FEC is interested in going beyond this.
Continue readingAsk Your Lawmaker
We're very pleased to announce that Sunlight grantee Capitol News Connection is launching today a new interactive and customizable widget that lets YOU be the journalist -- and hold power to account! You decide what you want to ask members of Congress and presidential candidates, see what other people are asking about, and vote on the questions you think are most important. CNC's award-winning public radio journalists will track down lawmakers and candidates on the campaign trail -- and get the answers you demand. Then, you can listen, comment, share and even embed the audio on your site. This is very cool.
Those using the widget include CNC public radio stations, public television sites, bloggers and social networking sites. To get the widget just go to www.askyourlawmaker.org/widget. Select the customization options you want -- you can display questions or answers -- by topic or state. You can listen and vote within the widget. Try it out -- and help spread the word! We want to get as many questions as possible, and aggregate as many voices as possible around each question: It's hard for a lawmaker to dodge a question asked by, say, 13,952 people in 17 states!
Update: Apparently NPR has taken down the widget from its site, for what may be technical fixes. We trust that will only be temporary.
Continue readingTransparency Thwarted
Today's edition of the New York Times has an op-ed highlighting a provision that's buried within the newly enacted Honest Leadership and Open Government Act that compromises the intended transparency.
As we know, members of conference committees often secretly inserted earmarks and other items into already finalized bills. To combat this, the Senate instituted new rules saying that any individual senator can object to such provisions, threatening the whole bill. In the category of giving with one hand and taking away another, the Senate also said that they could vote to waive all objections to any bill. If 60 senators agree, all the provisions are approved.
No great surprise that this gives new power to the majority party especially if the majority has close to 60 votes. A dissenting senator would have to muster 41 votes to stop the process. In the very bill meant to open up the bill writing process , we have a new technique to thwart openness and transparency. Harumph.
Continue readingSunlight and mySociety
Several of us from Sunlight spent the past weekend in the London environs sharing organizational stories, strategies, challenges, and blue sky thoughts with the good people who founded and operate mySociety.org.
As Micah Sifry said it later: It's not just that we keep hearing about mySociety whenever we meet people and tell them about Sunlight. It's that we definitely knew about mySociety when we were starting Sunlight and definitely knew that we wanted to take a similar approach: Broadly speaking, to use the web to open up citizen understanding of Congress and to open up feedback loops to produce a more responsive institution.
From TheyWorkForYou,WriteToThem,to HearFromYourMP, to the e-petition site produced for 10 Downing Street, mySociety has made extraordinary use of the web to connect citizens and their elected representatives in groundbreaking ways. While their effort differs in various ways from Sunlight because of the different ways our systems operate, their thinking has already inspired our work. And naturally, we are already conspiring to bring some of what they have done directly to the US.
Continue readingNew Fundraising Technique
I wonder just how transparent this will be.
Continue readingDisclosure of Bundlers Coming from Obama
ABC News' The Blotter reports:Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said Monday evening he would release new details on the levels of campaign contributions raised by "bundlers" for his presidential campaign, "something that no other candidate has done," according to campaign spokesman Bill Burton.
But it doesn't appear that the intended will be as complete as what Democratic candidate John Kerry or President Bush revealed in 2004 about those who raised the biggest bucks for their campaigns.
Update: I should have mentioned that this annoucement comes one day after Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun Times called Obama to task for his lack of disclosure.
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