One of Sunlight's resident creative geniuses (yes, there are many of them) have taken all the Defense Appropriations Earmarks and made them available for viewing within Google Earth. (You can only view this using Google Earth which you can download from this page.) The regular Google Maps version is available here.
And as they say: a picture really is worth a 1,000 words. One of our policy wonks loved the flight simulator that allows you to fly over earmark locations. It allows you to fly your choice of two aircraft anywhere around the globe, with custom layers visible from the aircraft. The simulator is hidden within the latest version of the program, and takes some getting used to controlling, but is certainly an entertaining way to experience the Earth's actual geography-and to educate yourself politically at the same time.
Continue readingVery Wobbly
When you get an article sent to you twice before 9 AM, and four times by noon, it deserves noting. Paul Krugman writes today about the nagging concern he has about whether the Democrats in Congress can stand up to the wealthy elite who finance their campaigns, spend billions on lobbyists, and offer lucrative future career opportunities. While he is ever the optimist, I think we know the answer. (In fact, he provides an example that gives us the answer in at least one instance.)
Krugman cites a poll saying that the public wants across-the-board change. Citizens who think America is on the wrong track were asked to suggest a phrase that best describes their concern. The most commonly chosen were "Big businesses get whatever they want in Washington" and "Leaders have forgotten the middle class."
Continue readingMore Earmark Reform Needed
Congressional Quarterly reports that a small group of Republican members of the House Appropriations Committee are working to reform how earmarks are decided upon. And little wonder, appropriators of both houses have recently been caught red handed abusing them. Seven of the 29 Republicans on the committee are meeting on a weekly basis in an attempt to come up with a reform that appropriators can agree to. One idea they?ve discussed is requiring that both the chairman and the ranking minority member approve all earmarks. The CQ article also lists several other ad hoc groups of lawmakers in both chambers that are looking to further reform the earmark process.
One plan sponsored by Rep. Phil Gingrey would cap appropriations earmarks and divide the dollars equally among members of the House and Senate. Besides the GOP, members of the Congressional Black Caucus are looking to reform how earmark dollars are spread around in light of a CQ report that showed a large disparity depending on the race of the lawmaker. Republicans are also advocating more transparency in how earmarks are handled. Here, here to that!
Continue readingEnviros vs. Mining Companies
The Hill reports today on the fight to reform the mining laws. The Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act, sponsored by Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), has conservation groups facing off with mine corporations. The House is set to vote on the bill today. What's at stake is whether the federal government will impose royalties on mining operations that dig for copper, gold, silver and other hard-rock minerals on federal land. Unlike coal mining and oil and gas developers who all pay royalties for using federal land and resources, hard-rock mining operations have never paid the government a dime. The current law is grossly outdated, does nothing to protect the land from despoilment, and is a huge rip off of the government and the taxpayer.
For 135 years, the mining industry has been allowed to walk away with gold, silver and other precious metals from federal lands without paying any compensation to federal taxpayers. Here's a handy "School House Rock" -style video that helps explains it all.
Continue readingSunlight Still Needed
We think the USA Today editorialists have got it right: the new ethics laws haven't meant the end to the perks or ways for lobbyists to curry favor with lawmakers. We never really expected it to (I mean, we weren't exactly born yesterday...). You can't legislate good behavior. And that's why Sunlight's work urging full transparency for the work of Congress and its members is so hugely important.
Today's edition also includes an opposing view op-ed from Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid where he attempts to make the case that he and his fellow Democrats have delivered on their promise to end the status quo environment of corruption in Congress. Watchdog journalists have shown how lawmakers and lobbyists have conspired to get around travel restrictions and gift bans. Plus, when the Senate passed the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, the practice of earmark abuse was preserved by a slight of hand by Sen. Reid and his fellow senators, putting anonymity back in the process.
Continue readingPromiseKeeper
There was a really important money and politics story yesterday on the front page of The New York Times. It noted that the Democrats are now getting more money from the health care sector of givers than the Republicans. (Historically, health care has always given more to the GOP.) Candidate Clinton is getting the most of the dough. The Times, working with our friends at the Center for Responsive Politics, found the industry is giving to get an inside track with the potential next president.
No great surprise here and the story confirms the reason. It quotes an advisor to healthcare corporations: "For many people in the industry," he said, "these contributions are a defensive measure. Health care is the No. 1 domestic policy issue, and they want access, a seat at the table." And another quote: "Everybody in the industry knows that health care reform is on its way," said the president of the Greater New York Hospital Association. "You have only two decisions: sit on the sidelines or get on the field," he adds.
Maybe we need to start up a new site:how about Promisekeeper.com?
Continue readingRegrets
Thank goodness this is not a post about the World Series.
Jeff Jarvis highlights Craig Silverman's blog Regret the Error and his book by the same title which chronicles mistakes by journalists. Jeff makes the point that in the world of Web 2.0, journalists can't hide from their mistakes, and they should rush to admit and correct the regrettable yet inevitable errors.
Well said, Jeff. Imagine if the concept were applied more widely.
I think I'd like to make a banner of these two sentences: "In the end, this is about instilling an ethic of transparency -- even about our fallibility and foibles -- in journalism, professional and amateur. It is about being unafraid to speak in our imperfect human voice instead of hiding behind the cold, castle walls of the institution." I'd hang that banner across the Capitol dome in Washington.
Continue readingThis is Not Transparency
At first I thought this was a joke, but it's not. From the Keystone State we hear that Pennsylvanian officials have decided not to publish the locations of its polling places. What?
The spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of State said that they made the decision after considering the bombings in Spain days before the 2004 national elections. (Did anyone tell the folks up in Pennsylvania that the bombings in Spain were of trains, not polling places? Wouldn't it be more logical to beef up security around train stations and rail lines rather than hide the location of polling places?)
Besides running afoul of the state's open records law and making coordinated statewide voter-mobilization strategies more difficult, Pennsylvania's action will make it that much more difficult for citizens to vote. America has enough trouble with its elections without playing hide and seek with the voters. This is beyond ridiculous.
Continue readingFollow The Money
Earlier this week, the Senate passed the FY2008 Labor, HHS and Education Appropriations Bill (S.1710). Besides including $150 billion for the various departments, the bill also includes a public access mandate requiring all research funded by the National Institutes of Health be made available to other researchers and the public. The provision has been the Holy Grail of the Open Access Movement, a wide collection of scientists, researchers, universities, libraries, and organizations advocating for the funding of specific medical research. The coalition wants peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature to be made available online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. This, they believe, will be a big step in removing barriers to serious research. After all, this is research done with public dollars.
Sen. James Inhofe tried his best to sabotage the open access provision in the bill with two amendments, one eliminating it entirely and the other gutting it, as Andrew Leonard reports in Salon. Why, you might ask? Leonard says it's no coincidence that in this election cycle the senator has received over $13,000 from one of the largest for-profit publishers of scientific research in the world. The company, Reed-Elsevier, spent a total of $3,380,000 on lobbying in the United States in 2006. Inhofe was the largest recipient of Reed-Elsevier PAC money in 2006.
Continue readingWhy Tuesday?
Why Tuesday?, a cool new non-profit founded by New York attorney and civil rights activist Bill Wachtel, is using the capabilities of the Web 2.0 evolution to strengthen America's democratic process through increased voter participation. Founded in 2005, the group works to make election reform an issue politicians can't dodge. In an interview published this week by the LAist, Why Tuesday? executive director Jacob Soboroff says that their goal is to be the "woodpecker on the conscience of America", and advocate for making voting more secure, accessible and reliable. He says that they don't have the all the answers, but want to make sure election reform is an issue politicians, opinion leaders and ordinary citizens are talking about.
One way they do this is to encourage individuals to become correspondents...interview and video tape politicians on what they believe should be done to strengthen democracy and voting. They then ask the correspondent to post the video on their YouTube group.
Continue reading
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