Jose Antonio Vargas, politics and technology reporter from the Washington Post has stepped up to the plate. He's created his own YouTubeChannel and he says he's doing it in part to break down the barriers between reporters and his readers just as the Internet has done for candidates and voters. He's asking for story tips and ideas as well as telling us a little bit about what's on his mind. I watched his first installment and really liked what he had to say about how even he feels like an outsider in lobbyist/lawmaker haunts like The Palm (a well-known hang out for lavish dinners and deals).
What a brave new world this is. Candidates are certainly figuring this out and we're lucky that some reporters, like Vargas are there to help us sort through it all.
Continue readingYour Late Night Reading: CRS reports Courtesy of OpenCRS.com
Poor John. He can't quite get over his late night work habits. (Before he came to Sunlight to direct our Open House Project he worked a day job and indulged his fascination with politics between the hours of 10 PM and 4 AM).
Last night at 2 AM he sent this email:
I just finished reading the latest CRS report from August 26th on Congress and the Internet, linked in the latest Open House Project report, and was delighted to find that Sunlight and the Open House Project are specifically cited by Walter Oleszek (senior government analyst for CRS) for our work in promoting citizen access.
That it was Oleszek's report was particularly satisfying for me, since reading several of his introductory books on Congress (Congressional Procedures and the Policy Process, and Congress and Its Members) is what got me quasi proficient enough to get started.
John has some more extensive thoughts this morning.
Continue reading“I think I’m missing something really big . . .”
It's nice to have company among Foundations in understanding the potential of Web 2.0 for their grantees. The Overbrook Foundation recently undertook a study of its grantees' use of the Internet and founded mixed results, but a lot of interest by their grantees in getting up to speed. Most telling was this comment by one of the participants in the conversation: "I think I'm missing something really big, but I don't know what it is or how to find out what it is."
It's Overbrook's belief that the most effective organizations in the new digital age will be those who recognize these digital opportunities and quickly seize them.
We agree.
And Thompson Says He Supports Disclosure?
In regard to openness and transparency, would be presidential candidate Fred Thompson says he supports more disclosure. But the actions of his nascent campaign have raised serious red flags.
Fred Thompson is finally going to make his race official this Thursday, September 6. Why on that day? Does the that date have some special historical or sentimental significance? Is he avoiding appearing in the Sept. 5 GOP debate in New Hampshire as charged by the state's GOP chair?
It is most likely that Thompson's choice of dates, Sept. 6, allows him to exploit the quirky reporting dates of federal election law so that he can raise money without reporting it until after the key January primaries are finished. If he wins those early primaries, and become the likely nominee, we will not know who financed his campaign, as Jake Tapper has reported.
Continue readingEarmark Reform: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Taxpayers for Common Sense, a grantee of the Sunlight Foundation, last week released the first of two reports on what can only be described as the good, the bad, and the ugly of earmark reform. Their first analysis gives a roundup of what actions the House took and didn't take.
TCS gives credit to the House for the volume of information now available but takes the House to task for the way it has provided it. The data dumps allowed TCS to get its its excellent databases up before the final vote on almost every bill but frankly they had to work too hard to do it. I mean, if the House and Senate are going to provide this infomation why not just do it in a database form themselves? Why do nonprofits have to take raw data and put the data in a form so real people can actually use it?
Continue readingWidgets, Blidgets and Nods
As we recently reported, MAPLight.org and OpenCongress.org recently launched widgets to make it easy for anyone to keep track of the presidential money race, current bills and legislative issues on their site or blog. What good is political information if it's relegated to to just one Web site? As John wrote on the Open House Project blog, widgets and other new forms of data visualization help spread the information further and faster.
There's clear interest in adopting these widgets to surface information about the federal government in new ways and we love some of these early adopters. TechRepublican just recently incorporated the MAPLight.org presidential fundraising widget on its site and NTEN is planning on using
using MAPLight.org's new API.
Corruption Round Up
Josh Marshall's intrepid pursuit of truth and justice (and yeah, of corruption in high places too) is really unparalleled in the blogosphere. Today he provides a nifty summary of the all the corruption scandals in Congress this year. Read it and keep digging.
And we thought that the last Congress was the most corrupt in recent memory!
Continue readingThere’s Gold In Those Databases
Brody Mullins had a terrific story yesterday in the Wall Street Journal that raises questions about whether six members of the Paw family, who live in a modest neighborhood in San Francisco and who list their occupation as "gift shop owner," could possibly make $45,000 in political contributions to Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.
Obviously digging into numerous databases, Mullins discovered that the Paws live in a modest 1,280 square foot house that they recently refinanced for $270,000. The head of the household is a mail carrier earning $49,000 a year. His wife is a homemaker. Mullins also figured out that the Paw family contributions are nearly identical to donations made by a wealthy New Yorker -- Norman Hsu -- who once listed the Paw family home as his own address. Hsu is a big fund raiser for Clinton.
How does this much money come from a family that doesn't appear to have these kinds of financial resources? It raises questions in the minds of many campaign finance experts (including yours truly) as to whether they were illegal contributions.Were the Paws "reimbursed" for their generous contributions to Clinton by Hsu? Hsu and the Paws deny any wrong doing. But it sure makes you wonder.
Given the crush for cash by all the presidential candidates, there are lots of stories like this in these databases.
Update: The Washington Post reports that Hilliary Clinton sees no reason to return the contributions by either Hsu or the Paw Family. Further Update: After reports surfaced in the LA Times today that there is an outstanding warrant out of Hsu, the Clinton campaign returns his money.
Continue readingFAQ Update
Sunlight is updating our FAQs. I want to make sure we have your questions answered. So, what do you want to know about us beyond our criteria for being considered for a grant and who gives money to us? Leave your questions, and if we haven't thought of them already, we will try to include them in our updated post FAQ section.
Continue readingTa Da: Interview with Greg Elin
Greg Elin -- Sunlight's Chief Data Architect -- did a fascinating interview with Jon Udell last week. I have the daily benefit of Greg's insights and so I want to share this very insightful interview so you can too.
Jon has blogged about the interview here. Udell is an author, information architect, software developer, and groupware evangelist himself. He writes a monthly column for the O'Reilly Network. It's worth a regular read.
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