At the end of September I was pleased to step into the larger role of Creative Director. Working with all of the different departments that make up Sunlight, instead of just one, was a big and interesting step. It involved a lot more work, but the most challenging part was starting to consider how our products, produced for all of our different departments, worked together. Looking at everything we've produced over the last 4+ years was overwhelming, so I set out to evaluate and make changes to at least SunlightFoundation.com by the end of the year.
Continue readingWould the Air Force block the government if it posted WikiLeaks cables?
According to the New York Times, the United States Air Force is blocking access to any web sites that have... View Article
Continue readingLeaks and Open Government
Some recent discussions of WikiLeaks have labeled information leaks as the silver bullet in creating a more transparent government. There... View Article
Continue readingLobbyist hired to head key congressional committee
Gary Andres, a lobbyist for Dutko Worldwide, has been hired by incoming chairman Fred Upton to be the staff director... View Article
Continue readingNew Financial Services Committee members raise money from finance sector
Eight of the twelve new members chosen to take seats on the House Financial Services Committee can count the finance,... View Article
Continue readingStatelight, Transparency in a Box: Pt. 4(a)
This is a continuation of Statelight, our series on advocating for open government change on a local level. Depending on... View Article
Continue readingThe Senate Should Change its Rules for Easy Transparency Fixes
At the beginning of each new Congress, both the House and the Senate have the opportunity to update their respective... View Article
Continue readingWikiLeaks Thoughts
This post was co-written by Ellen Miller and Mike Klein, Sunlight’s co-founders. The Sunlight Foundation was founded in 2006 with... View Article
Continue readingNation’s biggest banks benefit most from Fed program
Data recently disclosed by the Federal Reserve shows that one of its emergency lending programs, the Term Asset-Backed loan Facility or TALF, led to the purchasing of assets from 56 organizations--among them seven were also aided by the biggest bailout program, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Those seven financial firms benefited from $25 billion--or 35 percent--of the $71 billion in loans issued through through TALF.
More than two years after the financial crisis was touched off by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, when Congress, the Bush administration and independent agencies like the Federal Reserve took unprecedented actions to prop up bankers, brokers and other financial firms, the public is only now beginning to see detailed information on actions the government took that were considered secret before. While the Federal Reserve has released transaction level detail for TALF purchases, something that was ordered by Congress, it has withheld much of the underlying data for other emergency programs; Bloomberg.com reported that the Fed did not release information on the underlying securities purchased through the Term Securities Lending Facility program (TSLF) or the Term Auction Facility (TAF).
Leading by Example: Earmark Transparency
Due to the failure of Congress to act on President Obama's State of the Union call for a central database of earmarks, a number of NGOs had to build one from the disjointed and disparate disclosures on congressional websites. The database of earmark requests for 2011 was diligently compiled by WashingtonWatch.com, Taxpayers for Common Sense (both Sunlight grantees) and Taxpayers Against Earmarks. They had to troll through more than 39,000 requests sprinkled across congressional websites and deal with horrible data quality issues. As Daniel Schuman expanded on earlier this year, it ain't easy tracking earmarks.