Politics

When writing articles on legislation for the Congressional wiki I work on, Congresspedia.org, I often look around at what the various public interest groups have to say about what's in a bill and what their take on it is. Many groups write their reports so well that I'd often like to just copy and paste their whole take into the wiki, exposing their message to its many readers. Unfortunately, all to often I'm stopped in my tracks by a copyright notice at the bottom of a group's website. Many - perhaps most - public interest groups are unnecessarily hamstringing their own effectiveness and reach by using the same copyright protections that prevent Mickey Mouse knock-offs and xeroxed Harry Potter books. Our copyright laws are designed to protect profits by keeping information from being freely disseminated, but unlike Disney or Simon & Schuster, most public interest groups want their research, opinions and publications to spread, unencumbered, through the public.

The advent of the Web has infinitely expanded that potential as reports no longer have to be mail-ordered or press releases picked up by reporters to get your message out. That is, unless you copyright your materials, preventing them from finding their way into Wikipedia, blogs or the classroom. You may even be copyrighting materials without knowing it - since 1989, U.S. law assumes an implicit copyright on all published materials, regardless of whether a webpage or document has a copyright notice.

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Lizzie Nolan, our communications assistant extraordinaire, has been compiling links of stories generated by APME's earmark project. I'm going to toss a few additional links her way, but if we're missing some, feel free to leave them in the comments section and we'll add them.

In the Denver Post, Anne C. Mulkern reports on the earmarks of Rep. Doug Lamborn and finds one of those "only in Washington" wordings that make the head spin:

Lamborn made seven requests for projects tied to specific companies. Of those, five were to businesses whose political action committees had given him campaign contributions.

Officials with two of the companies, Goodrich Corp. and Aeroflex Inc., said there's no connection between their contributions and their requests for earmarks.

The political action committees support lawmakers who back defense spending, both said.

The committee wants to help lawmakers who are the most responsive to their business needs, said Thomas Bezas, Aeroflex's vice president of government and trade.

"We want to do everything we can to make sure they stay in office," Bezas said. "The longer they stay in office, the more it benefits our company."

So they make contributions to a member who's most responsive to their business needs, who supports defense spending, but their business needs have nothing to do with earmarks, and awarding defense earmarks is unrelated to defense spending?

(from the OHP blog) 

Add another tally to the list of public conversations about federal data availability.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, part of Health and Human Services, is hosting another in their series of "Open Door Forums", to discuss Medicare Part D Data regulations. (See here for CMS's description of the new rule and its data availability implications, and here for an example of coverage of their conference call, and for conference call details.)

This is the nitty-gritty of public data availability. A new public project has created a complex and rich public data resource, detailing the ways that the federal government spends money on drugs through Medicare.

The compromise here isn't obvious. Whole scale release of the data would violate probably both beneficiary and commercial privacy, so that isn't really an option. This is, however, public data, with a very clear public benefit. A very large and new public program is generating a huge amount of new and potentially useful information about the way we use prescription drugs. CMS is struggling with how to balance privacy/commercial concerns with the public good involved in releasing the information.

Clear federal information availability guidelines would probably be helpful in cases like this, where there's an immense stake for everyone involved. Insofar as the information is public, then it should ideally be available for bulk public download and analysis, given that that arrangement doesn't violate other concerns. Negotiating a new terrain of public data benefits and pervasive data will take measured dialog and analysis (as I wrote on Friday), so it's heartening to see an agency engaged with the communities affected by their work. I wonder if there's a place for the public access community within the debate around Medicare data, although my knowledge of health issues makes opinionated involvement impossible.

For other examples of similar officially sponsored public conversations about public data, see the USPTO's Public PAIR discussions, the EPA's recent webcast, Sen. Durbin's broadband dialog, Rep. Honda's new education legislation, the development of the original e-gov act (partially done online), and the Open House Project.

So what happens when reporters around the country investigate earmarks, digging into resources like the exhaustive compendium of fiscal year 2008 earmarks put out by Taxpayers for Common Sense and the wealth of influence data that the Center for Responsive Politics assembles on Open Secrets, and then ask members of Congress about what they've found? Well, they get incredibly revealing defenses of how earmarks work, like this one from Rep. Tim Holden that was reported by the Republican Herald of Pottsville, Pa:

“People you do business with contribute to your campaign,” Holden said in a phone interview Friday. “This was a constituent of mine who was having trouble doing business with the Pentagon, having trouble getting through the bureaucracy.”

So are some members of Congress in business with their earmark recipients, exchanging help getting through the bureaucracies for campaign cash? That's what a remarkable project that the Associated Press Managing Editors, the Sunlight Foundation, scores of reporters at dozens of newspapers tried to find out.

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Earlier today, Lawrence Lessig spoke about Change Congress at the Free Press' fourth annual National Conference for Media Reform, being held this year in Minneapolis. As always, Larry gave a killer speech. You can watch an earlier speech he gave at the National Press Club in March when he launched Change Congress here. Which reminds me...

Not to be missed: In the current edition of The Nation, Christopher Hayes, the magazine's Washington editor, profiles Larry and Change Congress. It's an extensive profile and a good read. (And I say this not only because he quotes me!) You don't have to take my word for it, Cory Doctorow called the profile "fantastic." Hayes writes "playing David to various Goliaths (armed with a laptop as slingshot) is the defining narrative of Lessig's career." If you're a Lessig fan, it's a must read.  If you're unfamiliar with this bona fide and burgeoning cult hero, check it out...And join the revolution!

This would be the day to check out the work of Oil Change International. Specifically, their Follow the Oil Money project.

I'm at my second of the mega conferences that are put on by the folks at Free Press - the National Conference on Media Reform. It's an amazing gathering (this year in tornado beset Minneapolis) of experts, average citizens and advocates. It's actually hard to pick which panel to attend -- I've never seen so few people hanging out in the halls, which is certainly a tribute to the program itself. This year there are for more panels and experts on what's happening online - sessions on social networking, citizen journalism, legislation 2.0. You can watch many of the sessions live.

Micah Sifry, our senior strategic consultant, is using his new Nokia phone/video tool to upload conversations we are having with some of the people here directly to Qik.com

(cross posted from the Open House Project blog) 

Something pretty exciting is happening over at honda.house.gov; (Congressman Mike Honda's Web site). They have posted their new education related legislation on the site, along with justifications, background, endorsements, and even the ability to leave public comments through the blog area of the site.

This approach to introducing and building support for legislation recognizes the importance of real public input and evaluation, and gives the public the tools they need to understand what legislation is really about: an explanation, a place to link to, a summary, even a list of institutional support.

We're excited to see more legislative initiatives recognize the potential of public engagement online, and also to see an OpenCongress.org widget being used to help track the legislative details.

There's a tipping point somewhere ahead, where public expectations lead to advocacy and legislating functioning through the merits of arguments made in a public setting. We're certainly not there yet, but small steps like publicmarkup.org, legislation 2.0, and now Rep. Honda's online work are all steps in that direction.

So what will this really mean? OpenSecret.org has the answer.

Earlier this week, Daniel De Groot, writing at Open Left, linked to a fascinating 23-minute TED lecture given by technology futurist Ray Kurzweil. In the lecture, Kurzweil gives a mind-blowing display of how technological progress is happening exponentially and not linearly. De Groot says he hopes people will think about the impact this revolution will have on politics. This is worth watching

On Tuesday just as the campaigns moved into the general election phase, the Campaign Finance Institute (CFI) released an analysis of the fundraising being conducted by the Democrats and Republicans for their presidential conventions in Denver and Minneapolis-St. Paul. CFI estimates that corporate funds will pay for 80 percent of the $112 million combined price tag of the two conventions. How is that possible?!

CFI found that both parties are using local “host committees” to raise unlimited corporate contributions to pay for the conventions and the FEC and IRS decided that it’s OK for “host committees” to spearhead the fundraising, This created a huge loophole allowing corporate money to flow to the parties.

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PolicyMap.com launched last month. It's a very cool and fun site, especially if you're into mashing up maps with demographics...And which public policy geek isn't? It's an online mapping tool that allows you to easily research market and demographic data by geography throughout the United States - down to a census tract level. It includes literally thousands of indicators related to demographics, real estate markets, money and income, education, crime and more.

The site is a project of The Reinvestment Fund (TRF), a non-profit community development financial institution that works across the Mid-Atlantic region financing affordable housing, schools, businesses, supermarkets and other projects "that build wealth and opportunity for the people and places that need it the most." They say that they have long recognized the need for good data and analysis about neighborhoods. And through PolicyMap, they are generously sharing information they've collected over the past decade with the public.

Much of PolicyMap is free to the public. They offer subscription options for the features and proprietary data that they are not allowed to give for free. That part we don't like so much, but hey, this is worth a look.

Yesterday, Rep. Steve Pearce won the Republican primary for the Senate seat in New Mexico being vacated by Senator Pete Domenici.

CREW sez:

Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM), is a third-term member of Congress representing the second district of New Mexico. Rep. Pearce’s ethics issues stem from his failure to properly report a transaction on his financial disclosure report and from trading legislative assistance for campaign contributions.

Read all the details here.

Lobbying disclosure reports will finally get reviewed by an oversight body as a result of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA). The Government Accountability Office (GAO) began auditing the first quarter lobbying reports to determine compliance and noncompliance to the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 and subsequent amendments included in HLOGA. The GAO may ask for time sheets and restaurant and travel records to check to see if employees are meeting the lobbyist threshold. The audit results should be released around Sept. 30, 2008, six months after the initial quarterly report filing date. Michael Stern at Point of Order points out some issues that may prevent the GAO from requiring audited firms to turn over documents:

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In October 2006, Sunlight grantee OMB Watch set up FedSpending.org, a free, searchable database of federal government spending. Subsequent updates have allowed public access to approximately $16.8 trillion in federal government spending, with complete annual data from FY 2000 through FY 2006 and partial data available for FY 2007. The site was so successful that the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (FFATA) set up USASpending.gov within the Office of Management and Budget, which Congresspedia dubbed "the ‘Google' of federal spending" by bringing tremendous transparency to how and where government spends tax dollars. As the site says, it's searchable and accessible by the public for free, and includes for each federal award:

1. The name of the entity receiving the award;
2. The amount of the award;
3. Information on the award including transaction type, funding agency, etc;
4. The location of the entity receiving the award; and
5. A unique identifier of the entity receiving the award.

U.S. Sens. Tom Coburn and Barack Obama, the original sponsors of the FFATA in 2006, recognize there is more to be done. Moments ago, Coburn and Obama introduced the Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008 (S. 3077), which would require the federal government to go beyond summary data on contracts it currently posts.

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Yesterday, Dan Christensen had a report in The Miami Herald about two Florida Congressmen who are also brothers, Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart, receiving $7,100 and $3,000 respectfully from a Maryland company weeks and days before they signed on to be cosponsors of a bill prized by the company -- the Hanger Orthopedic Group (HOG), a Bethesda, Md., -based prosthetics company, is pushing the Group Health Plan Prosthetics Parity Act (H.R. 5615). The bill would broaden insurance coverage for its products (artificial limbs), putting them on par with other medical coverage. Christensen reports that the manufacturing of prosthetics is a $2.5 billion industry, but private insurance companies currently cap the benefits. According to the Center for Responsive Politics' Influence and Lobbying database, HOG has spent $70,000 so far in 2008 lobbying Congress, and $130,000 since last summer on this issue, according to The Herald.

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The Hill highlights a problem that we've seen far too often with personal financial disclosures. Lawmakers do not always follow the rules in properly filling out these important disclosure forms. More often than not, the public is not privy to the lack of disclosure because oversight is spotty at best. Sometimes it takes an unfortunate story to point out what is lacking from a financial disclosure form:

Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Calif.) could face fines for leaving a heavily indebted mortgage off her financial disclosure statement, according to campaign finance experts.

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OMB Watch sez:

Saturday's New York Times has an article about the White House's new policy setting deadlines for any regulations agencies intend to finalize during the Bush administration. The policy, outlined in a memo sent by Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, says, "Except in extraordinary circumstances, regulations to be finalized in this Administration should be proposed no later than June 1, 2008, and final regulations should be issued no later than November 1, 2008."

Bolten issued the memo under the guise of reversing "the historical tendency of administrations to increase regulatory activity in their final months" — commonly known as midnight regulations. In reality, the memo may simply change when the clock strikes midnight in order to insulate potentially controversial rules from disapproval by a new administration.

Read OMB Watch's analysis.

Our friends at MySociety.org have a new crowdsourcing project that's really neat.

They have added video of debates in the House of Commons on their TheyWorkForYou.com Web site and are asking individuals to help match up each speech with the corresponding video clips. Wow. They are crowd sourcing all the work that the technologists behind Metavid have been doing themselves for C-SPAN coverage of Congress. Recently Metavid has added ways for you to help too.

TheyWorkForYou.com provides a randomly-selected speech from Hansard, the printed transcripts of debates in Parliament. You can search the video for the correct snippet. You then timestamp the video by hitting one button button. 

 MySociety.org has set up a "top timestamper" contest as well. Check it out.