Link Dump on Political Transparency
I had the opportunity to attend the Berkman@10 conference these past two days. I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts in the coming days, but I’ve blogged some of it at my blog, Copyrightings. However, one thing I wanted to highlight were a lot of people doing important work with government transparency. Here are some links, check them out:
- The Sunlight Foundation is behind much of this work and leads in taking the Internet and applying it to political transparency. They have more links that I may have missed.
- The Minnesota Post has applied this to their locale.
- MetaVid has Congressional video that are searchable.
- OpenCongress is open source so you can apply it to any political body, like Massachusetts.
- OpenSecrets tracks money in politics.
- MAPLight covers Congress and California politics.
- FedSpending tracks where contracts and grants awarded by the government go and whether they are competitive.
- Congresspedia is an editable encyclopedia on Congress.
- PublicMarkup allows people to collaborate to develop transparency legislation.
- Fortune 535 let’s people understand the wealth of politicians.
- Superdelegate Transparency Project seeks to shed light on those who have so much power.
$200 Oil
Where are the next generation planes which don’t need oil? Why aren’t the carriers placing a $50 million prize on the inventor that can solve that problem?
Inner-city crime - Back from the Brink - The Economist
This article perfectly sums up why I love the Economist. Not only is the content spot-on and insightful, it is often dripping with wonderfully dry sarcasm. Case in point: “Outside a liquor store, a policeman pats down a suspect. The suspect’s trousers are halfway down his thighs. You might think this is an impractical fashion for someone who often needs to run from the police.”
The blog of Kevin Donovan