Sunlight Foundation
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The Sunlight Foundation was founded in January 2006 with the goal of using the revolutionary power of the Internet and new information technology to enable citizens to learn more about what Congress and their elected representatives are doing, and thus help reduce corruption, ensure greater transparency and accountability by government, and foster public trust in the vital institutions of democracy. At the core of all of the Foundation's work is a focus the power of technology and the Internet to transform the relationship between citizen's and their government.
The Foundation's initial projects – from the establishment of a Congresspedia, the making of “transparency grants”[1][2] for the development and enhancement of databases and websites, and two separate efforts to engage the public in distributed journalism and offer online tutorials on the role of money in politics efforts – are based on the premise that the collective power of citizens to demand greater accountability is the clearest route to reform.
Sunlight aims to help citizens, journalists and bloggers be their own best watchdogs[3], both by improving access to existing information and digitizing new information, and by creating new tools and websites to enable all of us to pool our intelligence in new, and yet to be imagined, ways.
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[edit] Staff
- Ellen Miller, Co-founder and Executive Director
- Mike Klein, Co-founder and Chairman
- Bill Allison, Senior Fellow
- Larry Makinson, Senior Fellow
- Zephyr Teachout, National Director
- Paul Blumenthal, Research Associate
- Elliott Fullmer, Research and Program Assistant for the Congresspedia Project
Technology Advisors:
- Micah Sifry
- Andrew Rasiej
[edit] Projects Underway
[edit] Transparency Grants
Center for Media and Democracy. A one year grant to develop the Congresspedia, a joint project of CMD and the Sunlight Foundation. $95,000.
Center for Responsive Politics. A three year grant to create databases on lobbyists, 527s, personal financial disclosures and travel, and to expand campaign finance databases. $325,090.
OMB Watch. A three year grant to oversee and direct the exploratory work on creating an Accountability Matrix and to develop a database of government grants and contracts. $234,713.
The Project on Government Oversight. A one-time grant to support investigative reporting and blogging on the "revolving door" between the government and the private sector. $10,000.
The Institute on State Money and Politics. A grant to fund work on the creation of an API for disseminating the Institute's data into the Web 2.0 environment .The prototype API will be the first of its kind for dissemination of massive amounts of campaign-finance data. $15,000.
ReadtheBill.org. A grant to provide the initial funding for the public education efforts of this new organization, the leading advocate for open floor deliberations in the U.S. Congress, to require legislation and conference reports to be posted on the Internet for 72 hours before floor consideration. $200,000.
Room Eight. A grant to a blog that covers New York politics to expand its nonpartisan coverage to its congressional delegation through ongoing, scrutinizing coverage of each of the 29 New York congressional members, including their legislative and budgetary activities and earmarks. Room Eight will establish a number of new features including Congressional Wire and a Megabux Index calculation for a NY congressional member. $35,000.
WashingtonWatchdog.org. A grant to meet the immediate hardware needs of this online research service of federal data. This grant will enable all features of Washington Watchdog to be viewed and used simultaneously; increase the number of topics that can be developed; and increase the range and depth of the searchable information. $15,000.
[edit] Congresspedia
Congresspedia is the citizen's encyclopedia to Congress, which anyone can edit. Congresspedia is a non-profit joint project of the Center for Media and Democracy and The Sunlight Foundation and is a part of SourceWatch.
[edit] Sunlight Labs
Sunlight Labs is a Sunlight Foundation pilot project to prototype tech ideas to improve government transparency and political influence disclosure.[4]
Greg Elin and Micah Sifry are co-directors and Carl Anderson is a consultant to the Sunlight Labs.
[edit] Popup Politicians
"Popup Politicians is an AJAX-powered widget which contacts a remote database here at Sunlight to retrieve links we've selected for a politician. The single Javascript that powers the mouse-over "bubbles" is served from Sunlight Labs server along with the data. When you load the page, the Javascript looks for Technorati-styled link tags for Members of Congress on the web page and then dynamically modifies found links to add the rollover action and a mouse-over bubble."[5]
Links to Popup Politician Stories:
[edit] Sunlight Network
The Sunlight Network is the advocacy arm of the Sunlight Foundation. The Network is headed by Zephyr Teachout and it's first project is to award "a series of "mini-grants," in the $1,000 to $5,000 range, for local or regional nonprofit organizations and non-affiliated groups that have innovative approaches to strengthening the relationship between Members of Congress and the citizens they represent."[6]
[edit] Muckraking
[edit] Dennis Hastert's Real Estate Investments
On June 14th, 2006 Senior Fellow Bill Allison reported that House Speaker Dennis Hastert "has used an Illinois trust to invest in real estate near the proposed route of the Prairie Parkway, a highway project for which he's secured $207 million in earmarked appropriations." Hastert's 2005 financial disclosure form "makes no mention of the trust. Hastert lists several real estate transactions in the disclosure, all of which were in fact done by the trust. Kendall County public records show no record of Hastert making the real estate sales he made public today; rather, they were all executed by the trust." The story caused the Speaker's lawyers to threaten legal action for "false, libelous and defamatory" statements.
The story was subsequently picked up by the mainstream press including The Chicago Tribune, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Washington Post, Associated Press, NPR, The Hill, Salon, ABC News, among others. The local Aurora Beacon ran a two-part series on the Prairie Parkway and Hastert's land deal.
[edit] Hastert Real Estate Resources
- Bill Allison, "Dennis Hastert's Real Estate Investments," The Sunlight Foundation, June 14, 2006.
- Ed Morrissey, "Another Confluence of Pork And Influence (Update With Hastert Response, And Reader Response)," Captain's Quarters Blog, June 14, 2006.
- Ellen Miller, "How We Did It," The Sunlight Foundation, June 15, 2006.
- Mike Dorning and Andrew Zajac, "Records reveal Hastert's hand in land deal," Chicago Tribune, June 15, 2006.
- Dennis Conrad, "Speaker Hastert defends profits from land deals," Associated Press, June 15th, 2006.
- "The Pictures of Corruption: How Hastert Used Tax Dollars to Turn a $1.5 Million Profit," Think Progress, June 15, 2006.
- Lynn Sweet and Eric Herman, "Hastert's $2 million land deals questioned," Chicago Sun-Times, June 15, 2006.
- Rhonda Schwarz, "Land Deal Gives Hastert 300% Profit," ABCNews, June 16, 2006.
- Jonathan Weisman, "Lawmakers' Profits Are Scrutinized," Washington Post, June 22, 2006.
- Lynn Sweet, "Hastert should have revealed secret land trust," Chicago Sun-Times, June 22, 2006.
- Joe Conason, "Highway robbery," Salon.com, June 23, 2006.
[edit] Articles
- Jeffrey Birnbaum, "Aiming To Shed Light on Lawmakers," Washington Post, April 26, 2006.
- Elysha Tenenbaum, "New Group Sees Public Craving Ethics Reform," Roll Call, April 27, 2006.
- "Ellen Miller on C-Span's Washington Journal," C-Span, May 22, 2006.
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