Quiz Time!

Which branch of the United States Government at the federal level doesn't even have one elected official? For the answer, try consulting the tags for this post!

Is Independent Government-Funded Media an Oxymoron?

Do We Have Freedom of the Press?: ""

(Via Let's Try Democracy.)

5 Ways Bloggers Can Use OpenCongress to Build Public Knowledge About Congress

5 Ways Bloggers Can Use OpenCongress to Build Public Knowledge About Congress: "

One of the best things about getting news online, be it on blogs or elsewhere, is that it’s so easy to take the information and dig in deeper. Since bloggers and online journalists can link to primary sources for their reporting, everyone can easily engage with the issues they care about on a deeper level.

Political engagement is what we care about the most at OpenCongress. We think it’s fundamental for fighting corruption, dysfunction and apathy in our government. That’s why we’re striving to make the best primary source information on Congress for political bloggers to use. Every page on OpenCongress gives you—

• The best one-page summary — all the crucial official information on bills, issues, senators and reps. is available at-a-glance on a single page.


• The ability to write your members of Congress — login (or register) to your free ‘My OpenCongress’ account, and emailing your federal elected officials about a bill is just one click away.


• A chance to create political networks — use our pages to coordinate actions with people that feel the same way as you on an issue. OpenCongress pages have created powerful coalitions that have affected legislation.


• Information in context — Rather than just showing bills, senators, reps. and issues, we let you know you which ones people are paying the most attention to on the internet and which ones are ‘hot.’

Here are five ways bloggers and journalists can use OpenCongress right now to help shed more light on D.C. and give people the information they need to hold power accountable:

1) Always Give a Link When You Write About Bills

Too often, bloggers and journalists don’t give a link when they write about bills in Congress. Sometimes they don’t even tell readers exactly which bill they’re talking about. Providing a link to a bill turns a blog post into an opportunity for real political engagement because it gives your readers a chance to get involved by doing their own research and taking action. Plus, links go a long way to boost the authority and value of your posts.

We have pages for every single bill in Congress. You can find ‘hot’ bills here, and you can use the search bar in the upper right to find all other bills. Our bill pages combine official information about Congress with news and blog coverage, and the social wisdom of our users. See a sample bill page by clicking here.

As a bonus, every time you link to a bill on OpenCongress, your post will automatically show up on that bill’s OpenCongress page in the blog or news coverage feed. OpenCongress is the most popular government transparency site in the U.S., and we’ve had some reports of links on our bill pages creating a lot of traffic.

2) Link to the Exact Provision You’re Talking About

When you write about a specific provision in a bill, you can use OpenCongress to give your readers a link directly to the provision you’re talking about so they can read it in context for themselves. This way you can have the authority and trust that a primary-source link gets you, even when you’re writing about a single line of text, or a single word, within a gigantic, 1,000+ page bill.

To generate the links, just scroll over any section of legislative text on an OpenCongress bill page and a ‘permalink’ button will appear. Click the button to create a custom url that you can use to bring your readers directly to the part of the bill you are writing about.

3) Show People How Their Members of Congress Voted

Every time Congress takes a vote on a bill, amendment or nomination, OpenCongress creates a page that shows how every member of Congress voted. Linking to our roll call pages lets your readers dig down to see how their own senators and representatives voted. Then they can either email their elected officials in one click from the OpenCongress page to tell them how they feel about their vote, or remember the vote for when election time comes around.

You can find roll call pages on the ‘actions and votes’ tab of bill pages, or at our main roll call page.

We also offer the ability to link to vote position breakdowns by party, so, for example, you can easily share a link to the Democrats who voted ‘no’ on health care, or the Republicans who voted ‘aye’ on the stimulus.

4) Give an Unbiased Way to Learn About Members of Congress

People want to know who their representatives and senators actually are and what they actually stand for. But too often, that information is hidden by spin and bias. At OpenCongress, we have comprehensive, fact-based pages for every member of Congress including information on their voting history, bill sponsorship and co-sponsorship, committee assignments, biography and much more.

Members of Congress’s official pages are full of tailored information and politically-convenient statements. Wikipedia pages don’t have comprehensive information on actual bills and votes. When you write about the congresscritters, there’s no better place to link to than OpenCongress to give your readers an unbiased source to learn all about them. Our pages are built on raw data — members of Congress can’t hide from the facts we present.

5) Link to Race Pages to Build Knowledge About Candidates

As the mid-term election season ramps up, we’re providing simple pages that give you the basic facts for each Senate and House race. The 2010 RaceTracker is a non-partisan, fully-referenced, open-source and crowd-sourced wiki project tracking every congressional race, nationwide.

So, when you’re talking about Sen. Arlen Specter re-election chances, you can easily share information on his challengers from the left and the right. RaceTracker pages show you who’s a confirmed candidate, who’s considering, and who is just rumored to be running. They also show you how much money each potential candidate has raised, and give you links to get more background info about each candidate.

What resources on Congress do you want that we aren’t providing? Leave a comment on this post or email us at writeus@opencongress.org and we’ll build it if it is technically possible.

OpenCongress is a non-partisan, non-profit public resource website — we encourage you to link back to this post and share what you find here with friends and bloggers. Thanks for using OpenCongress to help build factual public knowledge about Congress.

Read all blog posts here, or subscribe to our RSS feed to keep up with what’s really happening in Congress.

"

(Via Open Congress : Blog.)

Kucinich Right, Greenwald Wrong

Kucinich Right, Greenwald Wrong: "

Kucinich Right, Greenwald Wrong

By David Swanson

On Democracy Now! on Tuesday, Congressman Dennis Kucinich said he was working on a Constitutional Amendment to address both 'Citizen's United' and 'Buckley v. Valejo,' meaning the Supreme Court decisions giving corporations outrageous and destructive powers of 'free speech' and defining the spending of money as 'speech.'

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(Via Let's Try Democracy.)

Grayson Introduces Bills to Dull SCOTUS Ruling

Grayson Introduces Bills to Dull SCOTUS Ruling: "

The newest installment in his 'Save Our Democracy' platform, firebreathing Congressman Alan Grayson introduced two new bills yesterday to dull the impact of last weeks Supreme Court decision, which determined that corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money on elections. Grayson called the 5-4 ruling the 'worst since Dred Scott.'

The first bill, patriotically titled the 'America is for Americans Act,' bans political expenditures from any corporation with foreign owners. 'Foreigners cannot vote in our elections, so they should not be allowed to spend unlimited money to buy votes either,' Grayson said in a press release. 'If we do not limit foreign influence, we will soon have the Distinguished Member from Russia or the Esteemed Senator from Saudi Arabia.'

The second bill introduced last night demands that companies 'cannot have it both ways' when it comes to 'campaign propaganda.' The 'Pick Your Poison Act' would force corporations to choose between lobbying congress to further their political agenda and supporting candidates in election years. 'If they want to use hired guns to influence lawmakers,' Grayson said, 'they need to stay out of the election process.'

Among the six bills Team Grayson says can 'Save our Democracy' are measures to implement a 500% excise tax on corporate contributions, apply antitrust laws to PACs, and require corporations to disclose SEC filings on funds used to influence public opinion.

Graysons outspoken demeanor has earned the freshman congressman the unfortunate reputation as the liberal antidote to GOP Reps. Michele Bachmann and Steve King, both prone to exaggeration and ideological grandstanding. But these measures could strike a chord among lawmakers who think the Supreme Court went too far last week by extending the free speech rights for individuals to massive corporations.

Follow Ben on Twitter. 

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(Via MoJo Blogs and Articles.)

Chump Change

Chump Change: "

Craig Jennings at OMB Watch visualizes the deficit reduction we can expect to see from the plan to freeze all non-defense discretionary spending that President Obama will announce tonight:

Beyond the fact that the freeze is just a small gesture in the face of a giant, systemic problem, Jennings adds this warning:

And that Obama is merely putting a cap — and not an across-the-board freeze — on domestic discretionary spending is especially troubling, because when congressional appropriators working within this framework get down to business this summer, it will be they who decide which programs get cuts and which programs get bumps. And in Washington, those with the loudest political voice (i.e moneyed) will see their favored programs thrive, while marginalized populations who can’t afford big time lobbyists will see their programs cut.

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(Via Open Congress : Blog.)

Kaptur resolution vs. Citizens decision

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-hc13/show

Resolution to Get Rid of the FILIBUSTER!!!!

H.Res.1018 Requesting the Senate to adjust its rules to reflect the intent of the framers of the Constitution by amending the Senate's filibuster rule, Rule 22, to facilitate the consideration of bills and amendments.: "Requesting the Senate to adjust its rules to reflect the intent of the framers of the Constitution by amending the Senate's filibuster rule, Rule 22, to facilitate the consideration of bills and amendments."

(Via Open Congress : Top 20 Most Viewed Bills.)

SCOTUS: Foreign Corporations Have Rights, Too!

SCOTUS: Foreign Corporations Have Rights, Too!: "

Politico's Josh Gerstein has a great story today pointing out that, in the wake of yesterdays Supreme Court decision allowing corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on elections, theres really nothing to stop foreign companies from supporting or opposing US candidates. It would be as easy as setting up a US subsidiary and having the subsidiary spend the money. Some of Gersteins sources argue that foreign corporations would be reluctant to interfere in US politics because it could bring bad press. But that doesnt seem like much of a deterrent to the worst corporations. Do foreign corporations like Gazprom that are largely state-owned really care what the US press writes about them? Law professor Mark Kleiman has more: 

One aspect of the ruling that hasn’t gathered much attention: as far as I can tell, the analysis doesn’t distinguish between domestic and foreign corporations.  Not that it would matter much, since a foreign corporation can always establish a domestic subsidiary, or buy an American company:   Cities Service, for example, is a unit of PDVSA, the Venezuelan state oil company.  So the ruling allows Hugo Chavez to spend as much money as he wants to helping and harming American politicians.   If the Russian, Saudi, and Chinese governments don’t currently have appropriate vehicles for doing so, you can count on it:  they soon will.

Nor is this a problem that can be handled by 'disclosure.'  The ad on TV praising the opponent of the congressman who did something to annoy Hugo Chavez won’t say 'Paid for by Hugo Chavez.'  It will say 'Paid for by Citizens for Truth, Justice, and the American Way,' which in turn will have gotten a contribution from 'Americans for Niceness,' which in turn will have gotten a contribution from a lobbyist for a subsidiary of Cities Service that no one has ever heard of.

This week just keeps getting better.

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(Via MoJo Blogs and Articles.)

Campaign Finance Refomers: What Now?

Campaign Finance Refomers: What Now?: "

As of Thursday, ExxonMobil is allowed to run election-day phonebanks. The Supreme Court ruled, 5-4, that corporations should be free to make independent expenditures in political campaigns. The decision overturned most existing campaign finance law and dealt a severe blow to supporters of campaign finance restrictions. But it didn't take reformers by surprise. Groups like Common Cause, Public Campaign, and Change Congress have been anticipating this defeat for months. In a confidential internal memo obtained by Mother Jones last year, Common Cause and Public Campaign warned, 'Without an aggressive media effort, reporters will likely call a bad decision in Citizens United another sign that campaign finance reform is a fools errand.' That effort continued with a massive press call midday Thursday, with the presidents of the top reform groups going on at length about their problems with the decision. 'It is a disaster,' said Nick Nyhart, the president of Public Campaign, told reporters. 'Its an immoral decision that puts the Roberts court on the side of Wall Street and big money lobbyists.' That was typical. 

So what's the reformers' plan? Last month, Mother Jones reported that disparate reform groups had been merging staff, budgets, and agendas to coordinate their efforts to deal with the fallout of the Supreme Court decision and to push for public financing of elections. On Thursdays press call, Bob Edgar, the president of Common Cause, confirmed that strategy. 'For the past year weve moved towards having a specific campaign with a campaign structure,' he said. 'A whole host of groups have put together a common staff, a common budget, a common agenda to get the financial resources together and the staffing in place.' Common Cause and Public Campaign, the two older, DC-based groups, combined their campaign finance reform teams late last year to focus their energy on pushing for publicly-funded elections. Theyll be the good cops, playing the Washington 'inside game,' working with Capitol Hill allies like Rep. John Larsen (D-Conn.) to sign up more support for reform. Change Congress, the newer organization founded by Larry Lessig, will play the bad cop, attacking members of Congress who dont support reform and accusing them of corruption. 

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(Via MoJo Blogs and Articles.)

Do you still like the Senate?

So something came to me while reading David Swanson's excellent new book, Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union: a lot of people complain that we must have a Senate in order to avoid really populous states from pushing smaller states out of debates. Do our intuitions hold, though, when we consider a point brought up by Swanson--that representatives of around 11.25% of the country's population (DC and territories not included) have the numbers to filibuster any bill? If we're talking equal representation, why shouldn't we give all 524 counties in the country 1 vote instead of giving each state 2 votes? Isn't that the logical conclusion? Under such a scheme, though, residents of Ontario County, NY would have 95x the voting power as the 9.5 million living in LA County, CA. Absurd, right? Well why should Wyomingites have 70x the voting power as those living in CA!?

Here's an idea: get rid of the Senate! In guarding against the mobocracy of the populous states, it has paradoxically become a tool for mobocracy of the few. Why should 11.25% of the population be able to derail the agenda of the rest of the 88.75% of the country?

After health-care reform, Senate reform

After health-care reform, Senate reform: "Washington Post - By Ezra Klein - Dec. 27 (Opinion) - To understand why the modern legislative process is so bad, why every Senator seems able to demand a king's ransom in return for his or her vote and no bill ever seems to be truly bipartisan, you need to understand one basic fact: The government can function if the minority party has either the incentive to make the majority fail or the power to make the majority fail. It cannot function if it has both.

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(Via NewsTrust - Politics - Most Recent Stories.)

Ballot initiatives

I was just thinking about possible misuse of the referendum process, which took me to thinking about the ballot initiative process. Ballot initiatives should be publicly funded to get on the ballot (let's say with a $25/person max contribution). If ballots were only to appear on the ballot if enough money has been raised (e.g., $500,000), this would translate into a minimum number of supporters and would cover the cost of putting the initiative on the ballot. (It saddens me that I need to specify no business contributions...I'm sorry, but companies just aren't people and so they do not have the right to free speech). From there, the ballot should just happen...no huge mudslinging PR campaign. No nothing. It's time for people to be engaged in governance by educating themselves about the issues! One thing that would help with this is if all legal documents were written in simple english! I never want to read another "Whereas" again!

What about the poor, who might not have the disposable time to educate themselves as they try to hold down 2 or more jobs? If I were president, there would be a living wage in place of the woefully inadequate minimum wage. There, problem solved!

VIDEO: David Swanson on Healthcare Reform and Democracy Reform

VIDEO: David Swanson on Healthcare Reform and Democracy Reform: "

Nine more parts to this video, including lively Q and A here.

read more

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(Via Let's Try Democracy.)

A Party Is Not a Movement

A Party Is Not a Movement: "The difference between parties and movements is simple: Parties are loyal to their own power regardless of policy agenda; movements are loyal to their own policy agenda regardless of which party champions it. This is one of the few enduring political axioms, and it explains why the organizations purporting to lead an American progressive 'movement' have yet to build a real movement, much less a successful one."

"Of course, frustrated progressives might be able to forgive the groups who promised different results, had these post-election failures prompted course corrections.

For example, had the left's preeminent groups responded to Democrats' health care capitulations by immediately announcing campaigns against these Democrats, progressives could feel confident that these groups were back to prioritizing a movement agenda. Likewise, had the big antiwar organizations reacted to Obama's Afghanistan escalation plans with promises of electoral retribution, we would know those organizations were steadfastly loyal to their antiwar brand."

read more

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(Via Truthout - Opinion.)

The voice of business

Echoing what I said earlier in this blog re: separation of business and state:

Yet the word “corporation” appears nowhere in the constitution or Bill of Rights. “It is scarcely conceivable that the drafters of the constitution had anything resembling corporate entities in mind when they drafted the Bill of Rights,” argue Robert Monks, a veteran corporate-governance activist, and Peter Murray, in a recent essay. All the individuals with a stake in a company have the right to express their views freely, the argument goes, so there is no need for the legal fiction of the corporate person to have such rights.

The voice of business: "Economist - Sep. 09 (News Analysis) - ... the word ‘corporation’ appears nowhere in the constitution or Bill of Rights. ‘It is scarcely conceivable that the drafters of the constitution had anything resembling corporate entities in mind when they drafted the Bill of Rights,’ argue Robert Monks, a veteran corporate-governance activist, and Peter Murray, in a recent essay. All the individuals with a stake in a company have the right to express their views freely, the argument goes, so there is no need for the legal fiction of the corporate person to have such rights.

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(Via NewsTrust - Politics - Most Recent Stories.)

Supreme Court Appointments

Many people are talking about amending the Constitution to limit Supreme Court justices careers. Where are people talking about electing (rather than appointing) justices? This would be one way of a check and balance from the electorate onto the government.

Separation of Business and State

In light of the imminent Supreme Court decision on Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, a free speech case that stands to gut election law, I found myself agitated over the lack of a clause in the Constitution forbidding corporatocracy--we have separation of church and state. Given the incredible foresight of our Founding Fathers, I find it hard to believe that they wouldn't include something like this if they were around today.

Swanson Strikes Again!

"I'm Finally Hopeful":

I'm a progressive and you're a progressive, but I'm starting to find reason to hope as you're coming off a giant sugar high and plunging into the deep despair of one betrayed and scorned. What gives?

1. I don't expect much of elections, whereas you imagine each time, contrary to all preceding evidence, that they create transformative change. If you expect elections alone to do much, then you're guaranteed to be very excited and then very disappointed, repeatedly, and almost frequently enough for people to catch on.

2. I don't expect much of presidents and don't want presidents to have the power to enact transformative change, whereas you think of presidents as properly making laws. I want Congress to recover the powers to make laws, begin and end wars, raise and spend money, ratify treaties, and so forth. I don't want presidents making laws with signing statements and orders and secret memos, and each subsequent president deciding which of these laws to overturn. I also don't want Congress asking a president what sort of laws to make. I want Congress asking us.

3. When I watched what candidate Obama did and said, I mostly paid attention to what he did and said, whereas you mostly paid attention to what you wished he'd said or what you fantasized that he was secretly thinking. And when he said the right things, I didn't believe him.

4. When President Obama, whose campaign had taken well over 10 times the money from the (un)health industry as most senators, quietly told Congress what to do on healthcare, and when the progressives in Congress self-censored and pre-compromised with Obama before opening the discussion by proposing the weakest reform they would support, I didn't dream about a lone superhero championing the cause of healthcare against a corrupt legislature.

5. You, and all of those joining you in a growing sense of disappointment and despair, are an active participant. Most of you are not going to abandon the cause. You're going to shift gears and push forward. That's how your disappointment becomes my hope, and hopefully your own. While I don't expect elections alone to change everything, I do expect huge changes from active people in between elections.

6. Most struggles for peace and justice have been harder and longer than this one and have advanced in fits and starts, with set-backs and losses along the way. If we actually make major progress toward taking control of our government in Washington, D.C., we will be met by a crackdown on civil rights, all variety of police abuse and intimidation, and more lies than Fox News could spew in a decade. I will take those set backs as encouraging compliments to our progress, because final success never comes without that sort of reaction coming first.

7. We have prevented the widening of the wars beyond where they are. We have prevented a war on Iran. We have turned the American people against war, including in Afghanistan. We have saved Social Security. We have stopped Bush's possible pardoning of his subordinate's crimes. The Congressional Progressive Caucus is for the very first time taking a firm stand on something -- which is far more significant than the weak healthcare measure on which they are taking the firm stand. Our positions are advancing in the polls, and we are building media outlets that will increasingly be able to communicate them.

8. Courts are beginning to turn against the crimes of the Bush-Cheney regime, with recent rulings that threaten the immunity of John Yoo and John Ashcroft, and the Justice Department has opened an investigation into torture that could be expanded into something useful if we work at it.

9. The current Congress will soon have been in session as long as a woman carries a baby, and yet with very little to show for it. People are catching on, and they are realizing how much more effective it is to lobby their congress members than it is to lobby the executive. They are learning the value of independent organizing to take their demands to their representatives, rather than being told by DC-based astroturfers how to ask for only what their congress members want to be asked for.

10. Nobody imagined 10 years ago a world in which we would have presidents and vice presidents confessing to torture on television. Nobody imagines now the radically altered progressive nation we can bring into being 10 years hence. Except us. We imagine it. And therefore we can create it.

11. If 51 senators were to eliminate the filibuster rule, the Congress could pass a progressive agenda within a month, including healthcare and the Employee Free Choice Act. A few months from now, the labor movement is going to realize that. A few years from now it is going to be a labor movement worthy of the name. Then, look out!

12. When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run, there can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun, yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one, for the union makes us strong.

David Swanson is the author of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book

Feingold's constitutional amendment

Feingold's amendment: Feingold (Begich, Durbin, and McCain) is sponsoring a bill that would amend the Constitution to provide that Senate vacancies are always filled by a special election instead of governor's appointment. The LA Times has written an op-ed in opposition to this amendment ("Feinstein Right, Feingold Wrong"), which is interesting to me for two reasons: it further divides me on how I feel about this issue and it raises a very important question that few have talked about, but that would cut across many of the electoral problems we have nowadays--why do we even have states?

'State's rights' has a bad reputation, a hangover from Southern resistance to racial integration, but as long as states exist (and have equal representation in the Senate) they ought to be able to decide whether waiting for an election is worth an empty seat in the Senate.

It falls short, though, of asking the next logical step of 'Why nation(state)s'?