OBAMA"S CHANGE.GOV WEBSITE ENCOURAGES PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY

Change.gov Content Now Under Creative Commons License

Commentary by Richard Esguerra

December 1st, 2008

Source: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/12/change-gov-content-now-under-creative-commons-lice

In the last few days, President-elect Obama's transition team took a significant stride towards a more open government by licensing the content of Change.gov under a Creative Commons Attribution license. Using that license essentially means that the transition team is allowing others to freely share and remix what's posted there, provided that reposts are attributed to Change.gov. The move is a victory for the public and the many advocates for a more wired, participatory democracy.

It's also another reminder of the importance of Creative Commons, which affords creators an opportunity to opt for something less than Disney-style copyright restrictions. By embracing a CC license, the Obama team sets a valuable example for others in government, many of whom may have defaulted to "all rights reserved" without considering other options.

While Change.gov has experienced some growing pains, the transition team appears to be making a real effort to use the website as a legitimate location for its conversation with the American public. The preview post of the President-elect's planned weekly address (posted on Thanksgiving Day) includes links to multiple sources — an embedded YouTube video, a link to the same video posted to Yahoo! Video, and a high-resolution .mov file — with the Creative Commons license guaranteeing that the public can freely share, remix, comment, and report on the President-elect's statement.

The switch to Creative Commons licensing is encouraging and we hope that it is a herald of more pro-open government changes to come.

INTERNET FUELS PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY

Commentary: Internet can strengthen democracy

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/08/26/newmark.democracy/

August 26, 2008 -- Updated 0117 GMT (0917 HKT)

By Craig NewmarkSpecial to CNN

Editor's Note: Craig Newmark was working as a San Francisco-based computer programmer in the 1990s when he started e-mailing friends about local events. His simple Web site has grown into Craigslist, which provides classified ads and forums for more than 500 cities in over 50 countries. This commentary by Newmark, a Barack Obama supporter, is one of a series from McCain and Obama supporters attending party conventions.

"How do we build what some call 'participatory democracy'?" asks Craig Newmark.

SAN FRANCISCO, California (CNN) -- Like most people, I really don't want to be bothered with politics. On a gut level, it seems to be the province of the popular kids, and I'm a nerd. (Plastic pocket protector, thick black glasses taped together, that was me in school.)

Now, my day job is customer service for a Web site I founded, helping tens of millions of people. I'm in touch with a lot of everyday human concerns, that's the gig. Every day, I connect with people across America who want to make things better, a new generation committed to civic engagement.

To that end, people are using the Internet as the platform for tools for elections and governance. Speaking as a nerd, I love the technology, but what really matters is the means by which we all can use the Net to strengthen democracy in the USA. We can address practical problems and also better realize the vision of the Founding Fathers.

Nationally, the Howard Dean presidential campaign pioneered the use of the Net for grassroots campaigning, involving ordinary people in the election process. The Net proved to be an effective tool for organization and fundraising. However, this campaign didn't quite reach critical mass, perhaps because there weren't enough Americans with high-speed Internet connections at the time.

In this electoral cycle, we see campaigns like the Barack Obama campaign using the Net for organizing and fundraising very successfully. Additionally, we're seeing the Obama campaign use the Net to battle disinformation campaigns. For example, rumors that he's a Muslim or wants to raise taxes for ordinary Americans.

The key is that the campaigns manage to get ordinary people involved, including people like me who'd rather not be bothered with politics.

After the participatory campaign, how do we build what some call "participatory democracy" or "networked democracy?"

Here are several areas where people are starting to make that real:

311: Customer service for government -- In New York and San Francisco, California, people can call 311 for city services. For example, you can get a pothole fixed, or find out how to get a license. In the future, it will be possible to make direct use of 311 systems over the Net. I feel all levels and departments of

U.S. government should provide customer service this way.

New York and San Francisco have made a good start, and interestingly enough, the Transportation Security Administration is doing a good job with its

blog. Transparency and accountability -- Money plays a much larger role in government than a democracy can survive. Some companies find it's easier to lobby for privileges than to compete in a free market. A notorious example of that involves "no-bid contracts." Sunlight Foundation is the hub of a network that allows people to blog about how lobbyists and others use cash in ways that might not survive public scrutiny.
Take a look at MapLight.org, Pass223.com, and Congresspedia.org, for examples. I feel all government action should be made visible to the public, probably including all contributions by lobbyists.

Supporting the troops -- There are small things we can do, like supporting the new GI Bill and helping get adequate medical care for veterans and their families and the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans of America. The Net helps veterans in obvious ways, like awareness and fundraising. Even better, it connects citizens with the soldiers and military families who need a hand, like the Yellow Ribbon Fund, Adopt A Platoon and Any Solider. The theme is to get help directly to the people who need it, with the least middlemen possible. The focus of much of this is the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, who helped pass the new GI Bill.

The Permanent Town Hall -- Americans overall are pretty smart and we know how to run things, providing we can overcome the privileged trying for more privileges. The problem involves too many voices providing a wide range of ideas of varying quality. We need Internet-based platforms that people can use to voice needs and suggestions, with means by which the participants can rate the priority and usefulness of those statements.

Such systems exist in their infancy, like the ratings on Amazon.com and the filtering provided in Slashdot.org. The first of these is already happening and we need to recognize their importance and accelerate their adoption.

The last requires more work, but is more important. American leaders are surrounded by people who filter input and who can isolate the leader in a bubble of disinformation. (Symptoms include low approval ratings or not knowing how many houses one owns.)

iReport.com: Watch Newmark's iReport endorsing Obama

However, if you know how Americans use the Net to talk, you can easily stay in touch with real people.

Speaking as a customer service rep, that's the real deal.

APPS FOR DEMOCRACY - INNOVATION CHALLENGE FOR PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY

iStrategyLabs Presents: Apps for Democracy - "An Innovation Challenge" to Visualize DC's Open Public Data

Last update: 6:00 a.m. EDT Oct. 20, 2008

Source: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/istrategylabs-presents-apps-democracy--/story.aspx?guid=%7B592BF682-4166-4171-8F5E-85B36A083A09%7D&dist=hppr

WASHINGTON, Oct 20, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- The District of Columbia's Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO), in collaboration with iStrategyLabs, today announced the launch of the Apps for Democracy - "An Innovation Challenge" for visualizing DC's public data. The intention of this competition is to reward technology developers with cash prizes and public recognition for creating applications that are useful for the DC government and the citizens, visitors and businesses of Washington, DC.

The contest will serve as a catalyst to visualize OCTO's data so it will be useful to the citizens of DC, improving their quality of life; foster innovation in the DC technology community resulting in startup formation and growth; solve the technology challenges of OCTO through more cost effective open collaboration; and work towards a new model for government/private sector/citizen cross collaboration that can be utilized repeatedly to solve OCTO's challenges and serve as an example for other municipalities.

Apps for Democracy will feature 60 cash prizes from $2000 to $100 dollars for a total of $20,000 in prizes. Developers and designers will compete by creating web applications, widgets, Google Maps-mashups (and other maps mash-ups), iPhone apps, Facebook apps, and other digital utilities that visualize OCTO's Data Catalog, which provides real-time data from multiple agencies to citizens - a catalyst ensuring agencies operate as more responsive, better performing organizations.

"The Apps for Democracy contest is part of our drive toward digital democracy in the nation's capital," said District CTO Vivek Kundra. "Especially in these difficult economic times, it's crucial to the government's mission to find more efficient and impactful methods for delivering an even higher level of service for a fraction of the cost. We are ushering in a new age of participatory democracy, one in which technology is developed by the people for the people."

Who: This contest is open to everyone.
What: Submission guidelines, meet-up notifications and awards structure can be found at appsfordemocracy.org. Submission must be release as open source code.
When: The contest starts 10/13 and ends at 11:59pm on 11/12. The awards ceremony will take place on 11/13. A kick-off happy hour will be hosted on 10/16 and 4 open innovation labs will hosted each weekend leading up to the deadline enabling participants to find collaborators and to work onsite among their fellow technologists. The official social media tag is #APPS08.

About iStrategyLabs:
iStrategyLabs is a digital agency focused on providing clients with interactive strategy, experiential marketing and content creation services. We believe in empowering the creative and technology communities by programming events and providing value to communities online and off in fun and innovative ways.

Visit www.istrategylabs.com or grab creative assets for articles/posts here.
SOURCE: iStrategyLabs
iStrategyLabs
Peter Corbett, 202-683-9980
peter@istrategylabs.com

CRAIGSLIST FOUNDER ON DIRECT DEMOCRACY THROUGH e-DEMOCRACY

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark in the following piece presents his thoughts on the possibilites for more direct democracy facilitated by the internet. He discusses both how the internet is already aiding participatory democracy at the grassroots level by providing more access to information through the alternative media of independent bloggers and news media, and how more transparency and accountability in government is acheived through this freer flow of information. He also discusses the future possibilities for e-Democracy, truly direct democracy achieved by every citizen casting their vote on legislation via the internet. - Editor

New technology brings us to old idea

By CRAIG NEWMARK 10/2/08 4:56 AM EDT
Source: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14183.html

Americans this election season are using the Internet to vastly expand their ability to participate directly in our democracy, but it’s just a beginning. Over the next 20 years, our governments will adopt a form of direct democracy envisioned by the Founding Fathers that previously was impossible to carry out.

Two hundred years ago, Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin and the other forefathers of today’s bloggers embraced the notion that government should function with the consent of the governed. Key to the success of the idea was exploiting communications technology, including the printing press and the postal service.

Based on similar efforts in the ancient Roman republic and Britain, the Founders designed a government based on a small number of elected representatives, with a separate judiciary. Checks and balances were provided so that one group couldn’t seize power. A free press served as a further check against tyranny.

In recent years, the balances have seriously eroded, but at the same time, a new communication technology, the Internet, has flourished.

People use the Net as their own printing press, giving them a voice and a reach they’ve never had before, for better or for worse. They are networking at the grass-roots level more effectively than ever before.

In politics, Democrat Howard Dean pioneered use of the Net for organizing and fundraising in his 2004 presidential bid. He was ahead of his time, though, because broadband technology had not yet reached critical mass, with the resulting spike in traffic.

Given the low cost of Net advertising of any sort, it appears the 2008 election starts the transition from very expensive, top-down campaigns to less expensive, network-driven ones.

Following Dean’s example, many candidates this year are using the Net for fundraising and organizing with extraordinary effect. Barack Obama’s campaign is based largely on grass-roots networking and community organizing, with an eye toward boosting grass-roots participation in government. John McCain’s campaign has not tapped into the Net as systematically or effectively, but many McCain supporters are using it among themselves.

People also are using the Net to strengthen or debunk political claims, engaging in levels of fact-checking that the traditional press was unable or unwilling to do.

Currently, even sitting politicians with the best of intentions find it necessary to spend an inordinate amount of time fundraising rather than governing. This election accelerates the trend to something else: People are using the Net for governance in ways that have barely been noticed.

New York and San Francisco are experimenting with telephone customer service systems that soon will be complemented by Net-based systems. Using the Internet, people will be able to navigate through local government to get things done — the ultimate in pothole politics.

Another emerging area of grass-roots, networked democracy involves transparency and accountability. The idea is that if we all see how the sausage is made, it will facilitate reform throughout the country.

A lot of accountability data are already available to the public — but in forms that limit their use and accessibility. For instance, there are loads of information about lobbyist contributions to congressmen and what they presumably get in return, such as sweetheart contracts.

The Sunlight Foundation is harnessing a network of organizations to build online tools so anyone can examine the data. For example, MAPLight.org focuses on the connection between money and politics, and the Center for Media and Democracy runs Congresspedia.org, which is basically a Wikipedia-like site for the U.S. Congress. (Full disclosure: I’m on the board of Sunlight.)

It’s still a struggle sometimes getting the sun to shine in on Capitol Hill. Online access to Senate election data is being obstructed by Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and John Ensign (R-Nev.), but their efforts are being countered online by Pass223.com.

In the fullest expression of direct democracy, every citizen would vote on every piece of legislation; representative democracy was, until now, the best compromise. The new challenge is how to give many millions of citizens a voice in government without overwhelming the system.

There are two approaches, both of which rely on technology that is available but not yet fully exploited. In online democracy, people need verifiable identities, the online equivalent of a driver’s license. Today, one example is the “digital certificate,” which, if widely disseminated, could help positively identify people on the Net and minimize fraud.

Congressmen and Hill staffers tell me that messages from verified people in their districts carry far more weight than blind e-mails that possibly are mass-produced. In other words, communications from known constituents are read, but form e-mails may not be. That’s one step closer to networked democracy.

Another approach involves large-scale discussion boards where citizens with verified identities can discuss issues online. The challenge is sorting the wheat from the chaff, but a solution is to let citizens do the work by filtering up the best ideas. Pioneers in this sort of scheme include Slashdot.org, Digg.com, and even Amazon.com.

Such systems, in theory, need hundreds of millions of citizens. In practice, they would number far fewer. Most people, including myself, would rather not be bothered with politics. From my day job, I’d guess that the number of interested citizens would range from 1 percent to 10 percent of the population.

Universal access to such systems must overcome the “digital divide,” but I believe that could be solved by using mobile phones to almost universally plug citizens into the process.

However it is done, we’re on the verge of realizing the vision of democracy upon which America was formed, from the grass roots up. It’s time to recognize what’s happening and get serious about nurturing it.

Craig Newmark is the founder of and chief of customer service for Craigslist.

CALIFORNIA: ONLINE PROPOSITIONS

Propositions to the people, online

9:47 AM, September 17, 2008
Source:http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2008/09/it-is-a-politic.html

It's is a political truism that big donors and special interests (hello, both sides of Indian gambling Propositions 94-97!) drive California's ballot initiative process. But now, taking a Web page from social networking sites like Facebook and Linkedin, Republican political consultant Mike Madrid has launched a site he says will make it easier for the masses to reclaim direct democracy.

The site, Californiapropositions.org , lets people to organize online by forming their own issue and campaign groups and find like-minded groups, just as they do on other social networking sites. But biggest benefits, Madrid says, will be in the two parts of the proposition process that cost the most -- raising cash and getting valid signatures.

An initiative requires 433,971 signatures to qualify for the ballot. (Or 694,354, if it’s a constitutional amendment.) It costs about $2 million to hire specially trained signature gatherers, the ones who annoy you as you enter Rite Aid, trying to remember which prescription you need to get refilled. But Madrid’s site gets around all that by allowing anyone who wants to download and print out a petition, gather a handful of signatures and send the petition in.

Because they are free from finance limits, past initiative campaigns have usually relied on big gifts to run their operations, which means trade groups, unions and rich people get great political clout over how initiatives are written. Madrid also says the site will make it easier to reach thousands of small donors who can give $10 or $20, doing what the Barack Obama campaign has done. He notes that the campaign for a high-speed rail line -- not exactly the sexiest political issue -- has nearly 38,000 members on Facebook.

“I’m a huge proponent of the proposition-industrial complex,” he says. “Most people think it’s a cancer on the body politic. I think it does was it was designed to do, only it hasn’t been as accessible to the masses as it was originally intended.” The main downside of his approach, he predicts: It will make recall campaigns of politicians even more frequent.

-- Jordan Rau

TECHNOLOGY AND DEMOCRACY: COMBATING DISTORTIONS

Technology and democracy: combating distortions

By Reilly Capps, staff writer
Daily Planet
Thu Jul 31, 2008, 08:02 PM MDT

Source: http://www.telluridenews.com/news/x223021242/Technology-and-democracy-combating-distortions

Telluride, Colo. -

Cynics say we’re living in a time of unprecedented lies and spin. After all, five years ago, a president distorted the facts and led us into a war. Not enough people questioned the administration’s “facts” about WMD and aluminum tubes, not to mention the idea of “pre-emptive war” during its “War on Terror.”

But is all that true?

If you look strictly at the numbers, we’re living in a world where more documents, histories, and general facts are available than ever before. There exists on the World Wide Web an archive of virtually everything ever said by virtually every top official in the Bush administration, and anyone determined enough can go through and sift out the fudges (someone counted 935 lies about Iraq).

It might, in fact, be getting harder to lie. Journalistic plagiarizer Jayson Blair got tripped up by LexisNexis. A Google search here revealed a town manager candidate’s alleged criminal past.

One of the Web sites aiming at opening the floodgates of information and letting information flow freely is Archive.org.

The founder of that Web site, Brewster Kahle, will speak at the Telluride Tech Fest at 3 p.m. Saturday. The Tech Fest is a gathering of technology-minded researchers and entrepreneurs, and the theme this year is “Democracy and Technology.”

One of the best ways to help democracy with technology is by giving voters the best access to the most information.

“We want universal access to all knowledge,” Kahle said Thursday, by telephone, from his office in San Francisco. “We believe that’s the opportunity of our generation.”

Archive.org has a library that all but a few bricks and mortar libraries would be jealous of. You can read 450,000 scanned-in books, and his 200-person army of workers is busily scanning in 1,000 more every day, he said. Works of philosophy, history, government, novels.

“It’s the Enlightenment idea that this country was sort of founded on,” Kahle said. “The idea that the individual is worth investing in — universal education and the modern library system came out of that. We see ourselves in that tradition.”

Sarah McClain, who runs the Tech Fest, brought in Dan Pearlman to talk about “Democracy at the Supreme Court,” and will be showing a movie by Keya Lea Horiuchi called “Considering Democracy.” Kahle and Archive.org could be part of the backbone of participatory democracy in the future.

“That’s a large part of what democracy should be,” McClain said, “is access to knowledge and be able to make your own decision.”

Kahle gives this example:

Archive.org has old press releases from the Bush Administration on file. There’s one from 2003, issued at the time of the “Mission Accomplished” speech on the aircraft carrier in San Diego. It read “President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended.” After it became clear combat hadn’t ended, the White House went back into its own press release and quietly added a word: “President Bush Announces Major Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended.”

But thanks to Archive.org’s archiving, watchdogs caught that change, and stopped a little bit of historical airbrushing.

It’s not all seriousness at Archive.org. There’s every concert ever played by the Grateful Dead, and video of Final Fantasy and “Sex Madness.”

Still, Kahle sees his mission as very serious, and echoes the late Peter Lyman, one of the great thinkers about the internet.

“Now knowledge has an address,” Lyman said. “You can go and build on it.”

While kids used to learn from secondary sources, from textbooks and such, now kids and adults can go to the primary source.

“That’s very exciting to see the actual things,” Kahle said. “Lets go find out what Nike is saying.”

Along with all this democracy talk the Tech Fest is bringing back the Tesla Coil, that crazy Frankensteinian electricity generator, on main street Friday and Saturday nights.

NEW INTERNET DIRECT DEMOCRACY PARTY ANNOUNCES CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE

A new internet based party in Boston similar to others such as the Senator Online Party of Australia has chosen a candidate to run for the 8th congressional district. If the candidate should win the election, he/she will be bound by agreement to vote on all legislation in accordance with the results the of the party's online polling system. Visit the party's website here: http://www.freegovernment.org/ - Editor

New party takes aim at Congressional seat

By JOHN RUCH July 25, 2008

Source: http://jamaicaplaingazette.com/node/2907

A new political party that calls for rule by online opinion polls claims to have a candidate for the local 8th Congressional District seat currently held by US Rep. Mike Capuano.

The Free Government Party, which has yet to identify its nominee, did not respond to a request for comment for this article. Alison Mills, a spokesperson for Capuano, declined to comment.

The Boston-based party exists mainly as the web site FreeGovernment.org, which apparently was launched on this year’s Fourth of July. The party has no political platform beyond creating a way for citizens to vote on individual pieces of legislation via online polls. The idea is that this would make government “free, convenient, and transparent.”

The party intends to run a candidate who would act like a voting machine. “If elected, you will be bound by contract to act as no more than [a] proxy for our district by voting on bills only as do online verified voters, and by introducing and sponsoring bills only with significant support,” said the party’s open advertisement for a candidate. The ad was posted July 6 on the classified ad web site Craigslist.

The party’s web site claims that about a week after posting the ad, it selected an unnamed candidate for the Nov. 4 election. The 8th Congressional District is the only district where the party will run a candidate. It is unclear why the district was chosen. The site appears to make no references to Capuano.

To get on the ballot, the candidate will have to submit at least 2,000 voter signatures to local election officials. The deadline is next Tuesday, July 29.

The party calls itself a nonprofit organization, though it did not appear to be registered with the Secretary of State’s Office as of last week. It appears the party is the brainchild of a software developer named Foy Savas and a dental student named Sophia Chou.

The web site features discussion forums and online polls. It is intended as a place to review pending Congressional bills and propose new ones. If the party had a member in Congress, that member would cast votes mirroring the site’s online poll results.

While the site theoretically has the potential for creating direct democracy, its real goal is establishing a representative system of “advisers.” Advisers are like super-members of the site who commit to voting on behalf of many other site members. Site members can select advisers who seem to match their politics and can be trusted to vote their way, allowing for a “convenient hands-off approach to voting” on the many bills before Congress.

The party’s member in Congress would then obey the final results of the advisers’ total votes. To ensure that voting is representative of the district, the party proposes that polls must have a quorum of votes equal to 50 percent of the number of votes the candidate received on Election Day. It is unclear what the member of Congress would be expected to do if there was no quorum, or in political situations that do not involve votes.

In essence, the site would create a kind of shadow Congress that ensures at least some citizens would review all legislation before its official vote.

Any person or group can be an adviser, and site members can appoint as many advisers as they want.

Voting access and voting fraud would seem to be significant issues with the process. If it were to win the seat, the party proposes spending part of the office budget on setting up a program that would cross-check the web site’s registered member list with lists of registered voters—basically, creating a shadow election department. The party acknowledges some sort of system would have to be created to allow people without Internet access to vote, but makes no suggestion about it.

It is also unclear how the site would avoid other political parties, lobbying organizations or other powerful interests from dominating the adviser positions.

Decision-making via online polls is becoming popular among new, reform-minded political parties. Another example is Britain’s Blah! Party, which uses online polls to help set the party’s agenda as a direct democracy method.

e-VotingBooth.com: VOTE TO HOLD OIL COMPANIES ACCOUNTABLE FOR OIL PRICES ON THE WEB

e-VotingBooth.com is an interactive website that attempts to record how the electorate would vote on each bill that comes before the U.S. congress. We applaud this effort because if the practice became widespread it would at least provide a public record of whether or not the will of the people is being accurately carried out by their elected representatives. Although this goal falls short of direct democracy because the votes registered on this and similar websites are not officially counted and have no legal bearing upon the legislation before congress, it can at least provide a gauge of the public sentiment. It also serves to begin the process of experimentation with the feasibility of technological systems that would be employed if the votes were to be officially registered at some time in the future when the people are granted the power to vote on federal legislation under a directly democratic system. The article below throws a spotlight on e-VotingBooth.com and invites people to weigh in on U.S Senate Bill 3044 which will attempt to hold oil companies accountable for the high fuel prices. First read the following mission statement form e-VotingBooth.com to understand how it works and why it was created. Also visit the site here: http://www.e-votingbooth.com/

Welcome to the website that puts Democracy in Your Hands!

How? By allowing you to “vote” on every single piece of legislation being considered by Congress. You can even add your own comments with your vote. Then, e-VotingBooth provides the “election results” to every member of Congress and the President before the Final Bill Vote in Congress.

e-VotingBooth drastically changes the mental calculus of Congressmen and the President of how to vote for a bill. e-VotingBooth adds a new voice, YOU, to their voting consideration and e-VotingBooth gives you significant power with your Congressmen and President.

You have power because e-VotingBooth tracks every vote you make, and our first site upgrade (coming soon) will provide your elected officials’ votes alongside yours for comparison. At any time you will see how they voted on each bill you voted. This will be particularly useful right before elections. For example, if you find a Representative, Senator or President voted against you 90% of the time you are far more likely to vote against him or her for re-election than if they had voted 90% with you. Now your elected officials are highly motivated to consider you and your neighbors’ votes—or suffer the consequences.

In essence, e-VotingBooth allows you to participate in the legislative process of the United States of America and easily track how your elected officials are serving you.

E-VotingBooth provides you with information to make an informed position on whether to allow them to continue working for you (their re-election fate). So dive in and be an active participant in the legislative process of the United States of America.


Vote to hold oil companies accountable for oil prices on the Web


June 29 2008


Source: http://cnewspubs.com/elections/modules/news/article.php?storyid=679

If you are tired of paying more than $4 per gallon for gasoline take action now: vote on U.S. Senate Bill 3044 on e-VotingBooth.com.

The Consumer-First Energy Act of 2008 is designed “to provide energy price relief and hold oil companies and other entities accountable for their actions with regard to high energy prices, and for other purposes.”

“e-VotingBooth.com is the only website where all Americans can vote on any pending bill in Congress,” said Steve Thompson, founder and president of e-VotingBooth.com, “converting the United States from a republic to a direct democracy. The site allows America to switch the focus from the individuals we elect to the legislation itself.”

Americans can vote at any time on any bill (once introduced), they're not tied to the voting schedule of any bill. They can even vote bills already enacted.

“While Americans have historically been able to write their Congressman or President, these actions are relatively diluted because they are only contacting individuals,” Thompson said, “whereas voting on e-VotingBooth.com aggregates every single American’s vote in that one respective bill, amplifying their power.” No other action is faster, easier or more effective than pulling up a bill and voting in e-VotingBooth.com.

e-VotingBooth.com is a non-partisan, private and veteran-owned company that assumes a fiduciary responsibility to provide this “public trust” as the only tool for all Americans to participate in the legislative process of the U.S. Congress. “We also believe e-VotingBooth.com is the perfect tool for all organizations and individuals who wish to remain neutral or apolitical, yet encourage their members to participate in the governance of our country,” said Thompson.

OBAMA, THE INTERNET, AND PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY

As the presidential race continually heats up, citizens make decisions about how they will be involved in campaigns or promoting their favorite candidate. But which candidate will make citizen participation more accessible to all? This article focuses on how Obama uses the internet as a mode of communication with voters and gives an interesting history of how previous presidents have used the latest technology of their time to spread their message. Will Obama's use of the internet be as successful as Franklin Delano Roosevelt's use of the radio? And how can the internet create a two-way mode of communication between the central government and constituents? Consider these questions while reading the following piece. -Editor

HisSpace

How would Obama’s success in online campaigning translate into governing?

by Marc Ambinder

Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/ambinder-obama

America’s politics have regularly been transformed by sudden changes in the way we communicate. And revolutions in communications technology have always bestowed great gifts on those politicians savvy enough to grasp their full potential. It is still unclear how far Barack Obama’s talent for online campaigning will take him. But it’s worth noting that some of the best-known presidents in U.S. history have stood at the vanguard of past communications revolutions—and that a few have used those revolutions not only to mobilize voters and reach the White House but also to consolidate power and change the direction of politics once they got there.

Improvements to the printing press helped Andrew Jackson form and organize the Democratic Party, and he courted newspaper editors and publishers, some of whom became members of his Cabinet, with a zeal then unknown among political leaders. But the postal service, which was coming into its own as he reached for the presidency, was perhaps even more important to his election and public image. Jackson’s exploits in the War of 1812 became well known thanks in large measure to the distribution network that the postal service had created, and his 1828 campaign—among the first to distribute biographical pamphlets by mail—reinforced his heroic image. As president, he turned the office of postmaster into a patronage position, expanded the postal network further—the historian Richard John has pointed out that by the middle of Jackson’s first term, there were 2,000 more postal workers in America than soldiers in the Army—and used it to keep his populist base rallied behind him.

Abraham Lincoln became a national celebrity, according to the historian Allen Guelzo’s new book, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America, when transcripts of those debates were reprinted nationwide in newspapers, which were just then reaching critical mass in distribution beyond the few Eastern cities where they had previously flourished. Newspapers enabled Lincoln, an odd-looking man with a reed-thin voice, to become a viable national candidate; it might even be argued that the idea of a “union” worth fighting for was conceivable because newspapers also enabled increasingly far-flung citizens to stay apprised of far-off events, and to envision themselves as part of a greater whole.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt used radio to make his case for a dramatic redefinition of government itself, quickly mastering the informal tone best suited to the medium. In his fireside chats, Roosevelt reached directly into American living rooms at pivotal moments of his presidency. His talks—which by turns soothed, educated, and pressed for change—held the New Deal together.

And of course John F. Kennedy famously rode into the White House thanks in part to the first televised presidential debate in U.S. history, in which his keen sense of the medium’s visual impact, plus a little makeup, enabled him to fashion the look of a winner (especially when compared with a pale and haggard Richard Nixon). Kennedy used TV primarily to create and maintain his public image, not as a governing tool, but he understood its strengths and limitations before his peers did, and his election and popularity resulted partly from that understanding.

The communications revolution under way today involves the Internet, of course, and if Barack Obama eventually wins the presidency, it will be in no small part because he has understood the medium more fully than his opponents do. His speeches play well on YouTube, which allows for more than the five-second sound bites that have characterized the television era. And he recognizes the importance of transparency and consistency at a time when access to everything a politician has ever said is at the fingertips of every voter. But as Joshua Green notes in the preceding pages, Obama has truly set himself apart by his campaign’s use of the Internet to organize support. No other candidate in this or any other election has ever built a support network like Obama’s. The campaign’s 8,000 Web-based affinity groups, 750,000 active volunteers, and 1,276,000 donors have provided him with an enormous financial and organizational advantage in the Democratic primary.

Obama clearly intends to use the Web, if he is elected president, to transform governance just as he has transformed campaigning. Notably, he has spoken of conducting “online fireside chats” as president. And when one imagines how Obama’s political army, presumably intact, might be mobilized to lobby for major legislation with just a few keystrokes, it becomes possible, for a moment at least, to imagine that he might change the political culture of Washington simply by overwhelming it.

What Obama seems to promise is, at its outer limits, a participatory democracy in which the opportunities for participation have been radically expanded. He proposes creating a public, Google-like database of every federal dollar spent. He aims to post every piece of non-emergency legislation online for five days before he signs it so that Americans can comment. A White House blog—also with comments—would be a near certainty. Overseeing this new apparatus would be a chief technology officer.

There is some precedent for Obama’s vision. The British government has already used the Web to try to increase interaction with its citizenry, to limited effect. In November 2006, it established a Web site for citizens seeking redress from their government, http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/. More than 29,000 petitions have since been submitted, and about 9.5 percent of Britons have signed at least one of them. The petitions range from the class-conscious (“Order a independent report to identify reasons that the living conditions of working class people are poor in relation to higher classes”) to the parochial (“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to re-open sunderland ice rink”).

What does the government do with the petitions? It says it reads them and directs them, at its discretion, to the appropriate department; sometimes the department responds. Advocates of the system note that it enables the government to monitor public wants and attitudes in a way that opinion polling doesn’t.

Those in Obama’s campaign who think about technology and government see the U.K. site as merely a baby step—the first of many ways that Americans might interact with a President Obama. But the British example also helps show the limits of online participatory government. Communication and transparency are virtues only up to a point; as students of bureaucracies know, both eventually become an enemy to efficiency. Moreover, if an Obama presidency invited more input than it could reasonably weigh and respond to, it would quickly squander the networking capital that the campaign has built.

Today Obama is like a brand, his campaign like a $250 million company, and the voters like customers; the persuasion flows one way. If he becomes president, then power, authority, and legitimacy will flow in both directions; voters who are now keen to support the idea of Obama may push against his initiatives in office, sometimes unpredictably.

Indeed, in recent years the Web has without question generated and focused enough public pressure to force the hands of politicians on several occasions. So far, though, this pressure has been created spontaneously—and it has worked to the distinct disadvantage of the executive branch.

When President Bush nominated his longtime friend Harriet Miers to be a Supreme Court justice, wired conservative activists revolted. Minutes after the news broke, a blogger searched the federal campaign database and found that Miers had contributed to Democrats in the past, provoking a wave of questions about her ideological bona fides. In the space of a few hours, conservative outrage coalesced, and activists succeeded in throwing an unprepared White House and Republican National Committee off message; talk radio, the ether of the conservative movement, was filled with confusion, sown by angry e-mails and phone calls. I remember a senior GOP official asking me that night, “What the hell just happened?” It would take the RNC many hours to figure out that bloggers were generating the heat, and that bloggers had to be tended to first if the fire was to be put out.

More recently, the “netroots”—liberal Democrats organized online—have kept pressure on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to avoid compromise with Republicans on national-security legislation the president calls critical. They’ve organized online petitions and sent e-mails to key staff members; they’ve raised money to air issue-advocacy ads. The Daily Kos Web site regularly asks its millions of readers to evaluate the performance of their congressional leaders, and, just as regularly, members of those leaders’ staffs check to see whether their bosses have had a good or a bad month. Top Democrats are relying more and more on netroots money to fund their political action committees, so these evaluations matter.

The lesson here seems obvious enough: technology has concentrated a fair amount of political power in hubs outside Washington. But Washington has not harnessed that power successfully.

If Obama wins, and if he can harness the Web as a unifying force once the voting is done, he could be a powerful president indeed—the kind that might even deliver on some of the audacious promises that Obama the candidate has made. But the Web, like the politics it seeks to transform, is unruly and fickle. The online networks that have turbocharged Obama’s candidacy could end up hemming him in, and even stalling his agenda, as president.

PANARCHY

The following article gives a great outline of the concept of Panarchy. The latest technology has enabled more participation and under some repressive governments it has even allowed for anonymous dissent. Technology in internet cafes can protect people as they would otherwise face consequences for commenting against the government. This article helps shed light on other aspects of Panarchy that can help us to better understand how participatory democracy looks in our times. -Editor

Paul Hartzog - Panarchy and the wikification of politics

Source: http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=148

Paul Hartzog introduces the concept of panarchy, a sociopolitical field that emerges when connective technologies, which lower the threshold for collective action, enable cooperative peer-to-peer production – of knowledge, of tools, of power.

Panarchy is the emerging system of sociopolitical activity that we might refer to as the “wiki-fication” of society. By “wikification,” I refer to the rise of mass participation systems, that include 1) software production, or “open source,” 2) knowledge production, e.g. wikipedia, or 3) group/identity production, e.g. communities. Mass participation is enabled by the recent spread of connective network technologies, from cell phones to the Internet. Panarchy emerges when these connective technologies, which lower the threshold for collective action, enable cooperative peer-to-peer production – of knowledge, of tools, of power.

Network technologies, because they increase human connectivity, increase both the speed and frequency of human interaction. But more connectivity also means more complexity, and therefore more unpredictability. As small events cascade into large ones, power becomes distributed throughout the system, at once everywhere and nowhere. The outcome of all of this is nothing less than the transformation of civilization. Where the current system is hierarchical, centralized, and differentiated, the new system is anarchical, diffuse, and overlapping. Where the current system marginalizes and represses difference, the new system generates difference in order to create, explore, and adapt to future possibilities and uncertainties. Where the current system reduces human labour to proprietary economic production, the new system consists of many modes of human labour and the production of open commons. And finally, where the current system institutionalizes static structures, the new system exhibits complex dynamics – it is a field whose elements and relations are continuously coalescing and dissolving, the whole field of which is called panarchy.

Power, knowledge, and democracy

Democracy is fundamentally about participation. Democratic theorists have long been aware of the complexities of participation. Who should participate? When? How? Network technologies emerged out of communities of participants who were deeply committed to democratic ideals of sharing and openness – basically hackers and hippies. Hackers and hippies are sharers, of everything from code to commons. Michel Foucault, deeply aware of the relationships between power and knowledge, expressed this open sharing attitude in his own work.

“If one or two of these ‘gadgets’ of approach or method that I’ve tried to employ with psychiatry, the penal system or natural history can be of service to you, then I shall be delighted. If you find the need to transform my tools or use others then show me what they are, because it may be of benefit to me.” (p. 65)

While it may seem odd to think of Foucault as a hacker, nevertheless his intuitions resonate with the hacker ethos which now permeates network culture. Yochai Benkler refers to these distributed systems as “commons-based peer production.” Networking technologies – TCP/IP, DNS, Usenet, the WWW, wikis, blogs, forums, mailing lists, podcasting, wearable computing, location-based technologies, and other forms of social software – all contribute to increased connectivity and participation in production. Consequently, we see also a resurgence in theories of “the commons.” Lawrence Lessig’s concern with the “fate of the commons,” David Bollier’s OnTheCommons website, as well as Ostrom and Hess’s recent book on “knowledge as commons.”

These networks challenge hierarchical power structures in both physical and digital realms. Saskia Sassen has identified global cities as one of the sites of interest, where informal, seemingly apolitical, movements emerge as phenomena worthy of further investigation. Howard Rheingold’s Smart Mobs also investigates the ease and rapidity of collective action enable by what he calls “technologies of cooperation.” Panarchy as a whole may be amorphous and polycentric, but some zones can be more concentrated, denser, than others. These are the zones where new forms of power emerge and contest existing powers. Hannah Arendt’s notion of power as something that exists wherever individuals come together for a common activity, is visible in these new zones of production, like wikipedia.

For, against, or away?

Ultimately, then, what can we do to more fully understand the panarchy which confronts us? Well, we can begin by looking to previous technologies that changed the sociopolitical structure. The printing press, and later the daguerreotype, created ripples of epistemological anxiety. That wikipedia benefits from dispersed collaboration is not really that surprising. Eisenstein notes the significant improvements in mapmaking after the advent of information-sharing and open practices, and the progress of science itself takes advantage of the same spirit (if not letter) of openness.

Nevertheless, traditional processes of validating and legitimating truth were suddenly challenged by the mere presence of a new alternative. What we have in wikipedia, and in wiki politics, is essentially the disruption of the author function. Production – of knowledge and politics – becomes diffuse and decentered, distributed throughout the system, disrupting previous spatial and temporal continuities. And just as the structural response to printing consisted of the emergence of the banned books index, so, too, the structural response to wikipedia has been slander and lawsuits. Foucault warned us about the conflicts that would arise under these conditions.

“There is a battle ‘for truth,’ or at least ‘around truth’ – it being understood once again that by truth I do not mean ‘the ensemble of truths which are to be discovered and accepted,’ but rather ‘the ensemble of rules according to which the true and the false are separated and specific effects of power attached to the true,’ it being understood also that it’s not a matter of a battle ‘on behalf’ of the truth, but of a battle about the status of truth and the economic and political role it plays.” (p. 132)

Ernesto Laclau gives us a way to understand the homogeneity of the systemic response when he explains that the state-system cannot distinguish between potentially antisystemic social movements undertaken for particular purposes (e.g. peer production) vs. social movements that are anti-systemic in intent (i.e. revolutionary).

The crux of emergent formations under panarchy is that they take one of three forms. First, groups can mobilize on behalf of current structures. Second, they can mobilize in opposition to current structures. But more importantly, they can mobilize as “third way” alternatives that reject both the dominant and opposition structures, and instead operate in parallel to current structures.

So, although many writers about global networks note their anti-systemic roots, it is also true that movements like “open source” software and wikipedia are not primarily anti-systemic in their formation or motivations despite the obviously system-transforming capacity of their innovative mode of production. In many ways, the consequences of the new formations must be analyzed separately from their intentions. When new alternatives operate in parallel to existing modes, their consequences are often less clear, and may even be of little interest to the actual participants.

Panarchy

In order to properly theorize about panarchy, we need to understand in depth both the new technologies and their configurations as networks and complex systems, as well as political philosophy and social theory. With only the technical knowledge, we risk treating the effects of new technologies in a superficial way, simply applying traditional economic or nation-state lenses, without a full appreciation of the potential deeper social and political consequences of those technologies. Conversely, with only the philosophy, we risk focusing only on what we acknowledge in our traditional field of vision – nation-states, organized labour, and such – while entirely missing where the real action is, even though it is happening in plain sight, because we simply have not trained ourselves to see it.

The social formations enabled by connective technologies are the most important object of study in social and political philosophy at present. Moreover, these formations are not merely of interest only when they intersect with traditional nation-states or economic structures. Panarchy creates and reproduces a new socio-economic-political space (sometimes referred to as “global civil society”), and its movements are either resistant to or ambivalent with respect to traditional hierarchical institutions. As a result, panarchy manifests through mechanisms of social governance that function independently of and in parallel to state governing. As Paul Wapner points out:

“What is absolutely essential to recognize, however, is that it is not the entanglements and overlaps with states and the state system that make efforts in global civil society ‘political.’ Transnational activism does not simply become politically relevant when it intersects with state behavior…. At stake in this analysis, then, is the concept of world politics.” (p. 339)

What threatens to overwhelm us as theorists is the sheer multiplicity of this space. Whether we call it “heterarchy,” or “plurilateralism,” or “cosmopolitanism,” or “polycontexturality,” or “neo-medievalism,” or “mobius web governance,” or “p2p [peer-to-peer] society,” what is essential about this multitude is that it cannot be represented on an axis that presents us with a unified epistemological or political “we.” This is taken up, for example, in Hardt and Negri’s Multitude, and Danilo Zolo’s critique Cosmopolis. All we get is flux; but this is not necessarily a bad thing. Indeed, it is a necessary thing: the resilience of complex systems is a function of their diversity. Though philosopher Mark Taylor is speaking of Foucault, Derrida, and postmodernists in general, he might just as well be referring to contemporary cosmopolitanists, when he remarks that what they “cannot imagine is a nontotalizing system or structure that nonetheless acts as a whole.” What self-organizing complex systems achieve is a balance between too much flexibility – therefore incoherence and a lack of identity – and too much rigidity – therefore a loss of adaptability that makes eventual collapse inevitable. The literature on complex systems and self-organization therefore provides another valuable analytical lens on panarchy.

In conclusion, in Parchment, Printing, and Hypermedia, Ron Deibert suggests that:
“The heterogeneous nature of postmodern social epistemology, and the overlapping layers of political authority, not to mention the dispersed centers of surveillance themselves, would all act as strong constraints against the emergence of a single mass identity. It is more likely that this sense of a global imagined community would coexist in a complex montage of overlapping and fluid multiple identities.”

Herein, we have some things to fear – the rise of criminal networks and “netwar” – but also much to celebrate. We are not adrift; “no center” is not the same as “many centers.” With mobility, comes liberty, and with liberty, responsibilities. So, while some might find this realm of complex networks, unpredictability, and perpetual flux disconcerting or even dangerous, panarchy also offers the most exciting challenges and theoretical opportunities for the foreseeable future.

Further links
Paul Hartzog interview on panarchy
Paul Hartzog lecture on collective action

GOVIT WEBSITE TRIES TO CREATE A DIRECT DEMOCRACY

A new website attempts to give the people a say on every piece of legislation that comes before congress. Ahh.. if only our votes counted for real.. Visit the site here: http://www.govit.com/ - Editor

Govit Tries to Create a Direct Democracy

Written by Josh Catone / April 8, 2008 2:01 PM /

The knock on the type of representative democracy that is employed in the US is that the people aren't actually voting on the legislation that gets passed -- representatives for the people are doing it for them. And those representatives are potentially beholden to outside influences like political action committees and lobbyists who help them raise money necessary to get elected. The system is supposed to weed out the bad eggs via regular elections (if your rep isn't representing you, don't vote for he or she next time around), but maybe that's not good enough. Enter Govit, a site that lets citizens weigh in on bills currently being voted on in the US House and Senate.

Govit lists every piece of active legislation currently before the United States Congress and lets users vote yes/no or abstain on each. From the voting page for each bill, users can also send a message directly to their government representatives urging them to vote a specific way, or send a message to their friends doing the same. Govit can also compare your votes to those of your representatives, those of Congress at large, and to the rest of Govit.

Govit acts something like a social network for politics. Each member of the House or Senate gets their own profile on the site that has a bio, fundraising information, and voting record, as well as how that member of Congress stacks up against Govit -- do their votes match the will of the people? Users can rate Congressional members, comment on them, and say whether or not they would vote for them.

On a more personal level, Govit allows members to befriend each other, which basically just lets you to compare your voting record to that of your friends if you have your profile set to public view. Unfortunately, by setting Govit up as a social network, the site becomes sort of a microcosm view of the American political system at large -- or at least it has the potential to. If we pretend that Govit becomes popular enough to actually have a national impact (i.e., politicians actually start paying attention to it), because it is set up in a manner where people are encouraged to shill for votes, it is easy to imagine the same back room dealing that goes on in Washington taking place on the site.

It's hard to look at Govit as the true "will of the people" because users have the option to make their votes public -- thus creating the potential for groupthink. Perhaps that is the will of the people anyway, but it would be easier to trust Govit's numbers if users at least didn't know who was voting which way until after the final ballot was cast. In other words: secret ballots tend to yield better results.

Still, Govit provites a useful tool for keeping track of what Congress is talking about, discussing it with like-minded folks, and seeing how your representatives match up with your own views. If you and your congressman are consistently voting on opposite ends of the spectrum, you might think twice about voting for he or she next term.

OBAMA'S 2006 'GOOGLE FOR GOVERNMENT' ACT: A MEASURE OF e-DEMOCRACY BECOMES REALITY

Senator Barack Obama back in 2006 co-authored with Senator Tom Coburn legislation mandating the creation of a centralized website that would contain a complete database of government spending, freely accessable by the general public. The act, titled the 'Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act,' received bipartisan support in congress and strong diverse grassroots support from bloggers and activists, and was signed into law by president Bush.

Barack Obama is the only remaining presidential candidate who has signed an oath (see second article below) stating that, if elected, he would ensure that the act is implemented to it's fullest extent. But many readers may be surprised to learn that the website mandated by the new act is up already up and running to a large extent.

The site, http://www.usaspending.gov/, was launched in late 2007 and now provides an easily accessable and user friendly multiple criteria search engine that allows citizens to discover where their trillions in tax revenue is being allocated, and for what purpose. One can even see details of every individual transaction to government contractors, including defense contractors such as KBR, Halliburton, etc. It also provides an easy means of comparing the overall budgets of the individual departments, education vs. defence, homeland security vs. social security, etc.

This amazing resource is intended not only to increase transparency, but also to increase the people's access to, and participation in the policy and budgeting decisions that are currently exclusively down to powerful lobbyists and their elected representative's own whim and fancy. Obviously, this is but one small step on the path to true participatory budgeting and democracy, but it is a crucial first step. The public must first have access to the knowledge of where money is currently being allocated in order to effectively and actively advocate for budgeting changes that will reflect the true will of the people. Hopefully this foot in the door will help lead to a participatory budgeting process sometime in the future, which will allow the people to input into the budgeting process directly.

This initiative of Senator Obama's is but one facet of his platform on ethics, transparency, and accountability, and many of his proposals, if implemented, will provide a measure of direct democracy to the people of the United States on a scale unprecedented at the federal level. Many of his proposals will utilize the internet both to increase citizen participation in government, and to 'shine the light' on Washington's behind closed doors shady deals and bring the process out into the public arena. To learn more about Obama's proposals in this area click HERE to see his platform on his official page, and see our previous posts on the subject HERE, and HERE.

The fact that this one particular element of his e-democracy platform has already become a reality in the form of http://www.usaspending.gov/, is tangible proof that Obama's intentions in this regard are genuine, and that the measures he is proposing are feasible and attainable. It is also interesting to note that Obama has also demonstrated his sincerity on an individual level regarding the subject of transparent finances. He is the only candidate that has posted six years of his personal tax returns on his website. You can view or download them HERE.

While Obama's proposals are a far cry from the true direct democracy that we seek, what is truly cause for hope among direct democracy advocates is the widening mobilization and political engagement of the masses that Obama's campaign has awakened. This, coupled with the foot in the door to Washington that his proposals offer in terms of transparency and active citizen participation, could signal the beginnings of a new balance of power, with the balance being provided by a new player in Washington: the people.

For that is where the true inspiration of Barack Obama's campaign lies: with the people, and not with Obama himself. Obama may serve to provide the catalyst, but it is the people who must provide the necessary pressure that will slowly lead us to direct democracy. As such, it will be crucial to maintain and increase the mobilization of the masses and their participation in politics long after Obama's victory in the election, if that victory comes. On that day, it will be up to the masses not to proclaim "YES, WE DID IT!," but instead to begin the struggle to prove the validity of the Obama campaign mantra: "YES WE CAN!"

The first of the following two articles dates from the passage of Obama's Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, and the second relates to a subsequent oath to uphold the act circulated by the Reason Foundation to all the presidential candidates. - Editor



Senate Passes Coburn-Obama Bill to Create Internet Database of Federal Spending

Friday, September 8, 2006
Obama Contact: Tommy Vietor or Robert Gibbs, 202-228-5511
Coburn Contact: John Hart, 202-228-5357
Date: September 8, 2006

Source: http://obama.senate.gov/press/060908-senate_passes_c/

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) today hailed the Senate's passage of the "Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act," a bill that will create a Google-like search engine and database to track approximately $1 trillion in federal grants, contracts, earmarks and loans.

"By helping to lift the veil of secrecy in Washington, this database will help make us better legislators, reporters better journalists, and voters more active citizens," Obama said. "It's both unusual and encouraging to see interest groups and bloggers on the left and the right come together to achieve results. This powerful grassroots alliance shows that at the end of the day, Americans want to see Congress work together to get something done and not continue to engage in the partisan gridlock that so often brings Capitol Hill to a grinding halt."

"Every American has the right to know how their government spends their money, and then to hold elected officials accountable for those decisions. I applaud my colleagues for unanimously supporting a bill that will aid the American people in that effort," Dr. Coburn said. "This bill is a small but significant step toward changing the culture in Washington. Only by fostering a culture of openness, transparency and accountability will Congress come together to address the mounting fiscal challenges that threaten our future prosperity."

"The group that deserves credit for passing this bill, however, is not Congress, but the army of bloggers and concerned citizens who told Congress that transparency is a just demand for all citizens, not a special privilege for political insiders. Their remarkable effort demonstrates that our system of government does work when the people take the reins of government and demand change," Dr. Coburn said.

More than 100 organizations ranging from Americans for Prosperity and Taxpayers for Common Sense to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and Greenpeace have endorsed S. 2590.

Dozens of editorials boards across the country including the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times and The Oklahoman have also endorsed S. 2590.

Forty-three Senators co-sponsored S. 2590 including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Tom Carper (D-DE), Susan Collins (R-ME), Joe Lieberman (D-CT), John McCain (R-AZ), Hillary Clinton (D-NY), John Kerry (D-MA), John Cornyn (R-TX) and others.



Obama Signs Oath for 'Google Government'

Source: Reason Foundation http://www.reason.org/

News Release LOS ANGELES — Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) have signed oaths declaring that, should they win the presidency in 2008, they will issue an executive order during their first month in office instructing the entire executive branch to put into practice the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, a Google-like search tool that will allow you to see how your tax dollars are being spent on federal contracts, grants and earmarks.

All of the major presidential candidates have been invited to sign the "oath of presidential transparency" which is being promoted by a diverse coalition of 36 groups, led by Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank that has advised the last four presidential administrations.
"The next president should be committed to transparency and accountability," said Adrian Moore, vice president of research at Reason Foundation. "Redesigning the federal government so that it is more accountable to taxpayers is a nonpartisan issue. Transparency will help produce a government focused on results instead of our current system, which is plagued by secrecy, wasteful spending and pork projects."

"Every American has the right to know how the government spends their tax dollars, but for too long that information has been largely hidden from public view," said Sen. Obama. "This historic law will lift the veil of secrecy in Washington and ensure that our government is transparent and accountable to the American people."

"Government transparency is essential to government accountability. Americans need to feel they can trust their government," Sen. Brownback stated.

"When government spends the people's money, it must be done with utmost possible transparency," Rep. Paul, the first to sign the oath, declared. "Signing the Oath of Presidential Transparency was a no-brainer for me."

The oath was sent to every presidential candidate who has met the Federal Election Commission's filing requirements and has "raised or spent $50,000 or more (the threshold for mandatory electronic filing) from sources or to payees other than the candidate him or herself." The oath was first distributed to every presidential candidate's headquarters on July 17, 2007. Subsequently, at least five follow-up emails or calls were made to each campaign.

Full Oath Online

The complete oath of presidential transparency is available online at http://www.reason.org/oath/.

About the Coalition

An alliance of 36 diverse groups is advocating the presidential accountability oath. The following groups are part of the coalition: American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, American Association of Small Property Owners, Americans for Tax Reform, Budget Watch Nevada, Capital Research Center, Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights, Center for Individual Freedom, Citizen Outreach Project, Citizens Against Government Waste, Doctors for Open Government, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Evergreen Freedom Foundation, FreedomWorks, Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, Iowa Public Policy Institute, Liberty Coalition, Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Minnesota Free Market Institute, Mississippi Center for Public Policy, National Taxpayers Union, Nevada Policy Research Institute, Reason Foundation, Republican Liberty Caucus, Research Accountability Project, Rio Grande Foundation, Taxpayers League of Minnesota, Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, The Harbor League, The Performance Institute, The Project on Government Oversight, The Pullins Report, The Rutherford Institute, US Bill of Rights Foundation, Velvet Revolution, Virginia Institute for Public Policy, and Washington Policy Center.

About Reason Foundation

Reason Foundation is a nonprofit think tank dedicated to advancing free minds and free markets. Reason produces respected public policy research on a variety of issues and publishes the critically acclaimed monthly magazine, Reason. Reason Foundation does not endorse any political candidates. For more information, please visit http://www.reason.org/.

Government Contact

Presidential candidates interested in signing the oath, or organizations interested in joining the coalition, should contact Reason Foundation's Amanda Hydro at (202) 236-9193.

OBAMA'S e-DEMOCRACY PLATFORM: INCHING TOWARDS A MORE PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY

Barack Obama's platform contains many proposals for initiatives in participatory democracy geared toward more transparency in Washington and more citizen participation, many of which would utilize the internet to engage people through e-Democracy. These proposals are laid out in detail on his website primarily under the Ethics section of his platform.To visit that site click HERE. See also our previous related post on this topic HERE. The following e-Week article dating from the time Obama revealed his technology agenda highlights his proposals and the impact they could have on the advancement of particpatory democracy in this country.

- Editor

Barack Obama: Refining Tech Policy

By Roy Mark 2007-11-16

Source: e-Week http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Government/Barack-Obama-Refining-Tech-Policy/

Citizen democracy, privacy and free speech in technology take the stage as Obama's IT platform takes shape.

On an issue where theres little disagreement between the candidates, Sen. Barack Obama moved Nov. 14 to differentiate himself from the Democratic pack with a detailed technology agenda.

While Obamas overall tech policy tracks with the plans from the other candidates—support for network neutrality, increased H-1B visas and jacked up spending and investment on math, science and technology—the Illinois Democrat uses his ambitious agenda to detail his broader view on citizen democracy, privacy and free speech.

Network neutrality, for instance, is more than a rate dispute between broadband and content providers, according to Obama. Without network neutrality rules or laws, he contends, the "quality of speech through which the Internet has begun to transform American political and cultural discourse" would be threatened.

At a campaign stop at the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif., Nov. 14, Obama said, "I will take a backseat to no one in my commitment to network neutrality." In his tech agenda released the same day, he added that network neutrality would "ensure that [the Internet] remains a platform for free speech and innovation that will benefit consumers and our democracy."

With the usual obligatory nod to training more Americans for high-tech jobs, Obamas tech immigration position moves beyond his fellow candidates promising more H-1B visas. Under an Obama administration, he says, all immigrants who earn their college degrees in the United States will be given a path to citizenship.

"We should examine our ability to increase the number of permanent visas we issue to foreign skilled workers," Obama states in his agenda. "We do not want to shut our doors to innovators overseas, who have traditionally made America strong."

On the Internet issues of free speech and participatory democracy, Obama steps ahead of other Democratic contenders for the White House in promoting specific ideas and proposals.

"[Obama] believes that openness of the new media world should be seen as an opportunity as much as some see it as a threat," his policy paper states. He "does not view regulation as the answer to these concerns."

Instead of the host of laws—most ultimately rejected by the courts—introduced over the last decade by both Democrats and Republicans to protect children online, Obama said parents should be provided filtering tools, including requiring content providers to offer parental controls software that not only blocks objectionable material but also prevents children from revealing personal information.

"Private entities like Common Sense Media are pursuing a sanity not censorship approach, which can serve as a model for how to use technology to empower parents without offending the First Amendment," the paper states.

Obama also proposes the creation of "Public Media 2.0" as the next generation of public media that will "create the Sesame Street of the digital age and other video and interactive programming." He said he would support funding for moving existing public broadcasting stations online to help "renew their founding visions in the digital world."

But nowhere in his tech policy agenda is Obama more impassioned on his view of 21st century technology as he is about government and the Internet.

"Together, we could open up government and invite citizens in, while connecting all of America to 21st century broadband," Obama said at his Google campaign stop. "We could use technology to help achieve universal health care, to reach for a clean energy future and to ensure that young Americans can compete—and win—in the global economy."

In Obamas view of his potential presidency, Americans would be able to watch a live Internet feed of all government proceedings, from agency meetings to congressional hearings. He would give people an opportunity to review and comment on White House Web site for five days before signing any non-emergency legislation.

In addition, he would create a government Web site and search engine to allow users to track online federal grants, contracts, earmarks and lobbyist contacts with government officials.

Overseeing it all would be the nations first chief technology officer. The federal CTO would have the authority to ensure government agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services to solicit and receive information from citizens. The CTO would also oversee a national, interoperable wireless network for first responders.

"This policy will enable Americans to discuss and debate more actively they key issues that affect our lives and will give citizens greater autonomy to determine where the truth lies," Obamas agenda states.