Category: America

Open Government Information Awareness still isn’t fully functional, but it’s getting there. I can now dig in and get full information on my representative and both my senators, for instance—including campaign contributions.

What’s missing—and who should add it? Links into information about what the politicians are doing would be helpful. Also, I miss the human voice. To this end, I suggested a public group blog to cover the elections a while back (at Lazyweb), and it looks like KnitWit has taken it up—BlogTheVote.org is registered but looking for organizers and designers—and ideas.

My feature request remains the same: first person coverage of campaign stops and actions, in a way that makes it possible to drill candidate actions by geography, issue, and contributor. Also, it shouldn’t replicate OpenGov, but link into it.

Other thoughts?

In a neat reversal of the government’s proposed Total Information Awareness scheme, MIT’s Media Lab has launched Open Government Information Awareness. As the FAQ notes:

The premise of GIA is that individual citizens have the right to know details about government, while government has the power to know details about citizens. Our goal is develop a technology which empowers citizens to form a sort of intelligence agency; gathering, sorting, and acting on information they gather about the government. Only by employing such technologies can we hope to have a government “by the people, and for the people.”

Anyone can submit information, and the system is designed to allow citizens to drill down into their specific areas of interest about government and see everything that’s going on about that particular level of government. Or at least it appears to be designed that way; the server has fallen over under heavy load right now. I look forward to seeing how it shapes up.

Thomas Jefferson is on my mind, as he is every July 4th (I wouldn’t be a good Wahoo otherwise, I suppose). I wonder whether today, looking out at the world, and at his own United States, he would still feel the same as he did in 1821, when he penned the following to John Adams:

The flames kindled on the Fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.

And there’s another optimistic note that seems to speak directly to today’s nation:

The spirit of 1776 is not dead. It has only been slumbering. The body of the American people is substantially republican. But their virtuous feelings have been played on by some fact with more fiction; they have been the dupes of artful maneuvers, and made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging chains for themselves. But times and truth dissipated the delusion, and opened their eyes.

Part 1: Greg writes an article that compares the Howard Dean candidacy and its fundraising prowess (and grab of a plurality, though not a majority, of the MoveOn primary) to a Smart Mob a la Howard Rheingold’s seminal work. The next day, he points to an article (via Doc Searls) that points out that it took the Dean campaign 84 days to raise $3.2 million, and since then it’s almost doubled the amount, with more than $2 million coming in over the Internet. And counting. People putting their money where their mouths are?

Part 2: Larry Lessig and the folks at eldred.cc have been fighting to get a bill introduced into Congress that would tip some of the balance of the copyrighted works back into the public domain—by making owners of works that have been in copyright for more than fifty and less than 75 years pay a $1 renewal fee each year. If the fee is not paid, the copyright lapses and the work falls into the public domain. This would help to unlock works that have no significant commercial potential, but cultural significance into the public domain.

On June 24 Lessig posted that he had found sponsors for this, the Public Domain Enhancement Act, in the form of Lofgren and Doolittle, Democrat and Republican (respectively) Representatives from California. The bill has since been introduced. We can only hope…

MoveOn’s primary starts today. The organization is sponsoring an online primary to allow its members to choose from the declared Democratic candidates; the organization will then endorse and support the candidate who receives a plurality of the votes. (In the preliminary straw poll, Governor Howard Dean, Senator John Kerry, and Rep. Dennis Kucinich got the most votes.) If you are a registered MoveOn member, you can help this experiment in online democracy by casting your vote today.

The irony? There is just as much of a vast right-wing conspiracy on line, and it’s easier to find. Greg pointed yesterday to fellow Hooblogger Wyeth Ruthven, who pointed to an article at Common Voice in which conservative columnist Jimmy Moore gives step by step instructions on how to submarine the MoveOn primary by voting for Al Sharpton. While Sharpton is unlikely to get a plurality of the votes as a result, unless there are more mean-spirited Cassiuses out there than MoveOn members, the action is likely to deny a plurality to the candidates which MoveOn members would legitimately vote for.

Wyeth also points to a discussion thread on FreeRepublic.com which illuminates the depth of intelligence and gentility which would lead someone to pull a stunt like this:

Go Al go! “If de candidate fit, you mus’ run de dimwit”… (1)

This is not a FReeping opportunity – this is lunacy! These people are COMMUNISTS!

THINK ABOUT IT …!!

DO YOU REALLY WANT YOUR NAME ON A LIST ASSOCIATED WITH A COMMUNIST ORGANIZATION …??

HOW WILL YOU EXPLAIN THIS WHEN THE DOJ OR THE FBI COME CALLING AND ASKING YOU QUESTIONS AND POKING INTO YOUR PRIVATE AFFAIRS …??(2)

Heh. It was only a matter of time before someone dusted off the C-word to smear opponents of our current Administration. I find it humorous that the poster seems as concerned about Ashcroft’s DOJ as I am.

So business as usual, but I’m glad that it’s moved online. Here it’s much easier to turn over the rocks and find what’s crawling underneath.

I used MoveOn to contact my congressman, Jay Inslee, about the pending media deregulation. He contacted me back:

Thank you for contacting me about the proposed Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations regarding further deregulation of the ownership rules for media companies.  I appreciate hearing from you.

Like you, I believe that the airwaves belong to the American people, and I share your concerns about the end result of the FCC’s most recent Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.  It is important to maintain the diversity of information sources so that the public interest can best be served. 

I have joined with several of my colleagues in leading the fight in Congress to prevent the FCC from allowing this rule change to go through.  Recently I sent a letter to my colleagues in Congress alerting them to the potential negative effects of the deregulation.  I also testified against the rule at the FCC hearing in Seattle held in March, and I wrote an editorial published in the Seattle Times that further expressed the dangers that further media consolidation pose to our system of free press and American democracy.  I have attached the editorial below for your review.

As you may know, in the FCC’s 2002 Biennial Review there are four major rules being considered for possible relaxation:

1. Broadcast-newspaper cross-ownership rule: This prohibits the daily newspaper and a broadcast TV station from being owned by the same company within the same market.
2. Local TV multiple ownership rule and the radio/TV cross-ownership rule: These rules limit somewhat the number of stations that any one entity can own in a single community.
3. National TV ownership rule: This policy limits the number of TV stations a single company can own. The current limit prohibits a company from controlling stations that collectively reach 35 percent of all TV households.
4. Dual Network Rule: This policy prevents one of the four major networks-ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox-from buying another network.

Please be assured I will be monitoring the FCC’s decisions closely.  I hope you will continue to contact me about the issues that concern you, as I both need and welcome your thoughts and ideas.  I encourage you to contact me via email, telephone, or fax, because security measures are causing House offices to experience delays in receiving postal mail.  My email address is: Jay.Inslee@mail.house.gov.  Please be sure to include your full name, address, including your zip code, in your message.  If you are a resident of the First Congressional District and would like to receive policy updates and newsletters via email, please email me to let me know.

Very Truly Yours,

JAY INSLEE
Member of Congress

The email included the content of Inslee’s editorial in the Seattle Times, which, as the paper notes in its archives, contains a factual error but is otherwise on the money.

So what has your representative done about the FCC action?

Someone finally pulled together all the wonderful administration lines about the Weapons of Mass Destruction that were the reason we bombed hell out of Iraq, risked American and coalition lives, destroyed our international credibility and moral authority, and set the precedent that nations can invade each other on suspicions and flimsy pretexts.

Starting with: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction” (Dick Cheney, August 2002), going through “I just don’t know whether it was all destroyed years ago—I mean, there’s no question that there were chemical weapons years ago—whether they were destroyed right before the war, (or) whether they’re still hidden” (Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, Commander 101st Airborne), and ending with “For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on” (Paul Wolfowitz, May 28, 2003). All sourced and hyperlinked.

Still any question about the contempt with which this “administration” holds its citizens, and the world?

Greg points to a BBC report that a Canadian scientist has found “astonishing” levels of uranium in the urine of two samples of 17 and 25 Afghan civilians. The conclusion the scientist, Dr. Asaf Durakovic of the Canadian Uranium Medical Research Center, reaches is that a new kind of uranium weapon was used during the war in Afghanistan.

I’m not saying Dr. Durakovic is wrong. Levels of uranium 100-500 times higher than those found in veterans suffering Gulf War Syndrome, after all, are awfully suggestive (the mean concentration was 315.5 nanograms per liter, while the US allowable is a mere 12). But I would like some information about the general background levels of uranium found in the Afghan population. Two samples is a seriously alarming indicator, but it’s not a smoking gun yet.

And I want a smoking gun. This administration has built such a wall of secrecy around itself and its policies that it’s been impossible to make any of the charges about inhumane and unAmerican conduct during wartime, let alone infringements of civil, legal, and Constitutional rights at home, stick. If this is real evidence, it needs to be bulletproof.

When you’ve mounted some of the most effective online anti-war protests ever, but still refused to prevent the war or convince the president to pay any more attention to your arguments than he did to his b-school classes, what’s your next act?

Some might give up. Not MoveOn. Currently they’re mounting a petition against the pending FCC ruling to further deregulate media ownership. The first round of this process was radio. Like your local radio station? Odds are you liked it better before Clear Channel bought it and started running it out of a central location hundreds of miles away. How do you like your local newspaper and television station? Want them all controlled by the same corporate interest? Before you say “it couldn’t happen,” think about what’s happened to radio. Yet most congresspeople only hear from the media on this one.

MoveOn is mounting a petition to convince Congress to block the FCC’s move. I think this one is worth signing, or at least looking at.

Salon is serializing Sidney Blumenthal’s White House memoir, The Clinton Wars. It’s amazing reading. Certainly not objective, but after reading everything that the rabid Clinton-haters have slung for almost a decade at the man, it’s interesting to read a perspective from the opposite side, inside the second administration just before all hell broke loose.

I wonder if it’s coincidence that the depiction of the president in the first installment sounds a lot like President Bartlett on The West Wing.

Philip Greenspun discusses things that could be done on the Internet to improve our ability during the next Presidential campaign to understand what the candidates are saying and doing, including distributed outlining and blogging. He suggests that blogging will not help us get a “comprehensive view of any one candidate.” But what if there were a centralized site with a channel for each candidate, like PolState, with a bunch of people having the ability to post information to that channel about the candidate, like BlogCritics?

I invoke LazyWeb. Let’s get a group blog going on this.

The US has restarted production of plutonium for nuclear weapons, the LA Times reported (via Detroit News) today.

Because, of course, all the nuclear weapons we already had weren’t enough.

Philip Greenspun lent his digital camera to Peter Menzel for a trip to Kuwait and Iraq. Menzel came back with a vial of Iraqi crude oil for Philip (prompting the one-liner, “I’m thus one of the very few Americans who can truly say that he got what the U.S. Army went to Iraq for!”), and some amazing pictures of the work done to extinguish the oil well fires, complete with unexploded (and exploded!) cluster bombs, Halliburton subsidiaries (Boots and Coots, not Brown and Root), camels, and drowning wildlife.

LawMeme, riffing on NYT: Patriot Act may not ride off into the sunset. Summary: Orrin Hatch wants to do away with the “sunset provisions” of the Act, which put a five year time limit on the various flagrant Bill of Rights violations therein. As a parallel act, The Kyl-Schumer measure, currently approved by the Senate Judiciary committee and facing an uncertain future in the larger Senate, would eliminate the need to prove that a suspect is linked to a foreign agent or terrorist group when getting a secret warrant. This would eliminate the last vestiges of due process currently standing between the justice system and a world where warrants are easy to get and impossible to contest. I think it’s time to write your senators, folks.

Answering my question from yesterday, CNN reports that four Marines were wounded in a suicide bombing as the coalition moves further into northern Iraq.