Joho the Blog
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August 15, 2006
A coalition is asking citizens to research the 1,800+ "earmarks" in the appropriations bill for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. "Earmarks" are special grants aimed at particular groups. They're a species of pork, and they've tripled over the past ten years. The diverse coalition, which includes the Sunlight Foundation, Citizens Against Government Waste, Porkbusters.com, Human Events Online (Pat Buchanan's outfit), and Examiner.com, will maintain a single database that they will expose in their own ways. For example, you can see how Sunlight has Google-mapped some of them. More info in Zephyr's post and here. This could be a great example of the sort of investigative project better handled by a smart mob than by a single, overworked professional, as proposed by Dan Gillmor and Jay Rosen, among others. [Tags: politics citizen+journalism sunlight_foundation] Posted
by D. Weinberger at August 15, 2006 10:08 AM
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Comments
"The Sunlight Foundation along with Citizens Against Government Waste, Porkbusters.com, Human Events Online, Club for Growth, the Heritage Foundation, ..."
Wow, that's *diverse* - it ranges all the way from paleoconservative to pseudolibertarian.
I can understand the backscratching involved, - but do you really think your audience is an effective place to recruit unpaid sub-interns for those groups? Isn't it more "FreeRepublic"'s sort of pitch?
Posted by: Seth Finkelstein | August 15, 2006 06:42 PM
A sort of investigatory wiki? With drama? As the pieces come in and are mapped, a picture builds, a potent image emerging from the bits. This could be the pulverized public's legitimate reply to the Bush Admin's invitation to "watch while we create our own reality."
Posted by: tom matrullo | August 15, 2006 06:47 PM
Earmarks and other forms of "pork" are inexcusable and reprehensible. It is indeed indicative of the high levels of corruption and graft that appears to be business as usual in Wash.
Posted by: Whitney Marr | June 12, 2007 06:28 PM