First off, the following blog post is NOT political. PLEASE do not try to turn it political. (If you do, you will be 301 (read: permanently) redirected to the fact that this is NOT political.)
It IS about bloggers trying to improve the world around them by shining light on a political process and making politicians more answerable to their constituents and less answerable simply to the power brokers inside the beltway. It is about my opinion that as long as there are bloggers who care enough to invest the time, they will have influence and authority.
In response to the House of Representatives’ proposal to spend $850 Billion on another stimulus package, a blogger (and a great new media consultant) who founded Kithbridge.com launched a new blog. ReadTheStimulus.org. What does it do?
Glad you asked. Here’s what it does. It takes the PDF documents of the draft spending bills that the government is known for spitting out and it converts them to searchable text and provides a search engine for folks (including the press, if they care to), to search terms and find how much of the bill is stimulative to the economy, how much is stimulative to certain lobbyists vs what is well just laxative so to speak.
Want to know if there is a bridge to nowhere in there? or funds for the mating habits of the iguana? Don’t think that will stimulate the economy? You can now find it within seconds.
I applaud the efforts of these bloggers to get the 335 pages out there, indexed and in a searchable form for the public so that folks on both sides of the political spectrum can debate it openly. (Note: they are going to post the various other proposed bills as well.)
Anyone want to make a bet with me as to how many of the politicians (from either side…again this is not political) have actually READ and UNDERSTOOD the implications of these 335 pages. If there were 10 of them in the whole House of Representatives who had personally read it cover to cover, it would surprise me.
One of the other things that is specifically designed for bloggers is the ability to link to specific pages and even paragraphs of the bill and link to it from their blog. This means if I find that there’s pork in the bill that I want to rant about, it is a simple matter of linking to it from your blog and you are set. Citizen journalists rejoice.
I also applaud their effort to make it even easier for the public to understand where the money is going by doing a group spreadsheet and asking other bloggers to pitch in this weekend with a little time reading through the bill and picking out dollar amounts so that the public will be able to see where the money is going. Again the Army of Davids each grab 5 smooth stones and head to the battlefield.
Left, right or center, they (politicians) are getting ready to spend ANOTHER $2,428.57 ($850 Billion / 350 million people) for each man woman and child in the United States, and thus mortgage our future for a LONG time to come.
I am encouraged that bloggers (once again) are spending their time and effort to show people WHERE that money would go. Props to them. Pay the site a visit. Whichever side of this you are on, I think you will find it interesting.
I can find a ton more uses for this type of effort…from the local school board on up.
Louis Cammarosano says:
Eric
Good one!
This also is not a political statement:
We can’t even begin to debate political philosophies and differences if they are obsfucated by bloated and perhaps corrupt spending initiatives that the people (bloggers) have no idea about.
Special interests, PACS, corporate influence detract our elected representatives from the will and political inclinations of their constituents. If voters can have the means to demand accountability of their representatives, they might start acting in accordance with the political inclination of their voters instead of their paymasters.
January 17, 2009 — 7:25 pm
Eric Bramlett says:
Great post, Eric. Did you notice the house/senate reps circle the wagons during the round of pork injection to get the first stimulus passed? Incredible…they actually aim to protect each others’ abilities to seek special interests.
I hope this is a wild success. Furthermore, with google increasing its ability to search pdf’s, it could become much easier to obtain real transparency in government.
January 18, 2009 — 7:47 am
Eric Blackwell says:
Exactly.
And when government is lazy or negligent, I think those are great opportunities for a local community blogger (REALTOR?) to be a non partisan resource that makes it easy for local lazy ( or broke) press and or concerned citizen.
I can see these types of local blog efforts generating traffic…and links.
Transparecy IMO might be profitable going forward…
January 18, 2009 — 8:38 am