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Nationalize, Organize, Decentralize: A "New Way Forward" on America's Banks

BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, April 7 2009

It might read like a Politics Online attendee list -- Joe Trippi, Zephyr Teachout, Jerome Armstrong, David Sirota, Mike Lux -- but it's actually just some of the big names in online politics behind a new effort called A ... Read More

Daily Digest: Party Hopefuls Vying for Tech Cred

BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, January 6 2009

Gathering of RNC Candidates Highlights Tech: The half dozen contenders for the post of RNC chairman gathered yesterday for an event that was threaded through with what might fairly be called an obsession with ... Read More

Inside the Bailout: The Public Servants Our Hopes Are Riding On

BY Nancy Scola | Monday, January 5 2009

With the American economy showing about as much useful forward momentum as as a stripped-down Chevy up on cinder blocks in the front yard, people are naturally starting to get a bit curious as to whether the $700 billion ... Read More

Daily Digest: Plutocracy-Killing People-Empowered Politics?

BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, October 2 2008

The Web on the Candidates Finding a Voice, Using It: Now's a good time to ask, what the heck happened with the defeat of the bailout bill on Capitol Hill on Monday? Our own Micah Sifry has an intriguing look at whether ... Read More

Bringing BuyMyShitPile.com to Meat Space

BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, September 25 2008

How does a protest go from online to off? Andrew Boyd -- activist, street theater veteran, and the driving force behind Billionaires for Bush -- was inspired by the launch of the website BuyMyShitpile.com to organize a ... Read More

Bailout Datatorial: Follow the Money From Wall St. to DC, 1990-present

BY Micah L. Sifry | Thursday, September 25 2008

I'm pleased to have played a small part in helping our friends at the Sunlight Foundation pull togetherthis nifty piece of 3-D (Dynamic, Data-Driven) journalism on the Wall Street bailout: a Google Motion Chart built on ... Read More

How much is 700 billion?

BY Zephyr Teachout | Sunday, September 21 2008

Big numbers are hard for people to process. 700 billion can start to sound like 300 billion, or 900 million for that matter. It becomes like sand grains or moon strands, magically big, past the point of counting; an ... Read More

Money Talks, Politicians Listen

BY Micah L. Sifry | Monday, March 17 2008

I wondered what the presidential candidates and other politicians were saying about the Federal Reserve's unprecedented interventions in the financial sector, including today's provision of $30 billion to guarantee JP ... Read More

News Briefs

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Summer Olympics to Stream Live From the UK — For Some

The BBC announced its plans yesterday to broadcast its live Olympics coverage of London's Summer games to PCs, mobile-devices and Internet-connected televisions, Reuters reported.

With a free Olympics application for Apple and Android phones, the BBC says it will be offering up to 24 live streams and video highlights clips, and plans for over 2,500 hours of live programming ... that is only available to viewers in the UK. NBC also plans to stream online, but the majority of free viewing of the Olympics will only be available to existing cable TV subscribers.

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CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront" Will Have Some Tech-Politics Commentators

This should be interesting: CNN nightly news program Erin Burnett OutFront is out with its list of political commentators for the general election. Some of the names are familiar in Internet-politics-land. The gang includes Upworthy's Maegan Carberry, who was previously director of communications at Rock The Vote; Sasha Issenberg, who ventures into our corner of the political world frequently while documenting the new science of political campaigns for Slate; and Ben Smith, veteran political blogger turned BuzzFeed's top politics editor.

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Copyright Fights Heat Up Again Around Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) today re-released part of a previously leaked February 2011 draft of the U.S. proposal for the Trans-Pacific Partnership pact on his KeepTheWebOPEN website, as he joined calls by advocacy groups to make the currently ongoing deliberations about the treaty more open.

The United States, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam are all involved in negotiating the agreement, which include provisions about intellectual property and copyright that will play a role in the developing global online economy. A 12th round of negotiations on the deal is now under way in Dallas, Texas. Issa is encouraging users to use his MADISON platform to comment on the document, which the website Knowledge Economy International obtained and released in March 2011.

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House Republicans Relaunch Speaker.gov

House Speaker John A. Boehner's office on Tuesday pulled the wraps off of the Speaker's overhauled web site just in time for a major policy speech about House Republicans' stance on any debt limit negotiations in the coming year. GO

We're All Journalists, Indeed: Obama Campaign Guests Checked Mobile Phones at the Door

Zeke Miller at Buzzfeed, studiously reading pool reports from President Barack Obama's recent campaign fundraisers, catches something: the Obama campaign, per Washington Post pooler David Nakamura, appears to be collecting mobile phones from event attendees at the door, and storing them in plastic bags. At least, that was the case at a Monday event in New York City.

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Americans Don't Elect to Use Americans Elect; 3rd Party Hits Wall?

Is Americans Elect, the third ballot line cum party that hoped to use the Internet to nominate a centrist ticket for president in 2012 dead? It certainly looks that way. But before anyone starts writing the post-mortem, remember that it has ballot lines in half the states--and those could be used by renegade factions in 2012, or possibly in 2014 to run candidates for Congress. GO

Lori Compas, Netroots Challenger to Wisconsin Senate Republican Scott Fitzgerald, Posts Irreverent YouTube Riposte, And It Takes Off

Lori Compas, a Democrat who's challenging Wisconsin state Senate Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) in the state's June 5 recall election, had a rather unusual Mother's Day this year: She spent at least part of the day making a YouTube video with her family. GO

Romney Campaign Targets Obama's Barnard Commencement Speech With Google Ads

New York City area web users looking for details about Barnard College's Commencement Ceremony, where President Barack Obama gave the Commencement Address earlier this afternoon, are also likely to have encountered a targeted ad calling out "Obama's Wasteful Spending" on Mitt Romney's website, as Emily Schultheis from Politico first reported. While she suggested it was targeted at only the zip code where the college is located on Manhattan's Upper West Side, it also showed up on a search for a zip code located in Queens, while accessing the Internet from Lower Manhattan. But it did not show up for an Internet user located outside the New York area. GO

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