Quote of the Day: 'the Real Players' in Politics
BY Nick Judd | Monday, October 3 2011
There was a sense that the rules on the books applied only to the naive and that the real ‘players’ worked with a different system.
— Bob Biersack, a pioneer in electronic record-keeping for campaign finance and friend to many a frustrated journalist trying to make sense of money in politics, describing the state of play in U.S. politics in the 1980s — at the advent of "soft money." Biersack left the Federal Election Commission last week after first joining it in 1981; his quote could be just as true of today, as candidates for president run full-tilt at November 2012 in the first post-Citizens United presidential campaign. At Roll Call, Ambreen Ali has the exit interview.
RELATED TOPICS:
- SHARE THIS
- Google+
- Instapaper
News Briefs
RSS Feed tuesday >Cory Booker Hires Democratic Organizing Veteran Addisu Demissie To Manage Senate Run
Newark Mayor Cory Booker has hired a veteran of the Democratic organizing world Addisu Demissie to manage his run to succeed the late New Jersey Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. GO
ShareProgress Debuts Social Sharing Optimization Tools
ShareProgress, a left-leaning tech startup in downtown San Francisco, launched its social sharing optimization platform Tuesday after several months of testing with the progressive advocacy group CREDO Action. GO
New Organizing Institute to Move from Collecting Election Data to Organizing Election Officials
The New Organizing Institute, a progressive nonprofit that trains campaigners and is no led by former Obama for America data director Ethan Roeder, is launching a new initiative next week aiming to "fix that" for local elections. NOI will announce a national network where local election administration officials can congregate to share solutions to common issues. It's a transition for a team at NOI that had previously been managing the Voting Information Project, which collects data on polling places, election districts and voter registration deadlines and prepares it for third parties in machine-readable format. In the 2012 election cycle, backed by the Pew Charitable Trusts and partnered with Google, VIP made information available in all 50 states. GO
Russian SOPA Passed First Reading
A first draft of a law nicknamed “Russian SOPA” was approved by the Russian parliament last Friday, June 14. Like the original Stop Online Piracy Act, the bill will establish penalties and procedures for online copyright violations.
GOCzech Prime Minister Resigns Following Corruption and Surveillance Scandal
The prime minister of the Czech Republic resigned yesterday, irreparably damaged by a corruption scandal and the possibility of impropriety in his personal life. According to the Czech constitution, his entire government will also have to relinquish office.
GOMayors of New York City and San Francisco Announce "Digital Cities" Summit
The Mayors of New York City and San Francisco announced Friday that they're co-hosting meetings in the Fall and early next year to examine the "best practices" that lead to tech-enabled economic growth. The meetings are follow-ups to the initial Bloomberg Technology Summit held last year in New York City. This year's summit in New York ... GO
New York State Joins GitHub to Get Feedback on Open Data Policy
New York is the first state to publish an initial draft of its open data guidelines on GitHub to seek feedback from the public, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced in a press release Thursday. GO
Brazilians Protest Forced Evictions on YouTube and in Mock World Cup
Tomorrow Brazilians who have been forced out of their housing in advance of the 2014 World Cup will stage their own “People's Cup” in Rio de Janeiro to draw awareness to forced evictions.
GOA “Fix-Rate” for Corruption: Integrity Action Wins the Google Global Impact Award
“From wanachi (“citizen”) to up there,” Emmanuel Dzombo explains with an upward sweep of his hand, is how Integrity Action has begun to reverse the bureaucratic top-down approach that has often blocked development work in Kenya. Dzombo is a local leader in Chengoni, Kenya, a country that ranks towards the very bottom of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index – at 139. The organization believes it could do more, and Google.org seems to agree. The Google Impact Challenge will provide the charity with £500,000 that will allow it to develop a mobile application for tracking and collecting data from citizens. GO
Crowdsourced "Danger Maps" Track Air, Soil and Water Pollution in China
Chinese citizens are exposing sources of pollution and other environmental problems by contributing to the partially crowdsourced website 'Danger Maps'. So far, the Chinese government is letting them get away with it.
GOU.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board To Meet Next Wednesday
A long dormant independent agency that was at least nominally supposed to exercise a modicum of oversight over the booming intelligence-industrial complex is scrambling to meet up next Wednesday, but the public will still be none the wiser about what it plans to do, since it is a closed door meeting. The only indication that the toothless ... GO
Despite Software Problems, Civic Hackers are Pedaling Bike Share Data
Reporters are shoaling around the news that New York City's new bike sharing system, Citi Bike, is benighted with problems stemming from its high-tech software. But that's not putting the brakes on plans to explore what programmers might do with data generated by the system by hosting a Citi Bike Civic Hack Night later this month. GO
Grassroots Republicans Are Not Waiting for the RNC To Revamp Their Digital Strategy
Several members of the Republican Party rank and file aren't waiting around for the GOP to reinvent itself on the technological front. They're organizing events themselves to explore what a tech-enabled GOP might look like for the 2014 cycle. GO
New Russian Law Makes Publication of Information on Gay Rights Illegal
On June 11 the Russian parliament passed a bill against “homosexual propaganda” that effectively outlaws gay rights rallies and bans informational or pro-gay rights material from publication in the media or on the Internet. Violators of the law will risk heavy fines and censorship and, in the case of a media outlet, risk being shut down. It had near unanimous support, passing in a 436-to-0 vote, with only one abstention.
GOMacedonia Draft Law to Regulate and Restrict the "Last Arena for Freedom of Speech"
The draft of a media regulation law in Macedonia has journalists and press freedom watchdogs up in arms. The proposed Law on Media and Audiovisual Media Services was written by the government behind closed doors and without input from the media or NGOs. It has been interpreted as a decisive move on the part of the government to limit speech online in a country where press freedoms are already limited. Until now, Internet-based news sites were not regulated like print media.
GOTrying to Prosecute Online Piracy in Canada? Good Luck!
A private firm that is monitoring Canadians who download pirated content online has found itself at the center of a legal battle. GO
