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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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What Twitter Won't Tell You About the Election

A new study released on Tuesday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press on Tuesday offers the opportunity to get real about what the political conversation on Twitter and Facebook can — or can't — tell you about the progression of the 2012 political campaign. Pew has found that even among users of Twitter and Facebook, a paltry percentage of people use social networks to get news about politics: Only 24 percent of Twitter users in the sample and 25 percent of Facebook users said they "sometimes" got campaign news through that network, while a full 40 percent of Twitter users in the sample and 46 percent of other social media users reported "never" getting campaign news through either Twitter or Facebook. GO

Navigating New York's "Road Map for the Digital City," One Year In

In May 2011, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg revealed a "Road Map for the Digital City," a plan to use technology to make city government more and participatory, and to leverage the city's tech sector for economic and civic gains.

New York City Chief Digital Officer Rachel Sterne will join our editorial director, Micah Sifry, on a conference call this Friday afternoon to discuss the progress on that road map so far. The call is free and open to anyone to join. You can sign up here.

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Pete Hoekstra's Campaign Website's "Offensive" Source Code Changed After Outcry

As if "chop suey fonts" and obvious graphic allusions to the stereotype of the Chinese as the Yellow Peril weren't controversial enough, the group that created an incendiary microsite for former Rep. Pete Hoekstra's campaign has managed to further fan the flames with what it's calling a mistake in its code. GO

Fidel Castro Loves the Internet

“The Internet is a revolutionary instrument that permits the receiving and transmission of ideas, in both directions, that is something we should know how to use,” Fidel Castro told a crowd of supporters on Feb. 4, according to the state-owned Cuban newspaper Granma International. Castro, who made his first public appearance since April 2011, launched his two-volume memoir, “Guerilla of Time,” and took the opportunity to discuss issues of importance to him. Earlier this week, Miranda Neubauer reported that one of these topics was the need for the Internet. Castro has been a proponent of the Internet as a tool for the exchange of ideas since 2003, but the average Cuban citizen faces great difficulty getting online. GO

Claire McCaskill Hires Blue State Digital's Alex Kellner As Digital Director

Missouri's senior Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill has hired Blue State Digital's Alex Kellner as its digital director. GO

Controversial Hoekstra Microsite Targeting Debbie Stabenow Created By The Prosper Group

Michigan Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra has caused a firestorm in the past 24 hours with a new campaign ad that depicts China as a young woman riding a bike in a rural area speaking in broken English. The thirty second spot aired in Michigan during the Super Bowl on Sunday, and it accuses Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow of aiding ... GO

White House CTO Aneesh Chopra's Exit Interview

On his way out of the White House and back to Virginia, where he is expected to run for public office — but will neither confirm or deny that's the plan — Aneesh Chopra describes the shape of the post he pioneered as the country's first-ever chief technology officer.

As a result of Chopra's interview with The Atlantic's tech/politics correspondent, Nancy Scola, there's now a public record of what this first-ever CTO thinks the CTO's job actually is ("On any topic that is a priority for the president, my role is evaluate how technology, data, and innovation can advance, support, and improve upon those strategies," among other things) and how it might be improved.

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Slovenian ambassador apologizes for signing ACTA, Poland halts ratification

Apparently, some EU countries are reconsidering their support to ACTA, only a week after signing the agreement.
Helena Drnovsek Zorko, Slovenia's ambassador to Japan, has in fact issued a public apology to her country for signing it. Meanwhile, Poland Prime Minister Donald Tusk says he's halting the ratification process of the international treaty.
Last week people took the streets in Poland, and a protest is planned in Ljubljana tomorrow. GO

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