This is a little something I’ve been working on since my May visit to New Mexico. Your mileage may vary (I stitched it together on my Mac and it’s color-calibrated for my printer), but I definitely recommend viewing it large.
Many thanks to my Aunt Margie for letting me stand up in her SUV and shoot through the sunroof.
I was reading an article in the Washington Post this morning that raised a number of interesting questions for me. Specifically, the article is about the F-22 fighter jet that’s at the center of a high-profile showdown between President Barack Obama’s administration and Congress. Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates want to halt further production of the advanced (and costly) fighters, while many members of Congress want to continue building them.
According to the article, in addition to the high costs to develop and build each plane, the Air Force is seeing the cost to maintain the jets increase over time:
The Air Force says the F-22 cost $44,259 per flying hour in 2008; the Office of the Secretary of Defense said the figure was $49,808. The F-15, the F-22’s predecessor, has a fleet average cost of $30,818.
What’s so striking to me, about this entire story, is the lack of information. The figures above come from two different sources, but which is correct? The Air Force seemingly wants to continue ordering F-22s (Air Combat Cmdr. John D.W. Corley said 381 are necessary; Sec. Gates put the number at 187), and might that be the reason behind the lower figure? I don’t know who to believe.
And what about Congress? What is their role in the situation? Well, last month the House Armed Services Committee voted to continue F-22 production to the tune of $369 million, for 12 planes, in FY 2011. They included the funding in the FY 2010 Defense Appropriations bill (H.R. 2647), which the full House approved on June 25. This is where things get interesting for the concerned citizen. Continue reading…
As Donny has been reporting, the House today is scheduled to vote on the Waxman-Markey climate change bill, a sweeping piece of legislation that will establish a program to cap emissions of pollutants and a system for trading emission permits. I won’t go into too much detail for two reasons: for starters, Donny has covered it quite extensively. However the larger reason is because I have no clue what’s actually contained in the bill being debated today.
My colleague Paul Blumenthal describes what’s happening in more detail, but the basic gist of the situation is thus: the House will debate H.R. 2998 as a substitute amendment to the original bill, H.R. 2454. Complicating matters is the sheer length of the bill — H.R. 2454 weighed in at 1091 pages. The substitute bill that was dropped this week is 1200 pages long! And, as if to add insult to injury, there are 300 pages of material included today based upon committee action yesterday. Continue reading…
Regular OpenCongress users know that we lag a bit (about 24 hours) behind THOMAS, the official site of the Library of Congress, when we put bill information and roll call votes on OpenCongress. This is a result of several factors, but put simply, we have to wait for the information to be online before our servers can collect it for publication. For the vast majority of users, this system works: Congress usually moves so slowly that waiting 24 hours to read the bill text or review a roll-call vote is not much of a problem.
We do run into trouble, however, when legislation being debated in Congress is not made available online.
On Friday, my colleague John Wonderlich and I made a field trip to Capitol Hill. Our destination: the House Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch. Our goal: pick up a copy of the FY 2010 Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill (and an accompanying committee report), which had been marked up that morning.
Continue reading…
One of the most frustrating things I encountered as a small-town reporter was a lack of access to information: whether I was trying to find out about laws in the Roundhouse or enrollment rates at WNMU, sometimes I ran into brick walls and red tape.
I now work for the Sunlight Foundation and OpenCongress, two organizations that are dedicated to open government, transparency, and citizen engagement. We’re using the power of the Internet to empower citizens in the political process and help them hold lawmakers and other officials accountable.
I’ll be in Silver City next week (June 1 – 5) and while there I would like to try to share some of the techniques I’ve learned for keeping tabs on government. Now, I’m not doing this as an “official” Sunlight event, but it will be geared around what Sunlight calls “Insanely Useful Web Sites,” some discussion of good-government principles, and time for questions.
I know this is short notice, but if anybody is interested in learning about some of the new ways of digging up useful information (from voting records of senators to campaign finance records to information on copper smelters around the world) I’m willing to get together. Thursday evening (June 4) looks pretty empty on the ole community calender, so let me know if you’re interested?
If so, please email me at andurin@gmail.com. If enough people are interested we will set a time and place.
If you’re interested in government information, and you have a knack for programming or visualizing information and like money (and who doesn’t like money) should check out Sunlight Labs new contest: Apps for America 2. Sunlight is giving away $25,000 in prize money (in conjunction with a few partners like Google) to the best applications that rely on the newly-launched Data.gov. I’ll let Clay explain:
These are exciting times for us– the walls between Government and Developers are starting to shrink, and we here in Sunlight Labs are terribly excited to get to work on doing great things with the data that’s coming out. Government has made a move in the right direction– now it is time for us to show them what we can do.
We’re happy launch Apps for America 2, this time with support from our friends. Google’s put in some prize money as has Craig Newmark, the founder of Craig’s list. O’Reilly and Techweb have provided another wonderful incentive: tickets and table space to Gov2.0 summit for the winners.
So, if you want a shot at $10,000 for first prize (or $2,500 for best visualization), you better get coding!