1. FCC requires online posting of political ad files

    By Keenan Steiner Apr 27, 2012 10:51 a.m.

    Handing open-government advocates a partial victory in a better than decade-long battle, the Federal Communications Commission voted Friday to require major network affiliates in the top 50 TV markets to post information about their political ads online.

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  2. Ways and Means releases tariff bill database

    By Bill Allison Nov 30, 2009 4:26 p.m.

    Last week, the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade released a <a Last week, the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade released a new resource page on miscellaneous tariff bills, which are measures introduced by members of Congress that cut taxes on specific imported goods saving money for a limited number of beneficiaries (usually just one). The subcommittee made a very handy database of these bills (they call it the MTB Matrix), showing who proposed each bill, who will benefit from it, how much money it will cost taxpayers, and whether or not lobbyists pushed the tariff break (a code sheet explaining the data, including its sources, is here). It's an incredible resource (and yes, it is similar to Real Time's 2008 tariff database; the difference is that the Trade Subcommittee's staff did the heavy lifting of putting this together, so the many man hours we invested in putting our database together in 2008 can be spent actually analyzing the data this time around).

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  3. Greasing the stimulus with pork?

    By Bill Allison Feb 5, 2009 4:45 p.m.

    Glenn Reynolds flags the latest twist on earmarks -- we'll have them, but call them something else:

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  4. Update on Earmark Disclosure

    By Bill Allison Jan 8, 2009 8:23 p.m.

    Just spoke to Kirstin Brost, the press contact of the House Appropriations Committee, who was kind enough to tell me that while not all of the details of the new earmark rules have been worked out, when members disclose their earmark requests, they will include the name of the beneficiaries. (Our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense told us they had heard the same thing).

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