How Government Works

Feb 8, 2016

Top 400 Taxpayers See Tax Rates Rise, But There’s More to the Story

As Americans were gathering party supplies to greet the New Year, the Internal Revenue Service released their annual report of cumulative tax data reported on the 400 tax r...

read in full

Feb 4, 2016

Chlorine Bleach Plants Needlessly Endanger 63 Million Americans

Chlorine bleach plants across the U.S. put millions of Americans in danger of a chlorine gas release, a substance so toxic it has been used as a chemical weapon. Greenpeace’s new repo...

read in full

Jan 25, 2016

U.S. Industrial Facilities Reported Fewer Toxic Releases in 2014

The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data for 2014 is now available. The good news: total toxic releases by reporting facilities decreased by nearly six percent from 2013 levels. Howe...

read in full

Jan 22, 2016

Methane Causes Climate Change. Here's How the President Plans to Cut Emissions by 40-45 Percent.

UPDATE (Jan. 22, 2016): Today, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released its proposed rule to reduce methane emissions...

read in full

more news

Controversial Patriot Act Reauthorization Ready for Senate Floor

On Oct. 7, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill, the USA Patriot Act Sunset Extension Act of 2009 (S. 1692), to reauthorize the Patriot Act. The bill, introduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chair of the committee, passed with bipartisan support but has been denounced by civil liberties groups and privacy advocates. A week earlier, the committee voted down another reauthorization bill, the JUSTICE Act (S. 1686), introduced by Sens. Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Richard Durbin (D-IL), that would have greatly reduced surveillance powers and strengthened civil liberties protections.

read in full

Transparency Precipitates Trust

Oct 6, 2009 by Craig Jennings

In a report on initial capital injections into banks under TARP, the Special Inspector General for TARP (SIGTARP) said that Treasury Secretary Paulson, the Federal Reserve Bank, and FDIC ~~lied~~ made "inaccurate statements" about the financial health of the several of the nine banks that received the first chunk of TARP money. And while news headlines glommed on to this aspect of the report, the SIGTARP made an important case for transparency.

read in full

Meet the New Recovery.gov

Sep 28, 2009 by Craig Jennings

...(mostly) the same as the old Recovery.gov.

The new Recovery.gov went online this morning, and it is...less than revolutionary. I've spent the morning poking around it and checking out the new features. Even though the really important stuff -- the recipient data -- will not be available until Oct. 15, I was hoping that the new site would significantly change the way Recovery watchers would be able to access Recovery spending data. This version, however, is not that site.

read in full

Regulating Credit Rating Agencies

Sep 23, 2009 by Craig Jennings

Yesterday, I noted that the economy-strangling credit crisis was largely due to the purchase of "risky" financial assets by large financial and other institutions. But when these firms purchased the assets, they believed (or could plausibly claim they believed) they were making risk-free investments, because credit rating agencies (CRAs) -- the private entities that grade the riskiness of debt instruments -- judged the mortgage-backed securities (MBSs) the financial firms were buying to be so. Of course, it turned out that the CRAs failed spectacularly in their assessments.

read in full

OMB Watch Lauds Obama Administration's Unprecedented Move on State Secrets Policy

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23, 2009—OMB Watch strongly supports the Obama administration's unprecedented move to create a government-wide policy on use of the state secrets privilege. The policy, issued earlier in the day, is the latest in a series of decisions by the administration to make government more open and accountable.

read in full

Are Agencies Slow to Spend Recovery Act Funds?

Sep 21, 2009 by Craig Jennings

ProPublica's Christopher Flavelle makes an interesting observation about Recovery Act spending to date.

read in full

OMB Watch Appeals Recovery Act FOIA Decision

Sep 18, 2009 by Sam Rosen-Amy

Back when the Recovery Board released the Recovery.gov redesign contract, many in the transparency community were upset at the extent to which the General Services Administration redacted the contract. While we certainly expected General Services Administration (GSA) - the agency which conducts most of the federal government's procurement - to redact proprietary information, the document had massive swaths blacked out, including such ridiculous sections as the number of peak users and one part titled "Introduction."

read in full

Panel Begins Work on Dissecting the Financial Crisis

Sep 17, 2009 by Craig Jennings

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a 10-member, bi-partisan, group of congressional appointees charged with determining the causes of last year's financial markets meltdown will begin its work today. The crisis resulted in a $700 billion appropriations bill and trillions of dollars in loan guarantees from the Fed, and now the FCIC will put the events that lead to the systemic breakdown under a microscope.

read in full

October Surprise: Looming Recovery Act Data Quality Issues

At the end of October, the first round of recipient reporting for the Recovery Act will be released on Recovery.gov. This reporting is a crucial step in Recovery Act oversight and transparency, but there is no guarantee that the reporting process will proceed smoothly. Come October, the diffusion of responsibility for Recovery Act data quality could result in a great deal of confusion, as a flood of bad data could stymie the administration’s efforts at Recovery Act transparency.

read in full

Public to See Recovery Act Data Oct. 15

Sep 14, 2009 by Craig Jennings

Updated below

The Nextgov blog Tech Insider is reporting that on the eve of All Hallows' Eve, the public will be treated with its first look at Recovery Act recipient report data. Recovery Board chief Earl Devaney has told Tech Insider that that the reports will become available after the 20-day correction and revision period allowed by the law to "mitigate[] the board's concern that large amounts of uncorrected data could actually harm transparency rather than enhance it."

read in full