Doug Ross @ Journal

Exposing Earmarks: Sunlight Foundation

The image is easy to conjure: fat-cat politicians of every stripe using leaf-blowers to dispense our money in the form of "earmarks."

Finally, the Sunlight Foundation is leveraging the power of the Internet and a motivated community to bring light into the darkest corners of Federal spending bills. It has created a new platform where citizens can investigate, expose, and publicize earmarks.

And just what is an earmark?

...An earmark is a line-item that is inserted into a bill to direct funds to a specific project or recipient without any public hearing or review. Members of Congress—both in the House and the Senate — use earmarks to direct funds to projects of their choice. Typically earmarks fund projects in the district of the House member or the state of the Senator who inserted it; the beneficiary of the funds can be a state or local agency or a private entity; often, the ultimate beneficiary is a political supporter of the legislator...

Why is this needed? Because most earmarks are authored anonymously! Under the current rules of Congress, no demand is made that an earmark's author is identified.

And there are over 1,800 earmarks in the proposed spending bill. And you can help!

Sunlight Foundation provides spreadsheets, interactive maps, politican pop-ups for your web pages and plenty of research help.

Ready to do your part to expose the waste in Washington?

Go ye therefore hence, and sip the sweet nectar of wisdom: Sunlight Foundation: Exposing Earmarks.