You may have heard of Big Oil, but have you heard of “Big Paper”? We know, sounds crazy, but check this out.
Right now, there’s a proposal in Congress to forbid the government from requiring scientists who receive taxpayer funds for medical research to publish their findings openly on the Internet. This ban on “open access publishing” (which is currently required) would result in a lot of government-funded research being published exclusively in for-profit journals — inaccessible to the general public.
A study by MAPLight.org shows that sponsors of this bill — led by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) — received twice as much money from the publishing industry as those on the relevant committee who are not sponsors. This is exactly the kind of money-for-influence scheme that constantly happens behind our backs.
Can you call your local member of Congress and ask him/her to oppose this corrupt bill — H.R. 801, The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act? Then, call Rep. John Conyers and tell him to withdraw it
202-224-3121 - to call your local House member
202-225-3951 - to call Rep. Conyers
Below is a script from ChangeCongress that you can use when you call below.
Who’s against this bill? 33 U.S. Nobel laureates in science, 46 law professors, and groups like the American Library Association, the Alliance for Taxpayer Access and open access advocates. Now, Congress needs to hear from the most important voice of all: you.
Can you take a moment to call your member of Congress and Rep. John Conyers today, to let them know H.R. 801 hurts the public?
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Phone script for calling Rep. Conyers and your member of Congress:
“Hello, my name is __________ and I’d like to let Rep. [NAME] know that I, along with groups like the American Library Association, the Alliance For Taxpayer Access as well as 33 Nobel Laureates in science, oppose bill H.R. 801 the “Fair Copyright in Research Act,” that will keep valuable tax-payer funded research inaccessible to the public online. This sort of life-saving research and information should be open for all to read on the Internet and not hidden from the public in for-profit journals.
I am deeply concerned about a new report from MAPLight.org showing that sponsors of this bill, led by Congressman Conyers, received twice as much money in campaign contributions, as those who are non-sponsors. This sort of influence-peddling is exactly what needs to be stopped in our government.
I’m calling to ask Rep. [NAME] to publicly put out a statement opposing H.R. 801. Can you please deliver that message?
Thank you for your time.”
NOTE: For Rep. Conyers, please ask him to drop bill H.R. 801
In the ancient Greek comedy, women withheld sex from their soldier husbands until they agreed to end an ongoing war.
Substitute sex for money and you have what the folks over at Change Congress are pushing: that donors go “on strike,” refusing to give their money to pols until a campaign finance overhaul is passed (specifically, they favor a system whereby people limiting themselves to small donations would get matching government funds).
They say that they’ve gotten no-contribution pledges from people who gave $400,000 to federal candidates in the last cycle.
Special interests pump millions of dollars into elections, giving them more influence over our political system than the rest of us. Until we fix our broken campaign finance laws, these special interests will block real change on issue after issue.
I am standing with Change Congress by pledging not to donate to any federal candidate unless they support legislation making congressional elections citizen-funded, not special-interest funded.
Lawrence Lessig is brilliant, both as a legal thinker and speaker. The Washington Post called him “the James Madison of our current day.”
Lessig has an innovative proposal for taking money out of congressional campaigning to restore trust in our government.
He writes:
1) Reformers are considering a plan by which congressional candidates who raise a threshold number of small-dollar donations would qualify for a chunk of automatic funding - several hundred thousand dollars. If they accept this funding, they couldn’t raise big-dollar donations. But they could still raise contributions up to a certain amount (such as $100 or $250), which would be matched several-times-over by the central fund, an incentive for politicians to opt into this system and focus on small-dollar givers. What do you think of this general framework?
2) Senators Dick Durbin and Arlen Specter sponsored a bipartisan bill last Congress that would make TV broadcasters pay a fee that would be the sole source of revenue for the central fund that candidates draw from. These broadcasters get access to our public airwaves for virtually free and make billions of dollars in revenue as a result. Under this scenario, no tax dollars would be used - eliminating the central talking point by reform opponents. What do you think about a fee on broadcasters to fund this reform?
3) “Public financing” was the old name for this issue - which would no longer be accurate if the Durbin/Specter proposal passed. And the name’s not that good anyway. What do you think we should call this reform? Clean elections? People-powered elections? Citizen-funded elections? People-funded elections?
4) Barack Obama is on the record supporting the reform of presidential public financing. Some reformers want to pass presidential financing reform first, then pass a separate congressional bill down the road. Others want to merge the two bills and have one joint national debate. What do you think?
Presentation Zen has a fabulous post on speeches and powerpoint.
Many meetings are killed with death by powerpoint. and Garr hits it right on the head when he writes:
In the case of many leadership speeches, for example, we want to see the man (or woman) and be informed and inspired by their words and perhaps even moved by their presence. Images on a screen? Perhaps. But in many of the great speeches of our time the images are painted with the speaker’s words. Bullet point slides? You’ve got to be kidding. To illustrate the point of just how absurd bullets can sometimes be, imagine how much “different” (i.e., totally ineffective) it would have been if you listened to Obama’s now famous “Yes We Can” speech against a backdrop of really bad PowerPoint slides. If bad slides can take some of the impact off even this kind of speech, imagine what wordy slides could do to your ability to connect with an audience.
My co-blogger Andrea Nierenberg has been away on business in Shanghai for the past week. I received a frantic email from her, “the blog won’t come up!” she exclaimed.
There was nothing wrong with the blog. I checked Typepad, the server– everything was working fine.
But it wasn’t working in China. The internet is being censored with the help of American companies including, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Cisco.
According to Wikipedia,
China employs an internet police task force, estimated at more than 30,000, which has been known for some time, attention is mostly focused on their work as censors and monitors. Countless critical comments appearing on Internet forums, bulletin boards, blogs, vlogs or any major portals such as Sohu and Sina are usually erased within minutes.
The banning appears to be mostly uncoordinated and ad-hoc, with some sites being blocked and similar sites being allowed or even blocked in one city and allowed in another. The blocks have been often lifted for special occasions. One example was the New York Times which was unblocked when reporters in a private interview with Jiang Zemin specifically asked about the block and he replied that he would look into the matter. During the APEC summit in Shanghai during 2001, normally-blocked media sources such as CNN, NBC, and the Washington Post suddenly became accessible. Since 2001, the content controls have been further relaxed on a permanent basis, and all three of the sites previously mentioned are now accessible from mainland China. In fact, most foreign news organizations’ web sites are accessible, though a small number (including BBC News) continue to be blocked.
Here in the states, thoughts of Tienanmen Square, conjure up images of massacre and the lone “tank man.” However, as Andrea tells me, when you search for “Tienanmen Square” in China, all you see is government sponsored information and photos of smiling tourists.
Google, whose informal corporate motto is “don’t be evil”, is finding that moral compromise is the cost of doing big business in China.
America has 5% of the worlds population, yet it has commanded a disproportionate economic and technological advantage.
Geographically almost untouched by WWII, it’s rise was catapulted at a time when Europe was smoldering, Japan lay in radioactive ash and much of the rest of the world was under colonization.
Today things are different. Products are be made in Beijing and software coded in Bangalore. Global education is becoming more competitive and mountains of knowledge once limited to the major libraries at elite universities and major cities are now all free, digitized and one google search away.
The one of the biggest competitive advantages America has had is its magnetism. It has been a draw for the Albert Einsteins, Andrew Carnegie’s and Sergey Brins of the world. But unfortunately, the current immigration policy encourages the worlds best and brightest to increasingly looking towards Europe for their education. The policy of admitting top foreign students to come and study at Stanford, get their partially government subsidized education, but not allow them to work in the country and apply what they learned is preposterous.
AlwaysOn reports that 47 percent of current venture-backed startups surveyed have immigrant founders Two-thirds surveyed say starting American companies is harder for immigrants today. Entire report here.
Asked by a student what it meant to be an American, President Ronald Reagan responded:
“You can go live in Japan, but you cannot become Japanese. You can go to France, but you don’t become a Frenchman . . . But anyone from any corner of the world can come to America and be an American.” Being open to legal immigration provides an opportunity for individuals to obtain a better life and to become Americans. However, research shows immigrants, particularly those who are highly skilled, also help America maintain its competitive edge, shape new industries, and create new jobs, technologies, and innovation for our nation.
Looks like Congress is trying to pass some serious law, but one lone senator, kept secret, is trying to stop it.
An unidentified senator placed a “secret hold” on legislation introduced by Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., that would create a searchable database of government contracts, grants, insurance, loans and financial assistance, worth $2.5 trillion last year. The database would bring transparency to federal spending and be as simple to use as conducting a Google search.
This is from porkbusters via Glenn Reynolds, in some conjunction with the Sunlight Foundation.
