michroots

Bruce Fealk has a few updates on Michigan Progress, the progressive talk TV show about Michigan politics. Bruce has already interviewed Mark Brewer and will soon interview Captain James Yee.

I also will be interviewing Captain James Yee. Captain Yee was a chaplain at Guantanamo Bay and he was charged with espionage and aiding and abetting the enemy. He then was put in solitary confinement for 76 days. Later all charges were dropped. I think this is going to be a very interesting interview.

Finally, he's set to interview Governor Granholm on April 13 -- should be interesting.

I'm sure that videos will be cross-posted to Michlib once they're up.

I'm going to be at this event hanging out with LiberalLucy and others.  I actually used to live in Troy before I moved to Saginaw, so this should be fun.

Congrats to Bruce, who was recently featured in the Rochester Eccentric. It takes a pretty in-depth look at what being part of the new breed of progressive activists is like.

Bruce runs Michigan Progressive Talk TV and contributes to Vote No On Joe.

One of the most essential elements of online political activism is that anyone can do it. The more people who are watching their elected representatives and are invested in the political process, the better. Thankfully, with some new (and a few old) tools, citizen watchdogging has gotten easier than ever.

One such tool is Open Congress. As profiled by Download Squad, MyDD, and Ezra Klein, Open Congress is an intuitive system that makes Congressional information accessible to the average person. By providing information on votes, bills, and members of Congress, Open Congress aims to increase transparency in government.

(To track your Congressperson, I strongly recommend the use of feeds whenever possible. Feeds can be read by feed readers, such as Google Reader or Bloglines. A feed reader will help you receive instant updates from feeds and quickly skim through a vast array of information on your Congressional Representatives.)

For the purposes of this tutorial, we'll be tracking Congressman Joe Knollenberg.

Voting History

To follow your member of Congress' voting record in real time, pull up Open Congress and input their name in the search field. In our case, we will enter "Joe Knollenberg" in OpenCongress' search window. This brings us to Knollenberg's OpenCongress page.

If you want to just browse through Knollenberg's recent voting behavior, you can click on "See Full Voting History". For anyone who wants to follow him more rigorously, click either of the orange buttons to access the feed.

From here, you can subscribe in your favorite feed reader and stay updated.

The Washington Post also offers an excellent U.S. Congress Votes Database, but unfortunately doesn't include the neat "Web 2.0" features of Open Congress. Open Congress' emphasis on finding relevant news articles and blog posts for specific bills provide a better understanding of a broader range of legislative proposals.

Sponsored Bills

Open Congress also provides information on the Congressperson's sponsored bills, along with a list of related news articles and blog entries that may give it context.

For example, let's take H.R. 853, which Knollenberg sponsored. The page for H.R. 853 returns blog posts critical of the bill, which may be useful to you in understanding the bill and composing your own blog entries.

Voting Record on "Major" Bills

Open Congress also offers a "Most Viewed Bills" section, which is roughly analogous to the most contentious or discussed bills of the past week. This is one of the best features of the website because it allows the user to identify which legislation is comparatively "important."

Let's take a look at how Knollenberg voted on the Employee Free Choice Act. Click "See Full Voting History," and then "Details."

You can search for your Congressperson's vote with the Ctrl+F key combination in most browsers.

Tracking Recent News with Google News

Depending on how closely you need to watch your Congressperson, you may want to keep track of every single news item that mentions them. This is very easy to do with Google News or Yahoo! News.

For Congressmen that use nicknames, make sure to search for both terms. In this case, we want to use the search term "Joe Knollenberg" OR "Joseph Knollenberg"

To catch every article as it appears, select "Sort by date." This is necessary even if you want to use a feed to track articles as they appear.

If you want to monitor news articles on a regular basis, use a feed or sign up for e-mail alerts.

Yahoo! News essentially works the same way. Yahoo's feeds are better (they don't have an annoying refresh problem that Google's have), but they don't seem to "catch" the wide range of news articles that Google does.

Finding Recent Blog Posts with Technorati

Blog posts can offer unique observations or opinions that are not mentioned in news articles. The mother of all blog search engines, Technorati, will return blog posts about a search term in reverse chronological order.

Again, the search term is "Joe Knollenberg" OR "Joseph Knollenberg"

You can browse the results like with the news search, but if you're doing this on a regular basis you should subscribe to the feed.

Tracking Campaign Contributions

Poking around campaign contributions can offer some of the best ammo for blog posts on elected officials. At the national level, Open Secrets and Political Money Line are both easy to use and self-explanatory. Simply input the name of the elected official or donor and search.

For more help, the Sunlight Foundation has also put together a comprehensive tutorial on how to use Open Secrets.

The Revolving Door

Open Secrets' Revolving Door helps identify potential conflicts of interest when Congressional staffers go to work in private industry or vice versa. The "Revolving Door" directory of members of Congress is available here.

Removed Information

In many cases, elected officials' own websites serve as fantastic sources of information for blog posts.

In cases where sensitive information is removed from their websites, the Wayback Machine can be used to access this deleted information. Last election cycle, the Wayback Machine was used to show that Mike Rogers partied at Mark Foley's house.

Capitol Footage

Unfortunately, there is still no easy way to obtain committee or floor footage online, other than through live Realplayer streams or a TV Tuner Card in your computer. Now that C-SPAN has relaxed its copyright policy, that should slowly start to change.

Right now, floor footage can be streamed live from the C-SPAN website. Committee footage can currently be streamed live from capitolhearings.org. C-SPAN is supposedly planning on expanding CapitolHearings.org to expand access to committee hearings.

Ideology, Interest Group Rankings, and Other Information

You may find these other resources useful in your watchdogging quest:

Project Vote Smart - A searchable database of elected officials and candidates that includes interest group ratings, voting records, and other information.

On The Issues - Determines positions of candidates and elected officials on key issues using voting records, newspapers, speeches, press releases, and the Internet.

Progressive Punch - A non-partisan searchable database that details how progressive members of Congress are.

Conclusion

Ultimately, online watchdogging is about bringing accountability to the electoral process. In particular, information can be found and spread without the involvement of the mainstream media. More informed voters can educate their peers and make better decisions, strengthening our democracy.

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This is something I wrote a while ago (I think last summer) for the UM College Dems when they were talking about starting a blog. It never ended up getting used, but a lot of the advice still applies. Since LiberalLucy is putting together her Beginner's Blogger Guide, I figure this might be useful for her.

Anyway, here it is:

This is a quick overview of my take on blogging and how to get started. This is by no means the only approach to doing it. A lot of credit has to go to Laura Packard (of the Stabenow campaign) for showing me the ropes, as well as some posts by Chris Bowers of MyDD.

What is a Blog?

From Wikipedia:

“A weblog, which is usually shortened to blog, is a type of website where entries are made (such as in a journal or diary), displayed in a reverse chronological order.

Blogs often provide commentary or news and information on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. Most blogs are primarily textual although some focus on photographs (photoblog), videos (vlog), or audio (podcasting), and are part of a wider network of social media.”

Why Blog?

Aside from its cathartic effects, blogs offer several other tangible benefits.

Blogging allows us the opportunity to discuss issues that deserve exposure, but that mainstream media outlets do not have the time or inclination to cover. Communities of blogs can evaluate candidates and policies, pick out the good ones, and find flaws in the bad ones. By being the “watchdogs,” or by talking about niche issues, blogs can highlight problems that would otherwise go not discussed, and often define the context in which they are discussed.

Politicians and journalists like it when a lot of their work is done for them. Blogs provide research, insight, and leads that help to make better policy or come up with better stories. Also, the people that read blogs tend to read a lot and are usually very interested in the issues. These are the people that talk about the issues or news of the day to their friends. By bringing your opinion to these people, you affect a larger group of opinion makers.

Blogs also provide a critical voice to challenge the infrastructure on our side. By discussing what works and what doesn't work, we can help to improve the Democratic political apparatus.

Finally, blogs serve to motivate and inform our activists. Blogs have the power to energize our base into action, and also help us to become more persuasive and make better arguments.

Local Blogs

In terms of high-level national blogs, “lefty,” or progressive blogs like Daily Kos and MyDD are much more widely read than their conservative counterparts. Unfortunately, the conservatives dominate the local political blog scene. This means that conservative bloggers better understand the factors that play into their local districts and are in a better position to influence races at the local and state levels.

If you have a moment, take a look at this article detailing how local bloggers played a critical role in Tom Dachle's defeat at the hands of John Thune. In addition to doing opposition research, they were able to effectively work the media to help slant coverage closer to their favor. National blogs do not have the resources or understanding to impact local races in this manner.

Good Blog Posts

Local blogging is also important because people also tend to like to read blogs with local, “specialized,” or somehow otherwise unique content. Not even the “top level” blogs cover every subject. It is more important to discuss the topics that you have a greater degree of familiarity with. This will set your posts apart from what everyone else is already talking about. When a particular issue becomes important at a state or national level, you will become the expert that people turn to.

Blogging also offers people a chance to provide their own commentary and research that is not available in major newspapers or even from political campaigns. In particular, people appreciate reading about how issues relate an individual's own life. If you are going to be blogging about state and national content, it is important to relate those ideas back to yourself or provide some kind of additional insight beyond what the papers and campaigns provide. Blogging is powerful because there is a degree of decentralization – instead of a top-down structure, you can have a conversation and contribute something back to the public. Conversely, blogging is not about simply repeating a campaign's message.

I have a few specific topics that I write about now, and that seems to generate more interest. In some cases, I am the only blogger from my area talking about particular local issues or races online. This means that when those issues come to the forefront (or even when people Google about them), my perspective counts. In some cases, I am the only blogger talking about a particular issue or candidate, which means that I end up at the top of Google searches for those topics.

Also, any letters to the editor (such as to the Daily or a local paper), speeches, or other original content authored by you is great material for a blog post.

Finally, blogging is collaborative. Writing good posts alone will not guarantee that anyone will hear your voice. The fun is in communicating with others. This can be through writing comments on other blog posts, posting at a larger blog about similar topics to what you cover, or by posting to a blog as part of a group or community (like the UM Dems blog!) In fact, most of the major sites covering national or state politics are at least partly user driven. Users post “diaries” about a particular topic, rate each others' diaries, and the best ones are bumped up for everyone to see. Matt at Michigan Liberal regularly posts entries on the front page that come from users and discuss the relevant topics of the moment.

With that in mind, let's get started and look at some possible topics!

Login info:

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Suggested Topics:

There isn't really a prominent student voice in the “blogosphere” (at least not that I know of), so we are in a position to bring something new to the table. I have suggested some topics that are worth discussing that we are likely well-suited to talk about:

• College Democrats announcements from the e-mails, like what you all were doing before.
  
• Your personal experiences doing College Dems stuff, such as District Invasions, registering voters, social events, rallies, working on ballot initiatives, etc.
  
• Issues that pertain to liberal students at U of M specifically, such as “Killer Coke,” student rights, relations between University students and the city of Ann Arbor, and campus politics and activism (although I would shy away from talking about campus elections).
  
• Issues that relate to college students specifically. This includes (but is not limited to) higher ed funding, access to vote, jobs for fresh college graduates.
  
• Local issues from your own home town.
  
• Issues that you have a greater degree of experience with. For example, if you are in the school of Social Work or have taken a lot of Environmental Studies classes, you are in a position to talk about certain kinds of issues with some authority.
  

Start Your Own Blog

If this sounds like something that you are interested in, I would strongly encourage you to start your own blog. Feel free to e-mail me and I can give you some tips on getting started, publicizing your blog, and building traffic.

Starting a blog is easy, user-friendly, and free. You can “cross-post” your own posts at the UM Dems blog, and then link back to your own. With more progressive voices out there blogging, we can send a stronger message, accomplish more, and hopefully help win some elections!

Senator Schauer's recent YouTube message and the new Michigan Progress TV show are both examples of elected officials in Michigan using new methods to directly communicate with the progressive community in Michigan.

There's no reason that candidates in Democratic primaries in Michigan can't do this as well. Perhaps for the first time, candidates have the opportunity to speak to us directly while incurring virtually no costs to themselves. When the time comes, I encourage each one to take the opportunity to introduce themselves to us.

In case you hadn't heard, Michigan Republican Party chair Saul Anuzis recently opened a Facebook account to "better connect with modern Republicans." I know from personal experience that there are a lot of people on Facebook interested in politics, but lack a "connection" to the political party of their choice. By being on Facebook, Saul can directly speak to potential volunteers and allies who might not otherwise get involved in the political process.

Regrettably, barring individual elected officials, the Michigan Democratic Party is far behind the MRP in its use and understanding of online organizing tools. Zack actually brought this up today -- unlike Saul and the MRP, the MDP doesn't have a blog.

A lot of the content that a regular MDP blog would require already exists. The MDP issues press releases and disseminates other information that we don't get from other sources in unfiltered form. For example, today's e-mail on the Presidential nominating process could have also been a blog post. During the campaign, all of the new MDP campaign ads could have been uploaded to YouTube and embedded in their blog. This kind of original information simply isn't available from blogs run by volunteers.

The benefits are obvious. The information is made available instantly, as opposed to screwing around with their site. The MDP would get their unfiltered message out, and help others access and distribute it. The media will be reading it, and they will treat it differently than a volunteer-based blog. For example, on a recent episode of OTR, Kyle Melinn directly referenced Saul's blog. Saul has everyone tuned in because he offers unique information and because he is the chair of the party.

Most importantly, Saul's blog is like a daily conversation with his activists. He keeps them engaged in the news of the day from a Republican standpoint. Furthermore, he makes it seem like he's involving them in the process. An MDP blog wouldn't replace press releases and press conferences, but it would represent a daily interaction with the activists that is equally important.

Why not do everything that we can to develop our party and make it stronger? We're all on the same side here.

Bruce Fealk recently launched a progressive talk TV show entitled Michigan Progress.  This is exciting new territory for progressives in Michigan.

Thanks to the wonders of Google Video, the first show can be posted and viewed anywhere.  Check it out!

Michigan Progress is the name of a new community television show that will focus on Oakland County politics and issues and from time to time we will have special guests. Our first two guests will be Dave Woodward, Oakland County Commissioner, and chair of the Oakland County Democratic Party, and Tim Greimel, freshman commissioner and part of the new Democratic caucus.

The County Commission is now aligned with 13 Republicans and 12 Democrats. The goal in 2008 is to turn the commission blue. We'll need your help to make it happen.

Our second show is going to have a very special guest and I'm very excited about the opportunity to talk politics and issues with our surprise guest. Please stay tuned for an announcement on when our surprise guest will appear. I know you won't want to miss this exciting interview.

I look forward to providing exciting, relevant programming to progressives in Oakland County and beyond.

Check out Randy's new blog post, "My American Dream."  Along with a lot of other people my age in Michigan, I can definitely empathize with where he's coming from.

Marcy Wheeler's website to promote her book Anatomy of Deceit is now live.  The website features a blog and several different options for ordering the book.

Wow, Drupal 5.0's garland theme really is very flexible.  I've seen a bunch of sites use it and they all look unique.

Marcy Wheeler (emptywheel) will be doing a booksigning for Anatomy of Deceit at the Kerrytown Concert House on Thursday, February 8 at 7PM.  If you're in the Ann Arbor area, be sure to go and pick it up.

I haven't actually bought the book yet, so I'll probably go just to grab it.

This isn't an isolated pattern - college Democrats are seeing contested elections, and Young Democrats just saw some very aggressive conventioneering to shut out progressives in Michigan, with dishonorable credential fights from party machine people reminiscent of an earlier age.

...

It's what happens when progressives get organized and work to beat back corrupted ideas that flourish in secret.  It's what happens when we genuinely listen to Howard Dean and take power for ourselves.  We should consider this in 2008, as we move forward.  Debate makes our party and our country stronger.

Thanks to my roommate for pointing this out.  If you're interested, take a look at the post and video on the MYD convention.

According to some, grassroots activists shouldn't have a say in the workings of the Democratic institutions that they participate in. We're "rogue" elements, after all.