DO YOU KNOW HOW TO TELL WHEN IT IS REALLY COLD? IT IS WHEN A POLITICIAN HAS HIS HANDS IN HIS OWN POCKETS!!

May 23, 2007

Watchdog has been working and writing about the absolute necessity of transparency in government and internet access to complete government open records as the only practical answer for good and honest government. As an example, the Shelby county election commission meets today and according to a source they have promised to put all local campaign financial disclosure statements on a new website page after the first of the year. There are two ways to do this. One is to put the printed statements up as a pdf file and the other is to require the local candidates to furnish this information in an electronic format (a spreadsheet such as Excel) and then create a data base so that anyone can easily find out how much a particular person have given to a particular candidate or how much that particular contributor or associated group of contributors has given to that candidate or group of candidates. WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? The public needs to know who is paying for influence and access and which candidates are they favoring. I have attached two files to illustrate the two options. One is a file on Barbara Swearengen Holt Ware. It is written by hand and in order to put it into a data base, it would be necessary to reenter each item, very labor intensive. The other is a file complied by a local group of activists using the state of Tennessee electronic database and adding some local candidates (not required to file in an electronic form) but which have been put into that format by the local group in order to illustrate and inform the public about what is possible. I call on the state legislature to change the law to require local municipalities to file in electronic form, like the statewide candidates are required to do now, and to do it at this session.

Here is the group of elected local and state candidates that are included in this list.

Barbara Cooper, Beverly Marrero, Bill Gibbons, Brian Kelsey, Bubba Pleasant, CurryTodd, GaryRowe, Henri Brooks, Jim Kyle, Joe Towns, John DeBerry, Kathryn Bowers, Larry Miller, Lois DeBerry, Mark Norris, Mike Kernell, Ophelia Ford, Paul Stanley, Tre Hargett, Ulysses Jones, Ron Lollar, Jim Coley, Mark Luttrell, Reginald Tate, Roscoe Dixon, Harold Ford, Jr, Mike Carpenter, A.C. Wharton, Rickey Peete, Mike Ritz

Click here to see this huge database file showing who contributed to whom and when

Click here to see the hand written Holt campaign forms