New Source of Information

TechRepublican.com talked about something interesting today. They have a new website that could be a useful source for news. It is called Maplight.org. It is aiming to create more transparency than currently exists about the relationship between politicians, donations and how they vote on bills. It is also like a blog or like wikipedia. Viewers can add their own information, such as articles that support a bill by special interest groups, which Maplight will then incorporate. "You create a page on Maplight with your own data and get a unique URL however Maplight does include a disclaimer that not all of the data comes from Maplight. " (Blogger) "Founder Dan Newman set up Maplight as a non-profit because "Politicians tend to be chosen according to how effective they can raise funds, which means many problems — whether healthcare, technology policy, or global warming — aren’t getting solved. When I tried to explain campaign contributions are causing this, I was waving my hands too much,” he said. “We created Maplight to show people specifically how issues they care about are connected with campaign dollars.” (Blogger)

This is very interesting because shouldn't politicians be chosen by how they view certain issues. I do not think it should be based on how much money they raise. That is important, but problems like healthcare and technology should come as a higher priority, don't you think. I think this will be a useful site because it will give us information that is important to us. It will give us information that will help us to make educated decisions and argruments.