Monthly Archives: March 2009

Take-Aways from Transparency Camp 09

Some random thoughts about Transparency Camp 09. Here are my big take-aways from the conference. Excitement: There’s a tremendous amount of enthusiasm among enlightened advocates of government transparency, fueled by the election of Obama and the mainstreaming of Web 2.0 tools like blogging. There’s a real can-do spirit, which is in marked contrast to continuingRead… Read more »

February was American Heart Month

I had a heart attack in 2001. Obviously I survived. A friend of mine had one a few years earlier and he didn’t. I remember that incident quite well because his wife called us around six-thirty in the morning as we were getting ready to leave for work. We’ll call them Fred and Ethel (onlyRead… Read more »

Transparency Camp thoughts: an ode to basic research

Several people have asked me what I took away from Transparency Camp, an “unconference” held this past weekend here in DC (read the Twitter stream to get an idea what it was like). I did get a few concrete facts out of it, but fundamentally to me, it was all about basic research, not applied.Read… Read more »

Federal Eye: Bill Would Separate Census From Commerce Dept.

House Democrats will unveil a measure Tuesday that splits the U.S. Census Bureau from the Commerce Department and makes it an independent government agency similar in design to the National Institutes of Health or NASA. The proposal comes in the wake of Republican allegations that the Obama administration is attempting to politicize the census byRead… Read more »

TSP Talk – We need more TSP options

Good Monday morning TSP participants. It’s time for your weekly TSP Talk. Stocks opened in dire straights on Friday, but quickly found their footing turning a 150-point decline into a small gain by the afternoon, but by the close sellers jumped back in and took the Dow down 119 points. After a dismal 2008, theRead… Read more »

Federal Eye: Challenges Await Sebelius at HHS

President Obama will nominate Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D) today as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, a job originally offered to former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, who withdrew last month due to issues with back taxes. Experts suggest that in addition to the administration’s health care reform efforts, Sebelius, 60,Read… Read more »