Follow the Oil Money
Well lookee here...a website that tracks petroleum industry campaign contributions, called Follow the Oil Money. I did a zip code/name search, and not surprisingly, Texas and Louisiana congressmen received quite a bit of campaign funds from the oil industries and they voted for "big oil" 65-100% of the time. And did you know that George W. Bush received $2,649,725 in oil contributions during the 2004 election campaign? John Kerry received $184,037. In 2008, Rudy Giuliani received $659,158 and Barack Obama received $163,840. The presidential races page told me so. Their visual charts are pretty amusing. They compare them to Facebook or MySpace, "in which companies and politicians have become 'friends' by giving money". For more information, including how they get their data, go to FAQ page. Continue reading
Civil Defense Documents and Films…My Current Obsession
Several student patrons are working on research papers about the Cold War era and some are focusing on the nuclear arms race and the fear of nuclear attack. It's been fascinating finding and reading materials we have in our print collection, including information published by the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA) in the 1950s and the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization (OCDM) during the Kennedy administration. (For a concise history of civil defense preparedness, read "Civil Defense and Homeland Security: A Short History of National Preparedness Efforts" published by the Homeland Security National Preparedness Task Force).
The students are just as fascinated (and sometimes amused) as I am with these documents that represent an era we never knew and a fear we can't relate to. Or maybe we can relate...our generation lives in fear of terrorism "code red" rather than the red scare of communism or atom bomb attack, but it's still a fear.
Anyways, the students and I found some more civil defense documents listed in the print Monthly Catalogs (we owned some FCDA and OCDM docs, but not as many as I would've liked), but we also found some on the internet. So I thought I'd share some of these online government sources I've discovered in my hunt for all things Cold War/Civil Defense related:
* Clips of historical "test" films at the DOE agency website.
* "Mr. Civil Defense Tells About Natural Disasters!" A government document comic book!
* "In Time of Emergency: A Citizen's Handbook on Nuclear Attack, Natural Disasters" (1968).
* The "Survival Under Atomic Attack" booklet can be found in federal depositories, but here is an online transcription.
* NARA records of the OCDM.
* "Atomic Culture" article by the U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission.
* Not a government source, but a virtual Civil Defense Museum website created by a Civil Defense enthusiast.
* "Civil Defense Log Dies at 67, and Some Mourn It's Passing" article at NYTimes.com.
And my favorite...Civil Defense videos!
* Internet Archive's collection of Civil Defense Films and other media/film resources on civil defense.
* Some of YouTube's collection of Civil Defense Films.
Did they really think ducking n' covering under a school desk would protect them from a nuclear attack?
Research Reports E-Voting Error Rates Of 3 Percent Or More
Voters prefer e-voting, but tech has limits, By Grant Gross, IDG News Service, March 21, 2008. Researchers found the error rate of the worst-performing machines was 3 percent in a simple task like voting for president and, in "more complex races," the error rate was higher.
- Voting Technology The Not-So-Simple Act of Casting a Ballot, by Paul S. Herrnson, Richard G. Niemi, Michael J. Hanmer, Benjamin B. Bederson and Frederick C. Conrad, Brookings Institution Press, 2008 c. 215pp.
Yet another digitization contract limits free access to public records
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has announced a draft "non-exclusive agreement with The Generations Network, Inc. (TGN) to digitize and further expand public access to archival holdings in NARA's custody." The contract restricts free public access for five years.
- DRAFT PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT AVAILABLE FOR PUBLIC COMMENT Posted for comment: March 10, 2008 Comments due: April 9, 2008 Send comments to: Vision@nara.gov or by fax to 301-837-0319
The contract specifies that NARA will receive digital copies of all holdings that are digitized as part of this agreement and "[a]s with all of NARA's digitization agreements, there will be no charge for researchers at any time to access the digital copies in any of NARA's research rooms" and that users will have "the opportunity to purchase copies of the documents in digital format" [emphasis added].
As the NARA announcement notes, projects like this "will enable the public to have electronic access to textual and microfilm records sooner than NARA itself can provide." Once again, lack of funding for public accessibility ends in a two-tier access: free if you get to a reading room, fee if you want to use the Web.
The proposed agreement puts restrictions on redistribution of the digitized records by NARA for five years.
For a period of five years following the donation [TGN "donated" copy of the Digitized Materials to NARA], NARA will not sell, make available for downloading, or otherwise provide in electronic form, the entire contents of the Digitized Materials or a major file segment thereof. During this five year period NARA's use of the Digitized Materials will be limited to (i) access by staff and researchers at NARA locations; (ii) production for a fee of digital images of a microform publication or a portion of a series of original records, with a minimum complement of metadata to enable the purchaser to describe, identify, locate, retrieve, and manage the images; 2 (iii) display of sample images on NARA's website or elsewhere to promote awareness of NARA's services and activities or for noncommercial educational purposes, and (iv) to reproduce portions of the Digitized Images on offline storage devices that are not accessible via Internet such as DVDs or CD-ROMs, with metadata created by NARA only, for sale to the public at rates established by NARA. In the case of (ii) and (iv) above, license restrictions on the materials as issued by NARA will limit their use to prohibit resale, distribution or republication of the Digitized Material in any format or media by the original customer or successive owner of the media. After five years from the date TGN donates Digitized Materials made from original records, NARA will have full and unrestricted rights to use them, including the right to sell, make available for downloading, or otherwise provide in electronic form, the entire contents of the Digitized Materials or segments of them. [emphasis added]
See also: GAO/Thomson-West Contract Raises Questions
Continue readingAHA, McDermott, others comment on “Improving Declassification” Report
Last year, the Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB), an advisory committee established by Congress, issued a report to the President, Improving Declassification. (See also: Improving Declassification, 2008-01-13).
On March 17, 2008, the PIDB heard public comments on its report. For a report on those comments and links to many of the comments, see:
- PIDB Receives Public Comment on "Improving Declassification" Report National Coalition for History, March 19, 2008.
Among the comments were concerns that funding would ultimately be the biggest stumbling block to realizing the recommendations and that too many documents are classified in the first place, which contributes to the overload of the declassification system. Tom Blanton, Director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University suggested that the PIDB recommendations should be transformed into a draft executive order for immediate consideration by the incoming president. Mark Zaid, Executive Director of the James Madison Project encouraged the PIDB to pursue declassification of records of Congress, and classified judicial records.
Representing the American Historical Association (AHA), Dr. Brian Martin, President and Chief Operating Officer, of History Associates, Inc. noted that the value of audio, video and digital media value may increase over time and urged The National Archives (NARA) to avoid thinking that "if we have it on paper, we don't need to preserve it in another format."
Dr. Patrice McDermott, Director of Open-The-Government.Org many in the public interest community fear that electronic records, including historically significant records, are being lost or destroyed.
With regard to "sensitive but unclassified" documents, she expressed a need for a clear review process of these unlimited control markings, rather than linking them to declassification review after 25 years and treating them as "super-classified. As previous witnesses said, she agreed that much of the problem is caused by massive over-classification at the front end of the processContinue reading