Politics Watchdog Follows the Money Online

[EV_Ares]

Dan Newman is tall and slender, with dark hair and a steady gaze. Imagine Ralph Nader or Harry Potter in his 30s. From a 700-square-foot office in Berkeley, California, with three colleagues and fourteen interns, he runs a nonprofit website that should give unscrupulous politicians pause. It's called MAPLight.org. The first three letters stand for "money and politics," and Newman is illuminating the connections.

http://www.maplight.org/

As issues go, money and politics (and their cousin, campaign-finance reform) are considered a snooze by most voters. But Newman's high-tech approach got hearts pounding in Silicon Valley last month. At an event called Netsquared, dedicated to "remixing the web for social change," the leaders of twenty-one nonprofit organizations presented their best digital do-gooding ideas to tech experts and funders. The causes ranged from promoting US recycling to stopping genocide to empowering Third World women. When a vote was taken on the second day of the conference, MAPLight won first-place honors and a $25,000 grant.

From: The Nation; entire article @ link below:'

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070625/hamilton