Web site gives full financial disclosure
Bob Corker
Congressional salaries are public information. However, that doesn’t stop Capitol Hill staffers from ranting and raving about LegiStorm.com, a web site that makes it a snap to find out how much Sen. Bob Corker makes.
It’s $179,000 per year, by the way.
Making life easier
Yes, it’s true that we have always had the right to know how much public officials spend on trips and what their investment portfolios look like. However, that used to mean sitting in a dusty office on Capitol Hill and pouring over tiny type for hours.
Now, through the magic of the Internet, it’s all on LegiStorm for journalists and conspiracy theorists and anyone who’s curious to see, instantly. If one of your leaders has taken out payday loans lately, you can find out. It’s all there. Tax information, spouse’s salary, you name it. And, boy, are our country’s representatives mad.
The man behind the mayhem
Jock Friedly created LegiStorm, and everyone from your state representative to the White House doctor has been after his head since. Hillary Clinton filed for an extension on her 2008 taxes, by the way.
Friedly calls himself the “transparency’s sidekick,” and that self-appointed office has gotten him more than a few strongly worded e-mails from Congressional staffers. One Congressman’s chief of staff says Friedly is a “peeping tom” conducting a “witch hunt.”
What can you find
The amount of information on LegiStorm is pretty extensive. The site is broken up into salaries, trips, financial disclosures, foreign gifts, earmarks and “the score,” which contains minutes from the House floor. As I type this, they are debating a bill to give the FDA more authority to regulate tobacco products.
Fun facts
Robert Bennett
Just thought I’d share some of the information I gathered today at LegiStorm: John McCain filed an amended tax return in 2007. Joe Biden has taken 74 trips while in office. Sen. Robert Bennet got a miniature engraving of the Sun Tsu’s Art of War on bamboo slips as a gift from China.
There’s plenty more where that came from. Check it out: www.legistorm.com
Of course they are mad. It seems that there’s a culture of imperiousness amongst our elected officials. They seem to not remember that we elect them, and their lives are made possible through our tax dollars. If it is money that we gave them, then we the people deserve to know just what it is being spent on.