Comments on: Sunlight Foundation in the Dark

By: James Richardson

James Richardson — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:12:06 +0000

And if Sunlight were so keen on transparency and openness in digital communication, Luigi, why is it that my comment critical of Luke’s article–posted yesterday at 1:39–is still awaiting moderation? Or has the comment already been moderated — and deleted?

Transparency is not a one way street.

I clearly allowed your comment here, though I certainly have no intention of offering a retraction, because I’m interested in debating the topic. Is Sunlight?

By: Michael Turk

Michael Turk — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:11:01 +0000

By the way, you’re also clearly not versed in reading FEC reports. The “Data Services Management/Voter Vault” would not include hosting. That would be for “data services”. I’m not sure specifically what that would be, but would typically involve paying for lists from Secretaries of State to update the data, changes to the application, etc.

Hosting for Voter Vault would be included in Web Hosting since it is a web based application that requires hosting.

See how that works? Any further questions about how to read the reports can be posted here.

Don’t worry, I’ll get you through this…

By: Michael Turk

Michael Turk — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:06:22 +0000

Luigi, what would I know. Having just run the RNC’s Internet operations, having worked very closely with SmarTech for years, and having originally conceived and built the shared hosting platform, I clearly know less than you do based on simply reading the FEC report.

That’s the problem with you liberals. While others are running businesses and actually creating something, you believe you can skim a report and tell them how to do it better without any actual understanding.

Keep up the good work.

By: James Richardson

James Richardson — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:49:28 +0000

Luigi –

As your so combative and yet still wrong, I can only assume you’re a GA Tech Alum. The “WEB HOSTING” fee is for hosting of GOP.com, 31 state parties, and a variety of other projects the RNC has yet to launch.

By: Luigi Montanez

Luigi Montanez — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:55:19 +0000

Hilarious, you’re the one who needs to learn how to read an FEC report.

http://www.opensecrets.org/parties/expenddetail.php?cmte=RPC&txt=Smartech+Corp&cycle=2010

Web hosting expenditures from March to September did indeed total just over $1 million. Luke reported $1.039 million, but I counted $1.002 million from the link above. Still just over a million dollars in either case, of expenditures clearly marked “WEB HOSTING”.

Those are completely distinct from the expenditure totals for Data Services Management/Voter Vault ($69K), Email Services ($11K), and Internet Connection at HQ ($65K). Luke clearly left those totals out of his numbers.

That’s the wonderful thing about open campaign finance data — you can actually calculate the numbers, instead of just huddle with Mike Turk and snicker.

Full disclosure: I work for the Sunlight Foundation, but I’m a software developer, not a reporter. I stumbled on your post on Tech Republican and figured out how wrong you were in about three minutes.

When can I expect a retraction on this blog, RedState, and TechRepublican?

P.S. To hell with Georgia! 45-42.

By: RedState

RedState — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 05:49:01 +0000

[...] “For an organization that prides itself on investigative research, the Sunlight Foundation is comically inept at reading campaign finance data. “They should learn to read an FEC report,” remarked my source.” [...]