"There is nothing quite as wonderful as money," sings Monty Python's
Flying Circus. "There is nothing quite as beautiful as cash. Everyone must hanker for the butchness of a banker. It's accountancy that makes the world go 'round."
Truer words were never spoken -- or sung -- about what makes the world
of politics go round. Which is why we are so pleased to announce
HuffPost's FundRace 2008, an exciting new feature that lets our HuffPost community explore the
details of exactly who is funding -- and influencing -- the 2008
presidential election.
Full public financing of campaigns remains, of course, our ultimate
goal. Sadly, however, it looks like it will take even longer than
ending the Iraq war. So until then, what we can do at least is
explore, catalogue, and follow the money. And FundRace is the perfect
tool. Use it and pass it on to your friends.
Our goal is to promote transparency and public debate on how money is
influencing public policy. FundRace makes it easy for anybody
interested in how our political system works to find out who is
contributing to whom and to break down donations into a wide variety of
categories.
For an example of how this will work, check out this post by
our political editor Tom Edsall.
HuffPost's FundRace 2008 is especially compelling because it lets you search specific
neighborhoods and exact addresses to see contributions made by your
neighbors, relatives, friends, your boss, or, yes, your favorite
celebrities. In major cities you can even click the "Street View"
button to see a photo of a donor's house. If you ever wanted to see
how the big Democratic and Republican donors live, now you can.
Keep in mind that all data in FundRace is part of the public record. We're just using technology to make the public record much easier to access and, therefore, much more public.
This means voters can do their own investigations -- for insight or
just for fun. No longer will journalists, lobbyists, campaign
staffers, and political consultants be the only ones who have the
means to process and make sense of the data.
If information is power, then all Americans should have full access to
as much of this public information as possible -- even if it means
making a few big contributors uncomfortable. How much does money
influence public policy? With FundRace, you'll be able to get the
information you need to draw your own conclusions.
Finally, I'd like to give a big tip of the hat and a big thank you to
Eyebeam, the nonprofit that originally created FundRace as an R&D
project. We'll do our best to continue that great work here at
HuffPost.