If you want to know if your country is corrupt, you look at the global integrity report.

One more reason to support Obama for America: he wants to build a database that lets every citizen, every news outlet and anyone else track every dollar that goes through congress. Well, of course, it probably would miss a huge chunk of "secret money", but it would be a step in the right direction.

Germany is currently missing from the report, though.

Awwwww... I was so going to enjoy the show and now they've ruined it for me :-(

Dave Winer blogged about campaign conference calls a few weeks ago. These give the "real media" people access to the managing teams of the candidates in the presidential race. He put up a recording of a Clinton campaign call.

This is one area where direct access means: having access to a lot of information that falls through the cracks, because CNN would never report on it, or the New York Times would never print it. It seems that we have again stumbled upon something that can be disintermediated by the internet. I, for one, would love to hear the spin that the campaigns put on recent events without the additional spin and filters that the main-stream media put on it when they decide what to report. Simply because I

• care a lot about politics and

• more importantly: it's an area where in my opinion the media has time and again proven that they don't serve society in any kind of meaningful way besides dumbing down the process

In particular, listening to the one recording from the Clinton campaign that Dave has put online so far, the key difference is that the campaign perceives the journalists as intelligent people and talk to them like they are. What a huge change to their normal mode of communication that is. I'm anxious to hear the new recordings that Dave put up on Pownce today (no need to check, though, they're private items). He also said that there will be a public RSS feed with enclosures soon, because he found a media partner that will provide the recordings.

I hope! I sincerely hope that something similar can be established in Germany in time for the next elections. I would have loved to have this kind of information back in 2005 when Angela Merkel became chancellor.

It's here! I was going to post the second part of my qmail recipes series on this weblog today, but the post got so long that I decided to publish it as an article. It's much easier to read that way. Enjoy!