At today’s Conservative Blogger’s Briefing, hosted by Robert Bluey at the Heritage Foundation, Onvia CEO Mike Pickett and CTO Eric Gillespie spoke about their project, Recovery.org – a new website designed to track where YOUR taxpayer money is going.

Recovery.org is a technological solution to government transparency that is doing exactly what the White House intended to do already, but hasn’t yet done with Recovery.gov.

The Company:
Onvia is a for-profit entity, that is, for the last 10 years, tracking government spending at over 90,000 government agencies.  Onvia takes a complicated process using advanced technologies to capture pieces of data and within 24 hours field that data into a database that is accessible to their clients (mainly small businesses.)

Recovery.org currently breaks down and sheds light on stimilus spending for over 9,800 government projects.  The website tracks spending by state, by county, and by city.

Soon, you’ll be able to track requests for proposals and also determine award data so that citizens and organizations know exactly what contractors are being awarded what money, for what projects.

Our goal is to take all of that disparate information that is out there and put it into something that is useable and trackable.

In the next few weeks, Onvia will create an API (Application Programming Interface) that allows users to download the entire file of information to use for any purpose.

The bottom line is that if you put the two websites alongside one another (Onvia’s Recovery.org and Obama’s Recovery.gov) – Recovery.org is better meeting the public's expectations for government transparency.

The Outcome:
For an average subscription of $200/month, Onvia’s clients are immediately more competitive in this economic climate, having been armed with the power of information at their fingertips and having a better understanding of their position in the marketplace of government contracts.

For more information on Recovery.gov and for an update from Heartbeat International, you can listen to the entire Conservative Bloggers Briefing on Blog Talk Radio.

Yesterday, I made it across town to hear from Rep. Jeff Flake at the conservative bloggers briefing at Heritage.

Rep. Flake came by to talk up a new site he's launched: PorkParade.com (disclosure: PorkParade.com is proud product of DAG, that I worked on.)

The site's goal is to put pork on parade and help build a movement to push back on Washington's wasteful spending. Cool tech features on PorkParade.com include:

* Email capture.
* Twitter - any tweets with the hashtag #pork are displayed in real-time and top twitters are also listed.
* YouTube videos.
* del.icio.us bookmarks, anyone can "tag" links with "porkparade" and those items will show up on the site's feed.

When Rep. Flake goes down to the floor of Congress he'll tweet about the earmarks he's going after and using #pork the tweet will show up on PorkParade.com. But the site isn't just about Jeff Flake, anyone can share examples of wasteful earmarks, help spread the message, and follow the discussion.

In addition to PorkParade.com, Rep. Flake shared his views on the possible bailout of Wall Street.

He noted his extreme skepticism to the whole plan and opposition to Wall Street executives walking away from failed firms with a golden parachute.

Rep. Flake noted that despite Treasury Secretary Paulson's pleas to the contrary, this bailout should come with costs for firms that take government funding.

According to Paulson, we can't make this bailout a punitive measure, but Rep. Flake asked the sensible question - why should we have to bribe companies to participate in this bailout? If we have to, then apparently this proposed bailout isn't all that necessary.

I have to nod my head agreement to that - failure comes with a cost, and Wall Street firms should not be able to escape their bad investment decisions without facing certain costs. Bottom line.

Today's bloggers briefing was back at Heritage, after being hosted by Family Research Council last week. Heritage's Conn Carroll stepped up to the plate and did a great job hosting the briefing in Rob Bluey's stead, who was out sick for the day. At lunch we heard from Congressman Joe Barton on global warming and energy policy and Jared Young who talked about a new niche YouTube site - CampaignCircus.com.

Joe Barton
Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX) is the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and he began by describing himself as an advocate for an energy policy based on free markets. Barton talked about the science behind climate change, and how climate change is a naturally occurring phonomena. He stated that whatever we do regarding global warming - we need to make sure that Americans' lives remain relatively unaffected and that we maintain the standard of living we Americans currently enjoy. Here are some more notes from Congressman Barton's remarks:

Cap & Trade Program

Nobody can tell you with a straight face that such a system won't be extremely expensive - the system has single-handed removed the petrochemical industry from Germany.

The effect of this program will be to drive energy-intensive industries off-shore.

There's no real effort to push this bill when the economy is weak because no one can deny the negative effect it will have on the U.S. economy.

Right now the global warming alarmists have the upper-hand (on the committee) but they don't have the votes. However, they don't want to talk about the science, they want us to accept the science as a given and get to the "solutions phase".

Even the people who think global warming a huge problem admit that if we did everything they wanted done right now - it wouldn't change the world's temperature 1/2 degree Fahrenheit.

Nuclear Power

The nuclear energy guys have won the fight.

Al Gore doesn't talk about it, but he just kinda accepts it - there's a benign neglect of nuclear power.

Once one or two nuclear power plants are built, we'll see an avalanche of others being built.

* The last time a nuclear power plant was built in the U.S. was in Texas in the 70s.

Congressman Barton was soft-spoken but clear and precise. He defined his role on the Energy & Commerce Committee as to "be the adult;" a role that should be filled far more often then it is in Congress these days.

Campaign Circus
Jared Young is the co-founder of the new niche YouTube site CampaignCircus.com which aggregates the latest political videos. Young has previously been involved with the video sharing site zigvid.com. He hopes that Campaign Circus will gain traction as a tool for bloggers.

Some notes on Campaign Circus:

* Launched a month ago.
* Political/campaign version of YouTube.
* Focused on the Presidential primary – will shift to House and Senate races in near future.
* A video aggregator for all the latest attack ads.
* Can embed and share videos easily.

Young noted that they'll be adding a "Pundit Accountability" section that will track the top pundits so you can have a easy-to-find record of what a pundit's said, and if their predictions have turned out to be true or not.

Young also got feedback on potential features including a tool to allow a user to cut-up a long video into shorter snip-its and then re-post the shorter clip.

UPDATE: More on Campaign Circus from Ericka over at RedState.

FYI: Stopping Planned Parenthood
Ericka Andersen has a good article up on former Kansas Attorney General and current district prosecutor Phill Kline and his battle against Planned Parenthood of Kansas. Kline spoke at last week's bloggers briefing.

At today's bloggers briefing at Heritage, Brent Bozell came by to talk about his new book Whitewash: What the Media Won't Tell You About Hillary Clinton, But Conservatives Will- that documents how the MSM has buried all negative news about Hillary Clinton, and is shamelessly promoting her presidential ambitions.

We also heard about a new conservative commentary and news website targeted at American and foreign expatriates, and a new study that grades the states on key labor issues.

Whitewashing Hillary Clinton
Bozell noted that the two most common reactions he’s gotten to his book so far are:

1) I had no idea.
2) I had forgotten all these things.

According to Bozell, many Conservatives don’t understand why many American voters still support Hillary Clinton. But it’s because many Americans don’t get their news from conservative media outlets.

He challenged us to examine the alphabet soup of Clinton scandals and name one that’s ever been resolved. But on the flip side, for a scandal involving a Republican – the media never lets the story die until they’ve gotten to the bottom of it.

As Bozell put it, there are two kinds of bias: that of commission and that of omission, and the MSM is guilty of both when it comes to the Clintons.

Also, the MSM consistently pushes the story of Hillary Clinton as a moderate, and there can only be two reasons for this: either they’re lying or they truly believe she’s a moderate. Despite the fact that her voting record in the Senate is almost in line with Ted Kennedy’s.

Bozell doesn’t think the MSM is lying, instead, “It just defines where they are on the spectrum. Don’t insult my intelligence by saying you’re being objective.”

Building the Conservative Movement Abroad
Eric Staal is the chairman of Republicans Abroad Germany, and the founder of a new media venture, The Reactionary. As an American expatriate who’s lived abroad for many years, Eric described how the US is routinely defamed in Europe’s publicly-financed media. To combat this misinformation and to help win the hearts and minds of Europeans, and the millions of Africans and Asians who are reached by European media – Eric started the Reactionary. It’ll be an independent, for-profit journalism and commentary site, that’s modeled in part off of RealClearPolitics.

The Reactionary is planning a January 2008 launch, will publish in English, and is aimed at the 6 million America expatriates and the growing “global elite” who in Eric’s words live and work in a foreign country, or are engaged in international affairs.

The Reactionary’s twin goals are to “Help export the US Conservative movement, and nurture and foster Conservative movements as much as possible,” in other countries by becoming a platform for those ideas.

Eric ended by noting that America has, “Lost the moral support of the European right.” And we need to completely shift the terms of the debate and shake things up. He explained that if Conservative ideas can be repackaged to be new, edgy or cheeky (as they say in Britain) than people might be open to them.

Grading the States
Brian Johnson, the director of the Alliance for Worker Freedom (an affiliate of ATR), came by to announce the release (on Thursday) of AWF's state-by-state report card that uses quantitative and policy data to grade all 50 states on workers rights. Utah ranked #1 in the report.

For today's bloggers briefing, Ken Blackwell and Tom DeLay joined us to talk about their new project, the Coalition for a Conservative Majority.

Blackwell explained that CCM is "not trying to replicate what the left has done but build a coalition that can compete against the left."

CCM is not trying to be another think tank. According to their website:

The Coalition for a Conservative Majority (CCM) will provide American conservatives a new voice in public policy and politics by inspiring, identifying, organizing and training them to become directly engaged in American citizenship and become effective activists for conservative principles and ideas.

Blackwell explained that CCM will organize around media markets, and is currently active in the following media markets:

*Scranton, PA
*Pittsburgh, PA
*West Palm Beach, FL
*Houston, TX
*Denver, CO
*Colorado Springs, CO
*Las Vegas, NV
*Phoenix, AZ

DeLay, who called in from Houston, noted that the Left over the last few elections has been able to put together some impressive coalitions, not just for elections but to drive policy.

When asked why they decided to create a new organization instead of working through an existing conservative organization like ACU for example, whose board DeLay sits on, DeLay responded, "We're not reinventing the wheel."

He explained that Coalition for a Conservative Majority will focus on "activism and actions."

On the Right, "our think tanks do a great job of working inside the beltway. We do a great job at putting on events, and that's important." But there is, "not enough communications and not enough action" on the Right.

Shadow Warriors
Ken Timmerman told us about his new book – “Shadow Warriors: Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender."

The book details how rogue agents in the U.S. Government and in Congress are leaking highly classified intelligence to the media, and harming U.S. national security.

In fact, Timmerman told us that there's currently an FBI investigation into intelligence leaks that's focused on a sitting U.S. Senator.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton came by today's bloggers briefing at Heritage to talk about his new book, "Surrender is Not an Option," and sound-off on a wide variety of foreign policy issues.

Ambassador Bolton has a knack for memorable lines, and I was extremely impressed by his knowledge of world affairs and his ability to concisely explain complicated issues in a straight-forward, no nonsense manner.

The Ambassador explained that two goals for his book are to show that, "Policy isn’t made by cosmic forces in the sky, it's made by real people," and to demonstrate "how the State Department undercuts the President's policies."

the United Nations
Bolton explained that the UN is one tool in the United State's foreign policy tool box.

The UN is a butter knife. You don’t use it to eat soup or cut steak. As long as you realize that, you’ll be alright.

(More after the jump)

At today’s bloggers briefing, Representative Connie Mack (FL-14) joined us to talk about the threat posed by Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. Specifically how Chavez is building alliances with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other US enemies. Mack was recently featured in documentary about the growing ties between Iran and Venezuela titled, “Crisis in the Americas.”

Here’s the trailer.

We also heard from Dave Mastio who came by to promote the launch of a new site, RightyBlogs.com.

Connie Mack

Yesterday a resolution co-sponsored by Mack was passed in the House, which according to Mack's office, laid out the "House of Representatives’ growing concerns over the national security implications regarding Iran’s growing relationships in Latin America."

Mack described the resolution, and the documentary as all part of an effort to get the American people to pay more attention to what’s happening in Venezuela.

Mack said,

It rests upon our shoulders and your shoulders to highlight to the American people the dangers posed by Hugo Chavez.

Mack argued that if Hugo Chavez continues his relationship with Ahmadinejad, and gives Ahmadinejad a foothold in our hemisphere, we’ll have something like Castro and Cuba during the Cold War.

"Do we want someone like that in our backyard?" Mack asked. He continued, saying we need to have a forceful discussion about policy toward Chavez, and we need to let the people of Venezuela know that we support them.

This guy's addicted to power, and he’s addicted to conflict. He sees himself as Castro, except he doesn’t want to be the dictator of just Venezuela but of all of Latin America.

Mack also stated that free trade agreements between Latin American countries and the US are important.

It sends the message to allies that we care.

RightyBlogs.com

Dave Mastio came by to talk about Rightyblogs.com, a directory of Conservative blogs organized by state, that Mastio hopes will be an, "accurate reflection of the Conservative blogosphere in each state."

The site's been launched in cooperation with Eagle Publishing (the owners of RedState) and is build on the BlogNetNews.com platform, that Mastio also developed.

Mastio said that they already have over 4,000 blogs in the directory and are adding about a dozen a day. If you have a blog that you want listed, you can email Mastio at editor (at) blognetnews (dot) com.

::UPDATED::
Next week Rob Bluey announced that John Bolton is supposed to come by to talk about his new book.

Rep. Tom Reynolds (NY-26) and the one and only Ann Coulter joined us for today’s bloggers briefing.

Rep. Reynolds talked in-depth about the “Mother of All Tax Hikes” and Coulter fielded our questions and spoke a bit about her new book, "If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans”.

Congressman Reynolds, who chaired the NRCC last cycle, talked about the “Mother of All Tax Hikes” or as Reynolds called it, the Monster M.O.T.H. because it’s “Got Democrats moving back to their roots of bigger government and higher taxes, like moths to a flame.”

The Congressman really got into the weeds on the tax fight – an issue about which I claim ignorance, so I’ll point you to a couple of good resources on the subject.

*Reynold’s office’s press release on the Monster M.O.T.H.
*Heritage on the bill.
*Dick Armey in the WSJ on the tax hike.

More from Reynolds and Coulter after the jump...

Bill Sammon from the Washington Examiner came by today's bloggers briefing to talk about his new book, "The Evangelical President: George Bush's Struggle to Spread a Moral Democracy Throughout the World."

Sammon explained that there are two meanings to the title of his book – one is the religious meaning, and the other refers to President Bush's deep-seated convictions and his willingness to stick to his guns even in the face of intense opposition.

The book is the latest in a series by Sammon chronicling the Bush Presidency. It covers events from December 2005 – August 2007.

A couple of highlights from the book include:

President Bush predicting that Hillary Clinton will be the eventual Democrat nominee.

The White House has been sending back channel advice to Clinton and other top-tier democrats telling them that they need to build wiggle-room into their statements about Iraq, so that they have the option to continue to prosecute the Iraq war if they’re elected in 2008.

Matthew Sheffield asked if the president thought there was a Liberal bias in the mainstream media.

Sammon quoted the President as saying:

"Most people who cover me, don't necessarily support me."

Rob Bluey asked how much the White House pays attention to blogs.

According to Sammon, the President’s really applauded the rise of the blogosphere as a part of the alternative press. Bush cheers not just the rise of the blogosphere - but alternative media like Drudge, talk radio and Fox News.

Someone asked what President Bush planned to do after his presidency.

Sammon said the President was going to establish a center for democracy that would be affiliated with his presidential library. He was planning to have dissidents from other countries come and lecture. He was also planning to do more faith-based work - continuing as a private citizen, what he started as president.

According to Sammon, he wants to be a champion for freedom and democracy – which considering his views on nation-building when he first came into office, is s pretty remarkable change.

Also For Your Radar:
Meghann Parlett from the Leadership Institute talked up LI's Internet Activists Schools that will take place from Nov. 12-15. A lot of TechRepublican contributors are going to be teaching classes at the school (I'll be talking about socnets).

United Nations Day - In honor of tomorrow's celebrations for the UN's birthday, CEI is getting the word out about the danger to US sovereignty posed by the Law of the Sea Treaty.

Today's bloggers briefing was well attended; we heard from Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn who talked about earmark reform, and we had a in-depth briefing on the Law of the Sea Treaty. Here are some of this afternoon's highlights.

Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn
Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, who is the Communications Chairman for the Republican Study Committee and the NRCC, spoke to us about the need for earmark reform and the likely veto of SCHIP by the President.

On the SCHIP veto, the congresswoman said:

We're looking forward to that coming back to us, and being able to work with that.

We're all in favor of SCHIP as it was originally put in place... We're not in favor of the expanded version of SCHIP.

Matthew Sheffield asked, "What do you think about the false smear directed against you by MSNBC?" (Here's the background on the smear.)

MoveOn.org is developing coordinated efforts against [Republican] members.

It shows the blatant disregard the left has for our men in uniform.

What do you think about changing the rules so that party committees can only spend their money in general election campaigns?

As a county party chairman, I made it a rule to stay out of the primaries... let the people that are voting in that primary decide.

I have been in a campaign where I was not the chosen candidate. So I just want a level playing field.

When asked if she would support putting a provision into NRCC rules to prohibit the party from getting involved in primary fights, she said she would support such a provision.

the Law of the Sea Treaty
Baker Spring and Cliff Kincaid briefed us about the Law of the Sea Treaty.

According to Baker the treaty:

Would regulate seven-tenths of the world surface, basically anything having to do with the ocean.

It would entail the curtailment of US sovereignty and it is the most dangerous and comprehensive treaty ever devised.

The Senate heard testimony about the treaty last Thursday. Senators David Vitter and Jim DeMint were very knowledgeable about the treaty and had some extremely hard questions for supporters of the treaty.

Here's some video of Sen. Vitter at the hearing.

According to Kincaid, a top State Department official repeated lied under oath about the treaty at the hearing. More info on the story here.

Also, here's a 30 second ad that USA Survival is running about the treaty.

If you want more information, Heritage has a briefing out on the treaty and Kincaid has lots of resources on his website, USAsurvival.org.