I’m impressed by the comments on H.R. 7297, the Emergency Automobile Industry American Jobs Protection Act of 2008, and encourage you to take a look.

I noted the bill in this week’s WashingtonWatch.com Digest (subscribe here) and spurred knowledgeable and opinionated people to share their thinking on the idea of a “Big Three” bailout.

There’s lots of blame to go around. Some blame management for collecting huge salaries and bonuses. Some blame labor for demanding salaries and benefits beyond what the market will bear. Apparently, there’s a Ford plant closing in Mexico, yet the workers there will get higher-than-normal severance benefits. An interesting comment points to the relationships between the auto companies and the dealerships, which may tie automakers into producing unprofitable lines.

Maybe among advocates of a government bailout for private industry, everybody’s all wet. Thanks to WashingtonWatch.com’s visitors for making their knowledge and thinking available to others.

As we head into the holidays, we naturally think about charity and those less fortunate.

Well, this doesn’t have much to do with that, because I’m incredibly fortunate to live the life I do and run a site like WashingtonWatch.com. But it does cost a lot of money and it does take up a lot of time.

So the other week, I set up an Amazon tip jar on the site. It’s a nice thing to rattle if you appreciate the work we do here. There are huge improvements we plan for the site early next year, and no money to pay for them. Your donation will defray those costs, and provide real encouragement to carry on.

Go ahead and click on the Amazon tip jar. It’s always over there in the right column. You can choose to give any amount. And just to make things easy, I’ve put one right here in this post.

Of course, regardless whether you give, have a very happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Commenting on the recent 1,000,000th visitor post, one Amos Davis says:

I have never been a 1,000,000th anything (Visitor) or anything else. If this is in fact true, then I feel honored to be a part of Washingtonwatch.com history.

I use this site to locate information on pending and enacted legislation from the U. S. Senate, House of Representatives, and the Office of the President. I hope all Americans have the opportunity to visit this information rich treasure chest.

It’s true (per Google Analytics) - and I couldn’t be happier to read your kind words.

We’re pleased to announce that WashingtonWatch.com has had one million visitors so far this year.

The site is on pace to easily double the number of visitors from last year, after growth of 350% in 2007. (Hey it’s easy to grow from the really low numbers in 2006.)

With the introduction of the WashingtonWatch.com blog in July this year, we’re doing even more to bring the workings of Congress home to the American people.

The blog provides a little Washington-insider perspective, ties the news of the day to Congress’ action, reveals the human stories behind the bills that get introduced, and throws around a little attitude.

We’re working hard - and succeeding - at building an active and aware, Web-enabled citizenry. That’s you! Thanks for reading, and for visiting the site.

We’ll develop more statistical information at the end of the year. And in 2009, we’ll roll out some fantastic new features that will make the site more useful, more fun, and more heavily trafficked than ever.

For now, welcome visitor number 1,000,000!

It’s always interesting to watch the comment boards, and a visitor who simply identifies him or herself as “.” is making the most of them.

“.” is going from bill to bill saying whatever he or she can to rile up other visitors and get them outraged.

On S. 505 and H.R. 549, the tax relief bills for teachers that I wrote about ealier, “.” is calling teachers “whiners.” Sure to annoy any teacher, whiner or not.

Likewise with S. 3507, one of the more prominent bills to extend unemployment benefits. “.” is calling people whiners and telling them to go get a job. That capitalizes on the frustrations of many other visitors and brings out harsh reactions.

On H.R. 6798, “.” calls a group (or person) identified as Agent Orange Legacy “uninformed idiots.” Here again we have an example of behavior that is not conducive to a good discussion of the legislation at hand.

To be sure there are meritorious arguments on both sides of any bill. The comment threads are really meant for people to air those out. It’s not helpful to go insulting people and picking fights, but it’s a free country. To the victims of .’s insults, I recommend a no-response policy. I suspect that he or she sees your outrage as some kind of reward.

“I want to see a stimulus package sooner rather than later. If it does not get done in the lame duck session, it will be the first thing I get done as President of the United States.”

So said President-Elect Barack Obama at his first press conference this past week.

Will subsidies for broadband be part of it?

The Telecommunications Industry Association recently urged Congress to include subsidies for broadband in the economic stimulus package. The membership of TIA are telecommunications equipment providers. They argue that subsidies for their products would be good for America.

Oh! - which allows me to mention how a group called BroadbandCensus.com is promoting a Nov. 18 conference on broadband here on this site (more info | register). They have sponsored info on pages like Public Law 110-385, The Broadband Data Improvement Act, and H.R. 3919, The Broadband Census of America Act of 2007, right where people interested in these topics will find it. (Click and check out their info in the right column.)

It’s a brilliant thing - sponsoring info here on WashingtonWatch.com. Here’s how to do it.

Anyway, enough fawning over a sponsor . . . .

The last stimulus package was passed in February and included rebate checks to taxpayers, returning about $540 per family on average. But it may not have been all that stimulative. Martin Feldstein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan, recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal that it was a flop, with only 15% of the stimulus money going to new spending. (The rest went to savings or paying down debt - not bad things, but they came at the expense of driving up national debt.)

If an economic stimulus bill happens, maybe spending on infrastructure is better than cash payments out to people. We shall see. More to come, of course.

Here’s why you should vote, even if you think your favorite candidate is already destined to win or lose.

And while a lot of people treat this as the end of the political season, it’s not. It’s the beginning of the policy season - the season when things actually happen.

Your mental attitude may be different tomorrow morning, but no matter what happens in the election, the material changes begin when Congress returns on November 17th, perhaps to consider an economic stimulus bill. Things really change in January when the 111th Congress convenes and the new president is sworn in.

So this election thing has been fun - for good measure, here are all posts tagged John McCain and Barack Obama - but it’s a mistake to put politicians first.

The vote is just a prelude to the policy changes to come, which is our bread and butter on WashingtonWatch.com. Keep watching.

I’ve done a couple posts here on the national debt - the inability of the national debt clock in New York City to handle the rollover to $10,000,000,000,000.00, and the freezing of the Treasury Department’s online national debt clock, now resolved.

The other day, through the WashingtonWatch.com Twitter feed, I discovered a service that will send you the national debt for the day, each and every day. Check out the NationalDebt Twitter feed.

Unfamiliar with Twitter? I wrote some about it while I was deciding whether or not to Tweet WashingtonWatch.com stuff.

The National Debt Twitter feed is hosted by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which is dedicated to “increasing public awareness of the nature and urgency of several key challenges threatening America’s future, and to accelerating action on them.” Sounds good to me.

They have an interesting page on the real national debt, which stands at about $53 trillion, not the $10+ trillion we think of. This is the debt calculation that includes what the federal government has committed to pay in Social Security and Medicare benefits beyond expected revenues in those programs.

Your share of the real national debt is about $175,000. You and every other person in the country. The real national debt is a real problem.

Anyway, kudos to the folks at the Peterson Foundation for pressing these issues as we’re doing from time to time here. Now, if we could just get through to you people!

Seriously, pass this post along to someone who you know who might be interested. We can get this national debt situation under control if everyone pays a little attention and takes a little time to get a handle on all that our government is into. We’re here to help you do that. And we’re gonna make it fun! (huh - maybe)

One of the keys to WashingtonWatch.com is good data about federal legislation. A reason why WashingtonWatch.com is not a much better resource is because it’s very hard to get good data out of the legislative branch.

So it’s nice to see that a new Open Senate Project is joining the Open House Project. These are both efforts to improve the workings of the Congress and make it more transparent to the public.

Over the past year-and-a-half plus, the Open House Project has developed a list of recommendations for the House, some of which have gotten some traction, as discussed in this retrospective on that work.

Now, here’s the dirty, and unfortunate, little secret: It is against Congress’ institutional interests and Congressmembers’ individual interests to be more transparent. Information is power, and giving the public access to the really good, really timely information about Congress’ workings would dramatically reduce their freedom of action.

So, while they will say nice things and make nice gestures about transparency, Members of Congress and congressional leaders will not give up power all that easily. Roadblocks of all kinds will get in the way of these projects, and ultimately information will have to be taken from Congress. Congress won’t just hand it over.

Getting leaders to talk favorably about transparency and take small steps in that direction is a start, though. At the very least, these efforts will lay traps for the politicians whose natural habitat is still the cigar-smoke-filled room.

Kudos to the Sunlight Foundation for building on the Open House Project with Open Senate.

Dozens of press releases come out every day on some public policy issue or another. I picked one pretty much at random to write about a couple of months ago. It was an American Trucking Associations release touting the support of a professional truck driver for a piece of legislation. I thought that was a little gimmicky, but it’s far from the worst thing I’ve ever seen in public policy advocacy.

So up went a picture of Tony Sifford and a post about his support for some energy bill or other. (Gosh - remember when energy was the biggest issue going, and not government bailouts and the reeling economy? Those were the days - two months ago.)

Tragically, Tony was killed in an accident a month later.

I’ve been honored to see commenters on my post about his passing offering their condolences to his family and illustrating how Tony Sifford touched their lives. It’s a nice illustration of the value of every life and how we all rely on each other. Even a “random” truck driver from Hillsville, Virginia is a part of our community and someone who we’ll miss when he’s gone.

This would be a nice lesson for the people debating H.R. 6798 to remember. It’s a bill dealing with whether certain cancer diagnoses should be attributed to Agent Orange, and the people debating it right now are being needlessly cruel to one another.

Take a moment out, people, to remember your common bond with one another and the importance we have to one another - in ways you might not realize until it’s too late.