I stumbled across this site through a newsletter I am subscribed to (thank you Lindsay Campbell).  The guy who has started watchdog.net, Aaron Swartz is the guy responsible for inventing RSS at the age of 14!  If you do not know what RSS is, pat yourself on the back:  you are the reason Asia is beating us in the realm of technology.  Heh heh.  Seriously though he is a remarkable person and has started watchdog.net as a way in which average citizens can get pertinent information about politicians in an easy to read and understand format.  The site is in a rough state at the moment, but I suspect within months it may have a great impact on people and politics played out over this year.  Here is a sample as to what they are up to:

 Thanks to the work of Alex Gourley and data from Taxpayers for Common Sense, politician pages now have basic information about the earmarks they’ve requested: the size and number requested and the size and number eventually passed.

“Earmark” is the catch-all term for the requests that Congresspeople attach to bills requiring Federal money be given to particular people or places. They’ve been in the news a lot lately, criticized as a form of corruption in which Congresspeople hand out money to lobbyists or campaign contributors instead of letting civil servants or the bidding process handle it.

As with other Congressional perks, they’re not exactly distributed evenly. Our chart shows how House leaders like Nancy Pelosi come out on top, with hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks, while newcomers like Laura Richardson get only hundreds of thousands.

Whatever your feelings on earmarks, we hope this data is interesting to you. Thanks to Alex and Taxpayers for Common Sense for making it possible.

 Again, this is just the beginning and the site is very rough.  But if Alex is able to do with this site what he has accomplished in the past it will be a great tool for American citizens.