Friday, February 10, 2012

Cleaning House

November 7, 2006

The following guest entry was written by Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.org

Now and then, the corruption in Congress gets to be too much, and American voters get rid of a lot of it. It builds back up, over the years, creating another need to clean house.

I think we're seeing that tonight, which is a big deal for me. My gig at Craigslist is full time customer service, a lot of which is about fighting small scale crime, petty harassment, scams, stuff like bait and switch. Like everyone else, I'm frustrated and feel kinda helpless in the face of massive corruption.

What's different about this election is the role of the 'net. People are connecting online to work together to defeat bad guys. My experience tells me that this is sustainable, in a way that'll break the cycles of corruption and house cleaning.

The Romans, during the last decades of the Republic faced tremendous corruption, couldn't fix it ... but I think we can.

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Juliana Gruenwald has been covering tech and telecom issues for more than a decade for National Journal, Interactive Week, BNA and Congressional Quarterly. This is her second stint with National Journal. She was recruited by NJ in 1998 to help launch its first tech policy publication, Technology Daily. She left in 2000 to cover international tech and telecom issues for Ziff Davis Media's Interactive Week magazine. She started her career at United Press International as the wire service's first Helen Thomas Intern. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Minnesota. A Minneapolis native, she misses the lakes but not the cold.


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Josh Smith covers technology policy as a staff reporter for National Journal. He previously interned at National Journal Daily, a Senate press office, and the Deseret News in Salt Lake City where he covered the state legislature, courts, and crime. In 2009 he graduated with honors from Southern Utah University after managing an award-winning student newspaper as editor-in-chief. Josh has received state, regional and national awards for his political and policy reporting, including first place in CapitolBeat’s 2009 Best of Statehouse Reporting college competition. A native of drop-dead-gorgeous Utah, Josh lives in Virginia with his wife, Amber.