Adam Lang
August 16, 2011
City Council, Philadelphia

Hello President Verna and members of City Council. Today and over the coming weeks, many people will present recommendations for how the districts should be redrawn. In fact, council members Green and Sanchez can attest to a contest involving over 100 participants to do such a thing. In light of that I will instead speak about reform of the process itself.

By ADAM LANG

THEY say "If you don't want something to get done, send it to a committee." And this is exactly what comes to mind after City Council unanimously passed Darrell Clarke's bill to put a proposed "Jobs Commission" on the May primary ballot.

January 31, 2011

Idea based on http://aboveavgjane.blogspot.com/ finance reporting for other races.

All reports filed under seeking a Council Office. (District)

Asterisked entries look like corporations.
Double Asterisked entries are for other oddities.

With the recent news of PHA and Germantown Settlement on top of the recurring themes and stories of corruption throughout Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, it is readily apparent that our state and local government is compromised at all levels. We can't trust any level of our government, from City Council to Controller to Mayor to General Assembly to Governor to the Judiciary to enforce laws and ethics.

It is time the federal government steps in and finds out how all of their, and our, money is spent and whom it is going to.

It is time Congressional oversight from outside our region steps in to find out exactly what is going on with tax payer money.

So far, Senator Grassley from Iowa, a ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee has started demanding answers. Contact him to let him know you support the current inquiries and request a start to end audit of federal money in Philadelphia.

Then contact Senator Baucus, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and encourage him to get involved.

Next contact the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Edolphus Towns (use zip code 11236-2806 to be allowed to use the contact form).

After that, Rep. Darrell Issa the ranking Republican on the house Oversight Committee (use zip code 92081).

Let's start by flooding them with thousands of emails that we want Congress to start asking questions and supplying us with answers.

Adam Lang
September 29, 2010

If you want ideas for a letter, start with the following:

by Adam Lang
August 30, 2010

Of the handful of people in the area who actually do talk about reform, they talk about structural changes: term limits, campaign-finance limits, restrictions on political activity, etc. Reforming some of the structures of government may have some positive effect, but the problem is whom we elect, not how we elect them.

Election after election we continually cast votes for people who spit on our back and tell us it's raining, while we cast a vote for them with a smile on our face.

May 19, 2010

It's Our Money is asking advocates and citizens to weigh in on the budget deal Council is set to vote on tomorrow. This installment comes from Adam Lang, a citizen activist who fights for open, ethical and efficient government in Philadelphia.

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/our-money/Balance_the_Budget_Adam_Lan...

by Adam Lang
November 14, 2009

Councilman Darrell Clarke, of the 5th council district, recently put forward more zoning legislation in his district that effectively requires many businesses to go through his office to start up. This prompted a discussion among many about the possibilities of him being beaten in an election for 2011. For the sake of discussion I have performed the following electoral analysis based on his previous primary election in 2007. I chose the primary since it doesn’t require any serious look at the numbers to know a Republican campaign in that district would be uphill across the board.