I concede, I was an Obama fan before. But his proposal unveiled at Google HQ today is amazing stuff. I link you to a conversation on it that Matt Stoller has already started because most net junkies know that Stoller isn't exactly and Obama fan. Scratch that, I should say wasn't, because after this was unveilved he said he leans toward Obama.

This is a, to use Stoller's phrase, radical proposal. I'm not a techy type, so I'll leave a lot of that discussion to the many people at TPM who are much better on that issue than I am. What I do know a bit about is government and transparency. The lack of transparency in our government, particularly over the last 8 years is one of, if not the, fundamental reasons that we are where we are today.

A lack of transparency in a democracy leads to increased voter apathy, and policy disasters because there is never a hope that the American public can vet those policies. Transparency is one of the core reasons some political scientists have proffered that democracies aren't as warlike as non-democracies. It is also the central complaint about institutions like the WTO and the World Bank that have decimated populations and the enviroment because of trade/development policies (respectively).

There is an opening in the American consciousness at this moment to try something new. It is critical that we take advantage of this moment in this election, so that we don't just roll back the barriers between our government and the people to pre-Bush levels.

We need to take advantage of this moment to drop a devestatingly large hammer on the barriers that keep information from the American public.

I do believe that Obama just said he'd like to take the first swing.