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Earlier this week, I wrote a story for the paper which I also posted here about people becoming concerned about address listers from the U.S. Census Bureau coming onto their property. The story was sparked by a news release from the Census Bureau intending to explain what the workers are doing and how to identify them.

It turns out this isn’t just a matter of people being a little freaked out. Some people are really freaked out.

The day the story published, I got an email from someone named Donna.

“Matt, I don't know about you but I am starting to get a little nervous with all this Big Brother activity. You know what they do in Irag [sic] with GPS coordinates, don't you?”

She referred me to a few links and a YouTube video. I also did my own Google search. I found long, long threads on assorted blogs about this. Donna is not alone in her worry and accusations.

Some of the concern – and concern is an understatement in some cases – is born of confusion about why Census workers are in the field in 2009 when the census isn’t until 2010. (The answer is these people are not Census takers. These workers are checking and confirming the addressed to which the actual Census forms will be mailed in 2010.)

Some seem creeped out by a stranger coming into their yard, collecting information into a computer, and leaving without saying a word. It’s as though they’d feel better if the worker had knocked on the door and said what they were doing. It seems secretive, and therefore suspicious.

But most of the angst centers on that hand-held computer they carry – a Global Positioning System (or GPS) unit which they use to mark the coordinates of dwellings and their address as they go along.

Bloggers and commenters out there suggest this is everything from just one more obnoxious invasion of privacy by the Federal government to a plot by the shadowy New World Order.

Others commenters have responded that the GPS mapping is just a more accurate means of documenting the address list to which the census forms will be mailed, and knowing precisely where they are. Location matters, because the census isn’t just about counting people, but counting where they are. The numbers of people and their locations are used to drive federal decisions from how much federal money flows into an area to where the lines for congressional districts are drawn.

The Census Bureau itself rarely opens its mouth on any subject without mentioning its promise of security and confidentiality of the data, and that it’s required by law.

But where do you stand on this? Do you trust that the process is as benign and secure as promised? Do you think the intentions are benign, but worry about how that information could be used by others whose intentions aren’t so benign? Or do you think it really is part of an ongoing effort by the federal government to know way to much about you?

Finally, have you had an encounter of any kind with a census address lister in your neighborhood or at your home? What happened? Did you trust them? Ignore them? Worry? Run them off your property? Call the police, or the U.S. Census Bureau?

I’d like to hear. Drop me a comment here. This is a national conversation, but I want to see what the same conversation sounds like in the community where I live.

April 15 came and went yesterday. You might have been thinking taxes. But Virginia's political candidates had a different deadlline in mind: the deadline for first quarter fundraising reports.

That includes three Democrats and a Republican seeking the governor’s mansion at the top, and closer to home in Roanoke, a small herd of Republicans and a single Democrat seeking the 17th district House of Delegates seat vacated by the retiring William Fralin.

The source of candidates’ funds are a matter of public record all across the country, but the reports aren’t always easy to learn about. In Virginia, we’re fortunate to have the Virginia Public Access Project.

VPAP is a non-profit organization funded by a consortium of newspapers. Led by former Roanoke Times reporter David Poole, it’s purpose is to collect process and present online all manner of candidate and elected official financial disclosure information, from the gifts elected officials have received, to the activities of lobbyists, to the money raised by political candidates.

So, if you want to know where Republican candidate for governor Bob McDonnell got the impressive $2.2 million he’s raised since Jan. 1, you can find out at vpap.org. Nearly half of it came from the Republican Governors Association, by the way. Some $15,000 of it came from four donors in the 24018 zip code in Roanoke. And yes, you can drill down to see exactly who the individual donors are.

You can also see where fundraising front runner Terry McAuliffe, a democrat, turned up the stunning $4.2 million he raised in the same period. The names can be pretty fascinating, like Donald Trump, who gave $25,000, and Bill Clinton, who gave $10,000. And you can also see that darn little of his money came from the western half of Virginia.

And you can see that Democrat Gwen Mason, running for the 17th House seat, has raised close to $40,000, while her five Republican opponents, who are still jockeying for their party’s nomination, aren’t even out of the gate yet.

The information’s all there, and in a bunch of different ways. If you care to look, it’s an engrossing tale of power and influence and the making of favors. All brought to you by the wisdom of open government.

When it comes to birthing presidents, Virginia is still the queen mother, with eight. Yeah, we’re in a bit of a dry spell – our last was number 28, Woodrow Wilson – but still. Ohio is still one behind at seven.

But we’re spoiled that way. Giving a president to the union is still a rare privilege – so rare that more than half of the states in our union have yet to achieve it.

We added a new one to the list just yesterday, and it was the relatively new kid on the block: Hawaii. Barack Obama might hail from the Land of Lincoln (who, by the way, was born in Kentucky, not Illinois) but he was born in the 50^th state.

I wonder if that gives folks in states who haven’t made the list yet – Wisconsin, Wyoming, Oregon, Mississippi, Louisiana, the Dakotas, Alabama, and 21 more – any feeling of inferiority.

No offense to Hawaii, but it’s the territorial equivalent of an expansion team.

I mean, what if you’re from Rhode Island? You’re one of the thirteen original colonies, right next door to Massachusetts, birthplace of four presidents, and one of the cradles of our great nation, and Hawaii makes the list before you.

It must be a bit like being a Cubs fan and seeing the expansion Florida Marlins collect a World Series title after a couple of years in the league.

But don’t lose heart, Rhode Island, Arizona, New Mexico, Hawaii, Florida, and others.

You get another at bat every four years.

Here's the tally:

When you think of corrupt spots on the U.S. map, you might naturally think of Illinois. And certainly moreso with the arrest of Gov. Rod Blagojevich on federal corruption charges this week. Or maybe you think of Florida. Plenty of shenanigans down Miami way over the years, right?

But where would you put Virginia? I've lived here my whole life, and while journalists love a good corrupt official to chew on, I don't think of my homestate as a place with a steady diet of crooked officials.

But one study by a publication called the Corporate Crime Reporter ranked Virginia 12th, at least among the 35 most populous states in the union. Louisiana was first, followed by Mississippi, Kentucky, Alabama, Ohio and finally, at #6, Illinois. Florida was 8th.

CCR took a report from the U.S. Justice Department on prosecutions on federal corruption charges and calculated a rate of the number of charges in a state from 1997 to 2006 per 100,000 residents.

Here's a look at the number of convictions in Virginia's two federal judicial districts by year from the DOJ report:

That's a total of 278 convictions over 10 years, which is way more than I would have imagined. The vast majority, though, are in the Eastern District. (This comes from a set of tables at the end of the DOJ report, by the way.)

By comparison, Illinois had 524, Louisiana had 329, and Florida had 809. Florida's Southern District had the most of any judicial district with 574.  Washington D.C. had 390, but the city's too small to make the top 35 considered, plus it's the nation's capital and is rather more overrun with public officials to begin with.

We should bear in mind that the numbers reflect not only the level of corruption, but also the interest of particular U.S. Attorneys in these kinds of cases, those same prosecutors' ability to get convictions, and other factors.

And, what the numbers don't reflect is similar kinds of cases that go through state courts. Think of Roanoke City Councilman Alfred Dowe, who double-dipped on his expense reimbursements, and whose case is before state courts. And then there's former Henry County Administrator Sid Clower, who took taxpayers for over $800,000, and was prosecuted in state court, but also picked up some charges at the federal level.

On the upside, those kinds of cases are fairly rare around here. And if you're still looking for comfort, at least our governor's name is not on the lips of every blogger and late-night comedian in the country. And if that's still not enough, be glad our governor doesn't have that peculiar hairstyle. I can stomach Gov. Tim Kaine's energetic eyebrow as long he's not selling off senate seats.

Here's a fun new way to find out what your elected officials are doing up in Richmond. The Virginia Public Access Project, for years now the place to go to find campaign finance data, now offers a database of lobbying activity in the state.

It's fun, fascinating, worrisome, and also disturbingly unreliable.

And that's not a knock on VPAP. It's a knock on Virginia's method of collecting this data, and it's utter lack of a means to see if it's accurate.

VPAP took the forms filed by lobbyists and their clients and reduced them to a terrifically well put-together database that allows you to track lobbying activity by who hired the lobbyist, who the lobbyist is, who got lobbied, the restaurants where they got lobbied, and so on.

As our Richmond reporter, Mike Sluss, reported in today's paper, you can learn some eye-opening stuff from the database. For example, payday lenders spent nearly $4 million on lobbying efforts to defeat legislation that put new restrictions on their industry.

But you can get a lot more details. Check out, for example, the popularity of Washington Redskins tickets as a lobbying carrot.

So there's data there, but at some levels, it's hard to tell if it's complete, if it's accurate, and if it says what you think it says.

That's because the state's reporting requirements are about as air-tight as the fishnets on the cigarette girl at the Tobacco Company.

As Sluss reports, the forms are filed with the office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth, but that office "does not have any type of auditing powers" to ensure the completeness or accuracy of the reports, said Chris Frink, the office's lobbying specialist.

Is it me, or does that fact sound like an invitation to write down whatever you want, who is ever going to check? (Well, except for you and me, now that we can look at this stuff online.)

The form asks filers to describe the lobbying activities conducted. Sluss cites one example in a filing by Phillip Morris USA: "All matters pertaining to the manufaccture, distribution, sale and use of tobacco products." Well, that's useful information. They might as well have written, "None of your @#$%!! business." And if they had, who would have known the difference?

Another issue has to do with the numbers they report. The reports require naming legislators who attend functions with a cost of $50 per person or more. Apparently, the common practice is to take the cost and divide it by the number of people in attendance. That might be appropriate for a catered affair that was actually billed per head. But what if it's a dinner where everyone orders off the menu, and Delegate X orders a $35 steak, the creme broulee and two bottles of wine, while Senator Y stops in for one cocktail? Using the division of the total cost, it would appear on the report lawmakers X and Y both received the same benefit from the lobbyist, which is both grossly inaccurate and grossly unfair to Senatory Y.

In fact, Sluss cites an example very much like that, in which House of Delegates Majority Leader Morgan Griffith (R-Salem) attended a function where he, after much offering, said he accepted a glass of tea or cranberry juice. But on the report filed for that event, Griffith was down for a full $127 share of the bill.

And then there's this: divide the bill by enough people to get it to below $50 per person, and you don't have to name names

No doubt there are some lobbyists and clients out there who don't abuse this slack system and follow the spirit of the law even though they apparently don't have to.

But the transparency of our political process demands something weightier than the spirit of the law. Spirits are fleeting things. Spirits have no teeth.  And this is a situation in serious need of some teeth.

Now, let's see, where are those teeth going to come from? Who makes laws in this state? Oh, yes, the very legislators who can exploit this vaguery to the own benefit, if they so choose.

Legislators can be persuaded. But who is going lobby them to make such a change?

Ok, don't pretend you weren't wondering. Just how many times did John McCain and Barack Obama mention Joe the plumber during the final presidential debate Wednesday night? That would be references to an Ohio plumber who appeared on camera with Obama recently asking questions about what Obama's tax plan would mean for him and plans to buy the plumbing business he works for.

After Sarah Palin's invocation of the mythical work-a-day everyman "Joe Sixpack" during the vice-presidential debate, it's a rather hilarious coincidence that an actual work-a-day everyman who became part of the debate really is named Joe.

But back to the question. How many times was Joe invoked?

Well, you can figure it out with our latest presidential debate word clouds, a fun visual analysis of the 14,000 words the candidates uttered -- or hurled-- during the debate.

Tell you what, I'll give you the answer to that one. When they mentioned Joe the plumber, they didn't always say "plumber." McCain mentioned "Joe" 23 times, and Obama nine times. But a total of five of those mentions were about Obama's running mate, Joe Biden. So that leaves 28 mentions of the other Joe.

The word "plumber" came out 11 times by the way -- probably the most times plumbers were the subject of so much political discourse since the Nixon administration, and the revelation of Nixon's crew of Watergate operatives and burglars, known around the Oval Office back then as "the plumbers."

Enjoy the word clouds.

When you deal with data all day long, you start to look for it everywhere - and find it.

So, Tuesday I'm at the Kirk Family YMCA in downtown Roanoke for my lunch-time workout, and during a break, I scan the bulletin board. There are lists there, lists with names and numbers. Ah. Data.

It's there that I spot it, on the list of the top females for September in terms of weight lifted as tracked by the Y's FitLinxx system.

No. 2 on the list: Darlene Burcham.

Yup, the 63-year-old Roanoke City Manager pushed, pulled, hoisted and hauled a total of 535,445 pounds during September.

Now, Burcham has been accused of throwing her weight around as city manager before, but a half million pounds?

I called her. She was gracious, but not thrilled by more attention from the press, even for something like her athletic prowess. But she indulged me.

"I was startled to see that myself," she  said. And she was skeptical. "I don't believe it. I think it's fake," she said of the number. The FitLinxx system must add wrong. FitLinxx users create an account they log into before a workout, and it tracks your workouts on the assorted fitness machines at the Y.

Burcham said she started working out at the Y back in June, mainly walking around the track at the inhuman hour of 5 a.m. She's had two different foot surgeries in recent years, is overly careful when traversing stairs now, and realized because of fear of injury, she just wasn't getting as much exercise as she used to. Her daughter Ann Kreft, a Roanoke City Schools principal, joins her often. (She's No. 14 on the list, by the way.)

After a couple of months of walking, Burcham started working out on 10 different fitness machines, too.

"I do not have any kinship with those machines," she said. "I think this is something you do because it's good for you."

And when she thinks about it, and how the weight can add up during a workout, she thinks maybe that number could be right after all.

But she found the number meaningless as a motivator. Nor did she take any satisfaction from the fact that anyone had noticed.

"The last thing I need," she said, "is more publicity."

That might be the headline in the satirical newspaper The Onion.

But this is no satire.

Roanoke Mayor David Bowers Tuesday during a city council retreat compared a rodent infestation in the City Market Building to the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the world, and deadliest attack on Americans ever on our own soil.

"To me, it's very much like 9/11, I guess, in the sense that you had this catastrophe and people had to have hope after it," Bowers said.

Ok, we see the parallel. Something bad happened - and in a relative sense, it is arguably a catastrophe - and we all need to pull together, have hope for recovery and move forward.

But let's examine what happened. Let's look at the data. Read more »

Well, the evidence is in. It's not a pretty picture.

The health department released reports from the latest inspections of the Roanoke City Market Building's 10 restaurants on Tuesday. What emerges is not the image of a small rodent issue. Mouse "excreta" - poop to us regular folks - was found in essentially every corner and every stall of the building.

The building was shut down and all its vendors' licenses suspended after a health department inspection Friday. Read the reports yourselves here. Links are on the left side of the page about half-way down.

Some had worse problems than others. Read more »

We’ve cleared another Roanoke City Council election cycle, but this time around, the residue of it includes more than bad feelings, losers and some new faces on the council dais.

It includes a special prosecutor and allegations of candidates and an unregistered political action committee running afoul of state election laws.

It also includes what is now an incomplete record of the financing of this election, despite laws that demand a complete, accurate and transparent record.

As a data-geek, a journalist who believes fervently that open government is good for everybody, and the purveyor of a database of city council campaign contributions , that troubles me.

The record of this election apparently has a signifiant hole in it. How big a hole?

Read more »