This illustrates the folly of big government. The politicians in congress are not lacking intelligence, but are simply trying to do too much. It would be impossible for these 535 men and women to each have a thorough understanding of all the industries they attempt to regulate. Although the tech community is up in arms over SOPA right now, how many equally bad laws have been passed that affect other industries? The government is the entity that enables corporations to violate the rights of the people.
Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works
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Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works
#62This is an invitation to play the lobby game. To me it reads like "we should bribe Congress too". But can we do that? Large corporations will have disproportionally much more economic power to bribe Congress. They can throw money at the problem repeatedly until they have exactly the law they want. If Congress cannot work, then Congress should write the laws but not vote them. Citizens should vote the laws, like in Ca…
Have you looked at how that's worked out for California? Thanks to ballot measures, the people of California voted to never raise their own property taxes, and then later voted to require massive spending initiatives in education and other places, which of course went unfunded, because they'd voted not to pay for anything. Now California has regular budget crises that are essentially unsolvable, thanks to citizens vo…
The only difference with other states of countries is that California got the budget crisis sooner, so it woke up first. It's better to have the crisis when you can still raise taxes (or cut spending).
Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works
#63The big problem with this, of course, is that word "educate" which the author encloses in quotes. The people who influence Congress "educate" representatives not with informative presentations but with money, and lots of it.
Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works
#64American geeks: if you want to fix your congress using your preexisting l33t hacker skillz rather than getting directly involved in politics (and who could blame you,) then here is my best advice: Force your legislature to start using version control. * No more sneaking revisions through in the middle of the night without anyone noticing. * Being able to do `git blame` style operations to resolve individual clauses d…
I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on PlainSite.
We don't have bills yet, but we allow diffs on the text of laws and proposals to improve them.
If you're interested in helping add features (we have a long list), e-mail info at plainsite dot org.
Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works
#65American geeks: if you want to fix your congress using your preexisting l33t hacker skillz rather than getting directly involved in politics (and who could blame you,) then here is my best advice: Force your legislature to start using version control. * No more sneaking revisions through in the middle of the night without anyone noticing. * Being able to do `git blame` style operations to resolve individual clauses d…
Legally enforce accountability?! GREAT IDEA! Let's get it passed as a... oh. Fuck.
Fundamentally, if you believe that the organization that determines the organization of Government is broken, there is no way to fix it with means that go through the regular system. An aberration in normal operational procedure is needed.
This is called revolution in the political space.
Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works
#66Who wants to sign up as the first ever crowd funded, open source lobbyist? I'd do it myself, but I'm not American.
I will pay you £5 though. Get another 100,000 like me and you're making a cool £500,000 gross. Just be sure to properly document what you're doing and what you intend to do.
I'll also give you £5 worth of slush money to grease palms and what not.
And if you meet certain objectives and milestones, I may even give you a £5 bonus at the end of the year.
Hell, I'll even give you £1 to give to every member of congress you secure, and £2 for every president you get!! (serving presidents only).
All these numbers are in Pounds Sterling. Do the math.
Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works
#67Excellent Thinking on it
Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works
#68Who wants to sign up as the first ever crowd funded, open source lobbyist? I'd do it myself, but I'm not American. I will pay you £5 though. Get another 100,000 like me and you're making a cool £500,000 gross. Just be sure to properly document what you're doing and what you intend to do. I'll also give you £5 worth of slush money to grease palms and what not. And if you meet certain objectives and milestones, I may e…
Also, you don't have to be any kind of saint. You need to be an a-typical lobbyist. Preferable with experience working for big oil, big pharma or big tobacco. A low down dirty underhanded lobbyist motivated purely by money, but paid for by people like me.
Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works
#69You'd think that tech companies involved would have a stronger lobbying arm. Every one of those extremely wealthy individuals that signed onto that "open letter" to congress should be funding lobbyists in combination with Google, ISPs, etc. and every provider out there who stands to lose from the passage of SOPA. Seriously, look at it. The IP lobby is spending millions to buy out Congress and we've got the billionair…
I think it's naïveté in a certain way, and also a belief that the power of ideas should win out above everything else.
Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works
#70I sat and stared at that screenshot of Internet Quorum for about five minutes with a mixture of shock and despair. I'm a user experience designer. I started my career in the mid '90s, trying to turn green-screen DOS applications into GUIs without letting things like Internet Quorum be the result. I've been fighting the good fight for fifteen years. With that one screenshot, I felt like the whole thing had been for na…
I think you might be overreacting a little bit in feeling sad about that screenshot. Sure it's ugly but it might be quite powerful.
Large organisations need systems that control their business processes. They even need systems that control the changes to their business processes. There's no way to delegate responsibility without some form of beauracracy.
P.S. Please show other better screenshots to inspire us.