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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

#101

Post by cpeterso »

JonnieCache wrote: post #11

American 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 read a story about an Australian government experiment to use a publicly-editable wiki for drafting (and commenting on) proposed legislation. Unfortunately, I can't find a link now.

Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works

#102

Post by mbreese »

klbarry wrote: post #91
JonnieCache wrote: post #11

American 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…

Counterpoint: There are some strong arguments that a senate operating behind closed doors would be more effective at ignoring special interests and working together than otherwise. The writers of the constitution did just this (they swore secrecy of anything they talked about in the convention to avoid voter backlash) [1] This is why they initially wanted health care debates behind closed doors - the lobbyists can ma…

This is very true... however, I think that the solutions addressed above would be most beneficial to the bill markup periods where amendments are made and things re-written.

There could very easily be a closed door aspect to the initial drafting of a bill. So that the entire committee would get the "blame" for the initial draft.

Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works

#103

Post by mbreese »

JonnieCache wrote: post #26
CWuestefeld wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice thoughts, but resolve individual clauses down to individual lawmakers, then back to lobbyists. In some cases you might be able to attribute a clause to a lobbyist, but this isn't the general case. And how could this be enforced? outward facing interface allowing the public to track the progress of bills in real time, increasing democratic awareness and participation. This exists, and doesn't seem to be helping.…

>Most of these just wind up saying "Interstate Commerce". In other words, you'll never be able to enforce this in any meaningful way. In my imagined utopia, all these justifying messages would be listed on a lawmaker's github profile-style page next to a big picture of their face, and any lawmaker with a long list of "interstate commerce" type messages would look like an unelectable crypto-fascist in the eyes of the…

I think you'll find that much of the power that Congress wields is due to the interstate commerce clause. It is one of a few bits of constitutional authority that Congress can use to justify laws.

It would be more apropos to talk about "commit messages" that were a long list of : "typos", "bugfix"... not that I have commit messages that look like this... nope, not me...

Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works

#104

Post by ibisum »

jerf wrote: post #35
JonnieCache wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Most of these just wind up saying "Interstate Commerce". In other words, you'll never be able to enforce this in any meaningful way. In my imagined utopia, all these justifying messages would be listed on a lawmaker's github profile-style page next to a big picture of their face, and any lawmaker with a long list of "interstate commerce" type messages would look like an unelectable crypto-fascist in the eyes of the…

And how do you plan on getting Congress to agree to use a system in which vast swathes of them will "look like an unelectable crypto-fascist in the eyes of the public"? Do you want to bring Democracy back to the system (or your choice of roughly equivalent question), or are you just trying to put your own political ideals on a privileged pedestal? I think one of the key reasons we have been unable to successfully ref…

>And how do you plan on getting Congress to agree to use a system in which vast swathes of them will "look like an unelectable crypto-fascist in the eyes of the public"?

Umm .. Facebook'ize it? Turn it into a "Web 3.0" App with MUD, 3D, Mobile features?

Seems to me, at least right now, there could be maintainers of the existing political output. Using version control on politics doesn't actually require the politicians to do it; we, the people, could turn version control on them already right now.

Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works

#105

Post by jberryman »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #98
JonnieCache wrote: post #11

American 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…

The measures you describe would help track huge volumes of data. That Congress produces huge volumes of data seems like the problem in the first place. The Constitution includes a clause stating that Congress must meet at least once a year, because the founders thought that otherwise Congress might have so little to do that they needn't bother meeting . Let's get back to that situation, please, and then it won't requ…

> Let's get back to that situation, please

That situation was an America that was mostly an agrarian society, pre-industrial revolution, pre-globalization, pre-climate-change. Are you suggesting the huge problems of the day could be addressed by a congress that meets once a year?

Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works

#106

Post by JonnieCache »

untog wrote: post #46
jaysonelliot wrote: post #12

I 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…

Am I really alone in thinking that the Internet Quorum UI isn't really that bad? Before my startup days I spent years working for the local government, and before that for a large (formerly public) gas pipelining company. I've seen so many horrendous Access/VBA-based frontends, or worse, Excel spreadsheets with macros that this system doesn't seem so bad. In a way I'm actually surprised that Congress even has system…

>I'd be all for donning a Guy Fawkes mask and changing the world if there was even the slightest assurance that the system replacing it would be better. I don't think there is.

The only argument against this is a statistical one, akin to how entropy works: One should engage in revolution only when the set of likely worse systems is larger than the set of likely better systems. (I could probably state this better if I knew more mathematical terminology; I suspect matrices are involved.)

Obviously in the US you haven't reached that point. Yet.

Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works

#107

Post by cjoh »

tomelders wrote: post #66

Who 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…

Huh. I'm the author of the post. I'll think about it.

Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works

#108

Post by turtle4 »

jaysonelliot wrote: post #34
gasull wrote: post #21

This 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…

Couldn't this be addressed by requiring all spending bills to have their funding built in? ie, the bill must include what they are proposing to spend, and where the funding will come from (tax hike). This would also help people understand the costs of what they are voting for.

Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works

#109

Post by InclinedPlane »

JonnieCache wrote: post #11

American 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…

Nice fantasy, but you have a bootstrapping problem: how is this to be implemented? If you are living in a fantasy world where you can change any process why not merely put forward the idea of passing a law with this content: "congress should stop being dumb"?

Besides which, you are attacking a symptom. The root problems here lie in the amount of power that congress has, the nature of the news media, and the nature of the election process. Those are much, much harder to fix.

Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works

#110

Post by mindcrime »

jberryman wrote: post #105
JoshTriplett wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The measures you describe would help track huge volumes of data. That Congress produces huge volumes of data seems like the problem in the first place. The Constitution includes a clause stating that Congress must meet at least once a year, because the founders thought that otherwise Congress might have so little to do that they needn't bother meeting . Let's get back to that situation, please, and then it won't requ…

> Let's get back to that situation, please That situation was an America that was mostly an agrarian society, pre-industrial revolution, pre-globalization, pre-climate-change. Are you suggesting the huge problems of the day could be addressed by a congress that meets once a year?

Are you suggesting the huge problems of the day could be addressed by a congress that meets once a year?

I would argue that, yes. Then again, I believe that most of our problems don't need Congress to be involved in the first place, and/or that Congress is the cause of most of our problems, not the solution.

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