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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

#81

Post by chaostheory »

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…

Better transparency and awareness is only one part of the solution. I strongly feel that people need to create a crowd-sourced lobbying group in order to get things heard and done. Money has always spoken louder than words in Congress.

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

#82

Post by mseebach »

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…

You'd also land your lobbyist in jail pretty quick. I'm fairly certain it's more than a little illegal (on the order of treason) to accept foreign money to influence congress.

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

#83

Post by brycecolquitt »

darklajid wrote: post #31
waqf wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funnily enough, individual Americans also have little control over Congress. I think we're all in the same boat here (and I don't even think the article implied otherwise).

I think the GP refers mostly to the title. No, the 'internet' doesn't need to learn about Congress, since the internet is a world-wide thing. I won't learn about politics in the USA anytime soon (no disrespect here, it's just of no interest to me and that's how I like it), but the article addresses me too.

I personally think that the "internet" does need to learn about Congress, or at least be aware of what is going on. ICANN controls the root DNS servers for TLDs, and before ICANN, the US government did.

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

#84

Post by SoftwareMaven »

I am reminded of the way the media handled the vaccination scare: they always had both sides represented, even though one side was rational science and the other was misguided if not openly fraudulant. I saw a lot of complaining on the Internet about journalists giving equal footing to "crazy" viewpoints. Of course we don't want that, either in journalists or legislators.

The question is how to determine what is the "rational" view and what is the "crazy" view. If we can address that in some way, we may be closer to a solution.

In government, it seems like following the money is a good start. The deeper the pockets of the original source of the money, the more crazy the source seems to be. If an idea is coming in being funded by a lot of individuals, it is probably more rational (where rationality is defined as the true will of the people).

I agree with TFA that you have to work inside the system to change it (short of open revolt). It reminds me of a friend who wanted to get rid of highway billboards. His idea was simple: Raise money to buy a handful. Sell ads and use the profits to buy other billboards. Once they control all the billboards, take them all down.

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

#85

Post by thinkcomp »

wizard_2 wrote: post #73
thinkcomp wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on PlainSite. http://www.plainsite.org 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.

Where's SOAP? I can't search for open "problems".

Add an issue!

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

#86

Post by Noughmad »

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…

Still, you would get all kinds of "Ensuring freedom and security for all citizens", "providing new opportunities" and similar crap.

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

#87

Post by thinkcomp »

eli wrote: post #80
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…

Sunlight Foundation is actively working on this sort of thing. Join their mailing list. http://sunlightfoundation.com/ http://sunlightlabs.com/

The Sunlight Foundation's APIs look great and some of their projects are pretty cool (and well-designed).

Unfortunately none of them are a really coherent integrated system that people can use to track what's going on with government. They're more like cool research tools for political scientists and economists.

PlainSite (http://www.plainsite.org) is trying to build more of the version control system talked about above, but it would be significantly better if some of the Sunlight Foundation's APIs were integrated.

http://www.plainsite.org/contact/contribute.html

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

#88

Post by mpgoetz »

gilgad13 wrote: post #58
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…

Open Congress: http://www.opencongress.org/ seems like something pretty close to what you are describing. I think its just a layer on top of the thomas.loc.gov system someone else mentioned, but it also does tracking of who changes/supports what. Judging from the number of comments, it isn't very heavily used.

I like Open Congress. In about 2 minutes, I was able to find out more about the SOPA bill ( http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h3261/show). Fun fact: you can send a letter to your congressperson straight from the page!
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