Re: Gellman on Thomas "not a tool for reforming Congress"

[Stanton McCandlish <mech@eff.org>]

The crucial point Gelman misses is that "Net activists" are not some 
freakish species of alien invader. They are offline, living, 
breathing, working, voters.  *VOTERS*, that is *THE PUBLIC*, want to make 
the net a central feature of the legislative process to increase 
the people's political influence.  There is nothing wrong with people the US 
Govt. exists by and for to want to influence how that goverment operates. 
Welcome to democracy.  The expectation that the public not be denied 
access to what a small select group of the public has access to is quite 
"reasonable".  The problem is also incredibly damned trivial to fix. You 
just post the stuff. If that entails hiring a few more people to take the 
word processor documents that become printouts for the committee and 
export those docs to text files and copy them from one hard drive to 
another, and add an index entry, so be it.  If it will even require a few 
more people to do data entry, in cases where no e-copy of the amendment 
existed in the first place - an increasingly rare situation - so be it.
There are lots of unemployed people around, and there are a lot of 
goverment people doing completely worthless jobs, while something 
important like this gets lip service but isn't fixed.  The budgetary 
argument is a crock.  Get rid of a handful of the unnecessary bureacrats 
employed by the government and you free up enough money to do this ten 
times over.

If more of our reps weren't so focused on politics-as-usual, and had 
some sense of responsibility and priority, this would have been taken 
care of in 1994. It is now 1996, and we still have a zillion 
overpaid people in the goverment doing worthless things, and no one 
fixing this problem.  Just fix it. That simple. Congress just has to 
make the choice to do it, and then stick to it instead of giving 
promises that aren't kept (c.f. Gingrich campaigning).

Gelman's implication that net access to legislation is some kind of 
ploy to get power for some "net special interest", as it were, is 
absurd.  The people demanding this access are offline people too.  It is 
typical of Washington-think to try to divide people into categories 
(white, black, asian; conservative, liberal; whatever.)  That doesn't 
work here.  There is no net constituency.  There are just a lot of 
offline consitituencies using the net, just as they use the USPS, the 
phone, and the fax.

To see just how absurd the quoted argument is, try substituting "fax" for 
"Internet" (and other apropos changes in context, e.g. "faxed" for 
"online") in all of the text below. Just try to picture in your mind 
"fax-using activists wanting to make the fax machine a central part of 
the legislative process to increase their own political influence".

Next try the substitution game with "telephone-using, telephony, 
phone" and "literate, literacy, writing".

In closing, I have to say that the scary part is that a few legislators 
honestly probably think that way. Several of them absolutely refuse to 
give out a fax number to anyone but a lobyist they are friendly with, or 
someone else close to them.  Time to vote dinosaurs like that OUT.

> Thomas users must have reasonable expectations.  Thomas is 
> not a tool for reforming the way that Congress operates.  
> Some complained that the so-called "chairman's marks" are 
> not available on Thomas.  When a committee marks up a bill,
> the chairman may offer an amendment in the nature of a 
> substitute.  This is the chairman's mark, but it is just an 
> amendment.. . 
> 
> Critics have argued that these amendments are available to 
> lobbyists not on Thomas.  Tough.  Congressional rules do not 
> require advance disclosure to the committee, other members 
> or the public.   . . .
> 
> Does this give the insiders an advantage?  Welcome to the 
> real world.  . .
> 
> Net activists want to make the Net a central feature of the 
> legislative process to increase their own political 
> influence.  They want to sit terminals, be spoon-fed 
> legislative data and change the world by sending e-mail 
> messages to Capitol Hill.   This is not going to happen any 
> time soon.  Having an Internet account does not entitled you 
> to a vote on the floor of the House. . .


--
<HTML><A HREF="http://www.eff.org/~mech/">    Stanton McCandlish
</A><HR><A HREF="mailto:mech@eff.org">        mech@eff.org
</A><P><A HREF="http://www.eff.org/">         Electronic Frontier Foundation
</A><P><A HREF="http://www.eff.org/A">        Online Activist    </A></HTML>