No Subject

[Lewis Lorton <llorton@shell.portal.com>]

  At 01:46 AM 6/5/96 -0400, you wrote:
  
  >  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.
  
  Is the Electronic Frontier Foundation volunteering to follow the legislation
  and post the various mark-ups to this list.- It is, according to Stanton
  McCandlish, trivial.
  
  >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).
  >
  Yeah for revolution! Why is it that it is always the geniuses with the
  solutions to all of society's problems are always kept in meaningless
  positions by the forces of the evil empire? Oops sorry - EVIL EMPIRE!!!!!
  
  Going on a business trip.  Will miss the occasional nuggets of pure bleep.
  I look forward to coming back just to catch up.
  
  L Lorton
  Typing for himself (and of course the minions of the Evil Empire)
  
  PS Is it really true that Jamie Love just became a privacy expert 6 months ago?
          Very impressive.
  
  
  >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>
  >
  >