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Government Web Sites Are Not for the Incumbents
Hal Plotkin has a column pointing out a severe deficiency in how the U.S. government handles web sites - they are often designed more to promote current office-holders than to conduct governmental affairs. The practice of using official resources for partisan political purposes is not new - the big rush actually hit about 3-4 years ago - but we could make such better use of the web, if only...
IIRC, there are some limitations to updating an office holders website close to an election.
Certainly incumbents hold many advantages... but perhaps the most important is the turnout: to a large degree, its the same people, especially in an "off-year" election. I'd ask anyone who's unhappy with the way things are to GO VOTE on NOV 5th.
If you have to write-in a candidate just to feel good about your vote, go ahead and do that. Vote for that potted plant, even. I need a laugh.
.sig last updated Jan. 14, 2000
1. Minor complaint: The article headline is backwards. These sites are biased toward the incumbents, as the article notes.
2. If we want less bias, have a nonpartisan agency write the bios and update the pages. Something like the Congressional Budget Office -- not immune to politics, but one step removed from the process and beholden to no single representative.
3. Incumbents win over 90% of Congressional races and have for some time, so the bias issue really isn't all that important. There is so much inherent bias in the fact that incumbents get to do newsworthy things in front of cameras that websites don't really change anything.
4. The real scandal about government websites, especially the Congressional ones, is the almost total lack of content. The home pages should include all votes cast by the representative -- Thomas is clunky and difficult to use. As the artcile notes, it would also be nice to know when the official is up for re-election. Personally, I'd also like to see links to FEC campiagn finance reports on the same page to make correlating funding sources and voting patterns easier, but asking Congress to commit mass political suicide is probably not a realistic option.
Make cheese not war 8:)
While this is certainly an unfortunate practice, it's hardly a new one, except perhaps with regards to the internet.
One of the many benefits of incumbency is the access to government resources which can be used in functionally political ways. The most basic of these is what is known in the business as "franking," whereby congresspeople can send mail to their constituents on the public dime. In 1994, the Republicans ran on a platform of reforming the franking rules, but quickly changed their minds when they found themselves in office.
As with most problems related to political campaigning, the only real fix I see is public campaign financing. By allowing anyone, incumbent or challenger, who can demonstrate a certain threshold of public support (typically through collecting a large number of very small contributions), the advantages of incumbency, fund-raising connections, etc. can be mitigated, candidates can be free to spend their time speaking to the issues, rather than raising money, and, once elected, they won't be quite so loyal to big-money interests.
(If you live in Massachusetts, be sure to vote yes on Ballot Question 2, to preserve our Clean Elections public-financing system.)
Red All Over: Rambling Missives from an Aspiring Revolutionary
...once he/she is elected to office is to do everything they can to guarentee they get re-elected the next time around.
I am a firm believer in term limits, and public financing of campaigns. I also believe how congresscritters are paid needs to be changed. Some dork making a hundred grand a year is too out of touch with reality to represent the average American who is making 15 thousand a year. It should work like the Peace Corps...while you're in office, all you get is what the average American makes per year. Then at the end of your (limited) term, you get a lump sum to make up the difference between what the average Joe gets and what a congresscritter is paid.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Goes much deeper than that. Government has more in common with organized crime than anything else anymore. Guess who give law enforcement their marching orders to set up those road blocks? Insurance companies do it with webs of non-profits that interface with the department of transportation and other related departments. A massive juggurnuat to generate tickets. Have a peek at the department of transportation web site for the country and your state. See who their their non-profit "partners" are. And then do a little rearch on those groups. What will you find? Insurance company executives sitting at the boards. Mixed in with the insurance company non-profits are public-relations non-profits, which are basically mercanaries the insurance companies hire to conduct "studies" that are presented to your lawmakers. And like the happy drooling dogs they are, the government obeys.
d wi enforce/pdf/4systemfailures.pdf
/hope it may be in the news some day because it's very illustrative of how the government works at certain levels. I can't stress this enough because we havn't been educated to understand how the country really operates, and it's rare to see such a clear specimen of "undocumented" government processes as the complex dance between the department of transportation and the insurance companies.
If that's not enough, these mercenaries do other things too. They interact with the judicial system. If anyone cares to read it, I've found some material presented by the department of transportation that encourages, and gives instructions, for government prosecutors on the finer points of judge shopping and jury tampering.
Just look for the phrase "judge shopping". And if that interests you, read on to the bit where they instruct how to influence juries.
http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/alcohol/
This isn't just some personal conspiracy theory I brewed up for your entertainment. I was fighting a speeding ticket and had to slog through several hundred pages of government publications and that's when I discovered this stuff. And I suspect
they are often designed more to promote current office-holders than to conduct governmental affairs.
If you visit your congressmens' offices in Washington, you find it is exactly the same. The physical office space belongs to the officeholder, and is used by his or her staff to promote a particular agenda.
Of course rival candidates aren't given equivalent resources by the government, but this is a feature, not a bug. The incumbent is the one who currently has the office, after all.
Yes, it is an uneven playing field because the government gives congressmen a web presence. But congressmen can also promote their campaigns and agenda on the House and Senate floors.
It may be unfair to rival candidates, but it would be worse to deny government resources that are needed to carry out representation. And it's really not as bad as it may seem. Voters are not that stupid. They can figure out that incumbents have an inherent advantage and so the voters can each account for this as they wish.
I go to the freedom.gov site, and get:
"The site freedom.gov wishes to set a cookie. Do you want to allow it?"
It's important that the government tracks everyone interested in freedom very carefully, after all.
Why do some sites try to set cookies when there isn't any sensible reason for them doing so, from my POV? I can understand when I actually have some server state to be linked with, but can setting cookies on the main page right away have any credible purpose, apart from tracking?
...is politics in general. As many people,so tritely, observe... people who want power are usually very self-centered and have no concern for the betterment of their fellow man. This is, sadly, completely out of alignment with what politics were originally intended to be. Let's take a look at the official definition of politics and break it down:
The science of government; that part of ethics which has to do with the regulation and government of a nation or state, the preservation of its safety, peace, and prosperity, the defense of its existence and rights against foreign control or conquest, the augmentation of its strength and resources, and the protection of its citizens in their rights, with the preservation and improvement of their morals.
First, let's start with the fact the politics is considered a science, where "science" is taken to mean:
Any branch or department of systematized knowledge considered as a distinct field of investigation or object of study.
By this definition, a politician should have a great body of knowledge regarding ethics, citizens and their rights and proper morals. If you apply that branch of logic to the politicians of the last few decades, we find that there is something that has slowly gone seriously wrong. Our politicians tend to be anything but knowledgable, ethical, moral or have any concern for citizen's rights!
We will start with our current administration. While the polls say that G.W. Bush has had anywhere from a 49% approval rating at lowest and as high as his post Sept. 11th rating of 93%. While this speaks well of him, it completely obscures many well known facts regarding his knowledge (quite lacking), ethics, morality and feelings on citizen's rights. If we delve deeper, we find that he, in fact, has very little knowledge about the system. Further evidenced by the fact that he is a poor speaker and his father's former cabinet appears to be running the entire show. He is just a mouthpiece.
Regarding ethics, I would question any politician's ethics who would have other men in thir cabinet involved in scandal. Especially in a position so close to the power seat as vice-president Cheney. Mr. Cheney's desire to conceal the connections between Enron and the current administration are very disheartening. Even the staunchest conservative must admit that this was not one of the finer moments in conservative history. (The liberal-controlled media argument doesn't wash here either as the news sources that reported negatively on this story tend to be just as far right as you can get.)
While Mr. Bush professes to being a good christian. He hasn't always been that way. His morals are not exactly what one would call "good". It's very well known the George W. Bush, was quite the party down, rich kid. As he grew away from his "youthful errors", he became quite the shady businessman. I would have to say that his morals are questionable at best.
Civil rights and the current administration are at odds with each other. This has been an ever increasing problem since Sept. 11th. As most Americans blindly wave their flags, their ability to do much of anything else to affect their own well being is being erroded by things like "The Patriot Act". In the name of security, the man in the white house and his staff are trying to convince us that it's good to lose your freedoms sometimes. This is quite damning evidence that he does not understand or care about the citizen's of this country's rights.
Seeing that all of this is true, it appears that George W. Bush fails to live up to the definition of what a politician should be, as do many of his cabinet.
The last administration has it's blemishes on many counts as well. Analyzing Mr. Clinton in the same way, we find that his knowledge of the governmental system was stronger than Mr. Bush's. (If anyone can provide links to examples please do so, I couldn't find any.)
Where ethics are concerned, Bill Clinton had his share of gaffes. Not to mention the more serious allegations regarding his time as Governor of Arkansas. No... Sadly, we can't say that Mr. Clinton has shiny repution either.
Everyone knows about his moral problems since they've been beaten to death. Like him or not, Bill Clinton was not a man of morals by strict definition.
As geeks, we all know that it was his administration that passed the DMCA which has potential to seriously impinge on citizen's rights. Not just your ability to "swap songs", but you ability to write code freely!
So, by the same analysis, Bill Clinton fails the test of what a good politician is. As do most other politicians. Why is this? Because we are humans. We have imperfections that prevent us from being able to truly hold to the ideals of what how politics should work. Some do better than others, but in general the lot of them are corrupt.
Most politicians are only interested in politics due to their hunger for power. Just that alone is damning as it points to a deep seated greed and selfishness that is almost required to be a politician. So how is it that our system even works? In reality, it doesn't.
Most of what the operations of the government and the way they affect us are almost 100% happily incidental. Ocassionally one person somewhere deep in the system does one thing right. Another one somewhere else in the system does something else right. And so on... There are the few people here or there who intentionally or unintentionally (They're human, remember?) do something wrong. But the aggregate result is something that more or les resembles a system that works. This illusion trickles upward toward the leaders (Senators, congressmen, governors, and ultimately the president) and makes them look good. (It works this way in any large organization) So... for now we are stuck with a system that appears to work, but is solely based on chance. Or looking at it another way, real politics (as opposed to the ideal defined above) is just another form of gambling.
In closing, I'll offer you this joke about politics:
Son: Dad, I have a special report for school. Can I ask you a question?
Dad: Sure son, what's the question?
Son: What is politics?
Dad: Well son, let's take our home for example. I am the wage earner, so let's call me the management. Your mother is the administrator of the money, so let's call her the government. We take care of you and your needs, so let's call you the people. We'll call the maid the working class and your baby brother the future. Understand?
Son: I'm not really sure dad, I'll have to think about it.
That night, the boy is awakened by his baby brother's crying, so he went to see what was wrong. Discovering that the baby had a heavily soiled nappy, the boy went to his parent's room and found his mother fast asleep. He than went to the maid's room, where, peeking through the keyhole, he saw his father in bed with the maid. The boy's knocking went totally unheard. The boy went back to his room and went to sleep.
The next morning...
Son: Dad, I think I understand politics.
Dad: That's great son, explain it to me in your own words.
Son: While the management is screwing the working class, the government is fast asleep, the people are being completely ignored and the future is full of shit.
---Whew! All that work just to post this---
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Is anyone else here uncomfortable with "government agencies" trying to "facilitate a wide variety of bottum-up groups to tackle ... problems"? It is hard enough to gather a group
of people with enough energy and committment to address a
problem. When such efforts are "facilitated" by the government
itself, all that energy is likely to get co-opted.
That's the "bloody shirt" to be waved about while organizing. E.g., chatting with your barber, you might say, "I checked out the (local governemt) web site just to see who I could call to ask a question about my water bill, and guess what? Twenty high resolution photos of Supervisor Snort, and not a single damn phone number!! To heck with that! So I just set up my own website with some of that information..."
Well, duh.... If you are not part of a "small group of connected individuals" and if you don't "know the rules," then you won't get anywhere, period. The solution is to form your own small group and learn the rules. If you're an opportunist, you then go about getting yourself and your buddies into office. If you're an altruistic reformer, you use your newly gained "power" (such as it is) to address whatever issues concern you. If you are a radical, then you offer seminars -- teach those rules to everyone! Supply hints on group formation! And at the same time, recruit for your own outfit. Now things are moving...
No!! That would take the fun out of everything! We want to use the deficiencies of their websites to promote our own organizations!
I basically agree with the sentiment here. What forms you need to file and where you get them and where you file them is pretty basic information. And as long as governmental units are deficient, activist sites have something to complain about and also a void that they can fill.
By the way, I live in Southwestern Oakland County, Michigan, and, the last I looked, the Huron Valley School system website had many problems -- PDF files where simple HTML would do, etc., etc. Any readers in this area who are interested in a bit of mild-mannered cybernetical activism can send me an e-mail, maybe we can work together and Try to Fix Things (TM).
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Manifesto for the Peoples of the Third Millennium
Most of the campaign finance reform bills, including the one backed by McCain and passed by Congress and signed by Bush recently, basically limit the ability of challengers to campaign, while leaving untouched the ability of incumbents to campaign.
This is just one example of it: the incumbents get government-subsidized campaign web sites, while the challengers do not.
Don't say that having the government pay for all campaigns is the answer, as that gets rid of democracy by having the government choose who will be in government (bye bye grass roots).
Wow, this is really big news considering in many states the demopublicans and replubicrats have setup ballot access laws designed to prevent third parties from making ever even making it onto the ballet.
Then there's old Federal Matching funds. I love that one. We need to PAY to help re-elect these shitheads.
The worst part is, nobody cares. Who's playing on Monday night football??
From the article:
"If an elected official tried, for example, to drape a banner with his or her picture on it over the state Capitol building, the police would yank it down and cite the offender."
Not in Boston. When my friends come to town, we go to the middle of the city and I give them five minutes to figure out the name of the mayor without speaking. They all do.
How? His name (Thomas Menino) is on every park bench. Every construction sign. The entrance plaque of every building public funds played a role in erecting. Associated with anything where the people and the tangible actions of the city government meet.
It's blatent, and it is an extra use of public funds, occuring in meatspace. This is a blatent contradiction of the ideas in the quote above.
But then, Boston and Chi-Town pols have been aquiring votes by unethical means for hundreds of years now...
Support a few technologists in Washington.
I MET a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which still survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
-Percy Bysse Shelley
Political leaders putting their names on public works is no new thing. If anything is novel about the web aspect of this, it's that the edifice they're affixing their name to is so much more transitory than masonry.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
..is that it doesn't clearly identify who it belongs go ("Office of the House Majority Leader" is really vague to some occasional voter from Podunk, Iowa) so the average visitor is misled into thinking this is some official gov't site with offical gov't statements (being a .gov and all). Especially since the presentation is very much "news site", not "personal site".
Then it has statements like "Free the Daschle Fifty" -- which the average voter is going to interpret quite out of context.
IMO this site borders on actively deceptive.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
As I see it, the problem is that the internet and the web represent a problem to politics and government - it isn't something they can control, though they try harder every year to do so. Here is a system that they cannot master, cannot bend to serve them how they need to be served, namely to be able to control the populace and tell them how to think. The internet isn't TV, no matter how hard they try. I fear if they are successful, somehow, and manage to put the net under thier thumb, they will likely see a backlash so huge that it will make the day the internet went black look like a party.
What would be my vision for a good political/governmental web site? It would mainly allow the participation of the people - I can easilty envision a slash/scoop web site where users could log in, and DISCUSS issues related to government - a central area where one could see all the legislation passed, all that is on the table or "coming up", all the text of everything, so that it can be seen by the people and discussed - and they (the govt/politicians/congressmen/etc) would take the peoples reaction into account and allow the process to refine the bill properly. I know you can't please all of the people - it would have to be compromise. But by doing so, it is better than the secrecy and hidden gotchas/riders we have now. Furthermore, it would keep people informed as to what is going on in their government, and would possible help keep corruption down by being an open forum. Constituents could communicate better with their representatives, and know that what they are saying is being heard.
One thing I wish was out there was a list of "who voted for what" - ie, wouldn't it be great to know what congresspersons/senators vote for what bills, on a per state basis - so you can see at a glance, based on a search, what your reps for your state voted for what legislation, so you can more easily make a decision to support them or not come next election? Especially things that limit our freedom, etc (think PATRIOT act, DMCA, UCITA, CCDBTA) - then be able to discuss this with other people in your area, in a moderated, threaded discussion forum? It would be true government by the people - true representation.
Instead, we have at best a "mismash" of segregated and separated forums and sites - there are some govt sites that allow you to find out the information (on some things, but not all), then discussion sites like /. and k5 that allow for the political discussion - but nothing that relates to each community/state - so no way to organise with fellow constituents.
You will never see this though, they will likely openly oppose such ability, if anyone tried to set such a thing up. If anyone know of such a thing (I can't be the only one who has thought about this), please let me know. I would love to know who to vote out (as it is, I am thinking about simply voting a straight ticket for one of the alternate parties - but I don't like the idea of doing that as it isn't a good informed decision).
Reason is the Path to God - Anon