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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...
Those who seek the power are least deserving of it.
Ravenn
Of all the things you can accomplish by screwing up your face and swearing into a dark room, sleep is not one of them.
It's standard practice in .gov to "rewrite" some of the findings, achievements, etc. of the previous administration to appeal to the current politicians thoughts and ideals.
I've always thought what a waste of time and resources it is for a particular State to rewrite road signs and post the picture and "thoughts" of the current governor on the backs of road maps. Of course there's many things you see, such as this /. article that shows just how much waste (and graft) occurs in .gov.
No matter how the politicians spin things, their primary goal is to get reelected. Very few policitians have enough guile to tell the establishment (and stick to their guns) that they're only there for one/two terms, to make a difference.
Jerry Fletcher,
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http://www.cotse.net/servicedetails.html
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
"they are often designed more to promote current office-holders than to conduct governmental affairs."
And the other avenues of communications aren't? How is Congressman Tauzin's self-promotional website different from, say, the form letter I got from Congressman Tauzin explaining how good the Tauzin-Dingel through franked mail (who needs to buy stamps when you're a member of Congress?) in response to the complaint I sent to him about said bill? Tell me how that letter and all the other form letters various members of Congress send to concerned voters isn't just so much political advertising?
No, I'm not saying all members of Congress are guilty of this (at the very least somebody read letters I've sent to my Senators, for example), but there are some who are quite guilty of this, and all we've seen come of it is legislation against using franked mail within X number of days of election day.
Come back when you've noticed the problem in general and not just the websites in particular.
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:)
...is designed to favour the incumbents.
The two big parties have enough funding to brainwash the masses into thinking that they are the only parties capable of winning, yet their policies differ very little.
The net effect is that by voting for either of them, you are voting for the status quo - nothing ever happens and they keep lining their pockets.
Vote for someone else. Left or right, it doesn't matter, just shake out the incumbents.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
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.
His main point seems to be that government web sites should be dedicated to organizing grass roots groups. First of all, the idea of the government organizing grass roots groups is oxymoronic. It is also a pretty dumb idea. I can just imagine the paranoia if the government tried to monopolize all of the grass roots organizations by hosting them on government web sites. "I spent the last 5 hours typing up my opposition to the mayor's speech when my computer crashed and the whole thing was lost. Then I got to thinking, who controls the web site? (The mayor.) Was it really a mistake that my post was lost?"
This guy, Plotkin, should go back and dig up some real abuses to complain about. Lacking that, this article just sounds like a big long whine.
If electricity is produced by electrons is morality produced by morons?
Democracy.org lets you find all your local candidates, their voting records and positions on issues, their addresses and websites, etc.
Moderation totals that amuse me for one of my posts: Flamebait=1, Insightful=2, Funny=2, Overrated=1, Underrated=1
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
The Web does not need to be simply another channel for PR. With Clinton-Gore the idea was partly PR but also what Mark Boncheck called Disintermediation. What we wanted to do was to have a clear channel between the politicians and the people, clear of press 'interpretation'.
The point is not that people are going to trust the politicians more than the press, they will not. However it does prevent the press from some of its wilder distortions. During the '92 campaign the media made much of 'fact checks', doing a reality check on the statements made by both sides. What they never told the people is that they relied 100% on press releases put out by the parties, this was an innovation of James Carville that the GOP quickly followed.
The point of Whitehouse.gov was that the people should have access to the same information as the journalists. That is why we put every whitehouse press release on the web site and through an email server and onto USEnet from day 1 of the administration. This was originally done at MIT and the site later moved to the EOP itself.
The two people mainly responsible for putting the government online were Gore and Gingrich. Gore genuinely believed in the Web and Internet, that is why the GOP had to invent the lie of his claiming to have invented it - to deny him the ability to discuss a major achievement.
Gingrich had a much harder challenge. The congress is divided in many ways, although the speaker controlls the house floor the committee chairs control their individual committees. Gingrich wanted the whole process of government to be transparent so the people could see what was going on. The committee chairs and the lobyists did not, any such democratising move would threaten their power. It would no longer be possible for last minute changes to be made to a bill in secret before it was rushed through committee. This is how many major legislative abuses take place. During the DMCA the lobyists for the RIAA inserted a clause to steal the returned rights of the artists. This was done behind closed doors without the knowledge of many committee members, let alone the people.
In comparison the UK hansard web site is genuinely open. The site was set up to eventually replace the printing and distribution of 'the vote' which is the collection of papers sent to MPs every day. As such the site has every bill and critically every proposed ammendment at the same time the members get it.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
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.
41,944 is the median household income, according to the page you linked. Most households have more than person with income.
It's not what a median job pays, for example.
The question of how the typical American is doing financially can't be answered in a simple way. Any single number you look at can and should be subject to interpretation. The median income for full time males is 37K. What about men who can't get full time work? Or men who have to work more than one full time job?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
Let's see. . .what CAN'T they fly Coach: the rest of us do. And as for baggage handlers, why not subject them to the joys of our new Federalized (and supposedly "Professionalized". . .) Baggage Handlers and screeners. Thay're SUPPOSEDLY there to represent us, as opposed to being the Senator from Disney or whereever.
Then again, if **I** was running things, I'd have Congresscritters and Senators living in general-issue family housing on any of the local military bases in the DC area. After all, if it's good enough for our boys and girls in uniform, it oughta be good enough for a Congressman or Senator....
..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?