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US Senate & House Create YouTube Channels
eldavojohn writes "Following an election in which online videos played an important role, the United States House of Representatives and United States Senate have opened YouTube channels (or 'hubs') advertised to be a 'backstage pass to your government.' Ideally this will bring transparency to citizens and inform them of their senators' & representatives' positions and ideas."
When the federal budget is released in a well-documented, well-designed XML file format.
Ideally this will bring transparency to citizens and inform them of their senators & representatives positions and ideas.
+5 Funny.
Check out the A bill to provide authority for the Federal Government to purchase and insure certain types of troubled assets for the purposes of providing stability to and preventing disruption in the economy and financial system and protecting taxpayers, to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide incentives for energy production and conservation, to extend certain expiring provisions, to provide individual income tax relief, and for other purposes remix featuring Bun B and Lil Wayne.
Killer!
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I think the biggest problem is more with a lack of time then a lack of caring. While apathy is a huge problem, who has time to sit at work and watch YouTube (or CSPAN) video all day? Hell, most of the Congress speeches are already written, rehearsed and recorded before they even step on the floor. They even have the press releases out the day before. How many times have you seen "Senior Senate from a state to deliver speech on [topic de jeur] tomorrow."
So little is actually a surprise inside the chambers that there is no actual reason to watch this crap, on TV or online.
If youtube is going to start carrying government videos, presumably funded by taxpayers, the videos need to be public domain and youtube needs to have a built in mechanism to allow views to save the video. I know there are ways of saving the videos already, but youtube does not provide this functionality.
Part of the reason for the United Stated Democratic-Republic. Is the fact that most people don't have time for full involvement in the government. While network neutrality may be a big issue for you for others they will take it or leave it. As for all the stuff that goes on. What I find more annoying is the people who we hire to take care of our government is not there to vote for every bill that goes across, and it is widely accepted that they don't.
What bothers me is that in Congress, the senators and representatives routinely vote on bills that they have not even read. They rely far too heavily on their staff to process and condense this information for them, which is flawed because we voted for and elected the representative, not his assistant.
Not only do I think they should be required to read every bill on which they vote, I also think that each year they should be forced to copy down the entire tax code, by hand, before they are allowed to take any other action (I wish I could remember where I heard this idea). When that proves impossible perhaps we would see some improvements to the way things are done.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I'm not sure what you're complaining about here. The first bit, I get -- YouTube looks like crap and its a pain to save. Got it. But is the second bit:
1. The signs have too many languages
2. The signs are written poorly
3. The card at the counter doesn't contain these other languages
or (and I suspect its this one)
4. The person at the counter only speaks English
If it is 4, I will pull up just short of saying, "Folks living in America really outta learn English," and instead I'll go with, "My tax dollars can and should be better spent on things other than multi-lingual DMV clerks."
I'm all about government transparency, but I'm also all about folks speaking English in America.
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
I also think that each year they should be forced to copy down the entire tax code, by hand, before they are allowed to take any other action (I wish I could remember where I heard this idea). When that proves impossible perhaps we would see some improvements to the way things are done.
The first improvement would be removing the "Write the tax code by hand" requirement.
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
Having it hosted on YouTube doesn't cost the taxpayer anything for hosting and distribution, whereas hosting it on a .gov server would have a cost to the taxpayer.