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US Senate & House Create YouTube Channels

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the can't-wait-for-them-to-do-something-that-matters dept.

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."

6 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. I'll be impressed by MikeRT · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When the federal budget is released in a well-documented, well-designed XML file format.

  2. Hmm by invisibleairwaves · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Ideally this will bring transparency to citizens and inform them of their senators & representatives positions and ideas.

    +5 Funny.

  3. there needs to be a "save" mechanism by johnny+cashed · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  4. Re:oh goodie by causality · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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
  5. Re:oh goodie by FredFredrickson · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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
  6. Re:Something wrong with hosting it themselves? by DragonWriter · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Any particular reason they can't host this content on a .gov server that I could possibly get to from work?

    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.