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."

Comments

oh goodie

[Zashi]

This we be watched as much as c-span! ....
>_

Re:oh goodie

[betterunixthanunix]

Which is unfortunate but true. Most people do not care about their government.

Even more unfortunate is that I cannot download these videos, at least not without violating the TOS, and so I cannot store my own copies of those proceedings.

Re:oh goodie

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a nice human interest video from Pelosi:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=wtOW1CxHvNY

Re:oh goodie

[Tdawgless]

Some people care about parts of our government. CSPAN doesn't get watched because you have to watch all the parts you don't care about just to get to the parts you do care about. At least now, I can search the videos for the stuff I care about. Like legalizing retroactive abortion...

Re:oh goodie

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a nice human interest video from Pelosi: http://youtube.com/watch?v=wtOW1CxHvNY

That one's good but even better is this video on equal rights for women from Senator John:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfLAv3JHRwY

Re:oh goodie

[alvinrod]

Why let something as silly as a little TOS stop you, when it's so utterly pointless and stupid given the ease of acquiring a copy of the video. No one is going to begrudge you for trying to be a better citizen. Except for the politicians perhaps.

For those curious about how to download videos from youtube, this site will give you an easy method of doing so.

Re:oh goodie

[causality]

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.

Re:oh goodie

[FredFredrickson]

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.

Re:oh goodie

[Shakrai]

The first improvement would be removing the "Write the tax code by hand" requirement.

Why? Maybe it would give them an idea of just how ridicious the tax code really is. According to this the Federal tax code consists of 3.7 million words. By contrast, all seven Harry Potter novels only clock in at around 1.1 million words.

What's wrong with that picture? It really requires that much complexity to fund the Federal Government?

Re:oh goodie

[FiloEleven]

There is a bill being aggressively pushed by DownsizeDC, the Read The Bills Act, which requires not just that the congressmen read the bill, but requires each bill to be read aloud in session before it can be voted on. This ensures that all congressmen voting on the bill will have heard its text, and it will also do a lot to cut the size of these monstrosities.

In addition, the bill must be posted online 7 days in advance, and no changes may be made without resetting that 7-day period, ensuring that the public can see and react to exactly what will be passed.

Everyone whose heard of this thing (and is not in the political class) is for it, and there's been enough pressure that the House Minority Leader requested the 7-day full-text posting of Obama's stimulus package. It's a great step, and it shows that the pressure from the electorate's phone calls and messages is working, but there's no reason that it should only be applied to a single bill.

The other bill they're pushing for, which I'll mention here because it also represents another process to improve our quality of legislation, is the One Subject at a Time Act. It's pretty self-explanatory, and would end the use of "riders" - sneaking unpopular chunks of legislation (or pork) into other popular or necessary bills.

If you want to see these changes made, one of the best things you can do is to raise awareness of these bills, call your congressmen, and convince your friends and family to do the same.

I'll be impressed

[MikeRT]

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

Re:I'll be impressed

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Heck, I'll be impressed when I find a well documented, well designed XML file format from anyone..

Re:I'll be impressed

[dmayle]

If that's what you're waiting for, than you might want to have a look at this article about http://www.usaspending.gov/... It's an eye opener...

Re:I'll be impressed

[RulerOf]

You sir, have won in a way I would have never, in my entire life, imagined possible.

Bravo!

Hmm

[invisibleairwaves]

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

+5 Funny.

there needs to be a "save" mechanism

[johnny cashed]

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.

Why hasn't anyone posted Pelosi's video?

[DangerTenor]

....in which she rickrolls the taxpaying public 37 seconds into her Cat Cam video?? (Kudos to TC for posting it...)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Something wrong with hosting it themselves?

[DragonWriter]

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.