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Legal Code In a Version Control System?
coldmist writes "Sen. Thomas Carper (D-Del.) is on the Senate Finance Committee, which just finished work on the health care bill. The committee recently rejected an amendment which would have required them to post the legislation for public viewing for 72 hours before it went to final vote. Several senators felt that the actual legal code would be too cryptic and complicated to be useful. Carper himself said, 'I don't expect to actually read the legislative language because reading the legislative language is among the more confusing things I've ever read in my life.' So, why don't they put it in SVN (or some similar version control system) where people can tkdiff the changes (i.e. new legislation is in a branch) or output a patchset? If a bill is passed, it's merged into the trunk. It just seems so logical to me, yet I can't find any mention of doing this on the web. What do you think?"
CHANGE THE LAW. Keeping the bible in Latin worked only for the priests and keeping the law in legal speak is working only for the lawyers.
"Plain language version"? "Corrected"? "Translated"? "Legislation that is passed on"? What on earth are you talking about? This is horrifyingly wrong. There is no "plain language version". Legislation is not "translated". Committees report a bill with specific language; though it may be amended later (generally on the floor, or in conference) there is no "correction".
And "The legislative language isn't that important"? That is so amazingly, completely, and gravely wrong that I have no idea where to start debunking it.
Yes, I AM a lawyer and I work on issues involving legislation every single day, so I fully expect I will get modded down. The perils of crowdsourcing.
Penny - plain text accounting
How is that different than the situation we have today?
The taxpayer would get stuck with all of the unpaid hospital bills (right now the hospitals eat them or try to make up the cost on those who have credit and can pay). Right now you only pay if you visit the hospital, but if the taxpayer has to pick up the tab then everyone pays regularly, even healthy people who rarely need hospital services. As bad as the present situation is this only makes it worse. The grandparents are correct: this bill is dishonest and the Democrats are pushing it dishonestly...period. Why do the Democrats shy away from having a head on debate about socialism and socialized medicine? Shouldn't they be proud of their socialism? Why do they try to sneak it through the back door? If their true position is too weak to stand up to real debate then they deserve to fail.