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Two Senators Call For ACTA Transparency
angry tapir writes "Two US senators have asked President Barack Obama's administration to allow the public to review and comment on a controversial international copyright treaty being negotiated largely in secret. The public has a right to know what's being negotiated in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), Senators Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, and Bernard Sanders, a Vermont Independent, argue in the letter."
Why legislate in the open when you can negotiate secret treaties in the dark?
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
It doesn't matter if this treaty is filled with rainbows and puppies. It needs to be killed as a matter of principle. Free people and free nations do not make law in the dark.
"We got more senators than that"
Indeed. It's a shame that only 2% of the senate is willing to stand up against this gross violation of transparency and democratic principles. Good luck to Bernie Sanders and Sherrod Brown and anyone else who might join them.
cheers,
A. Tapir
The way US politics and campaign finance are run, there is no way to make a credible run for office unless you are "same as the old boss."
If you don't like that fact, find a way to change it. But don't complain that a system designed to perpetuate itself continues to look the same.
American was not interested in a racist religious nutbag.
We are supposed to have a House of Representatives but it's really a House of whatever [insert current speaker here] wants to allow to the floor.
And the house leadership is selected by elected members of the house, who are presumably representatives of their district, given that's how they get elected. Sounds representative to me. Probably was more so before the mid 90s when party loyalty and fundraising became a bigger criteria for leadership than seniority, so if you're complaining that party politics distorts the picture, I'd agree, but it's still essentially a function of who gets elected.
Our Government stopped being about transparency and democratic principles a long time ago.
To the extent that this is true, it's because this is what we (as a whole) really want. Not what we say we want. We might say we want information and transparency, but frankly, even most of the attentive people I know outside the legislature simply don't pay *careful* attention. They might have hobby horses and hot-button topics, but very few of us have the stomach for careful analysis.
We get the government we have because generally we prefer to focus on our own lives, and when we're not, we prefer entertainment and passionate expression of our general philosophies over thoughtful, nuanced, nuts-and-bolts policy discussion. And because most of us need to be *paid* to seriously research a position and then go down and talk to members of congress about it -- or talk to each other reasonably about it. No surprise the people who will pay others to do that are best represented.
If you're one of the few people who donates to organizations that lobby and do legal work, that takes the time to cite policy research instead of simply ranting when you write your reps and senators, that understands the opposition positions and research well enough to know which of their points are respectable and which are refutable, that might even know (and be known to) some of the congressional staff by name, then congratulations, you're one of the few what I'm saying doesn't apply to.
But for the rest of us, well, the government as it now stands is essentially a reflection of our real habits and values instead of our ideals.
Tweet, tweet.
Reading political discourse among most slashdotters is like watching old people fuck.
It's messy, clumsy, and a little bit revolting.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Our current plethora of unconstitutional laws and policies would suggest that's not the case.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Personally, it reads like they want to know what ACTA is about before they are for or against it. Which is basically what I'd expect from a level headed politician. What they want is that the legislative (ya know, the body that SHOULD actually make the laws. If you think that's the prez's job, you're essentially wrong) can do its job. What I'd guess they want is to take back the power that has somehow appearanty creeped towards the prez (who represents another power, actually) while nobody was looking.
One of the cornerstones of a democratic, non-authoritarian government is that separation of powers. The creed is that no person should have more power than he absolutely needs. The US founding fathers saw that in certain situations it might be necessary to act swiftly so they created that office of the president and gave him the extraordinary position of wielding the executive power in his single hand, because executing laws can be a matter that cannot wait until you have assembled hundreds of people and got them to find a consensus.
Creating new laws, on the other hand, is something that should, must take time. It should be pondered and considered, by many brains with many different views, so every aspect these laws could affect can be taken into consideration. Good laws rarely come from one single person. No person has all the facts, no person takes every possible consequence into consideration, so many people can crate better laws that benefit most.
Ok, ok, so far the theory, because we know how much rubberstamping is going on, with few senators even knowing what they vote on. But at least they should have the power to do so, if they take their job seriously and don't just want to have good salary with little to no work or responsibility.
I'd guess they want their duty back. Whether they're eventually for or against it, only time will tell. But they want to know what they vote on, and given that most Senators don't, I'd consider that a good sign.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I only vaguely recognized the name Bernie Sanders until just recently when someone pointed me to this congressional hearing where he rips Greenspan a new one. Great Stuff!