Why a Theoretical Physicist Wants All State Bills To Be Online Before Final Vote (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Among a slew on ballot propositions that Californians will be asked to consider on Election Day (Nov. 8) is Proposition 54, a proposed constitutional amendment that seems like a no-brainer. If passed, the law would require that the final text of all proposed legislation be published on the Internet for 72 hours before lawmakers can conduct a final vote. Typically, the text of bills in California is put online as it goes through the committee and voting process, but sometimes those bills can change at the last minute. Accessing those changes isn't always easy. The initiative, which seems all-but-certain to pass, has massive support from Charles T. Munger, Jr., the son of billionaire Charles Munger. The younger Munger, an experimental physicist at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and a longtime Republican activist, has donated over $10.6 million to the "Yes on Prop. 54" campaign. The effort supporting the opposing view has taken in just over $27,000. Proposition 54 would also force the Assembly and State Senate to allow the public to record meetings as well, which could potentially be used in political advertising. So why would anyone oppose the bill? According to Steven Maviglio, the director of Californians for an Effective Legislature, a campaign committee formed to oppose Proposition 54. It all comes down to who is behind the initiative, and why. "The first thing you need to do is follow the money," he told Ars, pointing us to Munger, Jr. "He's been the top contributor to the California Republican Party. His goal is to disrupt the power of a legislature that's getting things done."

Comments

Yes please

[penguinoid]

The purpose of this may well be to delay bills someone doesn't like while also making it harder to compromise, but it would be nice to see what the bills say before they're voted on.

Re:Yes please

[BenFranske]

Sometimes. I generally favor an open legislative process and there is no doubt that a good bit of political shenanigans happens at the last minute. On the other hand, there are a good number of things I can think of where a 72 hour waiting period might be inappropriate such as disaster relief and other time sensitive bills typically handled swiftly by all parties involved.

Re:Yes please

[alvinrod]

I think there should be a requirement that all bills are read aloud in full before the legislative body that is to vote on them. At the very least, it ensures that all present are aware of the contents. It also has the nice side effect of keeping legislation concise and likely ends bundling various thing together that have nothing to do with each other.

Re:Yes please

[JoeMerchant]

I don't know about California state legislation, but Federal bills are literally unreadable. You'd need a staff of dozens, all experienced in the subject matter, studying the bill to have a chance of understanding it within 72 hours.

Re:Yes please

[JoeMerchant]

There isn't enough time in a Federal session to read a single big bill aloud. I agree, though, legislation shouldn't be so complex and frankly obscure as it is today.

Re:Yes please

[bondsbw]

There could be ways to mitigate that, such as allowing a supermajority vote or an executive order to override the 72-hour waiting period.

Re:Yes please

[darkain]

That, and bill's text for disaster relief can be pre-written, and simply enacted upon disaster. If the text hasn't changed, then there shouldn't be any issues.

Re:Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

There's absolutely no reason that the laws by which citizens are bound should be too complex for the average citizen to understand. There should also be no need for lawyers to interpret the law and the processes of justice: the average citizen should be able to understand the proceedings to which he is subject should he be accused of a crime. That is only just. What keeps law and court proceedings overly complex is nothing but artificial obscurity designed to create jobs for legal professionals.

As for funding bills, they should not be complex either: grant lump sums to executive departments and let the departments manage the details. Congressmen know nothing about naval architecture, but the Navy does, so let Congress grant a lump sum to the Navy and let the admirals figure out what ships they want. Congressmen know nothing about nuclear research, so let them give a lump sum to the DoE and let Energy figure out what to fund.

Re:Yes please

[XxtraLarGe]

Mod parent up. I was going to say the exact same thing. If they had to do this in the U.S. Congress, they'd likely still be there!

Re:Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because most of these bills are filled with bullshit legalese designed to confuse the public and hide their true intentions, which is to benefit large corporations and politicians and the expense of the people and anyone not in "the club".

Re:Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

Bills could also be pre-categorized by subject, or all operations and organization related bills introduced during state of emergency could be treated as urgent. All normal parties giving executive orders might be dead, and in a hypothetical situation a five minutes supermajority vote could take too long.

Re:Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd need a staff of dozens, all experienced in the subject matter, studying the bill to have a chance of understanding it within 72 hours.

Or at least a group pf 100,000 quasi organized individuals 15 minutes.

Re:Yes please

[Ichijo]

And then require that every law on the books be read aloud once every 6 years or the law expires.

Re:Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

Some auctioneer with years of experience of running large cattle auctions would be a perfect candidate for this job. The legislature would have to pay constant attention to the reader. On a negative side would be that some law makers would think they are in a cattle auction and start casting their votes prematurely, and competitively.

Re:Yes please

[SirSlud]

Or just the opportunity for nitpicking. The idea of a perfect democracy is stupid. Nobody wants the tyranny of the majority. Representative democracies are good, so long as money is kept out of the advertising equation. This is where the US has a problem.

Re: Yes please

[kenh]

On the other hand, there are a good number of things I can think of where a 72 hour waiting period might be inappropriate such as disaster reliefand other time sensitive bills typically handled swiftly by all parties involved.

Are you serious? Do you imagine first-responders to disasters need a literal act of (state) congress to respond? The various departments of the state are pre-authorized to respond, the so-called 'disaster relief' bills would address things like investments in reconstruction, providing emergency housing, etc., and are passed well after the disaster. First the disaster occurs, then the damage is assessed, cost estimates are formulated, then disaster relief bills are drafted and passed.

You could always amend the state constitution to provide a fast-track for a very specific type of bill, but honestly such a provision would likely be exploited way too often, rendering the bill useless.

Re: Yes please

[kenh]

Sorry, that last line should read 'amendment' not 'bill' useless.

Re:Yes please

[drinkypoo]

There isn't enough time in a Federal session to read a single big bill aloud.

Congratulations, you got it in one.

Re:Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

Not read aloud, recited from memory, by all sponsors of the bill - without any errors, or the bill automatically falls. That would make all bills short and concise and to the point.

Re:Yes please

[Wycliffe]

On the other hand, there are a good number of things I can think of where a 72 hour waiting period might be inappropriate such as disaster relief and other time sensitive bills typically handled swiftly by all parties involved.

Th categories that require an immediate response usually do not require an immediate vote. Things like grounding planes, mobilizing troops, deploying national guard to a disaster, etc.. are usually authorized by the governor and/or president without the consent of a legislative body. Declaring war and additional funding is done by the legislatures but a 72 hour freeze isn't going to really have much effect on that.

It annoys me that the summary decided that it is a bad law solely by the side funding it. A law should be decided on its merits and in this case, I think this is a good law. I also think things like picture ids for voting, background checks for buying guns, and plenty of other things which are sensible laws should not be immediately rejected just because the other side wants it. That's why we have the current stalemate that we currently have.

Re:Yes please

[Wycliffe]

And then require that every law on the books be read aloud once every 6 years or the law expires.

I think a similar solution should be that every citizen over the age of 18 should be mailed a hard copy of the laws for which they are bound every year and it should be written at a level that anyone with a high school diploma can read. I'm not a fan of case law where it takes an entire library of law books to decide what is and is not illegal.

Re:Yes please

[Wycliffe]

I don't know about California state legislation, but Federal bills are literally unreadable. You'd need a staff of dozens, all experienced in the subject matter, studying the bill to have a chance of understanding it within 72 hours.

And this is absolutely insane. We have members of congress regularly voting on bill that they themselves haven't read and don't understand. How can anyone think this is acceptable?

Re:Yes please

[Orgasmatron]

I'd also restrict the CFR to no more than 3 pages (ordinary font, ordinary margins) per day, which can be banked for up to 1 year, and each page expires X years after it was earned. (6 is a good number for X, but anything from about 4 to 10 would work.) Congress should need to affirmatively approve each page (roll call vote in a committee is fine) after it has been publicly posted for 30 days, and if they don't within 30 days of availability, the regulation fails but the President is still charged half of the pages. After congressional approval, the states would have a 60 day window to reject the regulation if more than 50% of the states pass state legislation that explicitly and solely rejects the exact same page number, or list or range of pages. Pages rejected by the states are not counted at all against the page total, but neither do they pause any date calculations. All currently existing pages at the time of passing expire X+1 years after ratification.

Note that I think this system is inferior to the constitutional system where the legislature legislates and the executive branch does not. But we don't seem to be capable of finding 5 guys that have read the constitution, and it seems lame to pass an amendment that says "Dear SCOTUS, we were serious about the separation of duties specified in articles 1 and 2, and for that matter in the 10th amendment. Please start acting like you've read them, or our next message won't be a polite note."

Re:Yes please

[MightyMartian]

The cost would be monumental, and the benefit dubious.

Re: Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

For every new law added, two existing laws have to be repealed.

Re:Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

The purpose of this may well be to delay bills someone doesn't like while also making it harder to compromise, but it would be nice to see what the bills say before they're voted on.

Agreed. GIT for Government has the idea, though there are countless variations. The idea is not just to know what the bills say, but to know what the exact step by step process of making the bill was, and which politician signed off on every edit and change. That doesn't mean that they can't just meet in a conference room and hash out something before putting it in a bill. In fact, I'd encourage that, but revision to a bill, or any proposed new bill must be signed off on by one or more politicians.

It might also be necessary to add some kind of rule to make the guy who signs off on everything not the guy who is about to retire/lose/etc, though at some point you have to hope the press will do its job.

Re:Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

I think there should be a requirement that all bills are read aloud in full before the legislative body that is to vote on them.

Under your system, any bill could be immediately killed by amending it to include the phone book or are you going to sit there while they read through every name and number?

Re:Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

The lobbyists think it's just fine.

Re: Yes please

[kenh]

I think there should be a requirement that all bills are read aloud in full before the legislative body that is to vote on them.

The Republicans tried to do this when PPACA was being discussed/passed - you may recall a few high-profile Democrats saying things like "we have to pass the bill, so you can see what's in it" (pelosi) and "what good is reading the bill if you don't have 2 lawyers with you to explain it to you?" (Conyers, admitting he never actually read the bill he was sponsoring in Congress). The republicans tried to force Dems to hear, from f they wouldn't deign to actually read, the bill they were trying to pass.

Re: Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

Monumental cost with a dubious benefit? Sounds just like your solutions to the fictional problem of global warming.

Re:Yes please

[No Longer an AC]

It annoys me that the summary decided that it is a bad law solely by the side funding it.

It's funny because I only read about half the summary and decided it was a good idea.

It's not like I'll get to vote on it anyway since I don't live in California. I guess their campaign budgets are getting too large though because I've seen a number of commercials for issues in California (Proposition 61? What's that? I don't care).

So your post prompted me to read the whole summary, but I still wasn't really swayed by that last sentence. I don't really see a good argument against it. Legislation is a slow and tortuous process and it should be. Give the world 3 days to pick apart your legislation and object to certain parts if they're objectionable.

Re:Yes please

[PrimaryConsult]

That's the point; the cost could be reduced by simplifying the laws. There isn't much motivation for that now. The prospect of making the book thinner than an encyclopedia mailed to 300 million people each year will certainly help motivate that. In the meanwhile it would be a boon to print industries and rural shipping for the USPS. Why should law be the only field which benefits from our complex legal system?

Re:Yes please

[legRoom]

there are a good number of things I can think of where a 72 hour waiting period might be inappropriate such as disaster relief

The author(s) of Prop 54 agree. From the text of the proposed law (section 3, part c; emphasis mine):

To give us, the people, and our representatives the necessary time to carefully evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the final version of a bill before a vote by imposing a 72-hour public notice period between the time that the final version is made available to the Legislature and the public, and the time that a vote is taken, except in cases of a true emergency declared by the Governor.

Re:Yes please

[mwvdlee]

Depends.
Who can make changes to a bill?
If this allows opposition to keep making changes, forcing a bill into an infinite waiting period hell, then it's bad.
Otherwise the longest delay this could possibly cause is 72 hours.

Re: Yes please

[MightyMartian]

It's not my fault the universe doesn't make CO2 emissions magically neutral.

Re:Yes please

[MightyMartian]

Even in Roman times legal systems were complex. The larger and more complex the society the larger and more complex the legal code

Re:Yes please

[bruce_the_loon]

I don't read the summary as deciding it was a bad law, I read that the people opposing it are using the funding source as a poor attempt to discredit the law.

Re:Yes please

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

That assumes prescience, but you always have to expect the unexpected.

I can think of a very good reason *for* this bill - the excerable habit U.S. legislators have of adding totally unrelated "riders" to bills. If this helps to stop that practice, go for it.
As for the opposition, the quote comes down to: "I'm against it because he wants it, waaaaaaa".

Re:Yes please

[Maxo-Texas]

You can look up many states statues online these days.

I read softcopy faster than hard copy with equal comprehension-- I can adjust the font size to be optimal.

Re:Yes please

[Shimbo]

AIUI in the Icelandic tradition it was the job of the speaker to recite the entire legal code from memory before the Althing conducted any further business.

Re:Yes please

[pipingguy]

Delete two pieces of legislation for every new one proposed. There's an idea!

Re:Yes please

[bestweasel]

Well if a single, simple measure like this costs $10 million to pass in one state, I'd say you're right.

Re:Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is absolutely insane. We have members of congress regularly voting on bill that they themselves haven't read and don't understand. How can anyone think this is acceptable?

The "Patriot" act relied on most of those voting knowing nothing about it other than it's name as it was rushed through. The "DMCA" relied on guesswork and assumptions about the toothless perjury conditions to pass instead of time spent reading and considering.
 
It's not insane - it's a cold and sober deliberate attack on the structure of the Republic each time such the thing is perpetrated.

Re:Yes please

[pipingguy]

Isn't this phenomenon called, "Grubering"?

Re:Yes please

[CrimsonAvenger]

If this allows opposition to keep making changes, forcing a bill into an infinite waiting period hell, then it's bad.

Since changes require votes at the Committee level, it's unlikely that the opposition can make any changes.

And if a bill is so disliked that a change can be managed every three days to keep it from final vote, it's probably a really bad bill....

Re:Yes please

[swb]

Fine, then we'll limit Congress and the Office of the Reviser of Statutes to the same information technology available to the Romans. I'll even spring for vellum over papyrus.

Re:Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent point about disaster relief. You can bet if that is ever the case, the city closest to the disaster will bear all responsibility.

That said, perhaps it needs a narrower focus, where a template for disaster relief could be created and no vote is required to finance/enact it, but a vote is required to extend/renew relief to avoid a perpetual state of emergency instead of resolution. See things like Flint Michigan's water supply disaster.

Re: Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

Or one can add a new rider every 71.9 hours to postpone it forever.

Re: Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

I propose a billion new ones. Now that all federal regulations are gone and new laws are banned, it's Purge time at state borders. Because AZ cops can't do jack in NM.

Re:Yes please

[quetwo]

But here is the kicker -- Senator A and Senator C both have towns in their districts that build floatys and arm-wings for the Navy... The Navy doesn't actually need them, and if they completely control their own spending, they will cancel the contract. Both Senators will have heavy job losses in their districts, spurning hard economic times, making it harder for them to get re-elected. If they write a bill that dictates that the Navy buys all these floatys and arm-wings for the Navy, then they saved jobs and are heroes... The same goes for army/navy bases, etc. Heck, it's reasons like that, that there is a fully stocked air-force armory in my town -- 75 miles away from the closest air-force base and 30 miles away from the closest airport that can even land a jet.

And that is why things don't chance. If we made these organizations more efficient and allowed them to spend in ways that are actually useful to them, lots of people lose their jobs (mostly people in congress, but you know)...

Re: Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

Legislators with enough votes to add riders that frequently have enough votes to kill the bill anyway.

Re: Yes please

[Entrope]

Yes, the criticism is a true ad hominem: this person supporting the idea is "bad", therefore the idea itself is bad.

Re:Yes please

[Imrik]

Of course, there isn't really any limitation on what the governor can declare to be an emergency, homelessness for example.

Re:Yes please

[ghoul]

The US has no enemies which can actually invade the US. It only needs a nuclear deterrent force. The rest of the Army,navy and air force is a jobs creation program so it makes total sense to use it the most efficiently that is spread the jobs over all districts.

Re:Yes please

[JoeMerchant]

>There should also be no need for lawyers to interpret the law and the processes of justice

Except that lawyers have a vested interest to perpetuate their value to society, and so they keep the system obscure and complex.

500 years ago, most people absolutely needed a lawyer because they lacked the education and exposure to concepts of the law. Today, we should be actively working to reduce the need for lawyers, but I don't see it happening in the courts, or any arena where "specialists" make money by representing people's interests (especially Real Estate sales).

Re:Yes please

[JoeMerchant]

Read some Kissinger, or at least Roosevelt's big stick doctrine. The US uses its armed forces to project force and influence international politics and policy.

Not everybody is influenced by the threat of nuclear annihilation.

Re:Yes please

[JoeMerchant]

As it was, as it should be, and as it will be when society falls again.

Re:Yes please

[JoeMerchant]

Agreed, though I notice that at most levels of higher administration (e.g. when you start to pass the level of having 100 or so reports) the art of the job is in knowing what to ignore, when to trust your direct reports and when to call BS and dig deeper. Representation is not as demanding as administration, but how this can possibly work when you represent ~800,000, or millions in the federal senate, is beyond my understanding.

I think the system would be improved with simplification, and I would vote for people who want to do that, but the very process of simplification would create enough change that it would be heavily swayed by special interests pushing to make the simplifications benefit themselves.

Re:Yes please

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

And then require that every law on the books be read aloud once every 6 years or the law expires.

I've been advocating law experation without renewal for years. It forces elected legislatures to review previous generations' laws for problems and continued validity.

It also recognizes the lower weight assigned to simple majority decisions (as opposed to supermajorities).

If there is too much for the government to do even a cursory review every 5 years, there's too much to expect The People to obey it all.

Re:Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, the purpose is more insidious. The intent isn't as much delay as it is to give the people with money and an agenda a chance to see bills and react with either private lobbying or very public press thrown at the bills. In this case, press as in spin, misinformation, and lies. Basically some wealthy people with an agenda want more control over the legislative process than they have now.

Would I like to see bills ahead of time? Sure. But what would I be able to do about a bill I disagreed with? Not write to my representative - the timing is too tight for that. Call? Sure, but that isn't going to do as much as hordes of lobbyists descending upon the state capitol or a slanted news report. I actually did vote no on this one - just because it will allow money even more access.

Re:Yes please

[fustakrakich]

There should also be a requirement that legislators show up for work, on time(!), so they will be there when the bill is read.

Re:Yes please

[William Baric]

So the tyranny of the minority is better? Because in the end, when you are forced to comply to something you don't agree with, it's always tyranny.

Re: Yes please

[Bing Tsher E]

Trees make CO2 emissions naturally neutral. No magic is needed.

If we'd stifle all the fools who make 'save a tree' arguments against paper usage, and plant more trees, the world would be better.

Re: Yes please

[yuriklastalov]

YOUR IDEAS ARE BAD AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD!

Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

Re: Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

Reductio ad absurdum. Say I think it is OK to murder for no reason. Is it tyranny to stop me?

Re:Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

But it forces the governor to stick his neck out and should he overreach in declaring emergencies, he is likely to be replaced come election day.

Re:Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

So your post prompted me to read the whole summary, but I still wasn't really swayed by that last sentence. I don't really see a good argument against it. Legislation is a slow and tortuous process and it should be. Give the world 3 days to pick apart your legislation and object to certain parts if they're objectionable.

Honestly, it should be much more than 3 days. The world doesn't need more laws, just better laws.

Re: Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

There's usually a good reason to be against something because someone else is for it in today's bitterly divisive politics.

For instance, it is the goal of certain nutjobs on the right to see to it that government can't do anything. Not "can't do anything right", but literally to make government unable to function. Then they can say that government is broken, largely because they helped break it.

This is how you get things like "means tests" for certain benefits, illogical qualifications for assistance that make you lose benefits the instant you get any kind of job, etc. They say they want to save money but what they really want to do is make sure that no universal anything exists that benefits all people. They WANT the red tape and inefficiencies, they create them, and they want you to be barely ineligible for help when you need it for nonsense reasons like having a job, specifically so that you'll get frustrated and hate government and hate the people who are worse off than you instead of the ones who are better off through the usual theft and dirty dealings that make rich people rich.

Why? Because government is the one force that can stand up to the super wealthy and the last thing they want is for we the people to start wielding that force effectively like we used to back when we had strong trade policies, strong worker rights, and a strong middle class.

A strong middle class is dangerous. A strong middle class means lots of people who are comfortable in life, not especially worried about where their next meal is coming from or stressed out from working 3 jobs. Confortable people have time to do things like protest things they don't like and take other political actions. The rich right wingers hate that to their core because it's noisy, chaotic, unpredictable, and of course it might affect their wealth and status if they don't behave.

The sooner everyone figures that out and starts to identify who their real enemies are the better off we'll all be.

Re: Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

If you had actually listened to Pelosi, you'd have heard what she REALLY said, not your deliberate and intentional misrepresentation of her words.

But you don't want to do that. It's too unpleasant for you. So you take her words out of context, because having to admit that Pelosi was being truth, that the fog of deception and misrepresentation about the PPACA from the GOP was causing a lot of confusion and misunderstanding due to a deliberate attempt to create such an environment.

After all, why not continue your same practices? Why would you stop lying? It gets the results you want. Truth isn't important. Integrity is to be avoided. Just keep lying till you get what you want.

That's what Republicans tried to do. That's what they're still doing. Why don't they try giving America a sane alternative? Why don't you try the truth?

Ah wait, you can't, can you?

Re:Yes please

[MightyMartian]

The United States is orders of a magnitude larger in population, land area and economy than Rome even at its height. Perhaps you missed the first part of my statement.

Re: Yes please

[MightyMartian]

I suspect you're the same individual who keeps saying this. Why is it you believe that trees have some unlimited ability to absorb CO2? And considering deforestation in many parts of the world, even if that were true, how would help?

But really, we both know what you wrote is just an idiotic and false talking point. All plants absorb some CO2, and increased CO2 will certainly benefit plants, but plants do not have unlimited capacity to absorb CO2, particularly when emissions do not decrease to give them time to do so. It's just a Heritage Foundation talking point that morons repeat.

Re:Yes please

[gfxguy]

Agree - the supreme law of the land (the U.S. Constitution) is only like 4 pages printed. What does it say about something like the tax code that has tens of thousands of pages? Even simple laws and legislation typically requires dozens or hundreds of pages. It's ridiculous.

Re:Yes please

[gfxguy]

I agree to a certain extent, in that laws governing the larger masses of people may be required as they define the role of government administration over those people, but laws that protect rights and define remedies for the violation of those rights need not be any more complex. So all you're saying is that as government grows, so do the laws governing it grow, but the laws the people really need be concerned about - their rights and legal remedies - need not be so complex. There's no reason we need to keep adding thousands of complex new federal and state laws every year instead of refining existing laws to be better and simpler.

Re:Yes please

[gfxguy]

You make some excellent points in your second paragraph. The problem is that adding a more complex system (as you describe in the first) is that it then becomes the "job" of legislators to, instead of embracing the system, find ways to work around it.... the same thing our "leaders" have been doing to the constitution since before the ink was dry.

Re:Yes please

[gfxguy]

It's an interesting proposition. I'm a solo programmer working in a fairly interesting role at my company - I write a lot of varied code and utilities, as well as doing a lot of other technical things. After about that magic five years, I found myself unable to keep up with new demands as I was maintaining old code to account for changes in the other software and hardware we use. After about 10 years it was almost all maintenance. I found an out in both switching departments and advocating for more off the shelf software that did what we needed (even if not quite the way people wanted... I told them to suck it up and deal with it).

Applying that sort of scenario to what you propose gives a pretty exciting result - after 10 years or so we're down to maintaining old laws (supposing the most important laws are passed first, after 10 years you're just down to nit-picky laws that probably don't mean a whole lot). After 10 years, you're refining and making the existing laws better instead of proposing complex new ones that benefit few at the expense of many (the typical law passed these days, it seems). Sounds good to me.

Re:Yes please

[gfxguy]

They'd all have to know and recite all the riders, too.

Re: Yes please

[gfxguy]

After all that blathering, she still said we need to pass it before "you can find out what's in it away from the fog of the controversy." No matter how you spin it, she still advocated passing it before understanding it. It was, and still is, a ridiculous statement.

Re:Yes please

[gfxguy]

Exactly - the complex laws are one way politicians can maintain their hold on power. Sadly, too few actually consider themselves public servants to act on our behalf.

Re: Yes please

[ChrisMaple]

The right wing is dominantly middle class.
Right wingers don't complain that the government is broken when it's doing nothing. They complain when it's breaking people and stealing things, which is the goal of leftist programs.

Your post is full of internal contradictions.

Re:Yes please

[sjames]

Oddly enough, 200 years ago, few people needed a lawyer (or could even find one). Your representative was generally just the smartest person you knew.

Re:Yes please

[swb]

I'll grant you population, but the Roman Empire at its peak was 5 million square miles. In terms of area managed per dollar invested with the technology they had, I think the Romans have nothing to be ashamed of.

Re:Yes please

[ChrisMaple]

The US is currently being invaded. There are currently about 15 million foreign soldiers in the US, all out of uniform. They are popularly known as "illegal aliens". They are here, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, "to harass our people and eat out their substance."

Re:Yes please

[ChrisMaple]

Regulations are added so fast that you'd either have to be a speed reader or spend all your time reading to read them all - it's over 250 pages a day.

Re:Yes please

[JoeMerchant]

Whether or not you "need" a lawyer is largely defined by how you live today. If you reach a certain level of wealth, people will target you with legal actions to take some of that away, and thus you need lawyers to handle that noise, but you pay parasites to represent your interests unless you enjoy spending your time in court.

If you're not in the top 5-10% of the wealth strata, this tends not to happen (all generalizations, of course), we seem to be living a little below that level and have had a bottom feeder target us over a matter of $200... the people "above" me have similar stuff happen all the time, people living more modestly seem not to have it happen much at all.

Of course, there are also "people's court" people out there who go around having small claims conflicts all the time... those mostly seem to be a matter of choice, doing business with people who don't make good on their contracts being one of the prime choices that lands those people in court... in my experience you can generally tell before getting into a business relationship whether or not the other party is going to do something so blatantly out of line that court action might make things better, and in my experience there's rarely been a compelling reason to get into one of those situations. Also generalizations, of course, and some people live the majority of their lives in that mess of bad actors - though from where I stand it looks like a choice they could choose not to make in the first place.

Re:Yes please

[ghoul]

I propose that only those who have come in legally as in with a visa after 1965 or through Ellis Island before be allowed to keep their citizenship. Everyone else who came illegally like the original colonists and their descendants should have to give up their citizenship and get to the back of the line. Hillary is descended from the original illegal immigrants - the pilgrims. Donald's father came legally.

Re: Yes please

[rickb928]

Careful. The facile arguments of the Libertarians are profound to them, and they rest on the kernel of truth to expand them ad infinitim.

That's their mistake, misapplication of the principles.

Re: Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

Trees make CO2 emissions naturally neutral. No magic is needed.

If we'd stifle all the fools who make 'save a tree' arguments against paper usage, and plant more trees, the world would be better.

Unfortunately, the calculations show we'd have to plant the entire earth within a few decades. And not let any of that be released.

It's not that feasible.

Re:Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, if the various government registers are maintained, it would be a legal codification, data integration and search with a filtering problem. Now the question would be, what other benefits could such computer readable legal code provide.

Re:Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

It's actually quite simpler than that.

Pass a law creating a disaster relief fund that the executive could use a small amount of on the declaration of a state of emergency and get more by asking the state assembly for approval which could by law be granted by a simple majority vote. The 72 hours would already be satisfied by the passage of the original law and by having access to a small amount of funds, work can get underway why the legislature approves additional access to funds or passes a new law that requires an additional 72 hours.

No need to attempt to conceive of all possible scenarios in order to have bills on standby already published if needed.

Re: Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

It takes one to know one

Re:Yes please

[ChrisMaple]

Let's see.

As it stands now, only people with lots of money and connections can be around the lawmakers when they're about to vote on a bill, or afford to buy lobbyists to be around the lawmakers as they're about to vote on a bill.

If this proposition goes into effect, millions of people can see the bill that's about to be voted on, in addition to those mentioned in the previous paragraph. Then any of all those millions of people can email their legislators and newspapers, and call radio stations and television stations, or even drive to the capitol and march about with a big sign.

Now, which possibility gives John Q. Public more ability to discourage bad legislation?

Re: Yes please

[jxander]

Really that just highlights a bigger problem: requiring a literal act of congress to allocate emergency relief funds.

How about we spend some time to create a bill to set aside an appropriate amount of money that can only be accessed by a governor or the president declaring a state of emergency (or some other harder-to-abuse threshold)

If random Joe middle class can keep some money squirreled away in case the car breaks down, or the roof falls in, certainly the country can do the same thing, right?

Re:Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

The original colonist did not enter the US illegally. There were no immigration laws prohibiting or even limiting entry into the US until the 1900s unless you were Chinese, a prostitute, convict, lunatic, idiot, or person likely to become a public charge (read welfare recipient).

While Hillary might fit into one of those categories, I doubt we can clearly maintain here ancestors all were. Now I asked a magic 8 ball if any of Hillary's ancestors were any of that and it replied "it is certain". I asked if any of them were vote for trump over Clinton and it replied without a doubt. So while it isn't scientific, it's blessed by a 1950s toy and now on the internet so it must be true.

Re: Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

What if they fail to read aloud the law that requires laws to be read aloud or lose validity?

Re: Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

What nonsense! The 2 repealed laws will just be grafted into the new law being passed. You act as if "law" is a defined quantifiable unit.

Re:Yes please

[mlyle]

That's what this measure does. If there's a statement from the governor that the bill is needed in related to a Governor-declared emergency, the 72 hour notice period does not paply.

Re: Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

Homosexuals are gonna getcha and gay marry you!

Re: Yes please

[MrKaos]

The right wing is dominantly middle class.

It would be difficult to imagine the political objectives of the Top 500 largest companies who have rights under law are aligned with the people. For example damaging the health care system and social security make people more dependent on employment and has no impact on a multinational corporation that isn't beneficial. I think you are confusing citizens, who are actual human beings, with corporations who are not.

Few people could match the lobbying budgets of a corporation who is determined to protect and extend their interests. Are you saying you support their interests over the interests of the populous, perhaps even your own interests?

Right wingers don't complain that the government is broken when it's doing nothing. They complain when it's breaking people and stealing things,

Probably because they are well off enough to not be worried about the machinations of government.

They complain when it's breaking people and stealing things, which is the goal of leftist programs.

That is quite a serious accusation. Are saying that "leftist programs" (whatever that is) have an objective of letting people steal from right wingers?

As far as I can see "leftist programs" are protests against something that affects them, so I am having difficulty making sense of this statement. Is there any particular programs you can point to where this is the case?

Your post is full of internal contradictions.

Would you mind pointing out what the contradictions are as I've read a good chunk of the TPP and the AC's comments are consistent with what I read there.

Re: Yes please

[sexconker]

It's bad form to post as AC then reply to it logged in.
For future reference, the reverse is also true.

Rule by a minority would be more tyrannical than rule by majority. "Tyranny of the majority" is a fun little phrase for small minds to latch onto, especially when they're in the minority and demanding people do everything their way.

Re: Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

Many bills refer to the National Electric Code. Should it be read in full each time it's mentioned?

Re: Yes please

[rickb928]

If you are referring to me, I do not post as AC, and did not in this thread.

No, I do not. No.

Re:Yes please

[eddeye]

We have members of congress regularly voting on bill that they themselves haven't read and don't understand.

Life is complicated. Legislation addresses thousand of issues, many of which are niche regulations affecting various industries, schools, government agencies, etc. Congress(wo)men can't possibly have expertise on them all.

The fact that ordinary people can't understand them is irrelevant - a regulation on sulfur emissions from coal plants has no meaning to Joe Shmoe. The U.S. is a big complicated country. Having laws only the average citizen understands would put us back in the age of robber barons.

The process (mostly) works because interest groups on all sides have experts who do understand the laws being proposed, and congress(wo)men regularly hear their opinions - including groups representing the public interest like EFF, ACLU, etc. Sometimes their concerns are dismissed, and sometimes congress(wo)men vote on interests besides good public policy (whether as favors to friends, placating donors, getting funding for their district, ideological rejections, etc). But almost nothing is passed without dissenting views at least being heard and considered by the committee.

Given the potential for abuse, it's shocking the system works as well as it does most of time. But it does work fairly well - the system hasn't imploded in 200 years (100 if you count from the beginning of industrial regulation).

Re:Yes please

[lsatenstein]

The purpose of this may well be to delay bills someone doesn't like while also making it harder to compromise, but it would be nice to see what the bills say before they're voted on.

This idea should be universal, every American state and territory, and even my own country, Canada.

The legislators do not have exclusivity on intelligence. My own city's councillors passed laws that are in direct opposition to the citizens. "Oh, we did not know!" was their response, after complaints came in to repeal the laws.

Re:Yes please

[Imrik]

If the declaration of an emergency doesn't cost the taxpayers (of that state) anything, they're unlikely to care that it isn't really an emergency. Currently the declaration is mainly to get federal money, which taxpayers in the state are likely to be in favor of.

Re:Yes please

[Agripa]

AIUI in the Icelandic tradition it was the job of the speaker to recite the entire legal code from memory before the Althing conducted any further business.

It was actually better than that. If anything was left out, it was repealed. This ended when Norway(?) invaded. It has been a while since I read about the Icelandic history of that time.

I think this is one of the major mistakes where statutory law is concerned. There needs to be an automatic repeal mechanism to prevent statutory law from becoming finite but unbounded.

Re:Yes please

[Agripa]

The cost would be monumental, ...

Exactly. It provides an objective if inaccurate measure of the cost of law. As it is now, no cost to benefit measurement is made. Some laws specifically forbid cost to benefit considerations.

Re:Yes please

[Agripa]

I've been advocating law experation without renewal for years. It forces elected legislatures to review previous generations' laws for problems and continued validity.

It also creates a public record of what they support.

Re:Yes please

[MikeKD]

there are a good number of things I can think of where a 72 hour waiting period might be inappropriate such as disaster relief

The author(s) of Prop 54 agree. From the text of the proposed law (section 3, part c; emphasis mine):

To give us, the people, and our representatives the necessary time to carefully evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the final version of a bill before a vote by imposing a 72-hour public notice period between the time that the final version is made available to the Legislature and the public, and the time that a vote is taken, except in cases of a true emergency declared by the Governor.

Wrong, a 2/3 vote is also needed: In section 4.2 of the prop, section 8.b.2 of Article IV adds "and the house considering the bill thereafter dispenses with the notice period for that bill by a separate rollcall vote entered in the journal, two thirds of the membership concurring, prior to the vote on the bill.

Re:Yes please

[Pepebuho]

That's why the executive have discretionary funds. They can help and cover that 72 hour gap

Re: Yes please

[dcw3]

It takes one to know one

No you - wtf is this kindergarten? Grow the hell up.

Re:Yes please

[david_thornley]

Laws aren't entirely straightforward, and in analyzing their effect it can be useful to see who's behind them and what they might think.

Re:Yes please

[ghoul]

Of course they entered illegally. Spain had claimed the entire Americas. Its just that the English did not give a twit about violating Spanish law.
Also all the native tribes had local communal property laws where the land was held in trust for the entire tribe. The settlers just land grabbed whatever they could at the barrel of a gun. They were all illegal till the US finally made treaties with all its neighbours and put immigration laws into place around the end of the 19th century. So only people who came after the late 1800s could claim to have come legally. Everyone else was illegal and so are their descendants.
The point I am trying to make is the law is not everything.

Re:Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

In cases like the PATRIOT ACT, it isn't so much prescience but writing a bit of legislation and waiting for a chance to push it through. There's a reason none of the people that voted for that bill read it, it was huge - far too big to write in the time allotted if it were written as a reaction to rather than in anticipation of disaster.

Re: Yes please

[kenh]

Why don't they try giving America a sane alternative?

They did, at the time - no one cared to report on it.

The CBO analyzed the GOP alternative to H.R. 3962 (PPACA, AKA "Obamacare") and concluded:

In contrast to H.R. 3962, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) finds that the Substitute would reduce average health insurance premiums ( by 7 to 10 percent in the small group market and 5 to 8 percent in the individual market) and would reduce the federal deficit by $68 billion over ten years.

Theoretical or Experimental?

[Anonymous Coward]

Title says theoretical, summary says experimental. Typically one is not both. How hard is it to confuse the two?

(For reference, I am an experimental physicist.)

Re:Theoretical or Experimental?

[penguinoid]

In theory, theory is the same as practice. But in practice, it isn't.

Re:Theoretical or Experimental?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or to paraphrase:

The difference between theory and practice is greater in practice than it is in theory.

Ha!

[bigfinger76]

The younger Munger

Well done, guys.

Re:Ha!

[Anonymous Coward]

Munger the younger...

I do wonder how it could be abused.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I remember the cheers that Herman Cain got for his proposal to keep laws to a fixed size, I was a bit leery as I could see how such forced brevity might impede effective communication.

If somebody made a point of slipping in errors, they could use this to manipulate the system.

Plus there are some people I wouldn't trust if they asked me to piss on them to put a fire out.

Maybe if he was trying to fix Alabama's Constitution.

reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems reasonable. Oh wait its from a Republican? That is the most god damn your brains are falling out of your head idea I have evar heard.

Because "getting things done"

[Anonymous Coward]

If they're "getting things done" then wouldn't you want the public to know that by recording the meetings and putting every bill online? You can record police in performance of their duties and the cops don't hide behind the excuse that you can't film them because "they're getting things done". Only people that rule from the shadows don't want the light shown on them.

Re:Because "getting things done"

[kenh]

"getting things done" is not the same thing as "doing the right thing" - the person opposing posting the final language of a bill for 72 hours before passage is hoping you don't see the difference...

The whole point of Prop. 54, as I read it, is to make sure the gov't is "doing the right thing" - what's wrong with that? Oh, right, it was proposed by a "republican"! Yikes! It must be a trick of some kind!

Re:Because "getting things done"

[pipingguy]

"Something MUST be done!"

"Well, THIS is something..."

"Then we must do it!"

Re:Because "getting things done"

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. Satire get moded down while dead serious social justice warriors get moded up. Slashdot has become cancer.

I know nothing about CA rules

[nedlohs]

but the obvious potential issue is that if changes to bills are relatively easy to make that will make for a great delaying tactic. Just change the wording on the bill you really don't want to see go to vote before the 72 hours is up on the last change...

Re: I know nothing about CA rules

[kenh]

The 72 hours requirement kicks in once you have 'final text', not each draft.

Re: I know nothing about CA rules

[Chrontius]

I believe the implication is that a bill could be un-finalized to buy you another three-day delay.

Re: I know nothing about CA rules

[Entrope]

How would a bill's opponents keep doing that? If they had enough votes to revise the draft over and over, they'd have enough votes to kill it or require it to something that would never pass.

Re: I know nothing about CA rules

[Anonymous Coward]

One, if there's not enough people in one party (or ideology) that agree on a bill, then it becomes necessary to have a coalition and to compromise (read, make draft changes) to get enough people aboard the idea. To some degree, this always happens. In the most extreme of very polar opposite parties who each want to paint the other side as evil, there's a lot of push to always get your "side" an effective edge.

Two, this further leads to the point that you want to make the appearance of compromising and trying to get things done. But it quickly turns into making every little point a matter of fodder or selectively misinterpreting text so that suddenly "woman's health" == "government funded abortion". Hence, you keep pushing for all sorts of complicated changes and know that getting those changes will be seen as a 'lot of push to always get your "side" an effective edge'. Ie, after a while you become wary that it's all just an orchestrated trick to avoid actually doing what the bill was designed to do. Add on a 72 hour delay, and you've pushed an already heavily compromised, heavily legalized, and heavily contentious bill into the realm of public opinion. What are the odds after all that that someone won't find some way to interpret the bill to being the next holocaust and push to get everyone to drop it?

PS - And this doesn't even get into the point that "final text" bills can be repeatedly fail to pass, then move back into "draft" stage. So, we can have all the drama amplified into years of not getting anything done.

Re: I know nothing about CA rules

[ChrisMaple]

Most states have had over 100 years to get their laws right. If a new law is so bad that it repeatedly fails to get a majority vote, it shouldn't pass.

Re: I know nothing about CA rules

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. Because God knows 100 years ago, to the dollar they were spelling out exactly how much to spend on education. Oh, right, something as fundamental as a budget and a tax system is still constantly an issue.

Re: I know nothing about CA rules

[kenh]

You just want this to be a problem, but it really isn't. You wrote:

And this doesn't even get into the point that "final text" bills can be repeatedly fail to pass, then move back into "draft" stage. So, we can have all the drama amplified into years of not getting anything done.

What prevents this from happening now? What prevents proponents from constantly re-introducing failed bills? Nothing. How does this proposal make constantly re-introducing failed bills any easier/likelier than the current situation? Nothing.

What's wrong with a little pause before passing a bill? What's the rush? most bills that are voted on don't go into effect immediately, they either go into effect a certain number of days after passage, on a fixed date-certain in the future, etc. - very, very few bills are in effect immediately.

Just because he's an oligarch...

[istartedi]

Just because he's an oligarch doesn't mean he's wrong. If transparency "disrupts" the sausage-making, maybe it's because there were too many rodent hairs in there.

The "OMG, some rich asshole sponsored this" argument has been applied to a number of initiatives, and in each case I'm trying my best to analyze the initiative on its own merits rather than based on who sponsored it.

It's not easy though. The voter's guide is 223 pages.

Re:Just because he's an oligarch...

[JoeMerchant]

Only 223 pages? That's a tiny fraction of the legislation that will be put to vote in a single session. Our system is like a black hole, and it's beginning to accrete mass at an alarming rate.

Re:Just because he's an oligarch...

[Anonymous Coward]

223 pages? Hopefully not a prophetic number.

Re:Just because he's an oligarch...

[RuffMasterD]

No, it's a prime number.

Re:well then

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha Ha. Uninamity.

Common sense but...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's common sense, but sense a Republican backs it, it must be bad. Great job. Brilliant partisanship.

Some backroom chatter is necessary for democracy

[Isara]

I voted against this, precisely because, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that we actually don't want *all* discussions to be televised. There's a lot of compromise that happens in these meetings, and I fear that real backroom dealings will start to happen once this law is in place. No one will want to be seen as compromising, and frank, intelligent discourse will end up as fodder for opposition commercials. The bill sounds great on the surface, but, as always, the devil's in the details.

Can we publish tax returns too?

[Anonymous Coward]

They should also publish the tax returns of politicians to ensure no undue influence. Can I remind you of the Panama Papers:

"Members of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle have channeled over $2 billion through offshore entities for unknown purposes."
I don't think Putin needs the $2 billion for himself, I think its to buy corrupt politicians around the world.

All those politicians names that appeared in those papers, include El Trumpo names! Who still hasn't published his tax return, despite promising to do it before the election! Claiming it was an IRS audit preventing him releasing them.... something the IRS said was not true.

Re:Can we publish tax returns too?

[kenh]

They should also publish the tax returns of politicians to ensure no undue influence.

What good would that do? Politicians don't report bribes on their tax returns, besides, the folks charged with writing the tax code don't even understand it, just ask Rep. Charles Rangel who failed to realize you need to report income from foreign rental properties he owns.

Re:Can we publish tax returns too?

[Anonymous Coward]

You think you're going to see this shit on a PERSONAL tax return? Fuck off, ignoramus, you have no idea what you're talking about.

Re:Can we publish tax returns too?

[ChrisMaple]

You are a liar. Trump's own people advised him not to release his tax documents while they were being audited by the IRS. That's what any responsible advisor would do. He did not claim that the IRS prevented him from releasing them.

Need it at the national level now

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if only we could get this at the national level. And the time before vote should be based on the size of the bill -- how about 1 day for every page in the bill.

I'd love to see these sleazy 'trade agreements' like TPP put under the same scrutiny.

Re: Need it at the national level now

[kenh]

how about 1 day for every page in the bill.

So PPACA, so-called ObamaCare, at 2,500 pages would have what, a nearly 7 year review before passage?

Federal Law and Tracking

[Herkum01]

What I would love to see is laws being tracked in version control. The text of congressional bills are large and people can easily slip in minor changes with major impact. There is no real tracking of who edited a bills text and version control would provide that transparency.

Beats having people acting shocked with something is added at changes added at the last minute.

Re:Federal Law and Tracking

[JoeMerchant]

Oh, you want actual transparency? That's several iterations into a brighter future than I think we're actually heading for.

Re:Federal Law and Tracking

[gymbrown]

Good idea. If we are to implement RCS in Politics, then we should also check out(no pun intended) the RCS community library http://www.rcscommunitylibrary....

Re:Federal Law and Tracking

[argStyopa]

I like it.
The wiki-method would be perfect for this.

Tracked changes, author/authority indicated, and logged indelibly for all to see, forever.

Then again, that would require us bringing a government that barely functions at a 20th century level into the 21st, when (I'm guessing) a significant fraction of congresspeople still have their emails printed every morning.

Re:Some backroom chatter is necessary for democrac

[Anonymous Coward]

AFACT, this only applies to public meetings, the ones that any random person could attend before. Now, they'll be allowed to record the meeting as well, rather than rely on the government to supply transcripts or videos - if the government feels like it. There was a court case about this for some city in CA recently, where a town tried to prevent someone from using video from a meeting in a campaign ad.

Backroom meetings and informal conferences can still occur without public scrutiny. But the results will need to be online for 72 hours before the vote.

Re:Some backroom chatter is necessary for democrac

[IcyWolfy]

The bill only requires that ==public== meetings be video-taped.
So, they are simply ensuring that the public can access the meetings in a manner other than driving up to Sacramento and sitting in.
Or to rely on the increasingly non-existant local news reporter who sits in and summarizes the actual actions that occur in these public meetings.

Who pays for it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest issue I see with most ballot measures in CA is paying for them. Where does the money to provide this service come from?

Re:Who pays for it?

[JoeMerchant]

The service of publishing proposed legislation on the internet? It's definitely cheaper that way than shuttling paper copies to all concerned, and probably cheaper than whatever they're doing now to exchange the changes behind closed doors before the vote.

Sad to see the Republicans obstructing again

[Anonymous Coward]

`There should be no requirement to make bills public before they're voted on. That just prevents the legally elected representatives from making decisions that they know better than the people.

Re: Sad to see the Republicans obstructing again

[Anonymous Coward]

This. Republicans again are using the Inernet to hurt the people.

Re: Sad to see the Republicans obstructing again

[Anonymous Coward]

They're only doing this because they're racists.

Re: Sad to see the Republicans obstructing again

[Anonymous Coward]

This. People aren't smart enough to understand the law.

Re: Sad to see the Republicans obstructing again

[Anonymous Coward]

This. We elect representatives for a reason. We have no right to see what they are voting on.

Re: Sad to see the Republicans obstructing again

[Anonymous Coward]

As they always do.

Re:Sad to see the Republicans obstructing again

[Anonymous Coward]

I am invoking Poe's law.

Re: Sad to see the Republicans obstructing again

[Anonymous Coward]

The po' don't get to see the law. The Law comes to get them.

Re: Sad to see the Republicans obstructing again

[SuiteSisterMary]

Nope, this is the elected official version of 'show your work.'

If the public can't get an idea of how the elected officials are going about their jobs, they can't make informed decisions about keeping them or replacing them in those jobs.

Remember Romney Care?

[kenh]

According to Steven Maviglio, the director of Californians for an Effective Legislature, a campaign committee formed to oppose Proposition 54. It all comes down to who is behind the initiative, and why. "The first thing you need to do is follow the money," he told Ars, pointing us to Munger, Jr. "He's been the top contributor to the California Republican Party. His goal is to disrupt the power of a legislature that's getting things done."

WTF? Ignore the actual wording, just look at who is proposing it! That's all you need to know. Oh, and "Getting things done" isn't the right metric, "doing the right thing" is, and they are not equivalent.

Dear Democrats, a little lesson for you - you know Obamacare (PPACA)? You know where the idea came from? (Brace yourself) A Republican! And when it was proposed by the Heritage Foundation it was attacked and vilified because, well, it wasn't Hillary Care, and since Hillary Care was the Democrat idea and the Heritage Foundation's plan was the Democrat plan, it must be destroyed! Until one day, many years later, Gov. Romney and the MA legislature picked it up, dusted it off, and tried it - it worked! The Democrats, thanks to their short memories, saw what happened in MA and decided to take it nation-wide. When the Republicans started to push back on (what was now called) Obamacare, suddenly one of the Democrats remembered it was a Republican plan (from the crazy old Heritage Foundation) and wondered why Republicans were attacking what was essentially their own plan!

Moral of the story - if Democrats didn't reject the Heritage Foundation plan back when Hillary's husband was in office for no other reason than it wasn't their plan, we could have had all the benefits of Obamacare at least ten tears earlier.

Re:Remember Romney Care?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean all the benefits of Obamacare like higher premiums, fewer choices of insurers and doctors, and the fact their website leaks your personal information to every goddamn asshole on the planet?

How about we just admit that this idea sucks balls.

Re:Remember Romney Care?

[Anonymous Coward]

... we could have had all the benefits of Obamacare at least ten tears earlier.

Ah yes. The benefit of paying ~6% of my income on premiums and up to another ~6.5% on out of pocket expenses if I actually use any medical services: presuming I'm "in network" and my insurance company ordains to actually pay for something. Do I mention that my place of work actually tried to push on me an even shittier plan which I refused, they appealed, and I won because their plan refused to cover any in-hospital care?

Seriously, fuck you. Back when Obamacare was announced and for a long time, I actually supported the notion of the ACA. But when you see year after year of Republicans trying to tear it down and replace it with basically nothing and we see virtually every other western country with a single payer or similar government paid* system that doesn't micromanage such ridiculous shit out of everything with globs of "the free market"** to magical fix things, it's patently absurd to champion other Republicans for "Romney Care" nor Democrats for being Rightest like the Republicans.

* Big clue bud. We already spend per capita as much on Medicare/Medicaid as most other western countries on their entire health system. That alone tells me that are system is utterly fucked up.

** Obamacare is there to...make rates not go up as fast. Yea, that's the ticket. We're going to be screwed over slightly more slowly. Awesome. Let me go declare bankruptcy and shove through all the inefficiencies of that because the system is still broken. Awesome.

Re:Remember Romney Care?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama/Hillary/Romney"care" + Open borders = Ruined country. There is NO way that they don't know that this is the outcome.

You cannot put a band-aid like this over a festering, gangrenous wound that is the monopoly-infested US healthcare system. The underlying problems must be addressed first, which is medical monopolies causing extortionate pricing. These *care systems just install a syphon hose into the pockets of the taxpayers.

Re: Remember Romney Care?

[kenh]

How about we just admit that this idea sucks balls.

My comment was directed at Democrats, to make a point about blanket partisan rejection of bills...

And yes, Obamacare 'sucks balls' (you mean that in the bad way, right?) that's why Republicans moved on from the idea and choose not to rally around it when Democrats resurrected it in 2009.

Re:Remember Romney Care?

[drinkypoo]

if Democrats didn't reject the Heritage Foundation plan back when Hillary's husband was in office for no other reason than it wasn't their plan, we could have had all the benefits of Obamacare at least ten tears earlier.

It wasn't a good plan then, and it isn't a good plan now. The ACA is a handout to insurance companies which shouldn't even exist, and they wouldn't if we simply extended Medicare to all citizens. It would have been both cheaper and easier.

Re:Remember Romney Care?

[MightyMartian]

What the hell is a "medical monopoly'?

Re:Remember Romney Care?

[Chrontius]

https://yro.slashdot.org/story...

https://politics.slashdot.org/...

https://science.slashdot.org/s...

https://yro.slashdot.org/story...

https://science.slashdot.org/s...

Charging "what the market will bear" isn't, if immediately after you agree to pay for a product or service you go bankrupt and/or homeless as a result of buying the product or service. 'Course, when the alternative is a quick/slow unpleasant death under hospital/hospice care that ends up costing the same... not much alternative there, either. Really, the only cheap option is euthanasia, and we're not willing, as a society, to go there yet. Another cheap option would be to allow end-of-life pain management at home in a DIY environment. Not like you're going to give yourself the wrong morphine dose, or misplace a vial, right?

Re:Remember Romney Care?

[ghoul]

Because Obamacare is a devil's compromise. Back then the Democrats felt they could actually have a single payer system and extend medicare to all or even better have an NHS. Obamacare is a bandage. Yes it gets the uninsured covered but at the cost of enriching the insurance companies and raising premiums for the middle class while doing nothing about the price gouging and monopolies of the medical sector both Big hospitals and Big Pharma. Obama just wanted to get something passed to have a legacy so he compromised and he compromised till he ended up with a Republican plan.

A true medical reform plan would have a few components -

1) Increase the number of Primary Care Doctors in the country so it becomes competitive and doctors actually start being available on weekends and nights. If going to the doctor needs time off from work you dont go for preventive care and you only go when you are sick hence increasing costs to society
2) Regulation of drug prices so that BIg pharma makes a reasonable profit but not so much profit that they spend Billions on marketing of unnecessary drugs to doctors and patients
3) Regulation of doctors and hospitals so that they have to present a menu of costs before hand rather than a bill after the fact. Restaurants manage it even though any pad thai has more components than a simple surgery. You dont need to price everything individually like 2 cents for pepper, 12 cents for raw noodles and so on which is how hospitals charge today.
4) Allow foreign doctors to practice in the US with a quick 1 year residency to increase competition in the medical sector
5) Either take 5% of salary and make it cover all Medical care (no copays,no deductibles,no coinsurance) or make all medical care expenses (premiums,copays,coinsurance,deductibles) tax exempt and allow such medical losses to be carried forward so that if you had a really bad year you may not pay taxes for the next 10 years or ever. Personaly I prefer the first option.
6) Allow creation of networks of doctors who have assigned patients and they are paid a fixed amount per patient each year. If they can keep the patients healthy and not consuming any medical services. If the patients fall sick and need a lot of medical care they lose money. Basically make it the doctors self interest to have healthy clients rather than sick clients. Today doctors make more money when their clients are sick, surgeons make the most. The aim should be to prevent the need for surgery and starve surgeons of work so more will go towards primary and preventive care than surgery.
7) Have local medical supervisory boards elected like school boards to supervise doctors instead of letting the AMA self regulate. Medical care is a public good. Its not something people have a choice in consuming. It cannot be left to the private sector.

Re:Remember Romney Care?

[Anonymous Coward]

FTFY:

It wasn't a good plan then, and it isn't a good plan now. The ACA is a poison pill that looks like a handout to insurance companies which shouldn't even exist, and they wouldn't if we simply extended Medicare to all citizens. It would have been both cheaper and easier.

They made it look like a handout to insurance companies and at first it was, but all of the parts didn't kick in at once in order to make sure that it is so fully intertwined with the health care industry that it will be painful to unwind and the final effect will be the collapse of the health insurance industry to pave the way for single payer^h^h^h^h^hprovider health care.

You will be much easier to manage once your very health depends on the largess of a partisan bureacrat.

Re:Remember Romney Care?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama care is a handout to the rich. It forces everyone to have insurance with no cost controls, meaning a captive market for the insurance companies. It was rejected originally because it's bad for America, not because it's Republican.

Re: Remember Romney Care?

[Anonymous Coward]

My comment was directed at Democrats, to make a point about blanket partisan rejection of bills...

No, your point was to villify Democrats, as usual. If you were making a point as you claim, you would have done a better job of castigating the sudden turnabout of the GOP on the issue. Or their various other failures.

And yes, Obamacare 'sucks balls' (you mean that in the bad way, right?) that's why Republicans moved on from the idea and choose not to rally around it when Democrats resurrected it in 2009.

Oh, wait, there you go. You're pretending that Republicans moved on from the idea. Except they didn't. Except you're not mentioning how all Republicans have got it is repeal. Repeal. They're lacking on the replace. For some reason. That's also why they nominated Romney, the one guy who couldn't effectively oppose the law.

But fuck, they were so desperate to repeal it, that they got behind an effort to declare that the federally operated exchanges wouldn't have the subsidies, an abstruse and illegitimate attempt, rather than honest opposition. Seriously, there was no point to that argument, except to convince the Supreme Court that they should abuse common sense in order to try to kill the law. Which the Supreme Court had already refused to do when there was something in the way of an argument with integrity being made. Why go for the technicality approach?

Because you can't win an honest argument.

But you can't go into this, because...I don't know, maybe you just can't see the scope of the problem.

Re:Remember Romney Care?

[ChrisMaple]

Not that there's any forgiving Romney, but Romney's plan was to cut off an even worse plan proposed by Massachusetts Democrats. Kind of like committing suicide so that you won't be murdered.

Re:Remember Romney Care?

[ChrisMaple]

"Basically nothing" is freedom, the opposite of Obama.
"Government paid" is an oxymoron.

Re:Remember Romney Care?

[ChrisMaple]

The American Medical Association controls accreditation at US schools, limiting the supply. The AMA also strongly influences state laws about who can claim to be a medical doctor, and the penalty for practicing medicine without a license. That's the medical monopoly, and it works to make medical care much more expensive than it should be due to supply/demand effects.

Then there's the problem of third parties making the payments, which removes the patient's incentive to economize and the doctor's incentive not to pad a bill the patient never sees. With state and federal government setting regulations, getting fees and supplying subsidies, that's 4th and 5th parties. The patient and doctor both have much reduced control of both the finances and the treatment. FUBAR.

Re:Remember Romney Care?

[ChrisMaple]

Calling Obamacare a Republican plan is either dishonest or ignorant. It was passed without a single Republican vote.

There's some limited sense in 1-7, but...
.......Medical care is a public good.
Not to the person receiving it. Not to the person providing it.
.......Its not something people have a choice in consuming.
Elective surgery. Choosing to ride out a sickness rather than seeing a doctor. Not getting flu shots. Not using Bandaids(TM) or BenGay(TM). Lots of medical things are a matter of choice.
------It cannot be left to the private sector
It must not be put into the hands of bureaucrats who don't give a rat's ass about whether you suffer or die.

Re:Remember Romney Care?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Basically nothing" is freedom, the opposite of Obama.

"Basically nothing" also includes no roads, no military, no postal system. Oh, right, people like me want those things and are willing to pay taxes to have those things because we want to live a society that isn't shit. Yep, that bastard Obama wanting some sort of health care system. Just like that bastard Nixon. Or FDR. Or, well, anyone who isn't a moron.

"Government paid" is an oxymoron.

Perhaps you've heard of these things called taxes? They're not exactly new. You might not like them. You might want to consider them invalid. Right up there with paper money. But they're a real thing. That the money comes from the people to be spent by government for the people's benefit is, you know, part of the "promote the general welfare"*. Or do you believe that government should/does exist solely on unfunded mandates and people magically complying?**

* Not to say I think the US Constitution actually allows for federal healthcare, but then that's more the point that a lot of what the government does (be it roads, military, etc) is clearly outside the purview of Congress. To me, that's just an argument to fix the US Constitution because clearly the vast majority of people want those things.

** Because at this point, you're going to be bitching about force and the threat of force to acquire those taxes/funds. Yea, that's how it works. Jackass freeloaders who don't feel any obligation to pay into the government to get the benefits of society will find out that they, you know, are going to have to do so regardless. Although some have found lots of ways to get the law written to avoid paying a "fair" share and we can argue endless on just how much various programs benefit society--like how I feel we spend way too much on the military or how we have a wholly fucked up system of educational spending (not an issue of spending too little) and general organization.

Re:Remember Romney Care?

[ghoul]

'Not to the person receiving it. Not to the person providing it.'
Thats like saying education is personal to the person getting it and to the person providing it

Elective surgery should still be elective as in the patient and doctor discuss the pros and cons before they decide to go for it (say a knee replacement)
However cost should not be part of the discussion if the surgery is going to actually improve health and productivity.
Cosmetic surgery is different so is end of life expensive treatments which should be self funded

' Choosing to ride out a sickness rather than seeing a doctor. Not getting flu shots. Not using Bandaids(TM) or BenGay(TM).'

Choosing to ride out a sickness is what we want to prevent as not only is the person sick and unproductive, they get other people sick. Also if it is something which gets progressively worse it costs a lot more to treat at a later state than earlier hence increasing the burden on the medical system
Regarding using branded on non-branded medicines that can be left as a choice where a non branded option exists but if no off brand options exist like for say EpiPens the cost needs to be regulated.

Bureaucrats can be extremely efficient more so than private sector employees driven by short term quarter to quarter goals. It depends on how the incentives are setup. If the incentives are setup for maximum healthy productive life for all citizens than the bureaucracy will do so. Blaming the bureaucracy is just a way of covering up for mistakes politicians did in setting up incorrect incentives.

Re:well then

[Anonymous Coward]

Unanimous is the result of a vote, and Uninamity means all voted the same.

Re:Some backroom chatter is necessary for democrac

[kenh]

It isn't about "discussions" it is about posting the "final text of all proposed legislation" for 72 hours before a final vote:

If passed, the law would require that the final text of all proposed legislation be published on the Internet for 72 hours before lawmakers can conduct a final vote.

Also, I'm pretty sure California broadcasts their legislative sessions, but I am curious why you feel a need to provide lawmakers with a "safe space" to conduct backroom deals.

This is not the California way!

[kenh]

As then Speaker Pelosi said, "We have to pass the bill, so you can find out what is in it!"

Or, as Rep. John Conyers famously said "Read the bill?"

Great Idea-works well at the Village level

[speedlaw]

I worked in Village Government for a while in NY. All bills must be published...read...debated...and voted on. You can't combine things in a bill and must vote on that one item. None of this applies to the State Government, or the Feds. No last minute sausages, or tacking a kill Planned Parenthood rider to Veterans Benefits. I iwish I lived in a world where the upper level governments had to follow the rules our little villages do.

Re:Great Idea-works well at the Village level

[chromaexcursion]

sadly, too few have your understanding of how the world works. and world government can't work like a village, they haven't for 4000 yrs.

Re:Great Idea-works well at the Village level

[SuricouRaven]

Government can work like a village, if you're governing a village. The larger the number of people governed, the more complex a system of government is required. This is why most countries use some form of hierarchy - city, county, regional and national governments.

Re:Great Idea-works well at the Village level

[gfxguy]

And yet legislating can still be done at each level as if it were a village. Maybe instead of governing 10k people, you're legislating for 20 "villages" in a county, or 40 counties in a state, or 50 states in a country. It doesn't have to be that complicated if the higher levels stick to governing at a high level. What's the expression? In times peace, 95% of governing should happen at local levels?

Re:Great Idea-works well at the Village level

[ChrisMaple]

To reinforce your point: We call it the federal government because it was intended to be a federation, a form of government one aspect of which is a state maintaining control over its internal affairs.

Sigh

[argStyopa]

"Follow the money" means to find out who ultimately benefits.
It does NOT mean "follow the money until it comes to someone you don't like and then reflexively oppose it because you just don't like them"...

Re: well then

[Anonymous Coward]

Fluid mechanics > quantum mechanics. Applied physics ftw.

Another wise idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I have another wise idea, on par with this physicist's suggestion. We should require all niigger bucks to register as sex offenders whether they've raped anyone yet or not. It's a preemptive approach to protect women from one of the most dangerous elements of society. Requiring niigger bucks to register as sex offenders would also force them to stay away from schools, therefore also keeping guns out of schools. This is a common sense measure to reduce crime, and I don't know how anyone could reasonably oppose it.

Re:Another wise idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Whipslash, what gives? We thought you would be a breath of fresh air after the complete clusterfuck that was DICE. Got rid of the DICE niiggers and replaced them with SJW niiggers... FUCK YOU!

Re:Another wise idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Some sites are promoting getting around that be referring to niigers as "googles". Let's see 'em try to filter that!

Re:Another wise idea

[sexconker]

Yup, slashdot filters the word nigger now.

Fuck censorship in all forms (especially of content people in power deem unsuitable).

Re:Another wise idea

[Anonymous Coward]

It did when I tried it in the above comment. Maybe the italic tag fooled it into letting pass.

A good bill is bad if the wrong person proposes it

[eagl]

So, a good bill is bad if the wrong person proposes it? Isn't that why our nation is currently paralyzed by hyper-partisanship? Politics-uber-alles?

Sunlight: The best disinfectant

[LeftCoastThinker]

"His goal is to disrupt the power of a legislature that's getting things done."

If the legislature is passing good legislation, the sunlight has no impact. If they are a bunch of slimy bastards making backroom deals that are bad for the people, they shouldn't be surprised that the voters are unhappy with the BS they are pulling.

California would be better off firing all of their crooked politicians and passing all legislation directly by referendum every 2 years. Much like stable software, the government has most things already nailed down. They don't need a full time legislature to meddle with their lives. Let the governor run the state based on the current law, and update the law every 2 years. Pass a line item budget every year. In the internet age there is no need for corrupt political representatives at the state level.

There's no obfuscation benefit. Post it!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the legislature that is supposedly the domain of the governed, their property and right to see it. Why shouldn't they see it before it's voted on, even IF that would possibly lead to short term political friction? If knowing what's in these bills before they're rubber stamped causes problems, those problems exist anyway in one form or another.

As someone who hates republican obstructionism....

[AvderTheTerrible]

....all I can say is this is one of the best fucking ideas I have ever seen.

Stamping a mandatory 3 day delay before final vote to give the public a chance to examine a bills contents and know what their elected officials are voting for is a real no-brainer. Last minute shenanigans cause untold numbers of legislative headaches for regular people. In fact that's typically how all the questionable crap bought and paid for by corporations make it into the shit that comes out of Congress: a last second rider attached to legislation that is absolutely must-pass.

With a mandatory 72 hour delay between finalizing the bill and allowing a legislative body to vote for it, it gives the public a chance to go over the fine print and get some kind of effective backlash going that could potentially get rid of that last minute gotcha crap people like to stick in there.

Following the money doesn't mean jack if it's a good idea. Good ideas can actually come from either side of the isle when someone has a rational thought. And yeah, I admit this might be and probably is an attempt to hamstring a Democrat led body by a Republican with a vendetta, but I will take a right thing for the wrong reason any day over a wrong thing for the wrong reason, which is what legislative bodies nationwide tend to do these days.

The legislative process was actually designed to be a bit slow for precisely this reason, so that people could speak up about things as congress or a state legislature is thinking of passing crap. This delay gives them that ability by taking away the ability to pull legislative fast ones.

This amendment should be rolled out in every state and territory, and then somehow forced down Congress's throat.

Re:As someone who hates republican obstructionism.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you don't understand politics. Because a Republican proposed it, it's a bad idea.

+1 For This

[no1nose]

Why not? What is the hurry to pass new laws and regulations?

Re:+1 For This

[ooloorie]

Why not? What is the hurry to pass new laws and regulations?

The only thing that remotely keeps the Democratic-dominated California legislature in check is public outrage, because even Democrats fear that when running against other Democrats. By suppressing public debate prior to votes, they can largely vote as they like, unencumbered by public opinion or outrage, since after the vote has happened, people usually don't bother with deep analysis or debate, since it's pointless. Being able to rush bills through is particularly important to legislators for crony-capitalist spending bills. Both parties love to wallow in lengthy debates on symbolic but divisive social issues.

Note that should Republicans ever regain power in California, Republican legislators love the ability to rush through bills as well. This isn't a Democratic/Republican issue, it's a citizen vs a corrupt legislature issue.

Business

[chromaexcursion]

At some point it comes down to a BUSINESS negotiation. Business negotiations are private. The non-public entity involved demands it. Negotiations are private! even for a pubic contract. Bribes are illegal. With the scrutiny in the US do you think any major company would? Get real!

Re:Business

[RuffMasterD]

What are you talking about? Businesses are free to negotiate however they see fit under Proposition 54. This is about letting the PUBLIC see the legislation they paid for with PUBLIC money before it is voted on by lawmakers the PUBLIC elected.

Re:Business

[ooloorie]

At some point it comes down to a BUSINESS negotiation

Even California hasn't fallen so low that its laws come down to "business negotiations".

the rule of toyata

[chromaexcursion]

"you asked for it, you got it"
remarkably stupid. and will never result in what the author desires

Re:the rule of toyata

[Anonymous Coward]

Gosh! Thanks for the criticism.

Care to add anything useful? Like an explanation of what you see as the flaws? How about a counter-proposal?

No? Just mouthing off then...

Re:A good bill is bad if the wrong person proposes

[guises]

The question is whether or not the bill is actually good. On the surface it seems fine, but when someone starts pouring money into a proposition that no one has any reason to oppose, that calls for digging a little deeper. The person in the summary is suggesting that it's an obstruction mechanism - slow the passage of legislation by introducing a delay before a bill can be voted on.

The additional footage from meetings might be similar - if every meeting is public and recorded then the legislators have to perform for the public all the time. Attacking each other constantly, declaring that the others are "for big government" or "in the pocket of big business", doing those farcical little legislative plays - "Look at this snowball! I have disproved global warming!" etc. Never an opportunity to compromise and actually accomplish something.

I don't know, if that's all they've got then it seems like weak opposition. But the money certainly raises my hackles a little, people don't spend that kind of money if they're not expecting to get something out of it, and that something is seldom altruistic. And if I knew anything about this guy it could perhaps make me more suspicious. There are certainly people whose politics are so blatant that it could provoke that kind of adverse response from me. I just don't know anything about California politics.

Re:Some backroom chatter is necessary for democrac

[legRoom]

You might try spending 30 seconds looking up Prop 54 on Google before becoming "pretty sure". It does more than one thing:

Key Changes That Would Happen if Proposition 54 Passes: ... The legislature would have to ensure that all of its public meetings were recorded, with videos posted on the Internet within 24 hours.

Re:A good bill is bad if the wrong person proposes

[legRoom]

if every meeting is public and recorded

Prop 54 does not make every meeting public. It just says that if a meeting is open to the public, then it must also be recorded and posted online, with no bizarre, unconstitutional restrictions on what people can do with the video.

Re:Some backroom chatter is necessary for democrac

[Goldsmith]

Ok, so... did you read what you linked? You do know that it includes statements saying the guy you're arguing with is right. I really hope you were just being pedantic about the phrase "pretty sure." The analysis states that currently the legislature and committee meetings are open to the public, and:

Live videos of most, but not all, of these meetings are available on the Internet. The Legislature keeps an archive of many of these videos for several years. The Legislature does not charge fees for the use of these videos.

So, the change here is that the current practice of transparency in the legislature is more evenly applied, and enforced in law. Wow. Hey, the real kicker is that it's going to take up 0.3% of the Legislature's internal operating budget. Gee, they're going to have to cut back on catered lunches.

Have you ever been to visit your representative? I'm a Californian, and have visited Sacramento to lobby the legislature several times. The argument here is typical of the petty politics of my state. In the Assembly, if you want something to fail, you have a Republican bring it to the floor. People gave Arnold a hard time for not playing well with the Assembly Democrats, but don't remember that Pete Wilson had the police lock the Assembly in their chamber until they passed his budget. Ideology, common sense, and good governance take a back seat to preventing the other guy from getting any wins.

Re:Some backroom chatter is necessary for democrac

[Goldsmith]

You do know that these guys already (voluntarily) video tape most public meetings. They don't video tape the ones where no one shows up. This doesn't change any of the Legislature's actions. Regardless of whether this bill passes, they're still going to tape their meetings.

Now, I don't disagree that this is all for political theater. That's why they record in the first place. Our legislature is pretty screwed up. It's been 20 years since the Republicans threatened any sort of legislative control in the state. So pretty much we've been living with back room deals and internal party politics governing us for most of that time (political parties and their meetings are private, so one party rule is not really open to the public). In the mid 90s there was a very brief (1 year) time where actual compromise flourished in the legislature. Horrible things like mixing the party affiliation of the major committee chairs happened.

Re: Need it at the national level now

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, or that bill could have been written in clear language in ten pages.

Re:Some backroom chatter is necessary for democrac

[legRoom]

Ok, so... did you read what you linked? You do know that it includes statements saying the guy you're arguing with is right.

Isara's concern, above, was about the legislature being forced to televise meetings that it doesn't want to. kenh incorrectly implied that the proposed law has nothing to do with that.

If the legislature was actually comfortable with recordings of every public meeting being freely available, they wouldn't have imposed a sweeping (and probably unconstitutional) ban on some of their most important uses:

No television signal generated by the Assembly shall be used for any political or commercial purpose, including, but not limited to, any campaign for elective public office or any campaign supporting or opposing a ballot proposition submitted to the electors.

Have you ever been to visit your representative? ... The argument here is typical of the petty politics of my state.

You're rambling in this paragraph. I can't tell what your point really is, or who you're criticizing. The provisions of Prop 54 relating to the recordings of public meetings make up a majority of its non-boilerplate text, and I don't see what's "petty" about wanting their existence acknowledged.

Re:As someone who hates republican obstructionism.

[Chrontius]

I believe the overwhelming Democrat position on this board is, "Stopped clocks are right twice a day, and this must be that time!"

Anyone else have a Munger in college?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the mid 60's we had a daddy's boy with more tutors than the rest of us had hot meals. They even tried going to class for him. We assumed daddy gave enough to get a wing named after him but preferred to pretend he had a son he could be proud of.

Some traditions never get old.

Why is no one commeting on the really importat bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Title says theoretical, body (and link) say experimental.
so confusing!

Nancy Pelosi said it best

[tomhath]

Her statement on the Affordable Care Act: “We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it,”

Re:Nancy Pelosi said it best

[Anonymous Coward]

Her statement on the Affordable Care Act: “We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it,”

Except, of course, that was in relation to the misrepresentations made about it.

Apparently we can't even follow context.

Re:Nancy Pelosi said it best

[gfxguy]

She still suggesting passing it first, before understanding it. She may absolutely have been correct about republicans misrepresenting it (although, given the time it's had as law, they were largely right about it negatively affecting the middle income earners), but she still said we had to pass it in order to discuss it "away from the fog of controversy." Yes, she did say that you have to pass it first, then we can discuss it.

Re:Some backroom chatter is necessary for democrac

[Imrik]

The main change with regards to the recordings is that they would become available for use for political ads.

Re: Need it at the national level now

[Imrik]

Or it could have been fine printed on a single oversized page.

Who and why?!

[CanEHdian]

According to Steven Maviglio, the director of Californians for an Effective Legislature, a campaign committee formed to oppose Proposition 54. It all comes down to who is behind the initiative, and why.

That's like saying that Snowwhite and the 7 dwarves are rallying against a proposition to mandate the installation of smoke dectectors in the bedrooms of children, because the initiative was started by the Big Bad Wolf (who of course figures the higher the children survival rate, the bigger chances are that some of them might get lost in the woods). So yeah, rip out all those smoke detectors because the Big Bad Wolf is after your children!

Republican Would Benefit?

[sycodon]

"The first thing you need to do is follow the money," he told Ars, pointing us to Munger, Jr. "He's been the top contributor to the California Republican Party. His goal is to disrupt the power of a legislature that's getting things done."

So, Republicans would benefit by everyone knowing what they are voting on, that the public know what's going on, and that the legislation be carefully considered?

What does that say about the people who oppose this? That they don't want people to know what they are voting on, don't want the legislation to be carefully considered, and that the public not be informed?

Is the definition of "getting things done" mean having things slipped in at the last minute while keeping the public and the legislators clueless ?

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[PopeRatzo]

So, Republicans would benefit by everyone knowing what they are voting on, that the public know what's going on, and that the legislation be carefully considered?

If you view this law from a national perspective, you can see the problem. There are always efforts like this to make states with big Democratic majorities "more accountable", but you never see similar efforts in places like Texas or South Carolina. It's like the gerrymandering issue. You will see ALEC and the Koch Brothers pouring money into state initiatives to have "fair districts", but only in blue states. We see initiatives to have electoral college votes given proportionally, but only in blue states. In fact, many blue states have gone to an independent commission drawing legislative maps, but you don't see it happening in red states. At all.

Of course, you want legislatures to be accountable to the people they represent. You want the public engaged with the laws that their legislatures pass. But the suspicion regarding this initiative comes from the intent of the people pushing it. It's like the efforts to "prevent voter fraud", which sound great but when you look a little deeper, you see that the intent is to strictly limit the participation of minorities, students and the elderly. For example, the "voter ID law" in North Carolina, which was passed in concert with executive actions that limited the number of polling places. By eliminating the polling place at Duke University, the early voter turnout among students has gone down 70%.

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[sycodon]

I suggest you find some rich liberal to sponsor such an initiative in the Rd states then.

But just because no one has done so doesn't mean it should not be done where people are trying.

And, BTW, the intent is irrelevant, as you yourself point out.

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait...you seem to be doubling down on the suggestion that it would help Republicans for people to know what the fuck is happening and not have last minute shit come down and get passed without due consideration.

What does that say about Democrats???

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[PopeRatzo]

Wait...you seem to be doubling down on the suggestion that it would help Republicans for people to know what the fuck is happening and not have last minute shit come down and get passed without due consideration.

No, it would help everyone to know what the fuck is happening. However, these initiatives are only being pushed in Democratic states for some strange reason.

I'm pretty sure you get the implication.

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[PopeRatzo]

And, BTW, the intent is irrelevant, as you yourself point out.

No, the intent is everything. The intent of a shrinking Republican minority seeking to hold on to power.

You have to look not just at this one initiative, but at the "suite" of initiatives with which these are always included (voter suppression, etc).

What good is "public accountability" when an increasing percentage of the population is disenfranchised?

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, Republicans would benefit by everyone knowing what they are voting on, that the public know what's going on, and that the legislation be carefully considered?

What makes you think given 72 hours they're any more like to bother reading or carefully considering what they're voting on? I mean, if it's so fucking important to do a good job of not voting in horrible, shit laws, then your representative should already being reading and carefully considering each law before voting.

As for the public knowing what's going on, we already have that after laws are passed. It's the job of your representative to do a good job of voting as you'd desire and it's public record of the laws proposed and how they voted. There's no actual need to have a 72 hour delay unless you're trying to push a direct democracy by proxy instead of a representative democracy. And, here's a hint: the reason we have a representative democracy is the same reason there's issues with Wikipedia editors: in practice a direct democracy becomes a legislative edit war between a select few with the time and energy to effect the outcome instead of an actual measure of what democracy as a whole wants. One could argue this happens regardless, through lobbying and the like. Well, this doesn't change things then.

What does that say about the people who oppose this? That they don't want people to know what they are voting on, don't want the legislation to be carefully considered, and that the public not be informed?

Read above.

Is the definition of "getting things done" mean having things slipped in at the last minute while keeping the public and the legislators clueless ?

Again, read above. Every bit of this amounts to "Duh, I'm a legislator who can't read or think but must do the bidding of my vocal donors." Which is, again, hardly any different to how things are done now. The only real chance is that we now have the ability of people to constantly make minor changes over extended periods of time as a battle of attrition to avoid ever voting on certain legislation.

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[sycodon]

No, it would help everyone to know what the fuck is happening

So why oppose it?

You seem to be saying it's a good thing, but only if everyone does it. That makes no sense.

And this inherently doesn't benefit one party over the other. My original comment was that the opponents seem to suggest it does and what does that say about them?

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, of course you're right. Any time a member of the party not currently in power in a state wants to propose a law, that bill is automatically invalid, worthless, and tyrannical in intent because it was proposed by the minority party instead of the majority. Everything that someone in party X proposes in a state dominated by party Y is, without a doubt, intended to oppress party Y and win back power for party X. All politics is cut-throat, and nobody could ever possibly propose anything that might honestly be in the interests of the people. Always look at the (R) or (D) after the name of the guy doing the proposing, never at the proposal itself. That's what democracy is supposed to look like.

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be saying it's a good thing, but only if everyone does it. That makes no sense.

You should read about game theory. It will blow your mind.

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[sycodon]

Nope.

Leadership regularly adds items to bills at the last minute. That practice is ubiquitous in all legislative bodies, even the US Congress, and is bullshit.

And, what's the fucking hurry? When a Bill is changed it takes a while for it to be analyzed and the people it may affect to understand it and bring their concerns to the attention of their legislator.

The only reason for allowing that bullshit is to slip something in under the wire and without due consideration.

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[PopeRatzo]

So why oppose it?

I don't oppose it. I'm asking where are similar initiatives in Republican-controlled states? Remember, these kind of bills are only introduced at the pleasure of the controlling party.

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[Anonymous Coward]

As if all those students aren't doing mail in ballots through their parent's address as well as vot9ng again at school.

One vote is more than enough for the typical idiot college student.

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[gfxguy]

So that's a good first step - support it and ask for it everywhere instead of justifying the opposition to it because it isn't already happening everywhere. Get past that, and we can move on and support efforts like this everywhere. It's a good thing.

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[gfxguy]

But the legislation is a good thing. Now get on your democrat representatives in red states to propose the same kind of legislation. It's all good.

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all states have an initiative process to amend their constitutions.

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[ChrisMaple]

Generally, college students attending college not in their home state, are ignorant of both principles and local issues. They are callow. They should not be voting in the college state. Their motive is almost always emotional, and their goal is to hurt people of accomplishment.

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[ChrisMaple]

Riders and other modifications can only be made by majority vote. If the majority wants the bill to pass, it can quash changes. This proposition brings two advantages, disclosing sneakiness and exposing errors to many eyes (like Linux).

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[PopeRatzo]

Generally, college students attending college not in their home state, are ignorant of both principles and local issues. They are callow. They should not be voting in the college state.

Sod off. You don't get to decide who has rights based upon whether or not you agree with how they vote.

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[PopeRatzo]

So that's a good first step - support it and ask for it everywhere instead of justifying the opposition to it because it isn't already happening everywhere.

That's exactly what's been happening. Blue states are drawing fair maps and Red states are suppressing the vote.

You can let Lucy pull the ball away at the last second only so many times, you know?

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[PopeRatzo]

As if all those students aren't doing mail in ballots through their parent's address as well as vot9ng again at school.

One vote is more than enough for the typical idiot college student.

You would have thought one of the hundreds of investigations into "voter fraud" would have turned up a single case of this happening by now, no? It's easy enough to catch. Whether or not I vote is public record.

So until you can point to this actually happening, you can fuck right off with your make-believe voter fraud by students.

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[PopeRatzo]

Now get on your democrat representatives in red states to propose the same kind of legislation.

You don't understand. The GOP supermajorities in Red state legislatures have absolute control over which bills are presented. They've changed laws to draw new districts in years when it's not supposed to happen just to make sure they maintain supermajorities, even though by popular vote these states would be Blue. If it wasn't for gerrymandering,, the US House of Representatives would be under Democratic control, since more people voted for Democratic candidates than Republican candidates for the past several elections. This is a matter of the rights of US citizens under the US Constitution. People are being disenfranchised nationally because of the behavior of their state legislatures. It's a very touchy subject here in Texas, and one that gets a lot of attention.

Voting rights and legislative accountability have to be constitutional amendments to the US Constitution or they have to be the result of Supreme Court cases slapping down the regressive states.

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[rickb928]

"many blue states have gone to an independent commission drawing legislative maps, but you don't see it happening in red states. At all."

Except in Arizona. And that is possibly unconstitutional; From Wikipedia;

The Elections Clause of the federal constitution provides, "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof."

The Arizona Redistricting Commission was enacted by Proposition 106, citizen-sponsored and decided, mostly cutting the Legislature out of the process.

Those pesky citizens again.

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[rickb928]

"No, the intent is everything. The intent of a shrinking Republican minority seeking to hold on to power."

In the face, in California, of a Democratic party majority seeking to destroy and eradicate the Republican interference, this seems predictable, an expected response to the majority's punishment of their opposition.

But of course the Left defines all opposition as illegitimate.

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[rickb928]

I do, finally, get the implication. I just hope you actually do. Which I'm willing to assume for your benefit.

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[rickb928]

Since there are ample reports of this happening, which you either choose to ignore or have not bothered to examine, you perhaps should take your own advice.

If you cannot be bothered to Google this, you cannot deserve further attention.

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[sumdumass]

Outside of it came from them and not me pushing this stuff or not everyone is doing it, where is the problem exactly?

Seriously, where is the problem? They cannot continually add to legislation in order to stifle government because that would require a majority vote and someone to ignore the rules when the leaders close the bills. The majority can simply vote down amendments and request a final vote.

Now if you are suggesting that the amount of time to read the bill and make objections known or summon support from the citizens (for or against) who have access to read the bills too is the problem, then I suggest you define democracy and republic for us so we all know we are talking about the same things. At best, any real argument that can be made about this or similar rules is that some are afraid of the people knowing before it is too late to do anything about it. That in and of itself isn't all that bad in every situation but those situations tend to be limited to government knowing what best and going against the popular sentiments of the people. I think deep down, this is likely where the problem is.

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[PopeRatzo]

If you cannot be bothered to Google this, you cannot deserve further attention.,

I just googled it. Number of prosecutions for students voting twice = 0.

Re: Republican Would Benefit?

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/local/fairfax-officials-say-some-people-may-have-crossed-state-lines-to-vote-twice-in-2012/2014/08/28/391b4210-2edb-11e4-9b98-848790384093_story.html%3f0p19G=e

Re: Republican Would Benefit?

[PopeRatzo]

Number of prosecutions = 0

Since voter rolls are public information, and anyone can see if anyone else voted, a prosecution would be the easiest thing in the world. Every year there are inquiries in blue states and red states and prosecutions aren't brought.

Number of prosecutions for students voting twice = 0

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[sexconker]

You sod off. Those kids are temporary residents and list their permanent addresses back home with their parents.

They're voting illegally when they register on campus in a district or state in which they are not a permanent resident.

Hell, I voted on a ballot measure years back that pointed this out and sought to make someone actually validate addresses because people who live in those districts are sick of kiddos coming in and fucking shit up every election and leaving before the impact is felt.

Re: Republican Would Benefit?

[Cinnamon Beige]

Intent doesn't matter, results do. You can cause a lot of problems by being a well-intentioned person who doesn't know what you're talking about.

Requiring bills be visible to the public in their final form for a reasonable amount of time before they become law means you can't stick onto, say, a standard bill a rider that makes it a crime to hold the wrong political views, or backdooring something like SOPA or PIPA by having it be officially a bill banning setting small children on fire. Or you might with all good intentions pass a bill that you're utterly convinced will increase the rights of the minorities--never mind that it is at best merely theater and at worst outright harmful for those it is supposed to help. The 72 hour period also means you can't easily find a period where a bill that (rightfully) would get objected to by the public can be rushed through without the public noticing.

Honestly, I expect anything that needs to be taken care of faster to be prepared for ahead of time: if it can't wait that extra 72 hours, it probably oughtn't wait long enough for a law to get written, either. Legal code is much like computer code here: the best outcome you ought to expect is that it is merely an amazingly ugly kludge that (barely) functions...

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[dcw3]

You make it sound as if the left has never gerrymandered. There's some good reading on the topic here.

http://www.theatlantic.com/mag...

Re:Republican Would Benefit?

[david_thornley]

In some places, college students are legally allowed to vote at the college, which is likely to be the place they spend the most time living.

Everything Will be An "Emergency"

[Anonymous Coward]

What will happen is that everything will be an emergency.

Don't sell Democrats short when it comes to being mendacious assholes looking to line their pockets.

Re: well then

[Immerman]

Says the poster using a quantum-mechanics based machine to access the internet.

72 hours isn't really enough time

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever since the Affordable care act, I've been advocating that all legislative acts be posted online at least 10 minutes per page of legislation + 24 hour before the final bill could be voted on.

No place like California.

[Anonymous Coward]

Need a law once you cross a billion dollars you no longer get to be involved in politics.
The cost of such wealth. The fine 1 billion.

Alternate waiting period

[Anonymous Coward]

the waiting period should be proportional to the lenght of the bill.
And the complexity of reading it. (As in makes tweaks to existing law so requiring reading that as well.)

A short, emergency bill could have a short period.
(As in we declare war or approve emergency funds.)

Something like ACA or major tax work should have longer.

(Similar to the warning time before taking vacation is proportional to the time off.)

Getting things done and compromise

[Matt.Battey]

The Constitution was specifically crafted so that Congress would have a very difficult time getting things done. This us because kneejerk legislation, and hidden cronyism is good for noone in the long term. When the framers compeomised, it was on how power was to be devided between State and Federal governments and people thought this was good. Now compromise means quid pro quo, "l'll fund your pet project if you fund mine." Getting things done amd compromise aren't good goals in the modern legislative process, because there's so little common value to it any more.

Re: Getting things done and compromise

[Matt.Battey]

Sorry for the typos, cell keyboards... :(

Re: Getting things done and compromise

[PPH]

No problem. You'll have 72 hours to fix the typos.

Re: Getting things done and compromise

[Matt.Battey]

Best response ever! :)

Re:Some backroom chatter is necessary for democrac

[aaarrrgggh]

If there is a partisan aspect to it, it likely enters around embarrassing the Democrat-dominated legislature. The budgets would be one ripe target. It should do more to "level the playing field" for the Republican Party and its inability to field a competitive candidate.

I voted for it, and didn't feeel like I had to hold my nose nearly as much as I did on a few other issues...

The tone of op is odd

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Proposition 54 would also force the Assembly and State Senate to allow the public to record meetings as well, which could potentially be used in political advertising.

Tbh these kinds of laws are starting to take it on the chin in the courts anyway as it steps on the right of the people to criticise their government, the most sacred part of free speech.

Re:The tone of op is odd

[ooloorie]

Tbh these kinds of laws are starting to take it on the chin in the courts anyway as it steps on the right of the people to criticise their government, the most sacred part of free speech.

How does an ability to record public meetings "step on the right of the people to criticize the government"?

Public Internet Veto

[Anonymous Coward]

I had this idea many years ago: Once a month(ish), all citizens would have the ability to veto any bill (via on-line) at the federal level, overriding even the president.

Just like electronic controls, a good feedback loop is essential. In our political system, it (the election process) is either too slow and/or broken. Unlike George Washington's day, we now have rapid communication and should take advantage of that. If a pet bill of a person/party/political machine forces it's way through the process, but the vast majority of voting Americans (2/3s?) don't want it, we'd have the right to block it (and send it back for possible revision). Another war in the Mideast to "protect our safety"? Nope. That 30,000-page trade pact that no one understands? Nuh-uh.

To me, this makes obvious sense, since it is we who would likely suffer/benefit under the new rule. Plus, it would force everyone creating such legislation to A) understand it in it's entirety, and B) simplify it (zOMG!) so that it's actually debatable and understandable by us plebeians - it is our country after all.

I know what you're thinking, that nothing would ever get done. But like another poster said, it's better nothing than the wrong things. It's just a thought...

Re:Public Internet Veto

[ooloorie]

I had this idea many years ago: Once a month(ish), all citizens would have the ability to veto any bill (via on-line) at the federal level, overriding even the president.

You don't seriously believe that any politician worth their salt would allow their power to be diminished in this way.

There are a lot of simple ways of fixing what's wrong with US democracy. None of those will get enacted because it isn't in the interest of the people who actually write the laws.

The TPP's perspective on all this

[MrKaos]

I wrote to the Joint Standing Committee assessing the TPP. I got through about 1000 pages which is a few sections of it's 6000 pages of cuntery, for want of a better word.

Contained within one section, I can't remember which, is the part on access to legislation prior to passing it into law. "Interested parties" (companies who's commercial interests are involved) get access to the formation of the law *THREE MONTHS BEFORE* the law gets presented to the house. Effectively, this means governments are forced into only policing the common law (i.e. you and me) as opposed to anything that is in the peoples interests.

Don't expect your governments to be able to get anything done, at all, after the TPP is signed in your country.

Sort of like ...

[PPH]

... a buyer's remorse law for Bad Cars. Let it sit in the driveway for three days and then either take it back or you are stuck with it.

Not a bad idea (the 72 hours). The recording meetings thing could be abused however. Things can be used out of context and it might discourage some people with unpopular opinions from speaking out.

Re:Sort of like ...

[djinn6]

Given we're talking about democratically elected representatives, I certainly hope that nobody in the California legislature has unpopular opinions, or at least having none that are unpopular in their own district.

Re:Why is no one commeting on the really importat

[PPH]

In theory, practice and theory are the same, but in practice they are different.

gut and amend

[Anonymous Coward]

This is designed to stop the process known as "gut and amend" in the CA Legislature.
A bill for something like "designation of Saccharomyces cervesii as state microbe" makes its leisurely way through the process, and then, the last day of the legislative session, a legislator puts forth new wording for the bill which replaces the benign former contents with something like "emergency confinement of all software engineers to Santa Rosa island". The bill goes up for final vote at 11:50PM, passes, and the convoys to the island begin.

Re:Some backroom chatter is necessary for democrac

[SuricouRaven]

You have a point. If a politician wants to be elected, they need approval by the people - but if they want to even stand for election with any chance of winning, they need the support of their party base. A faction that is often quite fanatical in their efforts to purge the party of 'traitors' who they see as going against what the party stands for.

Sneaky back-room negotiations do undermine the democratic ideal, but the alternative would be an unbreakable stalemate as no politician wants to lose the support of their party by being seen to concede ground to the enemy.

a republican wants more accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

and thats a bad thing?

oh yes, lets follow the money, a private citizen who leans republican (which who can tell what that actually means any more) wants more accountability out of the government that is supposed to be working for him...

how about this.. someone give me a good reason why anything in the government should be secret? and truthfully in this day an age using hostile countries is not one of them as pretty much everything except for people is allowed to cross borders uncontested (money, shitty products with no safety testing and even food with out proper labeling)

in the end all we are doing is staring at chaos, its like that swimmer that is drowning and ends up bringing the lifeguard down with them. be prepared for chaos as it will get worse and not better until we design a system that takes into account human greed and thirst for more personal power.

Re: Need it at the national level now

[CanadianMacFan]

And still be just as comprehensible as the original 2500 page bill.

Re: well then

[TechyImmigrant]

Says the poster using a quantum-mechanics based machine to access the internet.

I am a quantum mechanics based machine you insensitive clod!

Good. Make Internet access a public utility

[DogDude]

If this law passes, then it's really time to make Internet access a public utility so that all citizens can see these bills (and do everything else that most people do online). Putting it online now, as Internet access is limited and expensive, doesn't serve the poor.

Re:As someone who hates republican obstructionism.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm generally in favor of this, but it does have costs, especially in smaller districts. It interacts poorly with the Brown Act (requiring agendas to be posted). It's going to triple (at least) the work done and redone in legislatures across California as compromises fall apart. There's no guarantee the end results will be better. No one actually shows up at our local water board meetings. Our City Council meetings, however, already extend until 1-2am already - only fanatics stick it out and drive legislation. Making that repeat every 3 days does not end up being more representative.

That it had to be a constitutional amendment, and not just a law, is going to make fixing it very hard. So I'm voting no, like I do for most CA propositions. I don't trust that it's well thought out. I expect my legislators to dig deeply into issues and do their jobs.

Stuffing bills

[Anonymous Coward]

For those who don't live in CA, the legislature here has a long history of stuffing bills inside other bills at the last minute. These are often bills that have strong popular opposition, but are politically supported. The legislature can't take the heat from their constituents if the bill actually went through all the committee process and popular and political opposition would have time to organize, get on the radio or TV, run "call you state senator" adds, petitions etc. To get around this, a bill is tabled in committee and assumed dead. Then at the last minute the "Feel good fluffy marshmallow act of 2016" gets a last minute amendment to replace all the text with the text from "Smelly rotten fish act of 2016" and passes.

Lawmakers should be made to use source control

[hey!]

And the public should be able to examine the change logs to see whose office put in what to each bill.

Re:Lawmakers should be made to use source control

[swillden]

And the public should be able to examine the change logs to see whose office put in what to each bill.

Yes, we need LawHub. https://github.com/divegeek/us... (note that I stopped updating that repo years ago so the content is quite stale).

Re: well then

[Anonymous Coward]

Says the poster using information theory to access the internet.

No on 54. It is an unconditional incumberance.

[beachdog]

From a practical and cybernetics standpoint, proposition 54 aims to cripple the legislature and prevent it from acting promptly. Proposition 54 has an embedded assumption that the legislature will do something bad if it is allowed to pass bills without a 72 hour freeze.

From a cybernetics point of view, the operational problem from introducing an unconditional 72 hour time delay into the feedback loop of the legislature guiding the operation of the state is the time delay will create a potential instability in the feedback loop.

A good example of how time delay affects the operation of a state government is the state of Maryland. That state has a part time citizen legislature that nominally meets for about 2 weeks every year. In that short time period, all the bills are passed. Political parties, insiders and deals get made in a great hurry. Another effect of the part time citizen legislature is the part time legislators tend to have jobs such as working for a fire department where the employer has quite an interest in many budget items and bills to be passed by the legislature.

The moral of the story is introducing an unconditional time delay into the operation of a government sets off ripples and instability in the expression of democracy in an American government.

Re:No on 54. It is an unconditional incumberance.

[ooloorie]

From a cybernetics point of view, the operational problem from introducing an unconditional 72 hour time delay into the feedback loop of the legislature guiding the operation of the state is the time delay will create a potential instability in the feedback loop.

There is already a huge delay built into the system: the governor needs to sign the law, and then it takes even longer to implement it. In different words, your argument is utter bullshit, and you are obfuscating your authoritarian, partisan agenda with pseudo-scientific nonsense.

From a practical and cybernetics standpoint, proposition 54 aims to cripple the legislature and prevent it from acting promptly. Proposition 54 has an embedded assumption that the legislature will do something bad if it is allowed to pass bills without a 72 hour freeze.

That's not an "embedded assumption", that's quite an explicit statement, one that happens to correspond to reality. The only problem is that publishing the bills ahead of time won't really make any difference: California's political corruption and dysfunction goes so deep that publishing bills will make no difference.

Here is a time delay disaster example

[beachdog]

Suppose you are driving a car with electric steering and the computer drops in a 1/2 second time delay between your motion of the steering wheel and the actuation of the linkage pivoting the wheels. As a driver you already have some time delay. The road bends to the right and you turn the wheel. Nothing happens. You turn the wheel some more.While the time delay holds the car on one course, you have now drifted 2 feet across the double yellow line. You see a dangerous situation and you react by turning the wheel more. Even though the time delay was only 1/2 second, the cybernetic control loop for driving the car now turned an ordinary drive into an exercise leading to imminent disaster.

That is why proposition 54 is a very very bad idea. A three day time delay would make it impossible to navigate anything that moves. Laws are a special kind of idea that affects the direction of society.

Re:Here is a time delay disaster example

[ooloorie]

First of all, your explanation of control instabilities is nonsense, since you describe a control system that doesn't take into account the delay while controlling a system with delay. You're also mixing up control systems with delayed sensing and control systems with delayed control response.

Second, you ignore the massive "control system" delays already built into the current legislative system: signature by the government, legal challenges, etc. Those delays exist for good reasons. The US system of government is set up so that the executive branch can deal with short term concerns, and the legislative branch is supposed to take the long term view and engage in careful deliberation.

Third, we already know what happens if you give governments and ruling parties the power to pass laws quickly and without impediments; history is full of examples.

Your arguments don't make much rational sense; they are simply a reflection of your proto-fascist mindset. Pretty much the same arguments were made in order to short-circuit political debate and legislative deliberation in European democracies heading for fascism. Hitler usually argued that the "burning needs of the nation demands the ability of the party put in power by voters to act quickly and decisively".

But tell you what, just for amusement's sake, why don't you give some examples from the past where it was necessary for the California state legislature to pass a law in less than 72h. Please, go ahead.

What, you hate the USDA?

[Anonymous Coward]

The US Forest Service was a result of this kind of thing.

The Roman laws only took ten sheets Plus 2, ...

[aberglas]

The Roman republic had a big fight about laws about 450 BC. The plebs forced the patriarchs to write down the laws so that they could not be changed at the whim of a corrupt magistrate. It took them a year to do it.

And they wrote it down on 10 copper sheets. Not 100 or 1,000 or 10,000,000 that would be required today, but just 10. They were placed in the forum for everyone to see. Sadly they have since been lost, but cover many practical matters of the time.

But the plebians were not satisfied, so two extra sheets were added. That, of course, was the beginning of the end. But the time of the empire it took hundreds of pages to encode the law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The point, as I understand it, of the US last minute amendment is to be able to stuff things like an anti-abortion motion at the very last minute in an act for something completely different. Nothing is voted on until the very last minute, so most members do not even know what they are voting for. It is a joke.

we've seen this before

[ooloorie]

According to Steven Maviglio, the director of Californians for an Effective Legislature, a campaign committee formed to oppose Proposition 54. It all comes down to who is behind the initiative, and why. "The first thing you need to do is follow the money," he told Ars, pointing us to Munger, Jr. "He's been the top contributor to the California Republican Party. His goal is to disrupt the power of a legislature that's getting things done."

"Give power to the progressives and remove democratic safeguards in order to fight off the political influence of rich people" seems to sum up Steven Maviglio's argument. Those were pretty much also Hitler's arguments for the Enabling Act.

And fit on one side of one 8-1/2" by 11" paper

[rhyous]

Also, Meta-bills are a terrible design. All bills should fit on one side of one sheet of paper 8-1/2" by 11" paper, with 12 pt font.

If you want a 2000+ health care bill, then you would have 2000 separate bills.

This would prevent a lot of corruption.

Re: And fit on one side of one 8-1/2" by 11" paper

[chromaexcursion]

Totally impossible. It violates the Constitution.
Since the Constitution would not fit.

Perhaps 100 pages.

Gut and amend needs to go

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole Gut and Amend process needs to so. This prop 54 aims to at least minimize the effect of that process where bills are changed last minute after going through their respective committees leaving very little time for people to comment and change them once they are amended.

Getting things done??

[Anonymous Coward]

"The first thing you need to do is follow the money," he told Ars, pointing us to Munger, Jr. "He's been the top contributor to the California Republican Party. His goal is to disrupt the power of a legislature that's getting things done." Classic... Only if you believe that taxing people and corporations to death, disregarding the Constitution and The Bill of Rights and ignoring the rule of law is getting things done.

Yes, and NO!

[chromaexcursion]

Publishing the text of a bill is a no brainer.
Making meeting be able to be recorded by the public will result in VERY few official meetings. The real meetings will be done behind closed doors, possibly with some of the committee members left out. Then an official meeting to rubber stamp the result.
Frank, open discussion is rarely done in public. This will drive negotiations into the dark.

Re:Good. Make Internet access a public utility

[SuiteSisterMary]

I don't think the government paid for your bus fare, time missed from work, and possibly literacy lessons to drive down to town hall to view the text of bills and what not.