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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."
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.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
The younger Munger
Well done, guys.
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.
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.
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.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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.
BOOP!
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.
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.
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.
`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.
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.
Ken
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.
Ken
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.
It isn't about "discussions" it is about posting the "final text of all proposed legislation" for 72 hours before 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.
Ken
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?"
Ken
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.
"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"...
-Styopa
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?
In theory, theory is the same as practice. But in practice, it isn't.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
"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.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
....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.
The 72 hours requirement kicks in once you have 'final text', not each draft.
Ken
Why not? What is the hurry to pass new laws and regulations?
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!
"you asked for it, you got it"
remarkably stupid. and will never result in what the author desires
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.
So PPACA, so-called ObamaCare, at 2,500 pages would have what, a nearly 7 year review before passage?
Ken
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I believe the implication is that a bill could be un-finalized to buy you another three-day delay.
I believe the overwhelming Democrat position on this board is, "Stopped clocks are right twice a day, and this must be that time!"
Her statement on the Affordable Care Act: “We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it,”
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.
The main change with regards to the recordings is that they would become available for use for political ads.
Or it could have been fine printed on a single oversized page.
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!
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
"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 ?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Says the poster using a quantum-mechanics based machine to access the internet.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
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.
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...
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.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
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.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
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.
Have gnu, will travel.
In theory, practice and theory are the same, but in practice they are different.
Have gnu, will travel.
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.
And still be just as comprehensible as the original 2500 page bill.
Says the poster using a quantum-mechanics based machine to access the internet.
I am a quantum mechanics based machine you insensitive clod!
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
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.
I don't respond to AC's.
And the public should be able to examine the change logs to see whose office put in what to each bill.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
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.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
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.
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.
Yup, slashdot filters the word nigger now.
Fuck censorship in all forms (especially of content people in power deem unsuitable).
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
You just want this to be a problem, but it really isn't. You wrote:
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.
Ken