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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.
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.
"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!
Ken
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
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
"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
The 72 hours requirement kicks in once you have 'final text', not each draft.
Ken
"Something MUST be done!"
"Well, THIS is something..."
"Then we must do it!"
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.
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.
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.
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