

Senate blocks transparency, refuses to put bills online - miked
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33318534/ns/politics-capitol_hill/

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drinian
Much as I may disagree with Coburn on a lot of other issues, I'm glad that
he's most committed to things like transparency. So far as I know, he hasn't
tried to pull a stunt like this on religious or abortion bills.

The party of Obama is not Obama's party, it seems.

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yannis
>The top House negotiator, Rep. Ed Pastor, D-Ariz., didn't recall why his side
insisted that the Senate drop the transparency provision. But a Democratic
aide said later that there is concern that making every report public
automatically might cause agencies to be less candid in their dealing with the
Appropriations Committee. The aide required anonymity to speak candidly.

Lovely debate, can anyone please post it online? :)

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cameldrv
Not Hacker News, and the article is not consistent with the title. Come on
people, Hacker News is supposed to be at least a year behind Reddit.

~~~
Kadin
The article focuses on Coburn's response to the transparency measure being
dropped, but I don't think that's totally inconsistent with the headline. The
HN headline is sort of the upshot, probably more interesting and relevant to
those who aren't really interested in the intimate details of Congressional
procedure and dickering.

~~~
cameldrv
The article is about Coburn's amendment to require that reports from the
Executive branch be made public, not anything about not putting bills online.
The title is not what the article is about, and it is not related to hacking.

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miked
My claim: Everything that the government does should be posted online, unless
it violates one of the following:

* true national security concerns

* personal confidentiality

* any monetary transaction information that might cost the taxpayer money by putting the treasury at a disadvantage in some prospective transaction.

Objections? What am I missing?

~~~
roundsquare
I posted this below but I'll put it here also.

I think having every report written by the government posted online could
potentially make it difficult to be honest in the reports.

If a part of the government is commissioned to write a report, and they do
honest researchand come to a controversial conclusion (e.g. something about a
particular race), what happens if it goes online? People who find out about it
will get angry at that part of the government (e.g. call them racist). With
that in mind, I'd imagine they might write something less controversial but
less honest.

In the abstract, I agree with you, everything possible should be posted
online. But until people respond to things reasonably, I don't know that it is
feasible.

I guess its worth pointing out that I'm not sure where I stand on this... as
below, I'm sort of playing devil's advocate.

Edit: Spelling, grammer.

~~~
miked
>> I guess its worth pointing out that I'm not sure where I stand on this...
as below, I'm sort of playing devil's advocate.

I also have some concerns about full transparency, just on the general basis
that "the best laid plans..." often "gang aft aglay". But all bills should be
posted online, where they can be easily found and searched, at least a week
before the vote takes place. No ands, ifs, or buts.

I'd also love to see time reports of our hard working public servants. You can
discover a lot by softing through the details.

>> I think having every report written by the government posted online could
potentially make it difficult to be honest in the reports.

Yes. Not sure what to do about that.

Slightly OT, but I would love to see a law that requires every scientific
paper that used public funding be posted online, for free, within a year of
dead tree publication.

~~~
roundsquare
Yes, I definitely agree that as a procedural rule, anything that can become
law should be posted for a good period of time (with all sorts of exceptions
for emergencies... e.g. funding to help a disaster area).

I think the necessary action is some sort of education program (yeah, yeah,
it'll never happen, I know...). If we can somehow educate people to never get
mad at a fact (a quote from a political science textbook I read once) then we
might be able to do this.

In any event, I think this sort of education is necessary because as things
stand, reports are often treated as opinions, which is bad.

Edit: _Slightly OT, but I would love to see a law that requires every
scientific paper that used public funding be posted online, for free, within a
year of dead tree publication._

Its a interesting idea, but we'd need to find a way to compensate journals. I
think they get boatloads of money from academic institutions paying for access
to their publications (correct me if I'm wrong).

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JCThoughtscream
One of the very, very few times I'm glad a Republican's saying "No" to
something.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Come on, it's bad enough that we have articles like this on HN, but _comments_
like this? Bad form.

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jrockway
Hey, he didn't ask anyone to die in a fire, and he even capitalized the right
words. This automatically makes the post better than anything on Reddit.

~~~
JCThoughtscream
...man, I've no idea how to take "slightly better than a Reddit poster."

