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I dream of the day legislation is drafted using git and the public can see the pull request from Comcast Corp. lobbyists adding the language to a Senate staff m

I dream of the day legislation is drafted using git and the public can see the pull request from Comcast Corp. lobbyists adding the language to a Senate staff member's fork of the draft and track it being merged up the tree.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
compiler-guy 5y ago
Even with git, that is not the way it would happen. The people working on the bills are smarter than that. It is trivial to commit someone else’s patch as your own and without any history if you want to write the script. Just not that hard.
- raisedbyninjas 5y ago
  Even if the changed was committed by @OfficialComcast, a significant contingent of the temporarily embarrassed millionaires would accept this as the best course of action. After all those captains of industry are experts and probably shouldn't be questioned.
  - SiempreViernes 5y ago
    Captain of industry is an ironic name: a captain is typically someone that has been placed in authority by even higher powers, that's not typically how industry leaders like to describe their ascent.
    - manquer 5y ago
      Captian comes from the Byzantine latin word Katepano, while it can mean "placed at the top", there is no implications of higher authority placing them. Usual interpretations are that the person facually at the top how he got there is not really a factor. Somewhat akin to saying "boss" today.
    - quantified 5y ago
      Surprised by your downvotes. Getting into the club is a very social activity usually.
- briffle 5y ago
  Even that would be fine, we would still see that Representative Smith inserted the language into the bill. Its the person that has merge permissions into the main branch that has the accountability
  - catblast01 5y ago
    This solves what, exactly? We already know bill sponsors, the provenance of bills is generally not a problem in the US. All the regulatory capture and pork usually happens in the open already.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  I’d be less concerned with elected officials taking credit for “good” legislative language they didn’t actually draft and more concerned with a “language laundering” of sorts. By that I mean situations where the “bad” legislative language couldn’t be easily attributed to any specific elected official’s office because they’ve colluded to make successive, small, innocuous changes that, when taken together, turned in to “bad” language but it’s not easy to pinpoint which change, exactly, made the draft “bad”.
epistasis 5y ago
Doesn't matter how it's available if nobody reads it and there's no local journalism. That is the bigger problem than the way that bills are presented to the public.
thebeardisred 5y ago
What I don't dream of is every commit message in that tree saying nothing but "fixes" or "updated submodules".
sixothree 5y ago
Being able to access the laws openly and freely sounds like a novel idea in this country.
- Loughla 5y ago
  It's different from state to state, but most have some repository you can search. Local governments really vary based on size of city (rural areas have almost nothing online, but cities tend to have trackers). For most people, I assume they're talking about the federal government when they say things like you said. I just want you to know that it's already open and available. For straight legislation - congress.gov tracks bills and gives you the text of most things. Whereas federalregister.gov gives you regulation changes. Yes, there is a day or two delay on congress.gov from introduction and when it is transmitted from the GPO to the Library of Congress. But overall it's pretty quick.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  Have you heard of (YC backed) UpCodes? You might find their legal troubles[1] interesting and infuriating. TLDR: They were sued for copyright infringement for publishing housing code that had been adopted as law. [1] https://up.codes/free-law https://up.codes/free-law
quantified 5y ago
I just posted a dup of this article to be able to make the same point. How come no one ever slips a good thing into legislation when they can?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

compiler-guy 5y ago

Even with git, that is not the way it would happen. The people working on the bills are smarter than that. It is trivial to commit someone else’s patch as your own and without any history if you want to write the script. Just not that hard.

raisedbyninjas 5y ago
Even if the changed was committed by @OfficialComcast, a significant contingent of the temporarily embarrassed millionaires would accept this as the best course of action. After all those captains of industry are experts and probably shouldn't be questioned.
- SiempreViernes 5y ago
  Captain of industry is an ironic name: a captain is typically someone that has been placed in authority by even higher powers, that's not typically how industry leaders like to describe their ascent.
  - manquer 5y ago
    Captian comes from the Byzantine latin word Katepano, while it can mean "placed at the top", there is no implications of higher authority placing them. Usual interpretations are that the person facually at the top how he got there is not really a factor. Somewhat akin to saying "boss" today.
  - quantified 5y ago
    Surprised by your downvotes. Getting into the club is a very social activity usually.
briffle 5y ago
Even that would be fine, we would still see that Representative Smith inserted the language into the bill. Its the person that has merge permissions into the main branch that has the accountability
- catblast01 5y ago
  This solves what, exactly? We already know bill sponsors, the provenance of bills is generally not a problem in the US. All the regulatory capture and pork usually happens in the open already.
elliekelly 5y ago
I’d be less concerned with elected officials taking credit for “good” legislative language they didn’t actually draft and more concerned with a “language laundering” of sorts. By that I mean situations where the “bad” legislative language couldn’t be easily attributed to any specific elected official’s office because they’ve colluded to make successive, small, innocuous changes that, when taken together, turned in to “bad” language but it’s not easy to pinpoint which change, exactly, made the draft “bad”.

epistasis 5y ago

Doesn't matter how it's available if nobody reads it and there's no local journalism. That is the bigger problem than the way that bills are presented to the public.

thebeardisred 5y ago

What I don't dream of is every commit message in that tree saying nothing but "fixes" or "updated submodules".

sixothree 5y ago

Being able to access the laws openly and freely sounds like a novel idea in this country.

Loughla 5y ago
It's different from state to state, but most have some repository you can search. Local governments really vary based on size of city (rural areas have almost nothing online, but cities tend to have trackers). For most people, I assume they're talking about the federal government when they say things like you said. I just want you to know that it's already open and available. For straight legislation - congress.gov tracks bills and gives you the text of most things. Whereas federalregister.gov gives you regulation changes. Yes, there is a day or two delay on congress.gov from introduction and when it is transmitted from the GPO to the Library of Congress. But overall it's pretty quick.
elliekelly 5y ago
Have you heard of (YC backed) UpCodes? You might find their legal troubles[1] interesting and infuriating. TLDR: They were sued for copyright infringement for publishing housing code that had been adopted as law. [1] https://up.codes/free-law https://up.codes/free-law

quantified 5y ago

I just posted a dup of this article to be able to make the same point. How come no one ever slips a good thing into legislation when they can?