4 ms·

I ended up contacting all of the senators on the finance committee (they're responsible for the IRS's ongoigns) I hope they took in heart my concerns about IDme

by monksy 5y ago

I ended up contacting all of the senators on the finance committee (they're responsible for the IRS's ongoigns) I hope they took in heart my concerns about IDme being a piece in this data proxying/storage etc. Unfortunately: There were some senators who contact form was broken. (One in texas and I think one in wyomey was another.. other than that I got responses of "we don't give responses to non-constituents)

greenyoda 5y ago
> I ended up contacting all of the senators on the finance committee... "we don't give responses to non-constituents" That's a bit disturbing. Senators' work on committees affects everyone in the country, not just residents of the senator's home state, and one's own senators may not have a seat on that committee.
- monksy 5y ago
  Senator Cantwell (Was), Tim Scott (SC) were the ones that responded back with: Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. As a matter of professional courtesy to my U.S. Senate colleagues, I defer to them and encourage you to contact your U.S. Senator with this issue. In addition, I deeply value my correspondence with South Carolinians; because of the high volume of mail I receive on a daily basis, I will give preference to responding to my constituents. Contact information for your U.S. Senator can be found at www.senate.gov. Thank you for your time and have a great day.
- diebeforei485 5y ago
  You can contact the committee directly, by phone or fax. Numbers are on this page[1]. You can usually leave a voicemail if nobody picks up. For written communication, yeah most of us don't have a fax machine, but there are services online that let you upload a PDF to be faxed. They also accept snail mail, but it is very slow. 1. https://www.finance.senate.gov/about/faq https://www.finance.senate.gov/about/faq
  - wolfgang42 5y ago
    > They also accept snail mail, but it is very slow. For context, this isn’t just “it takes a couple of days for a letter to cross the country.” Here’s the note from my local congressperson’s contact page, for example: > All postal mail sent to my offices must be scanned for security purposes, which means it will take an additional two weeks for me to receive it. Regarding faxes, it’s also worth checking with your local library—mine offers scan-to-email and faxing as a free service.
- pirate787 5y ago
  On the contrary, it is traditionally considered inappropriate to contact Senators who do not represent you and it is unethical for them to respond in substance (in the House it is explicitly against House rules). We live in a representative democracy and power is distributed geographically through elected representatives. When you contact someone who does not represent you, you're sort of stepping outside the bounds of the democratic structure. You're also consuming resources that are apportioned to a legislative district that's not your legislative district.
  - genewitch 5y ago
    Do my tax dollars go to every senator on the committee?
    - pirate787 5y ago
      The point is that your scope as a constituent is traditionally limited to your voting jurisdiction.
      - pseudalopex 5y ago
        The point is senators' scope as committee members isn't limited to their voting jurisdiction.
  - monksy 5y ago
    > When you contact someone who does not represent you, you're sort of stepping outside the bounds of the democratic structure. You're also consuming resources that are apportioned to a legislative district that's not your legislative district. That is no longer relevant when they step out of the bounds of representative politics and form special social groups that dictate the laws and behavior of offices that we have to deal with. You can't just have your cake and eat it too.
  - jimkleiber 5y ago
    I appreciate you pointing this out and wish I heard it more. I hear so much talk of "democracy" but not many people talking of "representative democracy," which is how the US government is mostly structured (the occasional ballot issue). I wonder if the internet and other tools that have reduced the costs of communication have been nudging many of us more towards wanting direct democracy, not representative democracy, without even realizing the shift or how it conflicts with the underlying structure of our government. I'm curious, what are your thoughts related to how people see the government in terms of representative vs direct (or other forms of) democracy?
lewisl9029 5y ago
The broken form thing reminds me of when I tried to send a message to California FTB (basically the IRS for California). Kept getting this cryptic error: "Field contains invalid characters or format." Eventually I found through trial and error that the problem was APOSTROPHES. So I'm, it's, that's, they're, etc are all out. It amazes me that not only do they not support such commonly used phrases in their messaging system (which pretty clearly means they've never tested it with any thing remotely resembling a real world message), but also that they couldn't even have the decency to give a more descriptive message so I didn't have to go on a punctuation whack-a-mole.
- thrwawy283 5y ago
  Occasionally I see websites take issue with a odd number of ' because it's creating a SQL statement, and inserting my message/posting in a table within a database.
  - weaksauce 5y ago
    yikes. that's web security 101 level stuff.
  - colejohnson66 5y ago
    So instead of using prepared statements or even just escaping, the programmers just disallow any character that could cause SQL injection?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- compiler-guy 5y ago
  At least as of last year the FTB website still didn’t take parenthesis either. Pretty sure it is a ham-handed approach at sanitizing the input against sql injection.
- donmcronald 5y ago
  I've seen the same thing. I used a government form a few years ago that was for asking questions and it wouldn't accept a question mark (?).
A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
All I can do is express my thanks. In IL it seems like my concerns are, at best, ignored altogether. I get that I am low wagie nobody, but I do vote so I am sometimes really surprised about the non-responses I get ( if I get any at all ).
- monksy 5y ago
  I sent Duckworth and Durbin a note.. but ofcourse.. you'll never hear back. I also sent them a letter a while back about the National Security Letter law incursion in HK.. their response a month ago "intenational events are very sensitive subjects .. blah blah blah... vague non related comment on 'we believe on human rights.'"
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
    I sent Duckworth letters before ( physical too since they seem to respond more readily to those ) for a specific non-party request within her authority. The non-response I received made it look like no one read the letter at all. At this point, it is almost a given I will vote for just about anyone who will oppose her. Her class is part of the reason I tend to write 'representatives', when I describe senators and congressmen. If I had charisma, I would be running myself.
    - monksy 5y ago
      yeppppppp That's the downside of living in IL and it being mostly a D voting base.
baryphonic 5y ago
> Unfortunately: There were some senators who contact form was broken. (One in texas and I think one in wyomey was another.. other than that I got responses of "we don't give responses to non-constituents) Their contact forms aren't broken, they literally just don't represent you unless you live in their state.
YeBanKo 5y ago
Since you already have done it. do you mind sharing links and letter template? I think a lot of people think strongly about it, having this info handy might push more people to reach out.

by monksy 5y ago

greenyoda 5y ago

> I ended up contacting all of the senators on the finance committee... "we don't give responses to non-constituents" That's a bit disturbing. Senators' work on committees affects everyone in the country, not just residents of the senator's home state, and one's own senators may not have a seat on that committee.

monksy 5y ago
Senator Cantwell (Was), Tim Scott (SC) were the ones that responded back with: Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. As a matter of professional courtesy to my U.S. Senate colleagues, I defer to them and encourage you to contact your U.S. Senator with this issue. In addition, I deeply value my correspondence with South Carolinians; because of the high volume of mail I receive on a daily basis, I will give preference to responding to my constituents. Contact information for your U.S. Senator can be found at www.senate.gov. Thank you for your time and have a great day.
diebeforei485 5y ago
You can contact the committee directly, by phone or fax. Numbers are on this page[1]. You can usually leave a voicemail if nobody picks up. For written communication, yeah most of us don't have a fax machine, but there are services online that let you upload a PDF to be faxed. They also accept snail mail, but it is very slow. 1. https://www.finance.senate.gov/about/faq https://www.finance.senate.gov/about/faq
- wolfgang42 5y ago
  > They also accept snail mail, but it is very slow. For context, this isn’t just “it takes a couple of days for a letter to cross the country.” Here’s the note from my local congressperson’s contact page, for example: > All postal mail sent to my offices must be scanned for security purposes, which means it will take an additional two weeks for me to receive it. Regarding faxes, it’s also worth checking with your local library—mine offers scan-to-email and faxing as a free service.
pirate787 5y ago
On the contrary, it is traditionally considered inappropriate to contact Senators who do not represent you and it is unethical for them to respond in substance (in the House it is explicitly against House rules). We live in a representative democracy and power is distributed geographically through elected representatives. When you contact someone who does not represent you, you're sort of stepping outside the bounds of the democratic structure. You're also consuming resources that are apportioned to a legislative district that's not your legislative district.
- genewitch 5y ago
  Do my tax dollars go to every senator on the committee?
  - pirate787 5y ago
    The point is that your scope as a constituent is traditionally limited to your voting jurisdiction.
    - pseudalopex 5y ago
      The point is senators' scope as committee members isn't limited to their voting jurisdiction.
- monksy 5y ago
  > When you contact someone who does not represent you, you're sort of stepping outside the bounds of the democratic structure. You're also consuming resources that are apportioned to a legislative district that's not your legislative district. That is no longer relevant when they step out of the bounds of representative politics and form special social groups that dictate the laws and behavior of offices that we have to deal with. You can't just have your cake and eat it too.
- jimkleiber 5y ago
  I appreciate you pointing this out and wish I heard it more. I hear so much talk of "democracy" but not many people talking of "representative democracy," which is how the US government is mostly structured (the occasional ballot issue). I wonder if the internet and other tools that have reduced the costs of communication have been nudging many of us more towards wanting direct democracy, not representative democracy, without even realizing the shift or how it conflicts with the underlying structure of our government. I'm curious, what are your thoughts related to how people see the government in terms of representative vs direct (or other forms of) democracy?

lewisl9029 5y ago

The broken form thing reminds me of when I tried to send a message to California FTB (basically the IRS for California). Kept getting this cryptic error: "Field contains invalid characters or format." Eventually I found through trial and error that the problem was APOSTROPHES. So I'm, it's, that's, they're, etc are all out. It amazes me that not only do they not support such commonly used phrases in their messaging system (which pretty clearly means they've never tested it with any thing remotely resembling a real world message), but also that they couldn't even have the decency to give a more descriptive message so I didn't have to go on a punctuation whack-a-mole.

thrwawy283 5y ago
Occasionally I see websites take issue with a odd number of ' because it's creating a SQL statement, and inserting my message/posting in a table within a database.
- weaksauce 5y ago
  yikes. that's web security 101 level stuff.
- colejohnson66 5y ago
  So instead of using prepared statements or even just escaping, the programmers just disallow any character that could cause SQL injection?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
compiler-guy 5y ago
At least as of last year the FTB website still didn’t take parenthesis either. Pretty sure it is a ham-handed approach at sanitizing the input against sql injection.
donmcronald 5y ago
I've seen the same thing. I used a government form a few years ago that was for asking questions and it wouldn't accept a question mark (?).

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago

All I can do is express my thanks. In IL it seems like my concerns are, at best, ignored altogether. I get that I am low wagie nobody, but I do vote so I am sometimes really surprised about the non-responses I get ( if I get any at all ).

monksy 5y ago
I sent Duckworth and Durbin a note.. but ofcourse.. you'll never hear back. I also sent them a letter a while back about the National Security Letter law incursion in HK.. their response a month ago "intenational events are very sensitive subjects .. blah blah blah... vague non related comment on 'we believe on human rights.'"
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  I sent Duckworth letters before ( physical too since they seem to respond more readily to those ) for a specific non-party request within her authority. The non-response I received made it look like no one read the letter at all. At this point, it is almost a given I will vote for just about anyone who will oppose her. Her class is part of the reason I tend to write 'representatives', when I describe senators and congressmen. If I had charisma, I would be running myself.
  - monksy 5y ago
    yeppppppp That's the downside of living in IL and it being mostly a D voting base.

baryphonic 5y ago

> Unfortunately: There were some senators who contact form was broken. (One in texas and I think one in wyomey was another.. other than that I got responses of "we don't give responses to non-constituents) Their contact forms aren't broken, they literally just don't represent you unless you live in their state.

YeBanKo 5y ago

Since you already have done it. do you mind sharing links and letter template? I think a lot of people think strongly about it, having this info handy might push more people to reach out.