6 ms·

GREAT, BUT! We need an API on who wrote which parts of the bill. Find lobbyists who wrote parts. Find when there is an evil part (where lobbyists get congress t

GREAT, BUT! We need an API on who wrote which parts of the bill. Find lobbyists who wrote parts. Find when there is an evil part (where lobbyists get congress to sell out), and we need to find out WHICH congress person put it in there. We need to track the evil parts of bills to the congress person who is the sell out for lobbyists (and the corporations beind them)

matthoiland 4y ago
I'd love to see a git history for our current US legislation
- tstrimple 4y ago
  Yes. We need git-blame here.
- e_i_pi_2 4y ago
  You're in luck, someone recreated the constitution in git with the history of edits https://github.com/jessekphillips/usa-constitution https://github.com/jessekphillips/usa-constitution Edit: just noticed the dates aren't accurate, but still interesting and the authors are accurate
  - judge2020 4y ago
    Can git do pre-1970 dates?
    - progval 4y ago
      The file/wire format can, but the official implementation doesn't handle it well. There is some work in progress to make it work, for this kind of historical work.
- quadratecode 4y ago
  There is a project doing exactly this for German law.[1] I also once cobbled together a rather primitive Python script which commits Swiss federal law as MD-file into a repo through GitHub actions.[2] [1] https://github.com/bundestag/gesetze https://github.com/bundestag/gesetze [2] https://github.com/quadratecode/ch-law-tracker https://github.com/quadratecode/ch-law-tracker
sc90 4y ago
Find lobbyists who wrote parts Is this usually noted on the document?
- sgammon 4y ago
  unfortunately, no. but other records can and do illuminate such behavior.
ElevenLathe 4y ago
For pieces that were added as amendments, it is at least possible to determine who proposed the amendment. Instances where the as-written initial bill is written on K Street will probably always be impossible unless Congress pass absurdly strict sunlight laws with teeth (i.e. make it illegal for congresspeople to have substantive meetings without livestreaming them) that inconvenience themselves.
- clairity 4y ago
  yah, for that, we'd need complete social graphs for public servants, which would quickly run afoul the congressional staffs' civil liberties, because they'd try to hide as much as possible behind other people. you'd need that to appropriately apportion attributions back to the public servant. i'd be ok pushing for a legal carve-out for this social graph however, as i'd posit that greater governmental transparency overrides the potential encroachments of the ~tens/hundreds of thousands of partisans and lobbyists (<0.1% of population; though slippery slope could be invoked here). you'd start with staffers and move out to anyone paid directly by the office and their affiliated political organizations, then move to large donors and their PACs. obviously the current supreme court would try to block this as an antecedent to the citizen's united case.
  - ElevenLathe 4y ago
    Oh yeah it would definitely be in the interests of the ruled class. Unfortunately, since it is bad for the ruling class, we won't get it.
TOMDM 4y ago
git grep -n 'healthcare' | perl -F':' -anpe '$_=`git blame -L$F[1],+1 $F[0]`'
tcmart14 4y ago
Just need a github for legislation. Want to see who added what subsection? Check the commit history.
- e_i_pi_2 4y ago
  We do have this in the US! All laws should show who wrote them, when, who approved it, etc, we just don't have a great API for programs, and moreso we don't have the public appetite to consume it
  - mikecoles 4y ago
    No. The request is to show who wrote individual lines or sections. Currently the bill shows as being 'written' by legislators Smith & Johnson but lacks crediting/blaming who actually provided the wording for each section. The goal would be to see who slipped in which pieces of the bill.
    - e_i_pi_2 4y ago
      Ah ok that makes a lot more sense. To be fair though that is the same as git, I might push up the code but that doesn't mean I "created" it - I'm just the one taking responsibility for it by introducing it into the system
      - tcmart14 4y ago
        True, but signing the commits with a key for a specific subsection would mean you attach responsibility for whatever was in that commit. Right now the system is, a bill is listed with who "sponsors it." That can mean they wrote it, it could mean a lobbyists gave it to them or that several people spread across the staff of different representatives wrote it. Sure, we could say who sponsors it bears full responsibility, but its not practical, especially when a bill grows to become a tome. Using a VCS system like git isn't full proof, a senator could just pass out their keys like candy, but I think it would mean a whole lot more if voters could go, "well here is your commit to this bill on X day at Y time, signed by your keys." It may also help correlate the wheeling and dealing that goes on and more importantly, how a bill changes as it goes through committees. Edit: Actually it could have several other benefits. A senator could tag a "release" of the bill prior to the bill going to committee so the Senator could say, "look, this is the state of the bill now after going through committees, but here is a diff from when I tagged it before it going to committees. So no, my opponents are wrong when they say I put a provision in this bill to stock my favorite fishing hole, just check the difference."
zeruch 4y ago
Until you define a method/definition of "Evil" you're out of luck. What you can do, is use this to track changes, and then match it to a corpus of other data to get a better fidelity on what may influence legislation; financial transactions, public statements and where they were made, state visits, litigation, etc. Much of it in the public eye, hence scrapable and able to be put into a data lake/warehouse/cabana/dilapidated shack, and analytics applied to it. From there you may find emergent phenomena.
- cyberge99 4y ago
  Isn’t this what opensecrets.org does?
CH1jZci6jV 4y ago
I use to work in Congress. 100% of it is written by lobbyists.
- atlasunshrugged 4y ago
  This is categorically false. If you want an understanding of what life in Congress is like, I highly recommend Mark Strand's "Surviving Inside Congress"
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - xapata 4y ago
    It's not categorically false, just false. Some phrases written by lobbyists survive in some bills.
    - atlasunshrugged 4y ago
      But then wouldn't the phrase I was referring to, "100% of it is written by lobbyists" be categorically false because it specifically emphasizes the percentage and therefore the claim is false? If they had said that sometimes phrases or even whole bills from lobbyists get introduced I wouldn't have quibbled with it.
      - xapata 4y ago
        While the phrase has become used more loosely, I believe (could be wrong, of course) that it is best used to explain that the cause of being false is a category error. It's like the distinction between a type error and a value error. In this case, I'd say it's a value error. The value 100 is false, not the type, because we know that a nonzero amount of prose in legislation is indeed written by lobbyists.
        atlasunshrugged 4y ago
        Ah okay, this was really helpful, thanks! Not quite as bad of a language faux pas as when I was a kid and thought 'per se' was persay but I'm glad to know the difference
naikrovek 4y ago
i’d be happy with voting information for each bill that was voted on by either house or senate.
cjpearson 4y ago
It's a common misconception that increasing transparency reduces the power of lobbyists, when it actually does the opposite. [0] In short, the average voter doesn't care enough to find out who added a specific line to a bill, but lobbyists care a lot and they use the additional access to monitor and influence legislators. Legislator accountability is increased with more transparency, but they become more accountable to lobbyists than to their constituents. There needs to be a balance. A democracy that operates completely in the dark isn't much of a democracy, but Congress currently has the problem off too much rather than too little transparency. [0] https://congressionalresearch.org/TransparencyProblem.html https://congressionalresearch.org/TransparencyProblem.html
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- zhynn 4y ago
  You might also find this academic paper interesting: https://philpapers.org/go.pl?id=NGUTIS&aid=NGUTISv1 https://philpapers.org/go.pl?id=NGUTIS&aid=NGUTISv1 The title is a bit click-bait-y, but the argument is sound, I think. Forcing transparency changes how people do their work, especially what indicators of success they choose to focus on (which may be easy to relate, but bad indicators of success - like GPA). Transparency does not automatically grant accountability. I don't think we have a good handle on this problem, and we make the situation worse by assuming that transparency will solve the problems of corruption and government accountability.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- cwkoss 4y ago
  I am skeptical, this sounds like 'trickle-down economics' where the theory is internally cohesive but the conclusions don't actually line up with reality. Seems like the page you linked is an anti-trasparency advocacy org, what makes you trust them? Is there any data to back up this assertion?
sgammon 4y ago
lots of this data exists. campaign finance and lobbying reports help shine a light on this behavior.
mortdeus 4y ago
you are arguing for Git for legislation. not an api.
DannyBee 4y ago
"We need to track the evil parts of bills to the congress person who is the sell out for lobbyists (and the corporations beind them)" This would require a lot of changes to how bills are literally shuffled around the building :)
yarg 4y ago
Version track the bills. That would be very cool.
samstave 4y ago
We need the ability to understand exactly who profits from any act/law/bill and excruiciating detail of the finances of anyone in congress, coupled with max age limit for any seat, including the Supreme Court.
drexlspivey 4y ago
I want a webhook for Nancy Pelosi’s trades
nnmg 4y ago
Not exactly what you are looking for, but Open Secrets gets you almost there: https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying Their API leaves a lot to be desired, but the data is much easier to access and analyze than the raw data from the US House or Senate websites.
Calamitous 4y ago
Who wants to be the first to teach congress to use git?
bozhark 4y ago
All of this is somewhere, all of this information.
noveltyaccount 4y ago
Git blame for bills, I love it! :D
fydkwheduxb 4y ago
Everybody has lobbyists, there's no public cause that lacks lobbyists in the USA and if you think it's only corporations with effective lobbyists it's probably because you're discounting a slew of causes and groups.
galaxyLogic 4y ago
I think even before that we need an API to tell us who voted for or against each bill, and their party affiliation. Also an easy way to find all votes of each elected representative. Then maybe an app that allows me to pick a few bills and a few representatives and produce a matrix of how they voted on those bills, also which proportion of each party voted yes or no on those bills. And finally for each proposed bill who voted for or against to bring it onto the floor to be discussed and voted on, or not.
indigochill 4y ago
I've thought about this (as an outsider who doesn't know anything) and wondered if plain old git would do the job. I've heard Germany already does this, but when I looked at https://github.com/bundestag/gesetze https://github.com/bundestag/gesetze it didn't look like this was representative of what I would assume to be the full extent of German legislation. In theory, you probably wouldn't find lobbyists contributing directly, but you could find representatives and then link them to lobbyists they've associated with.

matthoiland 4y ago

I'd love to see a git history for our current US legislation

tstrimple 4y ago
Yes. We need git-blame here.
e_i_pi_2 4y ago
You're in luck, someone recreated the constitution in git with the history of edits https://github.com/jessekphillips/usa-constitution https://github.com/jessekphillips/usa-constitution Edit: just noticed the dates aren't accurate, but still interesting and the authors are accurate
- judge2020 4y ago
  Can git do pre-1970 dates?
  - progval 4y ago
    The file/wire format can, but the official implementation doesn't handle it well. There is some work in progress to make it work, for this kind of historical work.
quadratecode 4y ago
There is a project doing exactly this for German law.[1] I also once cobbled together a rather primitive Python script which commits Swiss federal law as MD-file into a repo through GitHub actions.[2] [1] https://github.com/bundestag/gesetze https://github.com/bundestag/gesetze [2] https://github.com/quadratecode/ch-law-tracker https://github.com/quadratecode/ch-law-tracker

sc90 4y ago

Find lobbyists who wrote parts Is this usually noted on the document?

sgammon 4y ago
unfortunately, no. but other records can and do illuminate such behavior.

ElevenLathe 4y ago

For pieces that were added as amendments, it is at least possible to determine who proposed the amendment. Instances where the as-written initial bill is written on K Street will probably always be impossible unless Congress pass absurdly strict sunlight laws with teeth (i.e. make it illegal for congresspeople to have substantive meetings without livestreaming them) that inconvenience themselves.

clairity 4y ago
yah, for that, we'd need complete social graphs for public servants, which would quickly run afoul the congressional staffs' civil liberties, because they'd try to hide as much as possible behind other people. you'd need that to appropriately apportion attributions back to the public servant. i'd be ok pushing for a legal carve-out for this social graph however, as i'd posit that greater governmental transparency overrides the potential encroachments of the ~tens/hundreds of thousands of partisans and lobbyists (<0.1% of population; though slippery slope could be invoked here). you'd start with staffers and move out to anyone paid directly by the office and their affiliated political organizations, then move to large donors and their PACs. obviously the current supreme court would try to block this as an antecedent to the citizen's united case.
- ElevenLathe 4y ago
  Oh yeah it would definitely be in the interests of the ruled class. Unfortunately, since it is bad for the ruling class, we won't get it.

TOMDM 4y ago

git grep -n 'healthcare' | perl -F':' -anpe '$_=`git blame -L$F[1],+1 $F[0]`'

tcmart14 4y ago

Just need a github for legislation. Want to see who added what subsection? Check the commit history.

e_i_pi_2 4y ago
We do have this in the US! All laws should show who wrote them, when, who approved it, etc, we just don't have a great API for programs, and moreso we don't have the public appetite to consume it
- mikecoles 4y ago
  No. The request is to show who wrote individual lines or sections. Currently the bill shows as being 'written' by legislators Smith & Johnson but lacks crediting/blaming who actually provided the wording for each section. The goal would be to see who slipped in which pieces of the bill.
  - e_i_pi_2 4y ago
    Ah ok that makes a lot more sense. To be fair though that is the same as git, I might push up the code but that doesn't mean I "created" it - I'm just the one taking responsibility for it by introducing it into the system
    - tcmart14 4y ago
      True, but signing the commits with a key for a specific subsection would mean you attach responsibility for whatever was in that commit. Right now the system is, a bill is listed with who "sponsors it." That can mean they wrote it, it could mean a lobbyists gave it to them or that several people spread across the staff of different representatives wrote it. Sure, we could say who sponsors it bears full responsibility, but its not practical, especially when a bill grows to become a tome. Using a VCS system like git isn't full proof, a senator could just pass out their keys like candy, but I think it would mean a whole lot more if voters could go, "well here is your commit to this bill on X day at Y time, signed by your keys." It may also help correlate the wheeling and dealing that goes on and more importantly, how a bill changes as it goes through committees. Edit: Actually it could have several other benefits. A senator could tag a "release" of the bill prior to the bill going to committee so the Senator could say, "look, this is the state of the bill now after going through committees, but here is a diff from when I tagged it before it going to committees. So no, my opponents are wrong when they say I put a provision in this bill to stock my favorite fishing hole, just check the difference."

zeruch 4y ago

Until you define a method/definition of "Evil" you're out of luck. What you can do, is use this to track changes, and then match it to a corpus of other data to get a better fidelity on what may influence legislation; financial transactions, public statements and where they were made, state visits, litigation, etc. Much of it in the public eye, hence scrapable and able to be put into a data lake/warehouse/cabana/dilapidated shack, and analytics applied to it. From there you may find emergent phenomena.

cyberge99 4y ago
Isn’t this what opensecrets.org does?

CH1jZci6jV 4y ago

I use to work in Congress. 100% of it is written by lobbyists.

atlasunshrugged 4y ago
This is categorically false. If you want an understanding of what life in Congress is like, I highly recommend Mark Strand's "Surviving Inside Congress"
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- xapata 4y ago
  It's not categorically false, just false. Some phrases written by lobbyists survive in some bills.
  - atlasunshrugged 4y ago
    But then wouldn't the phrase I was referring to, "100% of it is written by lobbyists" be categorically false because it specifically emphasizes the percentage and therefore the claim is false? If they had said that sometimes phrases or even whole bills from lobbyists get introduced I wouldn't have quibbled with it.
    - xapata 4y ago
      While the phrase has become used more loosely, I believe (could be wrong, of course) that it is best used to explain that the cause of being false is a category error. It's like the distinction between a type error and a value error. In this case, I'd say it's a value error. The value 100 is false, not the type, because we know that a nonzero amount of prose in legislation is indeed written by lobbyists.
      - atlasunshrugged 4y ago
        Ah okay, this was really helpful, thanks! Not quite as bad of a language faux pas as when I was a kid and thought 'per se' was persay but I'm glad to know the difference

naikrovek 4y ago

i’d be happy with voting information for each bill that was voted on by either house or senate.

cjpearson 4y ago

It's a common misconception that increasing transparency reduces the power of lobbyists, when it actually does the opposite. [0] In short, the average voter doesn't care enough to find out who added a specific line to a bill, but lobbyists care a lot and they use the additional access to monitor and influence legislators. Legislator accountability is increased with more transparency, but they become more accountable to lobbyists than to their constituents. There needs to be a balance. A democracy that operates completely in the dark isn't much of a democracy, but Congress currently has the problem off too much rather than too little transparency. [0] https://congressionalresearch.org/TransparencyProblem.html https://congressionalresearch.org/TransparencyProblem.html

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
zhynn 4y ago
You might also find this academic paper interesting: https://philpapers.org/go.pl?id=NGUTIS&aid=NGUTISv1 https://philpapers.org/go.pl?id=NGUTIS&aid=NGUTISv1 The title is a bit click-bait-y, but the argument is sound, I think. Forcing transparency changes how people do their work, especially what indicators of success they choose to focus on (which may be easy to relate, but bad indicators of success - like GPA). Transparency does not automatically grant accountability. I don't think we have a good handle on this problem, and we make the situation worse by assuming that transparency will solve the problems of corruption and government accountability.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
cwkoss 4y ago
I am skeptical, this sounds like 'trickle-down economics' where the theory is internally cohesive but the conclusions don't actually line up with reality. Seems like the page you linked is an anti-trasparency advocacy org, what makes you trust them? Is there any data to back up this assertion?

sgammon 4y ago

lots of this data exists. campaign finance and lobbying reports help shine a light on this behavior.

mortdeus 4y ago

you are arguing for Git for legislation. not an api.

DannyBee 4y ago

"We need to track the evil parts of bills to the congress person who is the sell out for lobbyists (and the corporations beind them)" This would require a lot of changes to how bills are literally shuffled around the building :)

yarg 4y ago

Version track the bills. That would be very cool.

samstave 4y ago

We need the ability to understand exactly who profits from any act/law/bill and excruiciating detail of the finances of anyone in congress, coupled with max age limit for any seat, including the Supreme Court.

drexlspivey 4y ago

I want a webhook for Nancy Pelosi’s trades

nnmg 4y ago

Not exactly what you are looking for, but Open Secrets gets you almost there: https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying Their API leaves a lot to be desired, but the data is much easier to access and analyze than the raw data from the US House or Senate websites.

Calamitous 4y ago

Who wants to be the first to teach congress to use git?

bozhark 4y ago

All of this is somewhere, all of this information.

noveltyaccount 4y ago

Git blame for bills, I love it! :D

fydkwheduxb 4y ago

Everybody has lobbyists, there's no public cause that lacks lobbyists in the USA and if you think it's only corporations with effective lobbyists it's probably because you're discounting a slew of causes and groups.

galaxyLogic 4y ago

I think even before that we need an API to tell us who voted for or against each bill, and their party affiliation. Also an easy way to find all votes of each elected representative. Then maybe an app that allows me to pick a few bills and a few representatives and produce a matrix of how they voted on those bills, also which proportion of each party voted yes or no on those bills. And finally for each proposed bill who voted for or against to bring it onto the floor to be discussed and voted on, or not.

indigochill 4y ago

I've thought about this (as an outsider who doesn't know anything) and wondered if plain old git would do the job. I've heard Germany already does this, but when I looked at https://github.com/bundestag/gesetze https://github.com/bundestag/gesetze it didn't look like this was representative of what I would assume to be the full extent of German legislation. In theory, you probably wouldn't find lobbyists contributing directly, but you could find representatives and then link them to lobbyists they've associated with.