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It’s unfortunate that our government is so inefficient that we have to pass mass bills like this at all. I doubt any of the legislators actually know the full c

by sampli 3y ago

It’s unfortunate that our government is so inefficient that we have to pass mass bills like this at all. I doubt any of the legislators actually know the full contents of bills like this that they sign.

Philorandroid 3y ago
> I doubt any of the legislators actually know the full contents of bills like this that they sign. Let alone any of their constituents, who are just as soon to believe the Saving Puppies and Kittens Act really is about saving puppies and kittens.
notRobot 3y ago
It is all by design. It could be so much better. It benefits the wealthy and powerful to have the system be as it is.
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
It's so much worse than that. There are documented incidents where legislators were voting on blank pieces of paper, the policies would be penciled in after they had voted. It is a shit-show of monumental proportions. More typically, thousands-of-pages-bills are only printed hours before they go to vote. In past eras, legislators were unable to read them and shirked that off to staffers who would read and summarize for them, but it became too much of a burden even for staffers at some point. They'd just read key sections. But at the same time, as technology progressed, bills became easier to print en masse. It was possible to print them at the "last second" (figuratively, say less than 24 hours), and so less time was allotted to print them before taking things to a vote. This is considered normal, among those who are involved, those who are knowledgeable about how Congressional procedure works. When legislators vote a bill up or vote a bill down, they are inevitably voting on little more than the name of the bill.
- 8note 3y ago
  This sounds like a perfect use case for a chatbot to summarize the law and identify weird stuff in it, other than the length
  - techwizrd 3y ago
    I don't think I'd want my representatives voting based on chatbot hallucinations, but it sounds like many of them are already voting based on misinterpretations, lobbying, media pressure, and blank sheets of paper. The government agencies I'm support/advise are already looking at using chatbots to summarize federal orders and other documents, however.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    I think your proposal makes it worse. If they're voting on 5000 page monstrosities drafted by lobbyists, or blanks pieces of paper... the solution can never be to make it easier to vote on those things. Because we want them to stop doing that, not do it even more.
- landemva 3y ago
  Legislators who respect the rights of their constituents would vote 'present' and then go fishing. Since the House membership was capped in 1929, I suppose this only gets fixed through a general strike of the people, or a crack-up divorce in a decade or so. https://www.npr.org/2021/04/20/988865415/stuck-at-435-representatives-why-the-u-s-house-hasnt-grown-with-census-counts https://www.npr.org/2021/04/20/988865415/stuck-at-435-repres...
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    > Since the House membership was capped in 1929, I About that. I discovered a really neat hack a few years ago, but I don't have the juice to pull it off. Constitutional amendments never expire and they can't be canceled, as long as that's not written into the wording itself. The ERA for instance, needed to be ratified within 7 years, or it became invalid. But old amendments didn't do that... so they wait around for centuries. And there's a particular amendment that was part of the original bill of rights (there were 12, of those 10 were ratified more or less immediately, and the 11th in the 1990s). This amendment demands that there must be one representative for ever 50,000 constituents. And it's already been ratified my much of New England (plus Kentucky!). If you happened to live in say, I dunno, Nebraska... you could conceivably get the ball rolling just by going in to talk to your state legislator. Call up his local office, ask if there's a time where you could come in and see him for 5 minutes, and then pour your heart out about how important it is to you. If he even brings it to a vote, that might be the sort of viral kick-in-the-pants it would need. But if it were ratified by your state, that would pique the interest of other states. You can check out what I've said, Wikipedia is sufficient to confirm all of it.
    - landemva 3y ago
      Intereating, maybe you can summarize your findings and put links on a blog somewhere? Thirty-thousand.org also has information about allowing the House to expand. https://thirty-thousand.org https://thirty-thousand.org
      - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
infamouscow 3y ago
This isn't unique to the US federal government. The understanding that governments are the absolute worst at everything has been written about and understood since the time of Plato. All that's happening is information is more readily accessible and the population is becoming less ignorant of their own government. People love to draw comparisons between their government and some other government to make a point in favor of their favorite pet policy. Rarely do the same people have even the most rudimentary understanding of all of the ridiculous things that take place in other governments.
jancsika 3y ago
> It’s unfortunate that our government is so inefficient that we have to pass mass bills like this at all. Efficiency in legislative process is a terrible metric for effectiveness in governance. In fact, some of the worst legislation in recent history was passed during times of greatest legislative efficiency. E.g., the PATRIOT act.
- seanw444 3y ago
  Exactly. Our government was inefficient from the start. That's by design.
- parineum 3y ago
  It's a poor choice of words by the OP. Legislatures can't be seen doing anything but brinkmanship so all bills have to be rolled into the only must pass legislation there is.

by sampli 3y ago

Philorandroid 3y ago

> I doubt any of the legislators actually know the full contents of bills like this that they sign. Let alone any of their constituents, who are just as soon to believe the Saving Puppies and Kittens Act really is about saving puppies and kittens.

notRobot 3y ago

It is all by design. It could be so much better. It benefits the wealthy and powerful to have the system be as it is.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

It's so much worse than that. There are documented incidents where legislators were voting on blank pieces of paper, the policies would be penciled in after they had voted. It is a shit-show of monumental proportions. More typically, thousands-of-pages-bills are only printed hours before they go to vote. In past eras, legislators were unable to read them and shirked that off to staffers who would read and summarize for them, but it became too much of a burden even for staffers at some point. They'd just read key sections. But at the same time, as technology progressed, bills became easier to print en masse. It was possible to print them at the "last second" (figuratively, say less than 24 hours), and so less time was allotted to print them before taking things to a vote. This is considered normal, among those who are involved, those who are knowledgeable about how Congressional procedure works. When legislators vote a bill up or vote a bill down, they are inevitably voting on little more than the name of the bill.

8note 3y ago
This sounds like a perfect use case for a chatbot to summarize the law and identify weird stuff in it, other than the length
- techwizrd 3y ago
  I don't think I'd want my representatives voting based on chatbot hallucinations, but it sounds like many of them are already voting based on misinterpretations, lobbying, media pressure, and blank sheets of paper. The government agencies I'm support/advise are already looking at using chatbots to summarize federal orders and other documents, however.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  I think your proposal makes it worse. If they're voting on 5000 page monstrosities drafted by lobbyists, or blanks pieces of paper... the solution can never be to make it easier to vote on those things. Because we want them to stop doing that, not do it even more.
landemva 3y ago
Legislators who respect the rights of their constituents would vote 'present' and then go fishing. Since the House membership was capped in 1929, I suppose this only gets fixed through a general strike of the people, or a crack-up divorce in a decade or so. https://www.npr.org/2021/04/20/988865415/stuck-at-435-representatives-why-the-u-s-house-hasnt-grown-with-census-counts https://www.npr.org/2021/04/20/988865415/stuck-at-435-repres...
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  > Since the House membership was capped in 1929, I About that. I discovered a really neat hack a few years ago, but I don't have the juice to pull it off. Constitutional amendments never expire and they can't be canceled, as long as that's not written into the wording itself. The ERA for instance, needed to be ratified within 7 years, or it became invalid. But old amendments didn't do that... so they wait around for centuries. And there's a particular amendment that was part of the original bill of rights (there were 12, of those 10 were ratified more or less immediately, and the 11th in the 1990s). This amendment demands that there must be one representative for ever 50,000 constituents. And it's already been ratified my much of New England (plus Kentucky!). If you happened to live in say, I dunno, Nebraska... you could conceivably get the ball rolling just by going in to talk to your state legislator. Call up his local office, ask if there's a time where you could come in and see him for 5 minutes, and then pour your heart out about how important it is to you. If he even brings it to a vote, that might be the sort of viral kick-in-the-pants it would need. But if it were ratified by your state, that would pique the interest of other states. You can check out what I've said, Wikipedia is sufficient to confirm all of it.
  - landemva 3y ago
    Intereating, maybe you can summarize your findings and put links on a blog somewhere? Thirty-thousand.org also has information about allowing the House to expand. https://thirty-thousand.org https://thirty-thousand.org
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

infamouscow 3y ago

This isn't unique to the US federal government. The understanding that governments are the absolute worst at everything has been written about and understood since the time of Plato. All that's happening is information is more readily accessible and the population is becoming less ignorant of their own government. People love to draw comparisons between their government and some other government to make a point in favor of their favorite pet policy. Rarely do the same people have even the most rudimentary understanding of all of the ridiculous things that take place in other governments.

jancsika 3y ago

> It’s unfortunate that our government is so inefficient that we have to pass mass bills like this at all. Efficiency in legislative process is a terrible metric for effectiveness in governance. In fact, some of the worst legislation in recent history was passed during times of greatest legislative efficiency. E.g., the PATRIOT act.

seanw444 3y ago
Exactly. Our government was inefficient from the start. That's by design.
parineum 3y ago
It's a poor choice of words by the OP. Legislatures can't be seen doing anything but brinkmanship so all bills have to be rolled into the only must pass legislation there is.