Senators skip classified briefing on NSA snooping to catch flights home

For legislation, the columns would have gross bills, whose embedded decisions and regulations could be broken out at will. For example, the Clothing Improvement Bill could be shown on its own (great, my guy voted to improve clothing), and its internals could be broken out to show that, for example, one effect is that citizens and residents of Canadian descent are only allowed to wear red socks (oh, feh, my guy hates Canadians).

You could also ask for just the breakouts from all bills that are concerned with socks, for example.

Which would be hard, because big bills have lots of individual effects. But it would show exactly what your guy supported, on purpose, unknowingly or as a compromise. Heck, they might even like to see that, they could learn what they voted on after the fact. I'll bet a lot of them still don't know in total what they voted for in the Affordable Care Act.

Each vote would also indicate things like if the member had more responsibility than just being a member, like on the relevant committee. A no-show here should be embarrassing. Or if the vote specifically impacts his region.

Bonus points to do this analysis all the way back to the beginning of the Republic.

If you're interested in volunteering some dev time on some creative ways of getting involved, let me know! My email is pvnick@gmail.com :)

EDIT: http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1geg2t/senators_skip_c...

Here for example is the view of Dianne Feinstein (CA D): http://www.opencongress.org/people/show/300043_Dianne_Feinst...

Her full voting record: http://www.opencongress.org/people/voting_history/300043_Dia...

You can also access their data directly or via API: http://www.opencongress.org/about/code

I would use the same technique Apple used to change minds when the iPhone was new. Come up with bite-sized ads, and play them like regular ads, many times, but instead of advertising for a product, they should educate.

The media is doing a terrible job at this. The same way Google tries to force ISPs to change with Google Fiber, we should try forcing the media to step up by putting them in a bad light, by focusing on the important problems they're ignoring.

Imagine 30 second ads that focus on non-partisan information, stats not emotions, factual information like current laws and how they're not followed, a focus on a more global picture, on something more long term, something that would make you think and be more aware.

There's a lot of misinformation out there. We know this from the numerous polls that show large number of people believing things that are factually and provably not true.

We need to correct that first.

EFF, ACLU, and other organizations like these are trying, but they're not reaching most people. We need to reach and educate the people who have been turned off by the current state of affairs.

We need Twitter-size ads that people would find interesting and that would wet their appetite to seek out more and get involved.

I think you're right. The amount of abuse in the government and corporate sector has gone out of control.

We already forgot the atrocities of the 2008 financial crisis, which wrecked numerous families and households, and caused real deaths. As far as I know, none of the senior management was held accountable. Same people who invaded the market with toxic assets are still invited for dinners at the White House.

The NSA scandal will be similarly toned down and forgotten, unless we change our attitude.

He's that good? Knows the `infinitude' of time? Chess gambit(@)?

I like him.

(@)The word "gambit" was originally applied to chess openings in 1561 by Spanish priest Rúy López de Segura, from an Italian expression dare il gambetto (to put a leg forward in order to trip someone).

Teddy Roosevelt's national parks.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Washington's_Farewell_Address

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

..of course, how much time would then be spent picking and grooming a successor?

Brazil (where I am from) has one of the biggest politician salaries of the world, also politicians here get many secondary ways to get money, for example our last president, Lula, when he became president he owned a single apartment and two more or less nice cars (Chevrolet Omega).

When he left the presidency he owned 53 apartments. And noone could prove that was from stolen money...

Our congress also can vote on its own salary, and they frequently do, a recent scandal was when they refused to increase the police salary and then increased their own by 70%, later smaller chambers from around the country went into more outrageous mode (one city for example, gave their lawmakers a 100% salary increase, while reducing the salary of teachers and medics to compensate the budget).

No, giving politicians money, won't make them less self-serving, if anything it gives a very clear incentive to self-serving people end there.

I am very sure if there was ways to ensure political power could not translate so directly to money, people would abuse it less.

No, I haven't noticed this (because it's not true). What I do notice are many stories about politicians abusing their positions, almost systematically [1,2]. I see no reason why a higher rate of pay would curb such behaviour (it's not like they're broke in the first place). I don't see why leaders of the commercial sector should be considered the "best of the best" either (think back to banking and other corporate scandals of the last decade).

In addition, the gap between CEO pay and 'normal' people has been the subject of debate before. When you realise that some of these folks sit on each-other's compensation committees it's easy to see how such arrangements can be abused -- and conveniently justified in hindsight as 'necessary' to "attract and retain the best of best".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_parliamentary_e...

[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jun/02/lobbying-mini...

And if I may quote Spider Man, with great power comes great responsibility. The constitution wasn't written under the assumption that the federal government would ever be as large as it is. It isn't set up for it. So the President is in charge of too much and is consequently spread too thin for any one person to handle.

Here's the problem: The number of officers of the federal executive branch who are elected: One. Just One.

Compare that to anything else. In any given state you'll elect the governor, but you'll also elect the mayor of each city and possibly the sheriff, etc. I want to vote for the head of the FBI. I want to vote for the head of the IRS. Stop putting it all at the feet of the President.

While in office, US Presidents live like royalty. None of the Fortune 500 CEO cohort live like the President, especially if you throw in perks like the reverence with which presidents are treated anywhere in the world they may go.

After office they can look forward to a remainder of their lives earning tens of millions on the speaking circuit.

Hardly qualifies as poor treatment in my view.

To that I would say the members of congress are exempt from insider trading laws (why?), and it turns out that many members of congress make the majority of the wealth from stock trades after they join congress. (now, that might be hear-say. I read this somewhere, and I have no good way to verify this).

In light of your edit, I have no idea what point you're trying to get across. Being President is so stressful ... so what? Anyone who could become President is likely well past the "living comfortably" stage so there's obviously something else that drives them. Same goes for any of the Fortune 500 CEOs you refer to (none of them need the money).

Suppose we pick elected officials at random. OK, in the first round we get a bunch of reasonable people and they do a bunch of reasonable stuff. In the second round, maybe the same thing, except that they have different ideas from their predecessors so they end up repealing all the programs and replacing them with still reasonable but quite different ones. Businesses can't plan anything because they don't know what the regulatory environment will look like the year after the election. The churn strains our already-difficult ties with countries like China, Russia and Saudi Arabia when the things the Nth Congress promised get repudiated by the N+1th Congress which is comprised of entirely different people.

Then, sooner or later, random chance produces a majority coalition consisting of people who are willing to horse trade for corrupt programs that specifically benefit their own friends and family, or "libertarians" and peace activists who very suddenly disband the entire U.S. military, or nationalist religious fundamentalists who decide to declare war on "Muslims" or drop a nuclear bomb on somebody with the ability to strike back.

The thing about politics is that you actually do want professionals running the country. You want people with formal training who know what they're doing. You just have to make sure they're representing us and not somebody else.

1) The financial sector of the economy attracts away many of America's smartest and most charismatic, while simultaneously making a career in public service, especially by comparison, very unattractive for this valuable group. Thus an escape to lucrative lobbying (and gov't contracting) positions becomes the only economic redemption for those experiencing such injustice (as they might call it).

2) There is a school of thought that believes, and aims to show, that gov't can't do anything well. In the U.S., a significant proportion of the time, people who espouse this attitude hold powerful offices -- it's no surprise, then, that they don't instil in their subordinates a sense of civic responsibility and pride. Neither should it be surprising that they behave cynically.

Right now in order to compete you must fundraise constantly or risk not having funds to counter the spin of a bankrolled opponent. It would be interesting if the Supreme Court simply eliminated the contribution limits but this would give even more of an incentive for congressmen simply to sell their votes("Vote for us and we will give you X gazillion dollars over four years vote against us and we drop millions in dark money against you and fund your opponents").

That leaves the expertise in the hands of unelected bureaucrats, who could easily maneuver the constantly-inexperienced politicians in the direction they wish.

Pick your poison...

They just create a bigger incentive for a revolving door between industry and legislative office.