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Thread: How transparent should politics be?

  1. #1
    Administrator CatInASuit's avatar
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    Default How transparent should politics be?

    How much should a person know about their government and how much should be kept hidden?

    For each member of government, should we know who they are, what their politics are, who they speak to, who they advise, who they take money from, who sponsors them and so on.

    For the government policy, should we know who has created it and why it was created and who it will benefit the most.

    And finally, what matters should be kept out of the public eye?
    In the land of the blind, the one-arm man is king.

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    Quote Originally posted by CatInASuit View post
    And finally, what matters should be kept out of the public eye?
    This is kind of a bad time to be asking Americans this, because I'm probably not the only one whose knee-jerk response is "all of them!"

    It annoys me, personally, that while at least in this state and at the national level, campaign contributions have to be disclosed (if you've ever donated to a national campaign, google your name), they're not disclosed in a very useful way for the most part. As far as I can tell, there's no way for me to look up a particular lobbyist and see all the federal dollars they've given, for instance. The data is available but it falls upon groups like OpenSecrets.org to try to aggregate it so that it's actually useful, and even they don't do that good a job because the disclosure requirements are deliberately crafted to make the disclosure data opaque.

  3. #3
    Jesus F'ing Christ Glazer's avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by CatInASuit View post
    And finally, what matters should be kept out of the public eye?
    Only operational matters that would endanger the lives of troops or agents in the field. Or give advantage to an enemy. But they should be made public as soon as they are operationally able.
    Welcome to Mellophant.

    We started with nothing and we still have most of it left.

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    Curmudgeon OtakuLoki's avatar
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    CIAS, NY state has some of the worst disclosure and ethics laws in the US.

    Because, in theory, our legislators are doing a part time job, they are free to have other jobs. Including being partners in major law firms, in NYC. In a particularly brazen move a recent NY State Senate Majority Leader was invited to become a partner in a major law firm this summer. The recent ethics reforms in NY requires that legislators make public where they take compensation from - but there's no need to report how that compares to their salaries for being legislators. The State Assembly Speaker has claimed that any more onerous reporting would prevent the high quality candidates we have now from seeking public office.

    For some reason, given the mess that is NYS right now, I am not convinced this is a compelling argument.

    I would like to see all income over $1000 (or so) reported for public officials. And in NY, at least, I'd love to make the Legislature a full-time position, and bar them from having outside jobs. I doubt that would pass a constitutional test, but I still fantasize about it. And getting the kleptocrats to pass it would be impossible.

    I would like to see more effort to enforce residency requirements for elected representatives. But that's mostly me being punitive and obstructionist.

    The biggest single thing to my mind is that I can see no good reason why budget negotiations cannot be made available to the public, even if they are probably best worked out outside of the public eye: i.e. I see no reason why the press or a CSPAN type set up couldn't record the negotiations for anyone who wants to see them on a 12 hour delay or so. No public disruption, but let the deals come out. I even know why this is probably a bad idea - but I'm so sick of "Three men in a room" that I'm willing to see it to end that.

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    Quote Originally posted by OtakuLoki View post
    The State Assembly Speaker has claimed that any more onerous reporting would prevent the high quality candidates we have now from seeking public office.
    There are no words. I feel your pain, buddy.

    New York, Michigan, Illinois, and California need to form a support group or something.

  6. #6
    Stegodon Jaglavak's avatar
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    I believe that except for military and crime matters, all of our elected representatives should be on camera whenever they are on official business. Every last meeting, email, phone call, backroom deal, favor granted, rule bent, fart, cough, and sneeze.

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