Tag: politics
FCC Censorship
With not much original reporting, I discovered that the latest big fine by the FCC against a TV network — a record $1.2m against Fox for its “sexually suggestive” Married by America — was brought about by a mere 3 people who actually composed letters of complaint. Yes, just 3 people. I filed a Freedom of Information Act request to see all of the 159 complaints the FCC cited in its complaint against Fox. I just received the FCC’s reply with a copy of all the complaints — and a letter explaining that, well, there weren’t 159 after all. Because the complaints were sent to multiple individuals at the FCC, it turns out there actually were only 90 complaints. It gets better: The FCC confesses that they come from only 23 individuals. It is shocking enough that what 10s of millions of us are permitted to see by our government can be determined by 159 … or 90 … or 23.
abolish the FCC already.
The folks over at governmentattic.org FOIAed portions of the FCC’s television complaints database! Browse their site to find citizen complaints about your favorite TV show
Structured Bills
we would like Bills (and related instruments such as amendment lists and Public Bill Committee debates) to be published in a structured data format, with all relevant metadata, as soon as is possible. This doesn’t just mean “publishing bills online” as is currently done – it means publishing them online in such a way that each bit can be referred to and, more importantly, contains the data necessary to join things up – e.g. when an amendment paper says a particular amendment is going to change from halfway through line 15 to line 18 of page 3, that amendment has its own ID, and contains the means to point out what ID or IDs in the Bill are going to be changed by this amendment. When a Public Bill committee votes on a particular clause of a Bill, that reference is linked to the ID, so it can be cross-referenced to what is being voted on. This would be of use not just to the public, but to MPs, drafters, and everyone involved in the process.
calls for an XML format for bills introduced in the UK parliament.
USASpending.gov
now you can query government waste via an API. they forgot &include_black_programs=true
Bush Accomplishments
not all of those metrics are Bush’s fault, but still
Off the record
the Bush adminstration admitted that it did not properly archive emails. But, that’s not all — they also admit to taping over the back-up tapes containing the email records.
in an environmental breakthrough, the bush administration recycles emails / evidence.
Huckabee wants Theocracy
oy. i find it hard to believe that an even bigger bible thumper might succeed dubya. if that happens, all bets are on SE asia to be the innovation power house.
Split Ticket
i think my dream ticket would be mccain / obama. they both have halfway sensible policies in complementary areas.
The Search Party
But one of the mistakes we’re not going to make is the mistake that non-scientists make. We’re going to make mistakes based on facts and data and analysis.
Rule by Decree
I was somewhat surprised by these results. I’d kind of assumed that with the growing concentration of political power in Washington, and the expansion of the authority of executive departments into all sectors of American life, that executive orders would grow apace, but this is not actually the case. Measured by executive orders per year, America’s Great Dictator was none other than Teddy Roosevelt, who cranked out an average of 356 every year he spent in the White House. Presidents Coolidge and Hoover: often stereotyped as laissez-faire hands-off executives, averaged 225 and 242 executive orders per year, not far behind FDR’s 274. Eisenhower issued only 60 per year, and no president since has issued as many as 80 per year.
who knew. dubya is not the most authoritative president
Gregor J. Rothfuss 