Even published on the recovery.gov site, it is still difficult to hone in on specific information. The bill is just entirely to big to be easily "accessible." Some type of smart search engine for it would be handy.
You guys understand that acts are essentially patches to apply to the US Code, right? Literally, they read "insert, in paragraph 5a, after 'is the domain of', 'Hacker News and'
The GPO, however, only prints the full code once every six (six!) years. They've got a room full of people reading and double-checking that they're writing exactly what's in the bills. Very archaic. Someone should apply a modern versioning system so the code is in black and the effects of bills are in red (and blue and green, like alexa or Google Trends does graphs, but with text), so the public can see not just the bill, but what the changes look like in real time. It's shouldn't be hard at all.
I'll bet someone could do this with GitHub by this weekend and have a site up by the end of the month.
Funny you should mention that. I've been working with a friend on something along this line for the last two weeks. We are looking to announce a beta launch here sometime next week. The site is going to be called Democritique. Stay tuned.
I'd like to let everyone know that we have launched our Fourth Branch, http://www.fourthbranch.us, for use and testing. It took us longer than planned to move to production, but our initial version is considerably better than what we previously intended.
In a nutshell, Fourth Branch will act exactly as that: The fourth branch of government. The emphasis on publicizing legislation and providing government transparency has lead us to develop this. Unlike anything to date, we are going to utilize proven social networking practices and focus it on legislation and issues that require public input.
We are looking for any and all comments, criticism and feedback to help us develop quickly. Thanks!
Where did I say the bill would end graft and pork? I didn't. What I'd like is the kind of transparency that could out the graft and pork to the American people. With enough outrage over the crud tucked away in this thing, maybe we can get decent people in the seats in the future.
Hmm, maybe his goal with this bill is to have something to show the public the extent of the grafting and pork. Then make everything transparent, push them all out of office.
I'm starting to like my imagined version of Obama.
Also, this website could keep a handful of people employed! Yay!