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  • From: James Manning <jmm AT sublogic.com>
  • To: internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] Black Budget
  • Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 10:37:24 -0500

> U.S. Park Police Chief Suspended
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39827-2003Dec5.html
>
> I wish I had this federal rule on hand to review. I'm sure I'm missing
> something, but it strikes me as highly undemocratic, this rule.

But that doesn't matter, we don't live in a democracy. Such is life
in the republic.

On a more legitimate note:

Murphy said Wednesday that Chambers broke a federal rule against
public comment on budget discussions and another barring someone
in Chambers' position from lobbying.

That seems legitimate to me, insofar as the budget isn't finalized
yet. Keeping the process hidden indeed has its pros and cons, but a
totally exposed process would seem to end up with companies/entities
taking budget line-items, pitching them as "killing children", putting
up some TV spots and letting the flood of calls to congress do their
work for them.

I dunno - at some point there's a reason we're a republic. I know *I*
am not versed enough in all the issues to intelligently weigh in on
federal budgets, and hence I try to elect people that I have
confidence in to do such a job. Can they be influenced? Sure,
lobbies exist, Sierra/Greenpeace and Microsoft/Intel alike, and that's
disturbing, but I'm not sure a fully democratic budget process would
actually be an improvement.

FoIA and other concerns, though, do make me happy that once it's
finalized, it is available for public review. It's certainly possible
(guaranteed, in fact) that I won't be happy with some/many of the
budget line items (being Libertarian, I'd rather see most of the items
wiped from existence). Then I can feed back those choices into budget
issues that matter most to me, and try to make sure I elect people
next time that align more with my goals.

IOW, elections are our method of feeding back into the "system".
There's certainly a significant temporal lag in that feedback cycle,
but it's the trade-off we accept in this form of government.

It'd be kinda neat to see a Sealand-ish kind of attempt at a new
(physically separate) nation with "real democracy" by electronic
voting of all citizens on all issues. Course, it'd be neat to see the
U.S. adopt mandatory military service at age 18, too, but that's
another thread for another time :)

James
--
James Manning <http://www.sublogic.com/james/>
GPG Key fingerprint = B913 2FBD 14A9 CE18 B2B7 9C8E A0BF B026 EEBB F6E4




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