On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 6:39 PM, David B. Shemano <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > <<<Or if legal persons called corporations organize to influence > legislation. It is only lobbying if its ability to influence legislators > derives from money rather than from popular support. As Jim said, from "one > dollar one vote" to "one person one vote" > > I think this very naive and impractical. An election can only tell us so > much. Communication between the governors and the governed cannot and > should not be limited to a periodic election. How should the members of > Congress vote to bail out GM? I doubt it was a campaign issue in > any specific election held less than 30 days ago. Shouldn't the governors > hear from the governed? And how should the governed effectively communicate > their views if not through lobbying through lobbyists?
There are methods other than elections to gauge public opinion. One example is opinion polls and the like, but I don't really like these because they are too susceptible to manipulation and misinterpretation. The best method is to have mechanisms for ordinary citizens to provide input to the government. Unlike present-day lobbying, this process should be fully transparent and ordinary citizens should have a way of offering their input. Something similar to this already exists today. I can think of 2 examples: 1) People contact their congresssional representative to tell them about some issue that they care about. The Internet has made this process incredibly more efficient than before. This way, congressional aides have a very good idea of what their constituents want. 2) Some Federal agencies like the FCC pre-announce any changes in their regulation policy and provide an opportunity for the public to provide their input. Here's an example: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-08-92A1.pdf -raghu. -- "We in the industry know that behind every successful screenwriter stands a woman. And behind her stands his wife." _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
