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carrick.baugh

User Profile Image carrick.baugh
Member since : May-23-2009 (Verified)
4 Ideas, 61 Comments, 112 Votes

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Ideas Posted

We pay for it.


We pay to execute people, and it is done in our name.

Should the State shield taxpayers from it?

This is not a question about whether capital punishment right or wrong. Rather, if we have it, should we be kept from seeing it?

We're talking about bringing the actions of the State into the light... this is certainly something that is kept from us.



Obviously, serious provisions would be made for guarding children from seeing it.


[Keep this in mind -- When an executed prisoner's body is autopsied, the cause of death is listed as "Homicide." As funders of the State, our hand, by extension, is at work when that life is terminated. If we choose to look away, that's our choice. If the State prevents us from seeing it, they make that choice for us. Should the State be allowed to prevent us from seeing the full extent of the actions it commits in our name, with our resources?]
The 'thumbs up/thumbs down' vote is helpful, as are the comment fields.

However, some ideas don't really fall under the umbrella of "open goverment" -- some relate to the private sector, some speak to non-relevant legislation, some are vague suggestions, and others are simply rants. These clutter the forum and deter user participation.

Rather than censor/remove these, or allow them to distort the statistics that reveal support, create a third option -- a "? - Not really an open govt idea" option below the 'thumbs down.'

An idea with more than ten votes, of which a certain percentage are "?" selections, can be bumped off of the main 'ideas listing' and placed into a separate category, or simply moved to the end of the listing. As is, its impossible to know whether negative votes demonstrate a lack of support, or the belief that the "idea" just doesn't fall under the umbrella of open government.
The Columbia Schools of Journalism already keeps a listing of print and broadcast media, and its ownership status. Expand this to include Internet sources, and allow users to track and record their 'consumption habits.' Users can then see if 80% of their news and information is coming from the same parent company, what percentage of their information comes from big media companies and how much is smaller-scale or independent journalism/media.

Using existing data from broadcasters, users can select the programs they watch (NBC Nightly News, NPR Fresh Air, Bill O'Reilly, Democracy Now, Daily Show) and read (Drudge Report, The Daily Beast, Financial Times, Washington Post), and be provided with a pie charts and graphs illustrating the ownership and diversity of the sources that inform their opinions.

This would be a pretty simple idea to execute, and might be done by simply working with Columbia to expand their current project. It would be ideal to host it on an expanded Fed, State and Local OpenCongress-style Sunlight Foundation page, where users can come to learn about and influence their government. An extremely cheap and easily developed tool, with great benefits.
Several websites and organizations compile information about the security (or lack there of) of Fed, state, & local elections laws & protocols -- chain of custody, ballot access, voter registration security. This info is spread out, and often so specific that it is only accessed by and decipherable to "elections buffs." The constituents most in need of secure elections, and most capable of forcing their representatives to amend current practices, are left without a large but decipherable body of information, as well as user-friendly tools to that assist them in their efforts at increasing elections security.

Rather than attempt to legislate costly top-down change (which VP Biden has opposed), create some type of framework into which volunteers (or elections officials) can dump/fill in data that visually illustrates the ballot chain of custody -- from Constitutional guarantee of their right to vote, to ballot printing, to vote counting procedure and machine software security, to recount procedures, final storage and eventual disposal.

An interactive time line-like illustration of the chain of custody would be ideal. Users can consult elections law to "fill out" the chain, with discussion forum threads accompany each step. Users can discuss/debate the best options and rate the vulnerability of their vote at that stage in the elections process -- a color-grade scale (yellow to red, to illustrate areas of greatest need and concern.) Threads will be cross-referenced to similar topics/issues in other localities, so that, for instance, Palm Beach County Florida users can investigate and discuss the cheapest and most secure non re-sealable adhesive ballot seals, with Orange County California users faced with the same problem. The tool can similarly be utilized by municipalities to assist each other -- once an open debate and investigation has identified the most secure and cost efficient option, Palm Beach and Orange County might combine their purchases to reduce costs.

The tool can become a great classroom civics project for students, where the class will dedicate itself to learning the necessity and means of maintaining secure elections, while getting hands-on experience working with their local government as pro-active civic participants (even if it does entail something as simple as researching adhesive stickers.) Students will learn to investigate a problem, find a solution, and how to present it to an elected official so that its value is undeniable, and their efforts deliver real world results.

This online tool would be best served by hosting it at the Sunlight Foundation's OpenCongress website, which already has an audience of involved citizens. Because the website is heavily user-driven, once the coding is written, the website/tool and the community using it, will largely take care of itself -- this is a very small investment with a very large return.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 4205 Ideas
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Comments Posted

carrick.baugh 9 months ago
Hey lunatic,
Even if dna repair for radiation exposure was free and accessible to all people, we'd still have to deal with it poisoning our ecosystems and food supply.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
From Snopes.com FAQ:

Q: Who creates the material for this site?
A: With very few exceptions, all of the material on this site is prepared by the same people who operate this site, Barbara and David Mikkelson.

Q: Who pays you to maintain this site?
A: We have no sponsors, investors, or partners, nor do we have any affiliation or relationship (financial or otherwise) with any political party, religious group, business organization, or any other group or agency. We pay all the costs of producing and operating this web site ourselves and derive our income from the advertising revenues it provides.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
I don't mean to insult you, but I wanted to share this..

Your idea, and some other ones on your account are hard to understand. You've made a good effort to share what you think, and an idea that you hope will help. It is confusing to read however, because it was probably written when you were feeling confused.

The Internet is great, but it can be bad when you pour your effort into it and no one responds. It sounds like you might be served better by sharing your thoughts, ideas and feelings with someone in the real world, who is listening.

The online world can be like an ocean of information, and your thoughts and feelings just get lost in it. Its better to share those things in the real world, than exhaust yourself pouring it into an ocean that never responds.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
GPS can tell you where to turn within a minimum of 9 feet of the street (assuming the map is correct.) On govt GPS, it is exact.

It still just sounds needlessly expensive. In a disaster, local police can/could/should post temporary signs identifying important streets and evacuation routes. The signs can be stockpiled.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
There's more than a few lunatics on here.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
@rwinkelbauer,

That's the real question. In a stable society, changing practice to broadcast executions would probably have a positive effect -- showing the injustice of murder in all forms, it'd evoke a discussion. In an unstable divided society, one that isn't capable of holding much of a dialogue, it might just turn into a spectacle. I think ti'd generally be the latter though. If we began broadcasting executions, I'm sure media coverage surrounding them, the crime and the victims would heavily increase. The state would not be producing "execution specials." As always, media would interpret and transmit the story, using evidence (the broadcast) provided by the state. It seems most likely, that if broadcasting was standard practice, that it would be available on OnDemand or similar view-upon-request formats. I don't know fourth amendment stuff well enough to know whether you could control rebroadcast by the media. The news freely airs image of death and dying in war, even common murder. Would the state be allowed to place access/rebroadcast restrictions on its homicides? That would certainly by hypocritical, not to mention the fact that the images (if shot by the state) would be in the public domain.

Beyond the benefit of making the public conscious of the fact that we do practice capital punishment, broadcasting would also demonstrate that executions aren't the pleasant sterile controlled things we think they are.. catheters fail, machines malfunction, veins collapse or 'explode', bodies jolt, bodies evacuate themselves, etc.


@tolynette,

Never thought of that. Parent identity... yeah, I don't know. That would be an incredible invasion of privacy, that in itself is the crux of roe v wade argument... the state funding element really turns it on its head. Good food for thought.


If it's not obvious, I'm opposed to the death penalty. All moral arguments aside, my primary reason is that we don't understand neurology well enough yet to say that these indebted criminals are of no use to society. Truly heinous criminals have a wealth of research data in their brains, and we don't have the technology yet to decipher it all, but its probably not far off. It'd be a shame if in 15-20 years, we can incredible technology for deciphering neurology and genetics, but had executed the test subjects. There might really be a gene or an identifiable neurological condition that heavily predisposes people to serial killing or serial rape. It'd be a shame if the day we identify it was delayed by three of four decades, because we'd chosen to execute all the test subjects decades earlier.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
I agree. Like the question asks though, if this is done in our name and with our resources, should we be shielded form the reality of it?

I posted it because I read this fact, and it stuck with me. In the 1830s and 1840s, there was a growing majority against capital punishment that was on the verge of retiring the practice. At that point, public executions were banned, and from then on conducted behind closed doors. Since that time, comfort with the death penalty has increased, and approval generally steadily grown.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
This has a lot of negative votes, but no comments to explain them. I'm surprised by it.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
I recently graduated. I agree that tuition rates and cost of living make short order of the larger college experience for a lot of people. I don't think however, that upwards of $80k (over the 4 years) should be poured out. There is tons of free money out there, but most people don't apply for it (including myself.)
I went to a really good state school, which the Fed govt scouts from, but there were plenty of people there who were spinning their wheels. Making it exceptionally easy for them to do that, would be a mistake I think. There should be considerable assistance available, but there should be a hurdle in front of it.

Govt loans, w/ better rates and deferment periods, are smarter.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
Please God. The day I see this error corrected, I will believe in my govt.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
Where are you going to school that $20k is your annual living expense, never mind the fact that school is generally only in session 9 months of the year?

If you choose to go to a school in NYC, but have no savings or outside support to meet your expenses, and don't perform well enough to receive additional financial aid, and refuse to live in The Bronx rather than adjacent to your campus... then maybe you just need to be somewhere else.

I am all for expanding financial aid, but laying out upwards of $20k (a teacher's or airline pilot's beginning salary in some areas) to an individual, for living expenses, every year... is outrageous to me.
Schools have their own student housing. If they want to keep a student and will provide that necessity to them at a discount, that's great. If they don't value the student enough to provide it, then why should taxpayers?
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
I work with 3d barcode. It works, if your physically label every individual object, and individually scan each one as well.

The benefit of RFID (which is proven and would be refined the private sector first), is that you could theoretically scan an entire warehouse by simply walking between the aisles. The time savings would be tremendous.

(RFID is proven, widely used, and will expand in the private sector first. As technology improves and demand increases, economies of scale will make its use snowball.)
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
What would be the incentive for not crashing my clunker into a nice Lexus, just because its driver pissed me off?


I wanna vote for this b/c its intriguing, but I don't think I can't get past this point. I could also commit insurance fraud by buying a $500 clunker, crashing it into my friend's overvalued car*, he claims whiplash, and we split the winnings.

*plenty of cars bluebook for a lot, even if the their insides are rotten.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
I want to attach this idea to "Free Pizza Fridays", I voted for that one also.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
Yeah, a generation of artists probably can be dead. The Internet helped destroy the oral tradition -- passing down skills, stories, lessons. The last place it was really flourishing was in music/art youth subcultures. The Internet really destroyed that, because people could learn on their own and practice on their own, and just appear in the subculture. There was no real social glue holding the participants together, just an interest in advancing the genre to the "next thing." If you look at a lot of music from the late 80s/90s on, its just stuff that fractured into smaller and smaller subcultures. No of it speaks to some larger experience, and most crap you see now is just kitsch rehashing of earlier eras of creativity (hip hop, punk, graffiti, etc.) A generation raised on 30 minutes commercials masquerading as Saturday morning cartoons, grew up to watch a music TV network selling them artists they owned (MTV owns Elektra and other record companies own Christina Aquilera, Limp Bizkit, etc.) Besides that, where was the family for provide a real foundation? At work, or shopping.
You've got a weak foundation, a corrupted subculture, an economic machine that pimps instead of insulating budding creativity, and to top it off, the distorting forces of globalization. It usually takes a generation or two for immigrant children to be as engaged and influential in their environments b/c they have learn how to affect they culture they're in. Young people today are suddenly grappling with debates about whether society is well served by making women cover cover their hair, when the natural step in advancing their culture was something totally different. We're all awash in information overload right now and there's no much of a foundation to work from. If you do have some soul, its preyed on and pimped out. Just look at what they did to Susan Boyle. They lifted her up, pimped her out and are beginning to tear her down in just a few weeks.
Personally, I think we're all having a 'culture shock' induced breeding/preservation instinct compulsion. When things get hairy, people always screw, get violent and comfortable taking more than they give. Its about seemingly demonstrating your strength, building up your resources and spreading your seed -- they all come down to self-preservation.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
Shit, woops. Its the Columbia Journalism Review

http://www.cjr.org/resources/
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
I was thinking more on along the lines of people half burying coffee cans filled with mercury, copper, explosives residue, etc. or just contaminating scrap metal with mercury and explosives and littering the roadways with it.

Good luck again
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
Hey, passing thought..

If this technology panned out, and was combined with onboard GPS in personnel carriers, one adverse effect might be that the bomb planters will just heavily pollute open roadsides (where rainwater run off collects and drains) to 'camouflage' the IEDs.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
Get in touch with some of the young Vet groups. They have the connections inside the military, and the credibility to be heard out.

There are a ton of highly educated vets just sitting in hospitals or doing small jobs in civilian life, who are the 'victims' of IED's. They could help you get the world out, lobby contractors/govt/media, and/or develop the science behind this.

Because these wars are so unpopular, these vets groups are generally independent of the government, and thus free to act and advance causes/efforts (like your idea) on their own accord.

Good luck.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
So the experience and knowledge of these people can be discarded, or paid for at a much higher premium as a contractor?

I'm 27, grew up around D.C., and I think this is a bad idea.

If these older fed workers can't do a job as well as a younger or different employee, then reassign or replace them. There is a lot of ambition in D.C., and at 65 it seems like there's not much further to go... these folks likely care about doing a good job, damned the political interests that want them to fudge the work. Whereas a younger upstart might just see their position as a step n the path to somewhere 'greater.'
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
In middle school we did a mock-family exercise, where we had to "marry" a classmate and design our living budget.

It was a cool exercise. It lasted maybe two class sessions. I was never asked to develop any type of budget or personal finance plan during my middle or high school education ever again.

Even a class that taught you how to cook, and budget for the ingredients would have been great.

I went to a public high school that is consistently ranked in the top 100 public schools in the country. I still think my education was abysmal, but sadly far superior to most of my peers.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
Locals generally know where to stop and what streets are what. GPS solves this problem for non-local assistance personnel.

Signs can be cheaply made. Traffic signs are no unique and stock piled for such situations. Street signs are easily temporarily replaced with paint on wood.

If you're in a disaster area, you'll know how to get our safely w/ traffic and street signs.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
1. This sounds like an extremely expensive device, which would require constant maintenance and preparation.
2. Dragging this device would increase fuel costs.
3 There are really only two pirate-rich areas, the horn of Africa and part of the South China Sea. It might be cheaper to assist those nations and their economies than engage in an escalating 'arms race' with their desperate inhabitants.
4. Most pirates are deterred by simply seeing them before it too late. New japanese technology that successfully transmits sound (at first a warning, then deafening noise) to approaching vessels, as well as "heat wave" like crowd control devices work well also.
4. How many small fishing vessels would be caught in this, and how many would have heir livelihood threatened/destroyed by damage caused by the device. Damage is inevitable, and for poor fishermen, a damaged boat might lead then into criminal means of providing for their families. It will certainly turn them against the foreign shipping fleets.
5. How long would it take for them to outsmart the system. As is, several boats approach these cargo ships. If eight vessels approached and four were caught be the jelly fish, the remaining four could still attack and board the ship.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
People don't understand the government agencies and their roles, the benefits they deliver, or resources they squander well enough to make an informed choice.

If it was a non-binding vote, serving more as a poll, that'd be interesting. It would tell the government where people see their dollars as being best spent.

However, it would be an awful way for small groups of people to heavily skew the data. Special interest groups could rally their constituents to 'vote' in a way provided to them. These people wouldn't be weighing their options necessarily, just pushing a 'party line.' For instance, you might see data indicating that taxpayers want 30% of their dollars allocated to aid for a foreign government. I'm thinking mainly of elderly Jewish voters, who are a strong organized civic-minded and active voting block (much more so than other groups in their age demographic.) Something like this might quickly go the way of online petitions -- initially Congress took notice. When they realized how easy it was special interest groups to get a large amount of signatures, and how casual an exercise it was for the signers, they stopped paying attention.

It would be interesting. But considering the complexity of govt, I think we'd see elderly voters heavily over represented. More general questions about where taxpayers think their money should be spent (education, health care, welfare/social safety net programs, military, foreign assistance, etc)

What would be great, is it if taxpayers could dedicate 1% of their dollars to a something from an expanded list. That might not tie Congress and the OMB's hands too much, and it would be a constant reminder of where taxpayers see their dollars as best used.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
Would an "Open Intelligence Reform Dialogue", in the form of an 'anonymous' encrypted online forum, be possible? Obviously, designed to be more productive than this forum, would a forum where current and retired intel professionals can collaborate on ideas for reforming and refining the CIA, DIA, NSA, FBI, etc etc be helpful?

Would this even be possible, considering what an attractive target it would be for foreign intel folks?
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
Great idea.

However, I presume the patent rights on whatever process or technology can sucessfully recycle nuclear waste, is an existing strong incentive. Hopefully, someone would make it free technology though.

The Mycologist Paul Stamets has done some work that shows how cesium-137 can be heavily absorbed by mushrooms (some 10,000 normal.) Cesium has a short 30-year half-life however. Just thought I'd share. Stamets has a great book out called "Mycelium Running."
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
Do we not investigate and prosecute marijuana dealers, just because a large amount of people in their communities really like them?
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
Those numbers would get awfully long pretty quick.

If we replaced the first three with alphabet letters that aren't easily confused with numbers, there would be a lot more options per 10 "digits."

There is probably an expensive long govt study on this, buried away somewhere.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
This will also allow wide swaths of people to comment on the content of the training material -- incredible feedback which will make the next edition that much better.

Some problems:
We might not want some methods & practices made public -- water treatment plant procedures, chemical facility security practices, etc.

There is probably also some revenue loss from foreign govts (who might usually pay) using the videos. The benefits of that probably greatly outweigh the lost usage fee revenue though.

Great idea. Maybe other govts would copy it and we'd have govts sharing info on practices for free, rather than flying govt workers around the world to host each other, tour facilities and give tired presentations. It might be a good idea to attach this to any existing govt working group/program that assists agencies in communicating with their foreign counterparts via video conferencing.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
Good start, Katie. Now get your classmates, teachers, parents and neighbors to call your state Reps/Delegates and Senator, as well as your respective Members of Congress, and lobby them directly.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
Have a sense of humor people....
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
Agreed. As it stands now, it looks like duplicates, which other users have "flagged," simply get deleted.

There needs to be a way to cluster similar idea, and connect ideas that would work well together/compliment each other.


It would also serve this site well to offer a third voting or flagging option -- 'N/A - Not Applicable."
A lot of people are using the this forum as a place to vent and rant, or comment on general policy with no relevance to 'open government.'
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
How about a mandatory 72-hour moratorium on House floor political theater following the proposal of major spending bills.

As much as I appreciate the idea of a healthy review period, I don't like seeing my loyal opposition party feign shock and indignation for the cameras, while GOP legal aides reviews the small changes to the original bill, and everyone gets home in time for an early dinner another night of NOT drafting a serious competing plan.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
I agree.

As much as I do though, this does not belong in this forum. These are ideas for expanding government transparency and the like, not comments on general policy.

There are a couple feedback sites when policy ideas and be shared. When they're here though, it just clutters the forum making people read, vote and provide feedback on fewer ideas.

It'd be similarly counterproductive to talk about government data sharing at a VA town hall meeting.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
A good idea to compliment this, might be creating some "sustainable" seal to be placed on consumer products and other industrial processes. The manufacturer/industry would be compelled to post the evidence/math behind their sustainability claim online. From there, journalists, investigators and citizens could constantly review and verify the company's (and govt's) sustainability claims.

It needn't be a govt operation. This could operate like LEED certification does.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
Sounds great, I'd love this. Having worked at a polling station, I can see this change paralyzing people. Some folks don't understand "fill in the bubble", let alone casting a run-off vote. Its something they'd have to learn though. This is what we should have.

Check out my "Citizens' elections security tracking tool..." (idea #400), for an online tool that could educate voters about the benefits of instant run off, and help them to bully their representative into voting for it.


Good luck though. The two parties would consider a vote for instant run off to be treason. Anything that rocks the two-party paradigm is toxic in their eyes.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
Oh yeah. I think slapping this onto OpenCongress or writing it as a social networking app (where results can be displayed for others to view), is the best bet.

Luckily, it doesn't require much text (screen area), and no secondary pages, so it'd work well as an addition to something else. Standing alone it'd never be found or used.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
tttahiti,

I think it'd be easier than one first imagines. Take a look at the CSJ tool.

This would be a listing of all news media (a zipcode entry area would heavily filter down the options.) You'd checked off the media you consume, the same way you check of "interests" when you sign up for an email account.

You could use it quickly once by clicking through your average 'consumption' and seeing your results. If you wanna get really specific, you can track your consumption over a day or week if you want. For really curious users, a "minutes" field could accompany each media option, to get your exact proportions.

For the casual curious user, it wouldn't take more than 5-10 minutes to fill out your sources, then see who owns your info.

"What magazines do I read? ..newspapers? ..TV news? ..online news?"

There's a lot of ways the data could be cut and interpreted (to illustrate quality, medium, etc.) -- ownership, portion read vs viewed (text vs moving image), Pew Research reported political bias, journalism awards and bad journalistic ethics controversies, etc.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
I think it's on the backdrop, not sure though.

I didn't vote for this. If someone someone doesn't know whitehouse.gov by now.. all they need do is google his name -- its right there beside his ".com" page and his Wikipedia entry.

Wouldn't hurt to see it elsewhere. I just don't like the idea of stamping that distracting test in front of it. It's essentially an advertisement.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
If we even did it at 50% that'd be a start. Write environmental and human/worker rights rules into the trade agreements as well. A scaled increased in the intl' min. wage, as a percentage of U.S. min wage, would ease the transition.
Trade deals that radically alter the economic landscape have not served us well -- think NAFTA and the collapse of Mexico's farms.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
Please don't clutter the site. It just makes for longer reading and less feedback .
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
Look at my idea post titled "Tool for tracking personal news/media consumption habits, and ownership of those outlets." It is in the "Uncategorized" category, idea entry #400 overall.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
I'm into this so far as educating spouces about where to find govt employment, how to write federal employment resumes, and making a website where jobs of this nature are listed/highlighted. However, any kind of preferential treatment, whether in consideration for employment or in receiving much direct assistance or education, is a bad idea. Fed employment listings can be altered to cater to these people.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
You should delete these ideas that are non-specific and not expressly "open government" ideas. It really just clutters the site and prevents people from reading, voting and commenting on well-explained specific proposals.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
Yeah, a relative of mine was in a meeting with him right after the election (maybe the inauguration actually), talking about trade and the economy. He was soliciting outside opinion, because he could already feel the bubble closing in, and wanted to make sure it didn't captivate him. No loose meetings/talking sessions w/ my relative's superiors since then though. We'll see...
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
Gotcha.
Well, I was curious b/c I posted what I consider to be a pretty reasonable, easily executed, and highly useful idea on elections security, and it has repeatedly been voted to zero.
No feedback either, so I can't tell whether the idea if the idea is poorly developed, or if it just rubs some people the wrong way. This morning I wondered if I was vaguely naive. Now I wonder if I'm vaguely paranoid. It's only had a total of 8 votes thugh. Its idea #400 "Citizens' elections security..."
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
I agree, but think it should be focused on the past century. The more distant past, of which there are no first hand witnesses to testify, has been developing its own 'commission' in the form of the recorded history that has emerged. Let's have commissions for the 60s AIM stuff and rez kappo-states that existed, and for the resource exploitation and contamination that has occurred, with reparations or land returns. Let's at least have the govt come clean on how it destroyed the Black Panthers and incited fatal infighting in the Panthers and similar african american civil rights groups, maybe set the stage for some honesty about their courier program.

A lot of this is being naturally fleshed out in the academic and internet/film/etc, and oral accounts. A consensus history is developing, and eventually the govt will have to reconcile with the public. I'm wary of any truth and reconciliation commission that invites people to a podium to cry and vent in place of their ancestors, just because we've already done a lot of that in the past 20 years. I think to a degree the Bill Cosby is right, and that we have to stop "talking" about race and start being beyond it.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
I think you're referring to the Income Tax. While you can't be jailed for failing to pay it, the IRS does use its power to destroy those who don't. Even the most vocal income tax protestors, don't advocate not paying your income taxes alone -- at the very least w/o great legal knowledge or help. An a real taxpayer protest would be more effective, but you'd need to be coordinated, prepared and heavily covered by the media.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
There should also be a way to connect similar/redundant ideas.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
Anecdotal comment --

I took a lot of Conflict Studies classes in school and the footnote to one lecture always sticks w/ me, because it confirmed a common sense suspicion. It was in reference to the fall of the Shah and how the U.S. had poured resources into monitoring the situation, but miserably failed for foresee what happened. The two-person Chinese team in Tehran, who just sat around and read newspapers, were the only ones to see the writing on the wall.

I've heard the Chinese follow an intel model that generally follows that model -- distilling commonly occurring info from a wide swath of sources, rather than investing great faith and resources in the perspective of a single corrupted/co-opted source. Who knows, the latter may lead you into a war in Iraq..
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
There are 3000 people monitoring this site for anti-two party initiatives? Are you speculating or have you heard that the two parties are actually dedicating volunteers and/or staff to influence the voting?
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
I did this kind of inadvertently -- found a program I wanted to do that was under the Americorps umbrella.

Requiring people to serve is a bad idea. Compulsory service never serves the body of participants as well as a voluntary service does.

Increasing the incentives to serve is the best idea. Deferring school loans, small scholarships, guaranteed access to affordable housing vouchers and food stamps for participants, expanded programs, etc.

Most young people are interested in some form of service, and don't mind the temporary poverty. Maintain the programs so that they learning experience and the small incentives make the experience worthwhile.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
I agree. I don't follow the 'conspiracy' theories, but I do see no reason why there shouldn't be real science done on how the buildings collapsed. There's no politics in this, its an engineering question.

If this had been the result of a natural disaster, the govt would have called for an investigation into precisely how the buildings collapsed. You'd think the engineering world would call for it as well. Its a question of understanding why, so that the structural failures can be identified and engineered against to protect future buildings.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
Its probably not as nightmarish as you'd think. RFID is going to be on EVERYTHING in the near future -- every box of cereal, every piece of mail probably, etc. Apparently RFID can be as tiny and inconspicuous as the dot on a 14 point font letter "i." Its just a question of how cheap it becomes, I have no idea what it is now.

Most manufacturers will put RFIDs in/on their products at the point of production. Its not like the govt is going to hire a fleet of people to stick RFIDs on every piece of govt property.

However, if the govt expressed that they'd like to RFID everything in the future, and created a system on paper for how it'd be utilized and the cost justified, it'd be a great boost for the RFID industry. At the very least, some real planning for RFID auditing should be written up.

It would be stupid to RFID and audit every pencil the govt buys, but for other inventory, it's smart. If you've ever worked for the military or some bureaucracy, you've seen how much stuff gets lost and needlessly thrown away, Think how much faster the GAO could operate if they could have that data updated at their will. Think how much time and money would be saved by the agencies that they audit, if they didn't have to hire people to monitor inventory or stop to reassign employees to do every time the GAO came sniffing around.

Everything being RFID'd is inevitable.
carrick.baugh 9 months ago
I wasn't referring to the tags. I meant the actual voting options -- "yes", "no" and some type of "N/A" makes more sense. There is a bunch of well meaning but useless clutter in here -- vague rants, etc.

More tags aren't a bad idea though -- Tools & Technology is pretty broad. Guess that's where the open field comes in handy.. but some secondary tags for tools & tech would make it easier to sift through
carrick.baugh 10 months ago
This would work better with RFID, vast lots of govt property could be scanned and audited much faster. Third parties could compete to provide the scanning service to drive costs down. It has the potential to be a bureaucratic nightmare, but there might be a reasonable way to do it
carrick.baugh 10 months ago
I agree to an extent, but if this were open too long and promoted too much it would be flooded with rants and other non-relevant unhelpful "ideas."
carrick.baugh 10 months ago
I presume DHS enjoys this requirement because it allows them to track the location, movement and interests of students. They can compare the 'citizenship' check list, against their 'suspect persons' list to see where people are and what they're learning -- islamic history, chemistry, engineering, anti-capitalist and "social movement" topical classes, etc.

I doubt they'd give this up.
carrick.baugh 10 months ago
Hey. There are equal yes/no votes on this idea. Just curious why.
If you're opposed, please leave some feedback.
carrick.baugh 10 months ago
It would be a good idea to require by law, that any agency that violates the IQA by providing false or fraudulent information, transmit an electronic record of their retraction to the Library of Congress, or some government (maybe just data.gov) or private organization, that can appropriately file and publish it.

This way, we will have a running tally of which agencies produce the most false and retracted statements. It'd be great for exposing incompetence or deception in govt, and embarrassing those agencies into cleaning up their act. At the very least, it will inform citizens, journalists and academics about how seriously they should take the word of certain agencies... Hopefully, it will highlight for the Executive, which agencies need to be reviewed and/or re-staffed.
carrick.baugh 10 months ago
That site exists. In fact, there are a few of them. OpenCongress.org and govtrack.us

I think those sites are expanding to include state and local government soon. Currently they only cover Congress.