A Normalized Version of Truth
I am, on today this day of rest, after watching the 1978 BBC documentary on Hunter S. Thompson, and reading a few chapters from Voltaire’s Bastards, inexplicably drawn towards open government projects. Vote-Smart.org, Govtrack, Hacking Congress, these sorts of things. Perhaps it is the contrarian nature of these my two influences—HSTs fuming about how Nixon represents the culmination of everything wrong with the American character, and Saul’s well-formulated excoriation of those who’ve perpetrated what Kevin would call “bureaucracide” throughout history—causing me to suffer a pique of rebellious outrage. I don’t care; it feels warm and righteous.
Canada, from what I can tell, does not yet have such a system. The LEGISINFO database is a start, as are the Federal Database of Public Servants, Elections Canada Online, and the Provincial and Territorial governments page. To their credit, the folks at GovCo have done an admirable job with their system. I have not been stymied in my search for specific pieces of legislation, or committee information, or meeting minutes, or what-have-you, though information about Senators’ voting history would be nice. I crave RDF and its associated ontological madness, and I yearn to mash normalized data into pointed commentaries.
Though my aims are pure, I cannot deny that on a deeper level my motivation is to impugn politicians both for sport and for spectacle. By the very act of working myself into a churning froth of anti-politcian sentiment, my desire to see the collective efforts these perverts (to borrow an HSTism) put together in one place is at an all-time high, even if they don’t amount to much. My stance on politicians must remain nonpartisan: distrust them all.
So off I go, wading through specs and tutorials, legislatures and handbooks, hoping to affirm that such a system is truly worth creating. After all, what good is a free government if all its secrets remain in the hands of politicians?
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(4 comments)
The problem with Canada is that those interested in all things political are more inclined to provide senseless editorial drivel rather than meaningful political engagement. The sooner Nick Taylor creates a Canadian directory; the sooner democracy will be saved. Think of the accolades!
On a side note, I love the booklog… and your recent fetish for all things Miller. Being the worm you are, I’m sure you’ve already covered Tropic of Cancer. I remember reading it back in those heady days of second year and loving it in a ‘Hank’s Beanfield’ sort of way.
nick check the wiki version of the EU constitution:
http://betageek.co.uk/eu/en/
kinda a cool idea. there’s a bit of my discussion about it with andre of sennosen if you are interested:
here
Hugh — I’m not quite clear on what this project is supposed to be. An amendable version of the EU constitution? A blogger-friendly version with permalinks and comments? What is the stated purpose? There doesn’t seem to be much backstory on it. I question the sanity of adding a wide-open “comments” section to a constitutional document when the flamewars are sure to be incendiary but perhaps I’m missing something.
yeah actually it’s fucking crazy! totally bananas! but you gotta love it anyway, a wiki version of the EU constitution, the long dreamed-of participatory anarchy brought to butt heads with a nightmare of bureaucratic european legislative documentation … still, what if citizens always fought it out on a wiki?? maybe for a consitution its crazy but what about city zoning laws? or maybe a park design? I don’t know – it’s probably totally nuts, but it’s cool anyway.