I just moved to Boulder, Colorado, and decided to check on my new Senators and Representative. What do I see on the news section of Representative Mark Udall’s site?
While I respect NASA Administrator Griffin’s right to express his personal views on global warming, I don’t agree with him. I think climate change and its impacts cannot be ignored. In that regard, NASA has a vital role to play in gathering the data and supporting the research that will provide information needed by policymakers. Unfortunately, however, the current Administration has not given NASA’s Earth Science program a high enough priority. I think that needs to change.
(The back story is here.)
Wow. A Representative that actually represents me? And one that takes a stand, the right stand, and is clear and unequivocal about it?
Golly.
Then, I looked at my Senators’ pages. Hmph. Neither says much of anything, to be honest (in fact, I had not even heard of either of them before). One of them, Wayne Allard, seems to go out of his way not to say anything. I looked at his stem cell page, where he talks about the use of adult stem cells, but only mentions embryonic stem cells in passing. If you read between the lines it’s clear he’s against it (he’s a Republican from CO, duh), but he doesn’t actually say what he stands for. The other Senator, Democrat Ken Salazar, doesn’t seem to have a list of issues with his stance, just press releases.
Why can’t politicians hire web designers who can make it easy to, y’know, use their websites?
And you know what else is funny? I have looked at many, many politicians’ sites, and very few — if any — actually say what party they belong to. This is perhaps the most basic thing they can state, and it’s nowhere to be seen. Weird.
Well, goading people into action is something I like to do on occasion. I’ll investigate these guys more and see what’s what. Which leaves me with one final thought here: US citizens, when was the last time you looked into your own reps?
June 3rd, 2007 at 9:24 pm
I keep tabs on Rosa DeLauro, and am on her office’s mailing list. It’s almost impossible not to hear about Joe Lieberman or Chris Dodd, even if you don’t live in Connecticut.
In preparation for my move this summer I’ve been checking in on Representative Jefferson and Senators Landrieu and Vitter. It doesn’t look so great, but at least I know.
And knowing is half the battle.
June 3rd, 2007 at 9:34 pm
I get a weekly newsletter from my House rep, Michael Capuano (D-MA). He is totally awesome. I used to write in to him all the time, but after I signed up for the newsletter I realised that he supports pretty much everything I would write into him about before I even write into it. Which is pretty fantastic, and makes me feel pretty damned good about his representing me in Congress.
My Senator is John Kerry. The less said about him the better.
June 3rd, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Well, actually, it’s not quite accurate to say that he’s “my” Senator. I’ve never voted for him. Not even in 2004. He certainly doesn’t represent my position on the vast majority of issues. The best possible thing I can say about Kerry as a Senator is that he’s not Joe Lieberman.
June 3rd, 2007 at 10:32 pm
During the 2006 mid-term campaign, the leftist site Crooks and Liars pointed out that a lot of prominent Republicans somehow forgot to put their party affiliation on their websites.
The cynical observer might consider this a sign that affiliation with The Party of Bush might be something of an Albatross Around the Neck.
As to why Democrats might be so “forgetful”, maybe it’s a ploy to play to both conservative and liberal voters. After all, the very definition of “politician” is “suck-up”!
June 3rd, 2007 at 11:40 pm
Fiscally conservative astrophysics major at Berkeley.
Need I say more? I don’t know if theres a politician alive who represents me!
June 4th, 2007 at 12:03 am
I would suggest that if you can’t find out what a politician stands for from their website, then their website is working perfectly well – at least from the politician’s point of view
The last thing a politician wants a voter to know is what they believe, so long as the voter is left with the view that they believe what ever it is you want them to believe!
June 4th, 2007 at 12:16 am
Looks like he’s taking his dad’s views, one of my favorite ‘old’ politicians Morris Udall (from AZ.. my current residence), and his uncle Stewart Udall. I THOUGHT the name sounded familiar.
J/P=?
June 4th, 2007 at 1:49 am
Politicians, just another name for lazy dead beats,,,at least for most of them. Every once in a while we get someone with cahones, but it’s becoming increasingly rare. Harry Trueman wouldn’t stand a chance in todays political market place, and Ab Lincoln would be just another hairy, homely wanna be. Ah well, thus goeth the Republic, slipping and sliding down the entropy slope.
Gary 7
June 4th, 2007 at 2:54 am
NASA has definitely lost its way. I am hearing about layoffs at Goddard Space Flight Center. These talented people were working on earth science projects. Many have gone to NOAA.
June 4th, 2007 at 4:24 am
Lucky you, here in Longmont we have Marily Musgrave to represent us. Sigh.
June 4th, 2007 at 6:25 am
I bet the party affilation not being listed is due to goverment issued websites can not be used for political party promotion. Remember email-gate with party email going out on government email? Just a guess
June 4th, 2007 at 6:42 am
Ah, Brett, that’s a good guess! You may be right. But what a silly rule that would be.
Writerdd, my sympathies.
June 4th, 2007 at 7:04 am
I don’t know BA – I’d like to see less party identification and more talking about the issues. What incorrect assumptions would you make about a congressperson when you found out their party affiliation? How many Republicans support civil liberties and how many Democrats support fiscal responsibility (to use two common stereotypes)? More than we might think.
Do we really need political parties anymore? A candidate’s website can potentially list every possible issue and their stance on it, as well as providing contact information when your favorite issue isn’t listed. We don’t need to rely on delegates to choose candidates for our party any more. We have the ability to find the candidate that best matches our values – and whether that candidate is running on the Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, Wiccan, whatever ticket loses quite a bit of its meaning.
We have hundreds of TV channels where once we had 3. Why do we still have only 2 political parties?
June 4th, 2007 at 7:06 am
Allard is a hack, good news is that he’s retiring in 08 so we have a shot at getting some good, fresh blood in there.
I think Salazar, being a freshman, treads lightly. While he’s not amazing, the alternative was Pete Coors.
June 4th, 2007 at 7:10 am
I’m always interested to hear people complain about their elected representatives. I think mine are great – but I’m not without complaints:
I come from Chicago, where it mattered who represented you in the US Congress – and the state legislature, and the city council, and who your precinct captain was, and they “didn’t want nobody nobody sent”.
I’m now in Washington DC where that’s all still important I guess, but it doesn’t really count since we have no vote in the US Congress, and we have no state legislature or governor.
Thank goodness we still have a mayor and city council. Prior to the last election, I asked people I knew two questions – who they thought they wanted to be elected, and how they would feel if some of the other strong candidates won instead. Almost universally the answer was that they weren’t so much against the other candidates as they were for their favorite – the city wouldn’t be ruined one way or the other. It isn’t about red or blue here, it’s the specific shades that get people excited here.
Too bad the ultimate control still lies with the US Congress. It wasn’t too long ago that your representatives stepped in and prevented us from even counting votes cast in a non-binding referendum because they decided the results would be irrelevant. Has that happened lately in Colorado, or Arizona, or Louisiana? (Or Guam, the US Virgin Islands, or Puerto Rico?)
That means we currently need to rely on your representatives to allow us to fix incompetent leadership of our public schools, or to let us to consider asking our daily immigrant workforce from Maryland and Virginia to help pay for the roads they use (let alone asking our convention visitors and pleasure tourists to do so).
Folks who pay even more attention to this would have real numbers to put forth, but from what I remember, a large majority of people in the US don’t know that DC is in a unique situation in this regard. It leaves me wondering if the situation is by design or simple ignorance. Since we abhor ignorance, I just feel the need to mind or remind people that even if they strongly disagree with their current representatives, they could still have it worse.
Hey – how did that soap box get under my feet? Sorry about that. I don’t mean to hijack this discussion – there probably isn’t much more to say here about the topic anyway.
June 4th, 2007 at 7:24 am
A good friend of mine traveled up to Boulder every weekend to work for Udall’s campaign even though she couldn’t vote for him. I was glad to see he won.
June 4th, 2007 at 8:00 am
political party shoudln’t mater as long as the politician stands for what’s right.
I’ve never liked party lines.
June 4th, 2007 at 8:08 am
John W & Gary A have hit the nail on the head, especially with the entropy comment. Although it’s good to hear about the rare individuals in government who “get it”, the whole political process in the U.S. has become so mentally ill & counter-productive that the thought of supporting anyone’s political ambitions leaves me with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
At this point, voting has become the equivalent of handing out sterile needles to junkies.
June 4th, 2007 at 8:26 am
Having Musgrave as a rep isn’t nearly as bad as having James Inhofe as a senator while I was in Oklahoma (earning my undergrad in meteorology, coincidently).
June 4th, 2007 at 8:38 am
I, for one, wish for some sort of Party-less system.
>>> so we have a shot at getting some good, fresh blood in there.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Nice one. Oh, wait, you were serious…
>>> Wiccan (Party)
Great. :-\ We’d have embryonic stem cell research, but a national health care system based exclusively on herbal remedies and chanting over crystals.
June 4th, 2007 at 8:42 am
Yup DSalovesh, that has bugged me for years. DC should either be part of another state, or it should have a special status to allow its people to be represented in the congress. The current situation is unpalatable.
But my opinion on this doesn’t count, cause I’m Canadian:P.
June 4th, 2007 at 9:47 am
I actually look at the following page fairly regularly to see how my representative is voting:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2007/index.asp
So far, Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) has represented me and my views without complaint. But I hadn’t looked at this page in a while, so I checked it today. Shock! The house passed the “Chiropractic Care Available to All Veterans Act” by a unanimous vote! How did this get by me? Why didn’t I read about it in James Randi’s SWIFT?
The only representative to vote against this bill? Pete Stark, the highest level nontheistic elected official according to secular.org.
J. D.
June 4th, 2007 at 11:18 am
>>> But my opinion on this doesn’t count, cause I’m Canadian:P.
Nonsense.
No one lives in Canada.
June 4th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
I don’t recognise my reps as being my reps – I really don’t care for them. However… all is not lost in West Virginia. We still have Senator Byrd, who has the guts (and seniority) to stand up for his beliefs – which mostly coincide with mine. And he’s been against the war from the start.
June 5th, 2007 at 6:56 am
Looking into Colorado politics can be depressing. It has been a conservative state for as long as I can remember. Hopefully that is changing a bit. But now days it seems that neither candidate is worthy to be in office.
June 5th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
I can no longer stand to check my rep’s website. I’m in right wing hell in Huntington Beach, CA and my so-called rep is Dana Rohrabacher, and he is Bush.
Totally Bush.
June 6th, 2007 at 5:31 am
You can sign up at Congress.org to have them email to you every week what bills came up and how your Congresscritters voted on them. You can also easily write them there.
June 6th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Growing up in Denver, there is a reason why Boulder is referred to as “25 square miles surrounded by reality.”
Mr. Plaitt’s speaking about how wonderful it is and how it represents his view is explains the deterioration of this once very good web site, as well as the above nutbar posts.
June 7th, 2007 at 10:49 am
Official sites are supposed to be non-political. For the most part, unless you dig into press releases, they aren’t going to discuss their party on official websites. Campaign websites, on the other hand, are very political and will shout their party identification in your ear.
Hope that helps.