Ignorance among the governing class
Really interesting debate starting at the Washington Post and Atlantic web sites. It revolves around lawmakers who apparently don’t know what they’re legislating.
In Virginia, the state legislators who wanted to determine the age of a fetus before an abortion had no idea their bill required an invasive ultrasound or what this procedure entailed. In fact, it is the insertion of a wand into a woman’s vagina. And it serves no medically required purpose.
The bill was supported by a majority of law makers, who – as noted above – did not know what their legislation meant in the real world.
After news reports and segments on Saturday Night Live, Rachel Maddow and the Daily Show, public outrage started to build. Now, the state legislature is revising their bill.
A similar thing happened with SOPA/PIPA, federal bills that would have altered the way everyone uses the Internet. And several members of Congress – from both major parties – smiled in front of cameras and microphones as they acknowledged they had no idea how the Internet worked. Which means, of course, they had no idea what effect their legislation would have.
The Atlantic calls it “official recklessness”
Local lawmakers have spent a great deal of time and effort promoting measures they either don’t fully understand or can’t reasonably believe are constitutional.
Ignorance of the law may be no legal defense to you and me, but ignorance of the law among those who are passing the law surely is the definition of bad governance.
Here’s the WaPo story and here’s the Atlantic‘s.
But here’s my question:
In this election year, how do we find out if candidates have the necessary knowledge – or at least a baseline level of curiosity – to govern appropriately?
What are your ideas?
Jonathan writes: “…a baseline level of curiosity.” That’ll be the day. Among contemporary politicians who must show they have all the answers, showing curiosity would be anathema — a sign of weakness; not resolute, etc, ad infinitum. It’s the business of artists and scientists, not politicians, to show curiosity. After all, one might discover the truth if one is seeking it.
From the WaPO article: “Bob McDonnell’s political future is not enhanced by vaginal ultrasound legislation,” said Stephen Farnsworth, a professor…
Could that be a nod, perhaps unintentional, to the fact our politicians are in perpetual campaign mode?
Farnsworth might not have been thinking along these lines, but I think a profound contemporary problem with our system is this need to respond in a way that appeals to the base, as opposed to enlightening the base. Politicians are also supposed to be leaders, and part of leading is to ensure the “base” (how tired I am of that term) has good information and to put that need ahead of one’s own personal ambition.
All politicians need trustworthy advisers. This has been true throughout history. Maybe state legislators cannot afford them. No individual has a broad enough knowledge to independently evaluate every bit of committee testimony. Did these legislators not have advice, or did they choose to ignore it?
It was Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the house who said, “we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it.” Isn’t that the point? We can’t think of everything. So if corrections are desired, pass another bill or as in this case, it can be changed before initial passage. There is value in the deliberative nature of the legislatures but when commentary is blocked such as when “rules” prohibit discussion by other viewpoints or limit input the process fails.
none of this suprises me at all.
they have one skill only, getting us to elect them.
Maybe if you want to run for office, you should be required to take a civil service exam and an IQ test, plus a test on American and World History.
But no! Any idiot can run.
The real problem in law making is that the lawmakers are not the real makers of the laws. Corporations and obscenely wealthy individuals hire lobbyists to conceive/write most of the laws and provide them to our so called lawmakers and their entourage of advisers.
Why is the law of the land so complex? Because obscenely wealthy patrons insist that tax law, business/corporate law, all laws be written to give them special privileges to enable them to increase and keep the vast majority of their wealth and to hell with the rest of us. How large is the US tax code and regulations any guesses? From http://isaacbrocksociety.com/2012/02/12/what-is-the-real-size-of-the-u-s-federal-tax-code/ According to the US Government Printing Office, it’s 13,458 pages in total. The full text of Title 26 of the United States Code (the part written by Congress) is a mere 3,387 printed pages, bringing the adjusted gross page count to 16,845. As an aside the average king James bible is about 1200 pages. Anyone think 17 thousand pages of tax code are needed to ensure that we 99%ers pay our fair share of taxes? Me neither. Those 17 thousand pages are to ensure that the obscenely wealthy such as Romney, Gates, the Kochs, the Waltons, GE, …. pay substantially less than their fair share.
You are probably saying GE; what the hell is GE doing in that list? Since 1819 the US Supreme Court has held that corporations are entitled to many of the rights of a citizen of the US with revisits to the initial decision from time to time to enhance the rights of said corporate interests such as:
The right to pollute, GM in St Lawrence River, GE in the Hudson River.
When caught polluting the right to fight clean up costs in court for eons while the peons suffer debilitated, shortened lives as a result of the pollution and eventually those peons not directly involved get to pay to clean up the messes while the courts dither on.