{"id":3633,"date":"2011-01-24T07:55:18","date_gmt":"2011-01-24T12:55:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=3633"},"modified":"2011-01-24T18:30:56","modified_gmt":"2011-01-24T23:30:56","slug":"ny-times-jumps-on-the-in-box-house-reform-bandwagon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2011\/01\/24\/ny-times-jumps-on-the-in-box-house-reform-bandwagon\/","title":{"rendered":"NY Times jumps on the In Box House reform bandwagon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In Box readers have been sending me emails this morning pointing to a new commentary in the New York Times called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/01\/24\/opinion\/24conley.html?_r=1&amp;ref=opinion\">Build A Bigger House<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[N]ow is a good time to consider a similarly daunting challenge to  democratic representation in the House: its size. It\u2019s been far too long  since the House expanded to keep up with population growth and, as a  result, it has lost touch with the public and been overtaken by special  interests.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In November and again last month, I published a commentary here called <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/12\/21\/yes-we-need-a-bigger-house\/\">Yes, we need a bigger House<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Congressmen (and, later, congresswomen) were supposed to know their   communities and their constituents intimately.\u00a0 They were meant to be   people you saw around town, in church, and at the market.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The authors of the Times piece, Dalton Conley and Jacqueline  Stevens, make an argument that is sharper and more convincing than mine.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>More districts would likewise mean more precision in distributing them  equitably, especially in low-population states. Today the lone Wyoming  representative covers about 500,000 people, while her lone counterpart  in Delaware reports to 900,000.<\/p>\n<p>The increase would also mean more elected officials working on the  country\u2019s business, reducing the reliance on unaccountable staffers.  Most of the House\u2019s work is through committees, overseeing and checking  government agencies.<\/p>\n<p>With more people in Congress, House committee members could see to this  critical business themselves \u2014 and therefore be more influential, since a  phone call from an actual member is a lot more effective than a request  from the committee staff.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Box readers have been sending me emails this morning pointing to a new commentary [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3633"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3633\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}