Two steps forward, a half step back

Comparatively speaking, the White Hats had a good day today, finally;

1. the House floor will be video cast, and
2. interim committee meetings will be audio taped, and
3. our Representatives voting records will be available online.

The Black Hats had a pretty damn good day too.

They managed to get the legislation passed with the proviso that no archive will be created; making webcasting nearly pointless. And, they managed to keep video cameras out of interim committee meetings.

The Black Hats are dragging their feet in establishing any system under which they can be held honestly accountable to meaningful standards of conduct and competence. They will water-down webcasting and every other effort to shine sunlight on their character and competence.


The White Hats weren't able to stop them.

They reasoned that pushing for the whole package could cost them no bill at all.

For a quarter of a million dollars, we could have legislative web casting that would be a model for legislatures everywhere.


The Black Hats claim no money, no expertise, and no need. They are still worried that cameras will catch them doing something they shouldn't be doing.

Well duh.



House Speaker Ben Lujan has reason to be particularly pleased with the fact that committee meetings aren't archived. If they were, there would be video on the internet showing Lujan bullying two women who had the audacity to use their hand held camera without first kissing his ring.

If that videotape were available, Lujan would have no choice except to apologize for his condescending treatment of those two ladies. As is is, he can simply pretend that it never happened.


However hard it was to going to be, to get searchable archiving, it got harder today. It got harder to get cameras into interim committee meetings.

It will get harder tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that.

Any day that a good ol' boy doesn't actually loose, he wins.

There is no good and ethical reason to not do webcasting right. And there is no better time than right now.


"The right time, to do the right thing, is always, right now". unk




photos Mark Bralley