When party X acts wrongly, it hands a win to party Y.
Here, the Arizona GOP is handing Arizona Democrats an easy moral victory.
When you no longer support something as essential as open records, you’ve sunk to despotism. Open records should generally be like a ratchet: once clicked, you can’t go back.
Who will watch the watchers? This should reiterate to everyone that the real enemy is not an R or a D but power at any cost and the money that enables it.
From the very beginning of the article this resulted from “new rules adopted by majority Republicans over vigorous opposition from minority Democrats.”
Which is not to exempt Democrats from any due criticism, but this is in fact a problem from only one side of the aisle.
Is it, or is the minority of Democrats only not doing it because the Republicans are, but they would be happy to do it if they were a majority - and the minority Republicans would scream about how bad it was.
I wish the above cynicism wasn't well warranted in many cases.
I think we're coming up on and partially into a serious issue here though - when the partisanship gets to a certain point "X acts wrongly" is no longer accepted as fact or viewed important by the X voters. At a certain point "X acts wrongly" is viewed (either by the voters or by partisan media) as so inconsequential compared to the "evils" of Y that X remains the correct choice.
There is always some level of this - that's perfectly natural, in our minds a lot of things go into decisions. However, we've reached the point where corruption, embracing antivax, and pursuing underage partners - all amongst a plethora of other examples... those are no longer ills strong enough to lower X below the level of Y in the eyes of a very significant portion of the electorship.
> At a certain point "X acts wrongly" is viewed (either by the voters or by partisan media) as so inconsequential compared to the "evils" of Y that X remains the correct choice.
Surely that can be a valid conclusion of a reasonable person though, right? Party X can just actually be better than Party Y and that can still be true when Party X does some bad things. In my view, this doesn't become problematic partisanship until a significant chunk of value someone is getting from their party comes from their own sense of identity as a supporter of that party, because that sense of identity has nothing to do with the policies or other actions of the party in question: it's by definition completely divorced from any serious political estimation of the virtues and ills of a party.
I completely agree with you about it being a valid conclusion from a reasonable person. I think we all do that to some extent - we're always softer on "our team"... but it's also quite rational to look at a minor corruption scandal and feel it's outweighed by a politician's view on some highly sensitive topic like reproductive rights.
When someone in party X does bad thing it is okay to party X, while party Y screams about it. Then later someone in party Y does the same thing and it is okay with party Y, while party X screams.
I would still make a distinction between being more personally forgiving or patient with someone who's part of your group and actually thinking that the same immortal act is acceptable from someone in your group and unacceptable from someone in a competing group or thinking the law ought to treat people differently depending on their political party.
> Here, the Arizona GOP is handing the Arizona Democrats an easy moral victory.
You're assuming morals play any role in the modern world of extreme partisan politics. If the last 6 years has proven anything, it's that partisan affiliation is more powerful than morals or good governance for at least 40% of the US population.
I think the GOP hardline is about 35% of the population - those are voters politicians could eat babies in front of without losing their votes. I think politics is pretty symmetrical (but not fully) so I think it's pretty safe to bump your estimate up to 60% of the US population... depending on how cynical you are I don't think 80% is out of the question.
People who don't just look at D or R on a ballot are in the minority of American voters.
No, it is more like 23+/-5% of population is hard line Democrat, 23+/-5% of the population is hard line Republican, people in both of those groups will vote the party no matter what, "politicians could eat babies in front of without losing their votes" from either camp
54% of the population are combination of Independents or Single Issue Voters. That is what sets the outcome of national elections
If moral victories could actually turn into political victories, this country would have purged the entirety of one party, and most of the other party decades ago.
Instead, winning is seen as more important than doing the right thing, and, well, we get the exact consequence of those values.
> Here, the Arizona GOP is handing Arizona Democrats an easy moral victory.
Right, and just like with the Georgia voting laws, it doesn't matter that a bunch of other states already have similar laws and/or the new law is a return to the status quo - it only matters when it's the "other side" that does it.
Now, that's what motivates people to vote, apparently.
I've worked with legislators in a variety of capacities. In my view, this is a good thing. In order to compromise, politicians need to be able to speak freely with one-another and with the public about matters that may not on their face be terribly politic. I attribute a great deal of the current polarization to the fact that politicians cannot have private conversations. Personally, I would favor more exemptions. The open government/pure democracy types hammer on their right to know everything their elected representatives are doing, but I don't see it that way. I send them to get the best outcomes they can for their constituents. I'll judge them on the end result and either send them back, or send somebody else. But the idea that I need to see all their texts and emails is, in my view, ridiculous. Worse, it means nobody can take nuanced/compromising positions. And that's bad for America.
Free private speech is naturally protected. Beyond that, if a legislature is going to publicly discuss anything, it should be part of a record visible to all voters. What you’re saying is that voters can’t handle politicians saying certain things that are necessary. Tough conversations are part of the world we live in. This is a natural constraint on politics.
The idea that you or anyone judges outcomes is also a tough one to argue. Results in politics are complex to the point of being opaque. If you figure out a way to judge politicians accurately, do tell.
Yes but the problem is that idealistic demagogues start to become preferred by the voters over people that are able to effectively create change, and suddenly getting things done is less effective than roasting your opponent or saying the right things.
As long as the votes are still public we know what the legislator ultimately did, which in my mind is much for valuable than listening to the bluster they said.
There might be a reason for this legislation in particular and privacy in government communications in general, but the fact that legislators might lack the courage to compromise without it isn't one of them. You mention "open government types" in the pejorative - which strikes me as very odd indeed. I wonder what is the /opposite/ of that in your view?
Their job is to, in the most literal sense possible, create public documents that govern. There isn't a world where I see it as a positive that legislators can further bury their actions and communications behind veils of secrecy while the government has the utmost access to our communications.
> I attribute a great deal of the current polarization to the fact that politicians cannot have private conversations.
This really does not make any sense. You seem to be arguing for less polarized discourse, but I cannot see how that is accomplished by hiding discourse. By hiding it, you create little pockets of extremism, not to mention opening up the doors for illegal and traitorous behavior.
Politicians can speak freely right now. What they want to do is further game the system, and I'm not sure how you can interpret these actions as otherwise.
> I'll judge them on the end result
You can already do that, and in Arizona, the end results don't look so good. Arizona, despite having a lot of potential and having beautiful natural landscape, seems to be consistently listed as one of the worst states to live in. Even the mere fact of Arizona being livable in the coming century is debatable due to climate change.
I imagine what they mean is that any time a politician speaks, they must adjust what they say to agree with core voter demographic if they want re-election. Perhaps if they spoke privately they could concede on certain topics and reach a middle ground, then plan a way for each to explain the compromise to their voters.
In a public forum people would likely view the compromise as one or both politicians "losing" and a mixture of ego and fear of not getting re-elected would prevent either party from giving ground and taking more measured approach.
There are similar exemptions in other states. Illinois has a very toothy FOIA law (5 day deadline for responses, few exemptions, and fee recovery for court cases, s much so that you can sometimes get a FOIA suit done on contingency). But legislative deliberation is exempt. (I'm in the middle of a FOIA controversy in Illinois about this issue.)
The WA legislature is, unfortunately, trying something similar - again: https://archive.is/jY1ba
> When Washington legislators tried to exempt themselves from the Public Records Act nearly five years ago, thousands of Washingtonians angrily emailed or phoned Gov. Jay Inslee’s office. Inslee vetoed the measure. We considered SB 6617 a dead letter. Forever.
> But now the Washington Legislature is asserting that legislators have a previously unknown personal privilege to withhold from public disclosure the documents they use in their work for the people.
A sibbling comment pointed out that deliberative process is widely abused and yes, absolutely it is. Almost sued the IL Senate a bunch of years back when they tried to argue that email metadata was exempt under legislative deliberation. They conceded before it got there, but not before sending us a dense letter on some.. remarkably fancy.. paper telling that was basically them airing their grievances about having to give the metadata.
If you haven't seen, alderfolk in Chicago are in a weird place as well. Since aldermanic offices aren't gov offices, records within those offices are exempt. It's gotten down to just a few in the past few years, but there were a tonnn of alderfolk whose official city email account were private domains, aol, msn, etc. The PAC has been very weak-handed in pushing against aldermanic office issues.
Similar happened with the mayor's office trying to argue that a pro bono consultant's emails were exempt because they were sent from her private account. Sued and won on that, but that's all to say.. there's still work to do.
Legislation is all about compromise (or at least it was, back when legislators worked). There's a lot of give and take, of people modifying positions they didn't hold all that tightly in order to gain on the positions that they really care about. That means that people say one thing on day 1, say something differently on day 5, and vote still a third way on day 10.
If you're going to "expose" all of that, you can make every one of them look like a hypocrite with zero principles. In many cases that may be true, but you can make it look far worse than it is. And if you do that, then nobody can work with any give and take, for fear that the press will destroy them.
As I said, I think that's the steelman. That doesn't necessarily mean that I believe it...
The executive branch needs its records accessible, at least to the legislature, so that the legislature can see what it's doing. FOIA laws are an extension of this concept to the general public. They are the ones carrying the stick, and they need visibility.
When we negotiate treaties, private conversations between leaders are useful and productive. The same goes when negotiating laws. Voters already have the most important visibility into legislative output: the laws that get passed and how their representative voted.
> When we negotiate treaties, private conversations between leaders are useful and productive.
For the most part these aren't truly "private", they become part of the public record but at a classification level that may or may not permit immediate or easy access.
This is very sharp contrast to what's being discussed in this article which is the deliberate exclusion of communications from the public record and their destruction.
LOL-- did you forget sarcasm tags? Their JOB is to represent the PUBLIC. Ensuring that the public can go back and look at how decisions were arrived at is critical.
Yes, clearly they would have "operated better" at trying to subvert the will of Arizona voters by abetting Trump's failed coup attempt. If only they didn't have to worry about their communications being read later, maybe they could have really let loose!
> having their communications publicly accessible undermines legislator's ability to do their job.
I find this argument dubious in general (with very limited exceptions for safety/security which should be clearly marked). Can you provide specific examples?
A legislator's job is specifically to serve the public. Hiding their communications from the public undermines public trust.
Actually I've thought about this a lot, and I can see where things are coming from.
An important part of representing a pluralistic society is compromise, if everyone can criticize every move a politician makes it then to populist and idealistic politicians getting elected rather than moderate politicians that can achieve things.
I think we can see an example of this happening today where demoguages are making headway over more rational actors.
Forcing legislators' communication to be public will just push them to hide more in ways that makes it harder to find and track. It will only punish honest legislators while doing nothing to stop dishonest legislators. It's exactly the same incentive scenario as guns, drugs, and regulations.
The legislators in question are public legislators. I think there's a reasonably strong argument to be made that being transparent to the public is a large part of their job.
(Nothing about this seems to indicate that it's meant to protect correspondence between legislators and their friends or family. It seems aimed primarily at obscuring political correspondence.)
Because we generally hold elected officials (and public servants, more generally) to a higher standard of behavior.
Apply the Nixon test: should the public have been given access to the tapes that conclusively established Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate break-in? Most people think yes, despite them being “just” conversations.
What if Nixon hadn't recorded his conversations at all though? What if spies had wiretapped his office and recorded it?
Those are important nuances to consider as well and different people will change their answer with those changes even though all 3 cases we have potential access to his conversations.
Every single part of this is wrong: Anthony Weiner isn’t in office, has not been in office in over a decade, and literally went to prison for his crimes. He’s a convicted sex offender and decidedly a private citizen.
It is remarkable how many HN readers have strong opinions, strongly held about how to do a job that they haven't done, nor ever seen done.
The job of a legislator is famously sausage-making: something that's gross even if the final product is acceptable. If it was done the way an outsider demanded it be done, it wouldn't be done at all.
There's legitimate disagreement on whether legislators' communications are viable public records. But I'd think that disagreement would be a lot more meaningful if it were held among people who had at least some idea what the job entailed.
I can revert it to the more anodyne original ('Legislature changes rules for retaining correspondence'), but I thought he first line of the article better summarized the contested nature of the change.
It depends on whether you want to perfectly represent the article or make the threads less of a debacle. I'd dial the title way back if you care more about the latter.
I don't sign in to my work email on my devices so I can tell my employer with a straight face that my device isn't their device. If legislators are really worried about their personal communications being leaked, they should keep those separate from their work communications.
> One of the most well-known of those efforts was a series of emails that Virginia Thomas, wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a supporter of former President Donald Trump, sent to a host of state Republican House and Senate members just days after Biden won the election. She urged members to throw out Biden's delegates to the Electoral College and replace them with a GOP slate.
This is serious stuff and the "solution" in this case is to prevent people from getting the emails via FOIA?
Isn't the entire point of the FOIA to allow for more transparency in government?
Transparency needs to be balanced with the need for some conversations to be easy and transident. If you can get my email, that means i have to spend several days writing them - following the full process I learned in 3rd grade: rough draft, review, final draft... These have to be on different days (just look at anything I write here - they often look great when I write them, but a day latter I see all the stupid mistakes in grammar and spelling). What I didn't learn in 3rd grade but is required is a separate lawyer to review everything as well.
The above process needs to apply even for the simple "are you free for lunch today".
Or instead I can just quit using email and drop back to phone calls (which few people ever record), or face to face conversations - which again are never recorded. Just because we can save emails forever doesn't mean we should.
Far-right "conservative" activists use work phones to plot to overthrow government. They fail, and get caught.
Rational solution: investigate, and proceed with normal criminal process if appropriate, to deter future such behavior.
Far-right "conservative" solution: ban long-term retention of communications data so that future far-right attempts to overthrow the government can't be prosecuted.
86 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 157 ms ] threadI just want an open government, man. Why is that too much to ask?
Because corrupt people want to be corrupt.
Here, the Arizona GOP is handing Arizona Democrats an easy moral victory.
When you no longer support something as essential as open records, you’ve sunk to despotism. Open records should generally be like a ratchet: once clicked, you can’t go back.
Which is not to exempt Democrats from any due criticism, but this is in fact a problem from only one side of the aisle.
I wish the above cynicism wasn't well warranted in many cases.
There is always some level of this - that's perfectly natural, in our minds a lot of things go into decisions. However, we've reached the point where corruption, embracing antivax, and pursuing underage partners - all amongst a plethora of other examples... those are no longer ills strong enough to lower X below the level of Y in the eyes of a very significant portion of the electorship.
Surely that can be a valid conclusion of a reasonable person though, right? Party X can just actually be better than Party Y and that can still be true when Party X does some bad things. In my view, this doesn't become problematic partisanship until a significant chunk of value someone is getting from their party comes from their own sense of identity as a supporter of that party, because that sense of identity has nothing to do with the policies or other actions of the party in question: it's by definition completely divorced from any serious political estimation of the virtues and ills of a party.
The issue is that we're taking it to extremes.
You're assuming morals play any role in the modern world of extreme partisan politics. If the last 6 years has proven anything, it's that partisan affiliation is more powerful than morals or good governance for at least 40% of the US population.
I think the GOP hardline is about 35% of the population - those are voters politicians could eat babies in front of without losing their votes. I think politics is pretty symmetrical (but not fully) so I think it's pretty safe to bump your estimate up to 60% of the US population... depending on how cynical you are I don't think 80% is out of the question.
People who don't just look at D or R on a ballot are in the minority of American voters.
54% of the population are combination of Independents or Single Issue Voters. That is what sets the outcome of national elections
Instead, winning is seen as more important than doing the right thing, and, well, we get the exact consequence of those values.
Right, and just like with the Georgia voting laws, it doesn't matter that a bunch of other states already have similar laws and/or the new law is a return to the status quo - it only matters when it's the "other side" that does it.
Now, that's what motivates people to vote, apparently.
Seriously?
Results are rarely black or white and less transparency makes it easier to create fake narratives.
The idea that you or anyone judges outcomes is also a tough one to argue. Results in politics are complex to the point of being opaque. If you figure out a way to judge politicians accurately, do tell.
As long as the votes are still public we know what the legislator ultimately did, which in my mind is much for valuable than listening to the bluster they said.
So your argument basically boil down to: the end justifies the means. Do I understand correctly?
> I attribute a great deal of the current polarization to the fact that politicians cannot have private conversations.
This really does not make any sense. You seem to be arguing for less polarized discourse, but I cannot see how that is accomplished by hiding discourse. By hiding it, you create little pockets of extremism, not to mention opening up the doors for illegal and traitorous behavior.
Politicians can speak freely right now. What they want to do is further game the system, and I'm not sure how you can interpret these actions as otherwise.
> I'll judge them on the end result
You can already do that, and in Arizona, the end results don't look so good. Arizona, despite having a lot of potential and having beautiful natural landscape, seems to be consistently listed as one of the worst states to live in. Even the mere fact of Arizona being livable in the coming century is debatable due to climate change.
In a public forum people would likely view the compromise as one or both politicians "losing" and a mixture of ego and fear of not getting re-elected would prevent either party from giving ground and taking more measured approach.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deliberative_process_privilege
> When Washington legislators tried to exempt themselves from the Public Records Act nearly five years ago, thousands of Washingtonians angrily emailed or phoned Gov. Jay Inslee’s office. Inslee vetoed the measure. We considered SB 6617 a dead letter. Forever.
> But now the Washington Legislature is asserting that legislators have a previously unknown personal privilege to withhold from public disclosure the documents they use in their work for the people.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/19/homan-square...
If you haven't seen, alderfolk in Chicago are in a weird place as well. Since aldermanic offices aren't gov offices, records within those offices are exempt. It's gotten down to just a few in the past few years, but there were a tonnn of alderfolk whose official city email account were private domains, aol, msn, etc. The PAC has been very weak-handed in pushing against aldermanic office issues.
Similar happened with the mayor's office trying to argue that a pro bono consultant's emails were exempt because they were sent from her private account. Sued and won on that, but that's all to say.. there's still work to do.
Legislation is all about compromise (or at least it was, back when legislators worked). There's a lot of give and take, of people modifying positions they didn't hold all that tightly in order to gain on the positions that they really care about. That means that people say one thing on day 1, say something differently on day 5, and vote still a third way on day 10.
If you're going to "expose" all of that, you can make every one of them look like a hypocrite with zero principles. In many cases that may be true, but you can make it look far worse than it is. And if you do that, then nobody can work with any give and take, for fear that the press will destroy them.
As I said, I think that's the steelman. That doesn't necessarily mean that I believe it...
When we negotiate treaties, private conversations between leaders are useful and productive. The same goes when negotiating laws. Voters already have the most important visibility into legislative output: the laws that get passed and how their representative voted.
For the most part these aren't truly "private", they become part of the public record but at a classification level that may or may not permit immediate or easy access.
This is very sharp contrast to what's being discussed in this article which is the deliberate exclusion of communications from the public record and their destruction.
Try screeching "public" louder and harder. Put your back into it.
You can expect legislators to operate better when every word they speak and write is not recorded for the political opposition to quote against them.
I find this argument dubious in general (with very limited exceptions for safety/security which should be clearly marked). Can you provide specific examples?
A legislator's job is specifically to serve the public. Hiding their communications from the public undermines public trust.
An important part of representing a pluralistic society is compromise, if everyone can criticize every move a politician makes it then to populist and idealistic politicians getting elected rather than moderate politicians that can achieve things.
I think we can see an example of this happening today where demoguages are making headway over more rational actors.
(Nothing about this seems to indicate that it's meant to protect correspondence between legislators and their friends or family. It seems aimed primarily at obscuring political correspondence.)
Apply the Nixon test: should the public have been given access to the tapes that conclusively established Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate break-in? Most people think yes, despite them being “just” conversations.
Those are important nuances to consider as well and different people will change their answer with those changes even though all 3 cases we have potential access to his conversations.
Do we? We've got a guy named Wiener that has been involved in multiple sex scandals and is still in office, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Unless there's a second one, he's been out of office since 2011. There are probably examples of what you describe, but he isn't one of them.
Better to make sure that the people supposedly using the public power they were given be allowed to act without accountability.
The job of a legislator is famously sausage-making: something that's gross even if the final product is acceptable. If it was done the way an outsider demanded it be done, it wouldn't be done at all.
There's legitimate disagreement on whether legislators' communications are viable public records. But I'd think that disagreement would be a lot more meaningful if it were held among people who had at least some idea what the job entailed.
You know what would help me get such an idea? Access to emails, calendars and other records.
This is serious stuff and the "solution" in this case is to prevent people from getting the emails via FOIA?
Isn't the entire point of the FOIA to allow for more transparency in government?
The above process needs to apply even for the simple "are you free for lunch today".
Or instead I can just quit using email and drop back to phone calls (which few people ever record), or face to face conversations - which again are never recorded. Just because we can save emails forever doesn't mean we should.
Rational solution: investigate, and proceed with normal criminal process if appropriate, to deter future such behavior.
Far-right "conservative" solution: ban long-term retention of communications data so that future far-right attempts to overthrow the government can't be prosecuted.
You really can't make this up.