<story><title>My Call to Senator Schumer’s Office on PIPA: It’s So Much Worse Than I Thought</title><url>http://amandapeyton.com/blog/2012/01/my-call-to-senator-schumers-office-on-pipa-its-so-much-worse-than-i-thought/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>rgarcia</author><text>Startup idea: a weekly email newsletter containing a list of bills your representatives in congress voted on (or introduced/co-sponsored), along with some &quot;like&quot; and &quot;dislike&quot; buttons. Home page maintains a prominent list of representatives most &quot;disliked&quot; by their constituents.&lt;p&gt;This whole SOPA debacle has convinced me more than ever that the feedback loop between constituents and representatives is absolutely &lt;i&gt;terrible&lt;/i&gt;. This would be an attempt to solve the problem (via public humiliation).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yummyfajitas</author><text>Like/Dislike:&lt;p&gt;H.R.3997 - Heroes Earnings Assistance and Relief Tax Act of 2007&lt;p&gt;To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide earnings assistance and tax relief to members of the uniformed services, volunteer firefighters, and Peace Corps volunteers, and for other purposes.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-h3997/show&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-h3997/show&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;How many people getting the newsletter would actually realize that &quot;other purposes&quot; refers to a $700 billion bank bailout? (This is the bill the Republicans killed, shortly before caving in and passing another bill a week later.)</text></comment>
<story><title>My Call to Senator Schumer’s Office on PIPA: It’s So Much Worse Than I Thought</title><url>http://amandapeyton.com/blog/2012/01/my-call-to-senator-schumers-office-on-pipa-its-so-much-worse-than-i-thought/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>rgarcia</author><text>Startup idea: a weekly email newsletter containing a list of bills your representatives in congress voted on (or introduced/co-sponsored), along with some &quot;like&quot; and &quot;dislike&quot; buttons. Home page maintains a prominent list of representatives most &quot;disliked&quot; by their constituents.&lt;p&gt;This whole SOPA debacle has convinced me more than ever that the feedback loop between constituents and representatives is absolutely &lt;i&gt;terrible&lt;/i&gt;. This would be an attempt to solve the problem (via public humiliation).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cheald</author><text>Having started someone along these lines, you would need a human element in between the raw data and the emails, translating each bill&apos;s name and purpose into human-speak. They are so shrouded in legalese that it&apos;s extraordinarily difficult to parse out the intent of many of them, and &quot;bad&quot; parts seem to be very difficult to locate at a casual glance. Even reading over the text of SOPA, it isn&apos;t immediately obvious to the layperson why it&apos;s a bad bill. The way it reads obscures the truly odious parts of the bill. Were it not for analysis and coverage done by third parties, you and I would probably read SOPA and say &quot;Yup, that&apos;s a good idea, upvote&quot;.&lt;p&gt;You&apos;d need a full-time staff of lawyers translating this stuff for the rest of us to make something like that worthwhile/</text></comment>