Comments on: Snatching Defeat From the Jaws of Victory

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 23 May 2008 15:00:41 +0000

It was a screw-up, the missing Title was not controversial, but I would triple check it before the next vote to be sure nothing extra was added in the interim.

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Fri, 23 May 2008 06:14:54 +0000

Well, it was either this Admin’s standard incompetence and carelessness (and that includes Congress and the Senate), or it was done purposely. *shrug* We’ll probably never know.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 23 May 2008 04:09:55 +0000

Steve, I don’t know of a group of any size that is involved in document preparation that doesn’t use version control of some kind or another. Marking up a law is exactly the sort of thing that version control is all about. As near as I have been able to determine, they did the equivalent of leaving out a chapter of a book.

The normal structure is Law, Title, Section, Paragraph. This should have been found by a quick check of the table of contents. They left out one of the Titles, not a few dozen pages at random, but an entire Title.

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Fri, 23 May 2008 03:42:19 +0000

Highfalutin’ medical journals use software to track each paper in every issue through every stage from receipt of submission through repeated editing through publication. (I presume most publications do that now; I just happen to know several medical editors.) Doesn’t Congress have something similar? The systems I know require someone to sign off at each stage. Someone really should get burned for this omission.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Thu, 22 May 2008 16:18:22 +0000

OT: Visited links are highlighted by shading which disappears in the shading of even numbered comments. Unvisited links are blue and underlined. It is something that I keep meaning to change in the CSS.

Actually, Kryten, I think there were some benefits to non-GOP causes in the bill and it may have lacked sufficient tax cuts for oil companies. With the Shrubbery, it could have been the font chosen, who knows.

I would bet on skulduggery. Many of Clinton’s problems were caused because he didn’t “clean house” when he came into office, and left a lot of partisan people in important positions.

That just shows that the problem isn’t beyond reach for people who are actually paid to track these bills, Hipparchia, when you can take the time from your day and find that large of a discrepancy with a ‘Net search. These things are on Congress’s network, and checking file size would have shown a major divergence.

I guess they need a checklist, to remind them how to do this. Maybe a big board with colored pens that were a feature in the lower grades to remind the kids of things they needed to do. We could start out with a kindergarten teacher, and then escalate to a teaching nun with a metal ruler if things didn’t improve.

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Thu, 22 May 2008 14:51:02 +0000

OT, why do some links in comments show up only on hover, while others are visibly underlined or shaded? There’s a link in the above comment, but you’d never know it by looking at it.

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Thu, 22 May 2008 14:47:49 +0000

What fools. Don't they know they can change the text of a bill after it has been passed by both houses? They need to take lessons from Don Young. Seriously, was it carelessness or skulduggery? I'm not willing to bet either way.

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Thu, 22 May 2008 09:16:47 +0000

There was probably something in the missing pages he expected and wanted. 😉

Easer to check 34 pages than 673. 🙂

Cheers!

By: hipparchia

hipparchia — Thu, 22 May 2008 07:48:14 +0000

the PDF is 628 pages at the gpo, 673 pages here [looks like maybe the house agriculture committee copy]. i finally gave up on following the farm bill this time around, but while there were some good provisions added, there were [last i checked] some significant cuts in food aid for the poor/elderly, big subsidies to wealthy farmers/big ag left in, and not-too-great conservation incentives. i'm not sure what it is about the bill that bush objects to, because i'm having a hard time believing that he's telling the truth about his feelings on subsidies for the rich. always before, he's been in favor of trickle-up redistribution.