Online access Congressional voting records and government contracts need to be available online. By Ralph Nader Congressional voting records and government contracts need to be available online. Congress is in a twitter about the Internet. No more waiting in lines at the motor vehicle departments or languishing on the phone to conduct some transaction with city hall, a state, or federal agency. Now, back to reality.
New technology is beholden to old politics and power structures, just like the old technology.
To test this assertion,my colleague Gary Ruskin and I tried two experiments in the past year. In this way, businesses, academics, trade unions, citizen groups, and other individuals can review defense, natural resource, medical research, consulting, subsidy, giveaways, and bailouts, among other agreements, that the government enters into with companies, universities, and other institutions. At the present time, it can take endless calling and writing to obtain copies of these documents, if they can be obtained at all. My associates once called scores of civilian agencies and companies to obtain these contracts and they were stonewalled, and in some instances elicited assertions that the taxpaying public had no business getting these materials. OMB did nothing, did not even write back to us.