Keeping voters in the dark:

As you know from time to time I like to post a box score on how our New York Congressmen and Senators are voting on certain issues. I make a point to see how our representatives are voting on a daily basis so I can stay better informed about who is earning their paycheck from the taxpayers.

What I want to know is why do I have to go search for this information? Why do our newspapers love to give us hundreds of stats of our favorite sports teams and players so we can see if they’re earning their checks but when it comes to something as important as our representatives track record their stats are no where to be found? It’s sad that I can tell you more about the horses running at Belmont on a daily basis than what my rep was doing in Washington the day before.

Doesn’t the NY Times, NY Post, NY Sun, Observer or anyone else who likes to write about politics think it would be a service to the voter to have a page dedicated to the representatives of this state with the name of the bill, a brief description, the name of the rep and whether they voted nay, yea or not at all. As a bonus to the people of this state they could even do something crazy like actually ask our rep why they voted the way they did for a certain issue. I mean if a sports reporter can get a quote out of Alex Rodriguez about what he was thinking when he hit a double down the line I would think some highly educated journalist could ask our reps about what they were thinking when they say, voted against renewing the Patriot Act.

I would be interested in starting a campaign to get our papers to start giving us the real statistics we need to know if these people are earning their pay. After all if you don’t know their records how can you make an informed decision? If anyone has a suggestions on how to push the issue, make a comment. Or if someone at one of the papers is reading this, take the idea to your boss on me.