Representative Government?
This year Oregon residents learned a bit about the hollowness of the implementation of representative government: Seven legislators went behind closed doors to decide how to spend billions of state tax dollars. They also chose what legislation — from state Lotto games to sex offenders — would move and what would get squished. The lid was clamped so tight that lawmakers complained they were getting only scraps of information about deals cut between House and Senate leaders — deals that involved some of the most significant bills on the docket. You will probably not find much different in Washington ,...