Unless something has changed, the protesters are NOT "locked in the Capitol." It is my understanding that they are free to leave at anytime--the guards just won't unlock the doors to allow them back inside once they have left.

Are these people holding a protest or a publicity stunt? If they want to protest then they shouldn't expect hotel treatment. If it's a publicity stunt then screw them. I'm sure they are free to leave whenever they want anyway. Call me when the governor sends in the dogs and fire hoses.

Bill:

Thanks for covering this issue when so many "real journalists" have cowered. The problem any Republican or Technotarian candidate will face on this or any other cost benefit analysis public policy discussion is: 1) we don't know what the numbers are; 2) we don't have anything to compare them to. I've been proposing for a long time that the National Governor's Association ( NGA.org ) should create xml state budgets so we can compare the efficacy of one program to that of another in another state. Chatting specifically about xbrl with Ed Chase, Standards Engineer for Adobe, recently, he responded: "I tend to agree that raw XBRL is appropriate in many cases. In other cases - for structured reporting, rendering, and forms-type applications, I think our combination of Adobe's Intelligent Document PDFs and XBRL is an excellent fit. You can take a look at what we've been doing with CoreFiling/DecisionSoft at: http://www.decisionsoft.com/PR-20050511-tagTips.pdf It allows us to create XBRL-embedded PDFs from taxonomies - providing transparency to the underlying data. With this, anyone can still view the filing, yet machine-processable XBRL is inside." It's time for citizens to demand these kinds of tools -- not necessarily this one -- be adopted by government at all levels so that we can talk about real issues with real dollar amounts attached.

Ed--I'm all for meaningful data in a useful format, but perhaps we should begin with the basics.  How about we have legislative voting records in a digital format?  Maybe even have those records available on the internet? 

If you get a copy of a bill's vote from the State Archive it will have a photocopy impression of the holes in the original page where the record fits in some official binder.  I am not kidding.

I don't know how we push modern technological suggestions when the state government 's mindset is barely post-typewriters.

sbk:

+1

I've blogged the Tennessean account of Karlen Evins' attempt to put cameras in the legislature.

The only way we push modern technological suggestions is to learn these technologies, teach our neighbors-fellow citizens-fellow voters and to demand that our politicians can no longer be iddatarate. When they stump speech at your venue put a notebook in front of them and say "Show me how to make an ODBC work! Show me how to do an import to excel from a web table! Show me how to download OpenOffice!" If they cannot walk them to the computer training center. If they won't go, don't vote for them. Whatever your party "Vote Technotarian!"

In a comprehensive Washington Post story on Medicaid quoted in the blog Geotenncare, this paragraph stood out:

In 2003, Oregon raised premiums and co-payments for Medicaid recipients and found that "thousands lost access to care," hospital admissions rose by 17 percent and many more people with mental illness were treated in state jails and hospitals, Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) said. "In the end, people got the care -- they just didn't get it in a very efficient way."

How might we best provide that care? Whatever the decision, it will affect all of us. HH

"Anyone missing the irony of these people inside being denied food while protesting health care cuts, only to have an ambulance standing by to take them to a hospital where they won't be able to pay because their health insurance was just cut off?" - life is ironic... and society is too. however, what is the solution here? We can't leave those people in the streets as they can't pay....