Transcript for Ovc opengov 20june2009 from 0:15:24 to 0:16:28
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Jake Brewer: C-SPAN is great because it allows the public to participate or to see what is going on in the halls of Congress as they debate. An interesting thing that happened though, when C-SPAN launched, is that you started seeing things like giant rubber stamps. You didn't actually see those in Congress before C-SPAN. Because you put them on video, now people know they will be on video and they make these huge graphs and they make these huge stamps and they stomp and they do a lot more and they're much more animated. On the house floor, they used to have much more open conversation and say "hey, by the way, this is what I need." "Hey! This is what I need, and why don't we just work this out. We don't have to necessary grandstand." So now it happens in club rooms, it happens in parties, it happens in other places. [Abram Stern: I never see that stuff.] You never see actual getting along and dialogue when you're flipping through C-SPAN. The way we see that is that there's a whole ecosystem of influence as having an impact on people's lives all over the country from their congressional representatives, from their state representatives, from their local representatives on all these different levels. It's our responsibility to figure out ways to make sure that that ecosystem of influence is brought to bear.