Thursday was a short day for me since I lead to leave early to go to debate nationals, but it was still one of the most fun a had. I got to do some real work and I learned a lot of things about people that I did not know were public record. We started out the day by going to a Senate finance committee and then we planned on going to the Judiciary committee immediately afterward. However, the Finance committee ran late, and no one else was around to cover the meeting and take notes on any changes to the legislation that might affect clients. So, Andy sent me to the judiciary committee and I had to take very good notes and analyze amendments on an agricultural bill regarding farm taxes. While I was there, they attempted to amendment the punishment in the bill regarding unwillingness to pay new taxes and the threatening of tax collectors. Some of the committee members attempted to change the punishment from a class 1 misdemeanor into a felony. I’m really not sure why this was such a big deal to the lawmakers, nor the firm, but it was, so I took lots of notes and gave them to Andy after the meeting. It was exhilarating. We then went and sat down and were going to cover one of the meetings by just listening to the audio feed. I was confused why we hadn’t always been doing that until the audio glitched and we had to go into the room so that we didn’t miss anything. We have to cover the meetings in person because most of the committee rooms do not have audio, and almost none of them have a video feed. Despite the fact that the technology exists and it is very cheap to do so, congress has not put in the audio or video feed in almost any of their rooms. And for a body that is supposed to be completely open to the public, that is a little strange. I asked Andy if they did not have this technology because they really didn’t want to let the public know what they were doing, he said that that was definitely one element going into the decision, but it wasn’t the biggest reason. Congress is always accused of being wasteful and over spending, but even when that is true, it is regarding public spending on mostly private enterprises. The congressmen all believe that if they voted to spend money on themselves and things for the government, then the media and the public would accuse them of misusing funds and spending money on themselves and thus lose reelection. So, the congress believes, seemingly correctly, that it is better for the public to think you are untrustworthy than for them to think you are using their money for anything other than helping them. After the meetings, we returned to the office and Andy showed me the voter registration data that he uses to do a lot of research and find out about people’s records. You can find what party people voted for in every primary election they have ever voted in, their addresses, their age, how many times they have voted, what parties they are, or have ever been registered to. It’s kinda scary, I’ve now looked up all my teachers and some of their voting records are very surprising.