House of (mis)Representatives

i like

you can do mail/email as one Rep says but I found out that you can only mail your own direct representative; recently I tried reaching to a other Rep not in my district re a crucial vote impacting the entire state and I was rebuffed! So it is not just you can't be heard by your own Rep you have no way to really be heard on all the items affecting your State.

This seems like an understatement of how far short our congress falls from representing the racial diversity of our country. Census.gov has the U.S. non-hispanic white population at 63.4%. Congress, however, is 87 percent white; 85 percent in the House and 96 percent in the Senate. This is a real issue, that needs to be dealt with head-on. I commend Andrea Seabrook, and Decode DC for all the work they're doing.

New listener based on your spot on TBTL in Seattle.

2nd listen (great new show, always loved your NPR work as well).

While the stat is alarming and I wish it weren't so, this seems like it may be an unsolvable problem, or at least unsolvable via the obvious solution.

After all, countries with a better ratio are also *smaller* in population—if we were to get back to Reps with districts of 60k or even 100k, there'd be so many Reps (10-ish x the number there are now if I understand the stat correctly), how the goodness would govt function?

xxx

It is a shame that Congress doe not pay attention to we voters.

给我好吗

Andrea, you select interesting music. Could you please post your playlist from your 'casts?

@Daniel Sircar: me too!

Um...I want to see citations for this in the description.

Interesting. I want to see a link to the Federalist Papers here.

The podcast was interesting, but I don't think that adding more representatives would make any difference and I wouldn't agree to the additional cost. It doesn't matter if there are 50 or 500,000 people represented, these Representatives do what they want anyway, and most certainly don't speak for me. Our government has strayed far from the original intent of many of the founders.

Excellent first episode, Andrea. Well done

Andrea, do you have a link to SoundCloud for the band. Really love it

ﻻﻻﻻ ى

You've completely missed the point on this. Having 5000+ Congressmen/women won't change Washington at all.

Excellent point. This is great work. Can't wait for the next podcast.

Good morning all,

Let's do some math: at present figures, taxpayers annually contribute about $7.5 million to the salaries of Members of the House. If we cut the number of Americans represented to 100,000 per representative, that jumps to $542 million and if you take President Washington at his word and cut even further to 40,000 Americans per representative, we're talking serious money at $1.4 billion. I think that would be money well spent, but not bloody likely.

http://havecoffeewillwrite.com/?p=33042

Do all you can to make today a good day,

Jeff Hess
Have Coffee Will Write

i really like it

Glad you are listening! Thx

Good luck with this.

YES, YES, YES - this is exactly the kind of information the American People need to hear - well done on a wonderful start Andrea - everyone needs to pass this link around - Love the format - well thought out - great positioning - truly a breath of Fresh Air!

Finally, I have been anxiously awaiting this story. Thanks!

Great show Andrea, definitely looking forward to more. This is a great topic for us Californians too. In the state Capitol, one assembly member represents more than 400,000 people!

Excellent start Andrea! I'm hooked and can't wait for number 2. Thanks.