United States Congress

org · in 23 videos (2007–2013)

Mentions by year: 2007: 1 · 2009: 1 · 2010: 2 · 2011: 6 · 2012: 8 · 2013: 5

Threads

Hank challenges John to attend a Step It Up rally and show it on video (2007) — ask, reported back, 2007–2007
Hank: cybersecurity legislation will probably hurt the internet and never be effective (2011) — prediction, unresolved, 2011–2011
Hank asks viewers to help keep the internet free from anti-piracy bills (2011) — ask, reported back, 2011–2012
Hank predicts the 2013 government shutdown will be resolved within days or weeks (2013) — prediction, unresolved, 2013–2013

What the videos say

2007

2007-04-13 · Friday the 13th: Step It Up! — Tomorrow is Step It Up Day, a campaign started by Bill McKibben, author of the book Hank told John to read, telling Congress that since everyone agrees there's a problem, it should act. (00:00:58)
2007-04-13 · Friday the 13th: Step It Up! — Hank challenges John to attend a Step It Up event in New York and wants video of him at a rally, even a rally of one, asking Congress to step it up for 2007. (00:01:32)

2010

2010-07-24 · Grammar School with Snooki — John worries that celebrating people like her instead of those who use language precisely and thoughtfully leads to really crappy discourse, on Jersey Shore or in Congress. (00:03:10)
2010-08-03 · I Love Hank: Esther Day 2010 — John recalls that in 2003 some members of the US Congress, angry that France saw no link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, renamed French fries and French toast 'Freedom' in the congressional cafeteria. (00:00:58)

2011

2011-01-14 · Top 5 Actual Conspiracies — The plotters picked General Smedley Butler to lead the coup, but Butler, a friend of Roosevelt, revealed the whole plot to Congress. (00:02:57)
2011-07-08 · Kill the Dollar Bill! — The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office reported to Congress that replacing the $1 bill with $1 and $2 coins would save $5.5 billion over 30 years. (00:01:30)
2011-08-09 · Hackers, Cyber crime, and a New Kind of War. — Hank also worries about the legislation meant to protect us: it will probably ruin much of what's great about the internet and will never be effective, since Congress will always be far behind the hackers. (00:03:09)
2011-08-10 · Understanding America's Debt Problem — John says the US is well above the 90% alarm threshold and Congress, in "the stupidest game of chicken ever," only barely avoided defaulting. (00:02:13)
2011-08-10 · Understanding America's Debt Problem — John says the so-called debt crisis would almost completely be solved by not extending the Bush tax cuts, which happens if Congress does nothing, and Congress is "awesome at doing nothing." (00:03:09)
2011-11-18 · Top 5 Reasons ████ ██ ██████ — The description warns that Congress's plan would let any US website be turned off at a moment's notice and push sites to censor themselves. (00:00:00)
2011-11-18 · Top 5 Reasons ████ ██ ██████ — Hank says he loves and needs copyright law and doesn't want John's books stolen, but doesn't want Congress meddling with the internet. (00:00:55)
2011-11-18 · Top 5 Reasons ████ ██ ██████ — Hank presents his top five reasons why Congress should not be allowed to regulate the internet. (00:01:11)
2011-11-22 · Old Man Narrates Young Girl — John says Hank, in his last video, correctly called the copyright measures before Congress 'a steaming hot slice of crazy'. (00:01:24)
2011-11-22 · Old Man Narrates Young Girl — John says the legislation before Congress would increase that inequality: YouTube, Google and Tumblr can afford lawyers against Viacom, he can't, and it won't stop already-illegal wholesale piracy. (00:02:54)

2012

2012-01-20 · Thoughts on SOPA From New Orleans — The description says the internet blackout resulted in a great number of congresspeople dropping their support for SOPA and PIPA. (00:00:00)
2012-02-24 · CUTE-OCALYPSE! — Hank mock-calls on Congress to regulate internet cuteness: a board of cutologists, a cute rating system for media and a weekly quota per American. (00:01:43)
2012-04-03 · Idiotic Governance: How Our Political Discourse Hurts Our Economy — John says the last five years have seen 23 short-term extensions of the FAA ticket tax, mostly because Congress fights about unions, which helps members raise money. (00:00:47)
2012-04-03 · Idiotic Governance: How Our Political Discourse Hurts Our Economy — John says Congress let the FAA's funding lapse over the summer, so the ticket tax could not be collected, and airlines raised prices by the exact amount of the tax, keeping the money. (00:01:12)
2012-04-03 · Idiotic Governance: How Our Political Discourse Hurts Our Economy — John says Congress finally passed a long-term FAA budget in February, but by then the dispute had probably cost a billion dollars. (00:01:42)
2012-04-06 · Can I be Space President? — Hank says the people working on Webb, defending it from Congress and fighting technical problems daily, can lose sight of how amazing their work is, and he is glad to bring that home to them and the world. (00:02:27)
2012-10-09 · Attacked by Squirrels and Neoclassicism: Thoughts from Places, Washington D.C. — John notes the Capitol and the Washington Monument stare at each other, the monument's red aircraft lights making Washington look disapproving of Congress. (00:01:38)
2012-10-16 · Burning Peeps, My OTP, and Velociraptors: It's Question Tuesday — Asked why legislation to kill the penny is held up in Congress, John jokes that the current Congress could not pass anything, even to save itself. (00:00:37)
2012-11-08 · The 51st State — Hank expects the opposition to cite $20 billion of extra Medicare and Medicaid costs, but says the bigger issue is the balance of Congress. (00:01:56)
2012-11-08 · The 51st State — Hank says granting statehood takes not 51% of the vote but two-thirds. (00:02:33)
2012-11-09 · The Stadium of Representatives: The End of B20 Week :-( — Hank says the founders split between equal representation per state and representation by population, and compromised: a Senate equal for every state and a House apportioned by population. (00:00:29)

2013

2013-01-01 · Why Does Congress Suck? — John says the last two years saw the least effective Congress since at least the 1850s: it passed only 219 bills, almost all naming federal buildings after war heroes. (00:00:30)
2013-01-01 · Why Does Congress Suck? — John says Congress was designed to be bad at doing things but has to cooperate just enough to cover the basics; it always has, but he is now a little worried. (00:03:13)
2013-03-12 · Understand the Sequester (Spoiler: It's Bananas.) — John says these three programs are 45% of the budget (mandatory spending); other mandatory spending is 13% and debt interest 6%, 64% in total, leaving 36% discretionary spending allocated by Congress. (00:00:59)
2013-03-12 · Understand the Sequester (Spoiler: It's Bananas.) — John says in 2011 the US nearly defaulted, not because it could not pay but because Congress refused to raise the debt ceiling it was hitting because of its own budgets. (00:02:25)
2013-03-12 · Understand the Sequester (Spoiler: It's Bananas.) — John stresses that Congress, not the president, sets tax rates and the budget, so a resulting deficit is literally Congress's fault. (00:02:39)
2013-03-12 · Understand the Sequester (Spoiler: It's Bananas.) — John says Congress then passed the Budget Control Act, raising the debt ceiling and creating a super-committee to reach a "grand bargain" on long-term fiscal problems. (00:02:59)
2013-03-12 · Understand the Sequester (Spoiler: It's Bananas.) — John says sequestration does nothing about the long-term fiscal problem, since mandatory spending keeps growing: Congress answered a long-term problem with a short-term crisis it then failed to solve. (00:04:47)
2013-05-31 · Optimism is Not Insane — Hank thinks we see a graph rising toward a disaster point and assume we have only years left, but usually we adapt: capitalism, technology and even Congress adapt. (00:02:04)
2013-09-13 · Syria in Five Minutes — Hank says collecting chemical weapons from a country in civil war would be extremely complicated, but enforcing the norm against them without bombing or Congress would be an excellent outcome. (00:04:33)
2013-10-01 · The Lowdown on the Shutdown — Hank says the deeper problem is that politicians redrew district lines to be ever more partisan, making elections easier to win but radicalizing districts so representatives must be uncooperative; not easy to fix. (00:02:01)
2013-10-01 · The Lowdown on the Shutdown — Hank says that starting today about 800,000 people are out of work until Congress acts, including a very good friend of his, which makes him mad. (00:02:51)
2013-10-01 · The Lowdown on the Shutdown — Hank says no one knows how quickly it will be resolved, perhaps three days or three weeks, but it will be, because he trusts Congress wants the country to exist. (00:02:57)
…and 4 more statements in 2013 (most important shown)