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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Don’t relocate. Stay in your damn house. Go talk to the people who are actually running in those districts. If you can write them even the cost of a ps4, they want to hear from you.

In particular for Democrats running against entrenched Republicans, these people aren’t evil corporate fat cats. They own restaurants, teach high school, are small-town mayors, or nurses. They need help to compete. The DNC is not going to help candidates who don’t show viability on their own.

NOW is the time to get involved, before the primaries.

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>> Go talk to the people who are actually running in those districts. If you can write them even the cost of a ps4, they want to hear from you.

You propose this as a solution, but for the average person it makes no sense. Suppose that in the worst case scenario, the big ISPs did eventually start throttling certain content and offering tiered pricing for unfettered access to the entire Internet. Would the extra cost of upgrading to a higher tier really be worse than the cost of making political donations and taking the time to participate in lobbying activities (even if it were as simple as mailing a printed letter or making a phone call)? I am going to guess that for the average person it is not worth it.

I am not sure if this is the right equation. Should we accept something wrong just because it costs (financially) us (personally) less than fighting for fixing it ? Are we becoming more apathetic than the previous generations ? (real question) Should the cost of right be priceless ?

I'm not saying whether it is right or wrong. I am just saying that realistically, this is the calculation that many people will make.

Don't be so pessimistic, people care about things.

The calculation has to include the whole set of stuff the Republicans break and cost you though, not just net neutrality and your connection bill.

Ahh I misunderstood what you said. I see what you mean now, but sadly I'm still salty that solution (despite being a sound one) boils down to money.

The Supreme Court has decided that in this country money=speech, so ...

Yes, Citizen United and unlimited corporate monetary donations to political candidates is at the core of many of our political problems. The only fix I see is to use the system to fix itself. Wolf-PAC goal is to end the corrupting influence of money in our political system.

It's a PAC with the goal of ending all PACs.

http://www.wolf-pac.com/the_plan

If you can write them even the cost of a ps4, they want to hear from you.

Isn't this the problematic issue, though? If you have some disposable cash, politicians will pay attention to you even if you come form outside their district. If you don't, they won't. Sure, they want people to vote for them but that's basically a function of how much money they can throw at the problem.

You say "politician". I say "registered nurse running in a district where the R would be effective unopposed otherwise, needing straightforwardly to raise $100k before the end of the year to get taken seriously by the DNC".

You can not like that the system works this way (I hope you do like the idea of more RN's and school teachers as reps!), but compared to lobbying the Republican FCC, it has the virtue of being plausibly effective.

Any suggestions about how to find this type of person running in this type of district? I agree that supporting this type of person could be disproportionately effective, but how do you find them when still in the early stages?

Maciej Ceglowski of Pinboard has been traveling the country meeting candidates for races that professionals helped identify as underserved by the DNC, and came up with a "Great Slate", which is a good starting point:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/great_slate

But: if you live in a major metro area: you're probably in a D district, where just a few miles from you there's a suburb in an R district. Find that district and see who's running in it.

Here's who's running in the NM-2:

http://fec.gov/data/elections/house/NM/02/2018/

Just fix the URL for whatever race you're interested in.

Strong recommend on donating to the Great Slate.

I love the idea of more regular people (especially non-lawyers) running for office, I'm just more pessimistic than you about the wisdom of throwing more money into the campaign finance machine.

Are you sure that the time to be involved wasn’t say... a couple of decades ago? This feels like the terminal end-stage. It was time to be involved when Reagan was ending the hope of public education or mental health, during three or more decades of scientists and environmentalists screaming bloody murder, or at some point during our decades of failed adventurism abroad.

This isn’t new, this is the sharp end of an edifice people have allowed to be built underneath them, complete with extralegal security apparatus. It’s only when an orange clown is in charge and his henchmen are sharpening their regulatory knives, or 75% of the insect biomass vanishes that people start to notice.

You're not wrong, except that no one has a time machine, so...

But I feel ya'.

No time machines, but maybe a genuinely panicked recognition of just how much trouble we’re in could inform the nature and magnitude of the response.

Orange clown --> Racist

Henchmen --> Fear-mongering

Public Education --> We still have it.

Mental Health programs --> Still have 'em.

Insect Biomass --> It's almost as if having 7B humans on the planet has consequences. But sure, rabble rabble, it's all Reagan's fault.

He clearly looks orange due to spray tan. Although it's rude, I don't see how it's racist to make fun of someone for their spray tan.

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