I feel like we need to stop lying to ourselves like this.
Copyright is getting ridiculously out of hand because lobbyists hold the power and the system is not really accountable anymore.
That's where the real power is.
Typically when one uses the term "deep state" you mean someone working in the government that has their own agenda and/or are acting on a specific conspiracy / cabal agenda counter to the direction of, say, the administration providing the guidance and direction. This is why the person asked about employees vs. lobbyists.
Deep State refers to government employees who hold a lot of power e.g. heads of alphabet agencies, their close underlings, etc and wield it in such a way that there's little recourse for the average American.
Both these moneyed interests AND the Deep State exert an influence that citizens should seek to regulate.
The ones with the money and corporate power are pulling the strings of those who they install
Suppose you are the EPA and you'd like to implement some environmental rule that might or might not be strictly within your legal powers.
You work out a deal with a friendly organization and they sue you for improper stewardship of the environment (with details, obviously, according to the rule you want to implement). Then, instead of fighting their lawsuit, you settle it, agreeing to their demands -- which consist of the rule you wanted to implement. That rule is now one you are obligated to enforce pursuant to a legal agreement, instead of something you implemented on your own authority. This structure tends to prevent normal accountability mechanisms from working.
(As a side note, I'm always surprised, when I see descriptions of this tactic, that it's permissible for an agency to agree to take actions that are notionally not within the power of the agency. I would be interested to know more about what exactly is going on there.)
Score one for losing transparency into the cycle of bureaucrats funding former bureaucrats of similar political alignment by abusing the courts.
It's really sad when you realize that Trump's administration (when the initial rule establishing the website) was more transparent than Bidens. Before, the settlements were posted immediately; now, if you even know about them at all, you need to wait months after filing a FOIA to find out about it.
Some of the more prolific groups have been getting 1 to 3 million dollars a year from the settlements alone.
In simple terms: were they elected and do you pay for their salary?
In general, however, those agencies are slow moving (requires comment period, must decide given bounds, funding limited, etc) and pretty narrowly handcuffed / acting within the statute. Recently even those narrow powers have been rejected by the courts (see admin law judges, CFPB single director, etc).
And how much US Congressional experience do you have?
Same thing goes for lobbyists. They would have zero power if politicians gave them zero power. If the population would be smart and informed, this wouldn't happen. So, what's happening now is totally a result of democracy, which of course is a totally ridiculous idea^1, but it's still democratic.
[1]: Let people who have absolutely no idea how to run things decide who should run things. That's like if the passengers of an airplane, having zero experience with aviation, deciding on who the captain should be.
I guess they would vote for an airliner captain? E.g. most people go to doctors for medical adcive rather than new age mumbo jumbo. I don't see the problem in this particular case.
For what it's worth, it's not so much lobbyists as the ability to generate dollars period (many lobbyists aren't actually very good at this), and there's still power there in numbers as seen in recent elections so don't sell yourself short if you have a compelling case to make. Just sayin'! :)
Legislators are directly elected, president is elected somewhat indirectly but largely by popular vote, administrative rule making has notice and comment process, Article 3 judges are appointed by President and confirmed by legislature... everything derived from the will of the people. It sounds like you are upset that more people aren't as upset at the same things you are. That's not a problem with the government, that's a problem with the populace.
Organize a petition to have your congressional rep submit a bill for what you want. If they refuse, find someone to run who will do it. Actually do something, don't just post online about how the government isn't working... make it work for you!
https://theconversation.com/the-right-to-vote-is-not-in-the-...
> At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Madison expressed the prevailing view that “the freeholders of the country would be the safest depositories of republican liberty,” meaning only people who owned land debt-free, without mortgages, would be able to vote. The Constitution left voting rules to individual states, which had long-standing laws limiting the vote to those freeholders.
> In the debates over the ratification of the Constitution, Madison trumpeted a benefit of the new system: the “total exclusion of the people in their collective capacity.” Even as the nation shifted toward broader inclusion in politics, Madison maintained his view that rights were fragile and ordinary people untrustworthy. In his 70s, he opposed the expansion of the franchise to nonlanded citizens when it was considered at Virginia’s Constitutional Convention in 1829, emphasizing that “the great danger is that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the Minority.”
There's a reason the Constitution, as originally written, doesn't actually guarantee anyone the right to vote. Even today, it wouldn't be unconstitutional to, say, ban redheads or people born on Tuesday from voting.
I think the 14th amendment would block any such ban, since 15/19/24/26 make it clear that this is a right people have by default.
And that's ignoring how hair color ties into race.
Oh but if you make laws that just happen to make it harder for black people and Latinos to vote, its just a bad coincidence yea? Awe so sad, wish we could do something about it!
No, they say the opposite. They set up specific conditions you can't use to disqualify for voting. It's a short list.
> And that's ignoring how hair color ties into race.
SCOTUS is pretty good at that. See the just announced Marietta case; Congress said you can't discriminate against end-stage renal failure patients. An insurer decided they'd get around it by not covering outpatient dialysis - of which 99.5% of patients are end-stage renal failure - and SCOTUS permitted it.
Kagan's dissent correctly pointed out it's like banning yarmulkes and claiming you're not discriminating against Jews.
Those amendments don't directly give maximum protection, but they establish it as a right, which seems to indirectly give pretty good protection.
The 15th is kind of iffy, but slavery interacts weirdly with citizenship to begin with. And before the 15th there was nothing calling voting a right.
As far as the 19th goes, the 14th was in big part scoped to male voters at the time.
Overall I think it would be pretty hard to argue the constitutionality of any restriction that isn't applied "evenly".
It's too easy to get voters to vote for things that are deceptively drafted, and then you're stuck with it forever.
Democratically accountable legislature is still democratically accountable legislature when the citizens pay attention or participate or not. People are supposed to work their ass off in democracy when they fight for political power. Instead they treat it as a opinion contest that should have options they like.
Yes, and the problem is not limited to copyright
"This is the organization. And this is the idea."
All I see on the sociopolitical HN threads is an avalanche of brilliant ideas. But ~nobody is organized, is trying to organize, or even is theorizing about it. It just feels so empty and futile, makes me weep deep inside.