Tweet temporarily derails SOPA debate
cbsnews.com
cbsnews.com
http://www.rightsidenews.com/2010120612252/us/politics-and-e...
Choice bit:
RSN: Cliff Kincaid recently had a National Press Club conference where he called for resurrection of the Congressional internal security committees along the lines of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Would you support recreation of such committees?
King: I would. Something similar. If we called it the House Un-American Activities Committee, that would be lighting up the history of McCarthy in a way that wouldn't be necessary, although I am often quoted as saying "McCarthy was a hero for America." He was. He was right far more times than he was wrong. It is a historical fact. But I would submit a different committee name so that we don't have to deal with the history, and move forward. I think that is a good process and I would support it.
My inner cynic isn't surprised by this, but that little hopeful light that typically keeps the cynic in check is flickering out.
(Nota bene: Under SOPA, RSN could take down Hacker News for this comment, no?)
How many of you in meetings with a VC tweet about being bored and surfing for cats with cheeseburgers?
How many of you would keep an employee who did this during an engineering meeting?
How many of you would keep working at a job when your boss ignores you so they can check their fantasy football teams?
The only funny (morbidly, blackly funny) part of this is that that wasn't what stopped the debate--it was a finicky rule about choice of language, some pieces of which date back over a century and a half.
Folks, these are the people running the US. These are the people who have a monopoly on force, and who claim the moral highground to do with you what they will for the nation.
Why the fuck aren't you doing something?
The failure of the Occupy movement has been that it is primarily been driven at an emotional level, and (if my own experiences have shown anything) has lacked serious thought.
So, here, we're all designers/engineers/entrepeneurs, let's talk about this.
Goal:
Fix what is broken with the US federal government.
Constraints:
Any proposed solution cannot disrupt current economy significantly (avoid riots, breaking public services, hurting people. etc.).
Any proposed solution must be straightforward in implementation and simple in explanation (average Joes and Janes need to be able to get it--no GNU cat() implmentations, please).
Any proposed solution must gracefully integrate or deprecate existing systems where possible (see defense, messaging [postal service], FCC, IRS, etc.)--this need not include existing legislative organs, however (those are command mechanisms, which probably would need to be replaced wholesale anyways).
Any proposed solution must allow active participation by the governed and allow for expression of their will. This implies any solution must allow for equal, open, and easy access to the functioning of the government.
Suggested starting point:
1. Identify what is actually wrong with the government.
EDIT: Updated example list of existing systems example. Added constraint for "expression of governed's will".
I think you're missing the point of the Occupy movement.
Identify and visualize the "broken wheels". And no vagueness either: Name names, quote figures and compare track records to campaign platforms then get that information out there in clever, "viral" ways. Large, detailed infographics might seem popular with us nerds but general population needs very specific, dramatic examples of just how fucked up things are.
Public financing of elections would be a definite step in the right direction and meets all of your constraints.
Everyone who pushed forward the meme that the Occupiers had/have no clear agenda did nothing but expose their own ignorance, ineptitude or intellectual dishonesty.
[1] http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/occupywallstre... "Beginning from one simple demand -- a presidential commission to separate money from politics"
Feel free to blame "the media," but I've personally asked more than a few people at Occupy to be specific about what they were demanding or what success looks like and I never heard anything like that. I heard a lot about jobs and employment. A bit about the banks having too much power. And one person talked a lot about middle east politics.
You've been looking for information, yet never read the original call to Occupy? Or were you just keeping an eye out for more background information in what is provided to you by the press?
You will have a difficult time convincing them otherwise.
Cities and localities have issues, too, but are far more representative of and responsive to their own residents' needs than Congress. (None of the cities blessed with Occupy camps proposed censoring the internet, for example.)
Mostly because internet regulation has been federalized. When they can, cities attempt to ban things left and right; many of the Supreme Court precedents on film censorship involve municipal statutes. Not to mention their love of "free speech zones".
This is being downvoted, but I do really intend a real point that isn't in jest. Politicians have zero potential of repercussion. Even in cases of corruption, fraud, etc... jailtime is minimal at best. Seizing assets or punishing those funding and conspiring with them never happens. Once you're a politician, you have free reign for corruption. Much of the US and much of the world even believes that our last President and his cabinet were likely guilty of wrongdoing on several occasions.
We do need to have some method of holding stringent accountability. These men fear nothing, and respect no one. If they get voted out of office, they'll just go work for a lobbyist for 4x the salary. I don't think we have to go as far as the guillotine, but let's face it, the French Revolution was a lot more effective than the Occupy Movement at reshaping France and influencing a great deal of Europe. Find something to add weight to their decisions. Don't let them do wrong with no repercussion.
So, allow me to offer a condensed set of your listed problems there, and please correct me if I miss/misrepresent something:
1. No mechanism for holding politicians accountable exists. 2. In the event where a politician is found accountable, no meaningful mechanism for punishment exists.
That our political system (in general) rewards loyalty over problem solving is strong evidence of corruption.
The problem that is inherent to #1 however is that, at least initially, they are investigated by people closest to them. Few people in Congress was to open up any Congressperson for deep investigation. Everyone has skeletons so investigations seem to generally be done in a way to kick up the least amount of dust, yet appear to be in motion.
And you're absolutely right for #2. Rarely are the rich or corporations punished in a serious way. Deceptive business practice that makes you billions? Fine given for millions. Unless you get caught in such a bad and terribly obvious way that they simply must go after you with jailtime, they won't.
There is no way to punish a politician or a group of politician for non-performance, corruption, failure to uphold the US Constitution, etc. You've basically gotta kill someone. And even if you do that, you're likely going to face less time than the average person on the street who does the same. Afterall, all your best friends are lawyers and lawmakers.
Join the discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3361424
I mean, they are nominally doing the same sort of work as we'd do designing control flows in software, right? They're looking at a problem, identifying issues, finding dependencies, and then picking a decision-making algorithm (the law) that should address those issues. They use legalese instead of bytecode, but the idea is the same.
The idea that somehow this process should be held to different standards than any other engineering project (especially any other one which impacts so many!) is likely central to the problems we face as a country today.
Someone wrote on another thread about SOPA that a politician is always campaigning. I believe this to be true. Politics is almost exclusively posturing, and it's reasonable for one to tire of the senseless bloviating, especially when it pertains to technical topics on which the speaker is obviously very poorly informed.
Not saying things should be this way, but that's the way they are.
My issue would be that they couldn't be polite to their colleagues, not that their being bored by someone speaking means they're doing a bad job.
In this case, the politicians aren't supposed to love each other, they're from different parties. Yes, you want them to be able to work together, but saying that one person is boring you doesn't mean you aren't able to do your job and make the decisions you're there to make.
I do wholeheartedly agree with your first paragraph, though.
And the new bosses can change. Obama's election was the result of almost nothing other than: "I'm not the status quo." And he won.
So vote out every incumbent in the next election, and the message will get across loud and clear. Maybe the next generation will start with similar problems, but they just got told clearly that if they want to keep their jobs, we want CHANGE.
And politicians do what it takes to get re-elected. A clear message that change is desired will change this country.
Considering Obama's record, that's an argument against your point.
Disclaimer: I don't have a problem with rich people, I just have a problem with the fact that if one isn't born into wealth and/or politics, it is for all practical purposes impossible to even get on the ballot.
I used to subscribe to the theory that everyone should vote. Now that I am older and smarter, I still vote, I just realize that the chances of it making things better in my country are slim to none.
I mean, sure, coming from wealth is a huge advantage; Few people go from being that poor to being one of the most powerful people in the world, and, of course, if you weren't born with the money, you have to come up with it in other ways.
Now, I agree that far too many of our politicians seem to come from the same pool; I'm just saying that they do let new blood in, from time to time.
Wow. Gun, meet foot.
Even among HN readers there are a lot of people who are still very pro-establishment in the sense that they wholeheartedly defend the NY Times, major political parties, etc. This is part of the same youthful optimism that leads people to do startups... the idea that they will soon be part of the establishment so they might as well defend it now for karma.
What do you think we should all be doing?
HN sees only the top level of the abstraction and assumes that the system is a lumbering behemoth incapable of change. Pushing the system from the bottom, it's actually quite capable of very abrupt change. Unfortunately, those methods of change require copious amounts of time, and will probably replace or supplant much more enjoyable hobbies you'd rather have.
In previous eras, this was considered the burden of citizenship...
For a simpler answer: Call your congresscritter. They're actually very responsive to phone calls and real letters. It's not hard to do.
I vote in local elections and cheerfully pay taxes--but look only towards the treatment of the online petitions hosted by our current administration to see how much attention is paid.
The difficulty of participating in government isn't something to be cherished--it's something to be fixed.
Treat this like a software development project, except we're coming up with a government instead of a program.
1. Setup a public bugtracker, where people can submit examples of federal government acting incorrectly (attached to bugs, have relevant news articles, studies, and impacts for why it is important).
2. Setup a repo with a "blessed" version of the founding documents of the government. Anyone can read the docs, and suggest changes. Any changes to the laws would have an easy-to-follow path in the changelog, and linked tickets from the bug tracker demonstrating that they were necessary. These docs can be forked, but the blessed branch gets the "official" reference implementation.
We've had the tools to "fix" government for years now--we should start using them.
Things I'd personally like to see:
1. Who controls the "blessed" version? This is a hilariously interesting problem, and likely would end up with some kind of set of "core" developers. That said, we have the tech to make relatively authenticated, secure votes (PGP or somesuch). I'd suggest using that to accept changes to mainline, and if it becomes obvious the core devs aren't paying attention we fork. This might be really slow to get things accomplished (past the initial bootstrap), but that's okay in government--the more conservative your creation of policies, the better.
2. A creation of a structured query language for determining if an action obeys a law. This would be really tricky, but if the core docs can unambiguously be parsed and tested against so many problems in government simply go away. I don't really expect this to get done, but it's an intriguing idea, no?
3. My personal belief is that a good government is like a good operating system: it provides basic infrastructure when you need it, is invisible when you aren't looking for it, and protects you from other things in the environment (and them from you!). So, a lean, simple, easily-verifiable government that protects basic rights and provides basic needs and which only intervenes when processes (groups) come into direct conflict seems like the correct goal--not this bloated ill-defined overreaching contraption we have today.
To be fair, this is a clearcut case where processes have come into direct conflict. After crying wolf dozens of times over the last 100 years, Big Media now realizes that they really are facing an existential threat: loss of control over distribution. At the same time, the Internet, arguably the single most important technological development and economic engine in human history, has thousands of die-hard defenders in its own corner.
Things like the SOPA hearings are exactly what we pay our representatives to handle for us. They have an obligation to do their jobs competently, just like the rest of us, and as these reports show, they are doing exactly the opposite.
Also, http://www.opencongress.org/ sounds a bit like the document repo you're looking for. Even the official thomas.loc.gov lets you track versions of a bill (though, admittedly, it's hard to read if you don't know what you're doing).
I understand that the popularity contest driven plutocracy we currently operate under will never create a sane government. This is not because voting doesn't "work" - I am not suggesting conspiracy here. But affluent societies don't give a shit. On the whole, so long as you feed, clothe, house, protect, and entertain your electorate, you can do whatever you please, and your power will likely not be challenged. My vote does not, and never will, count, when I am vastly outnumbered by the votes of people so comfortable in their lives that they don't bother with silly things like political introspection.
So, my only alternative is to participate in the only historically viable means of effecting meaningful change: a violent overthrow of the system. I am not willing to do this. That is why I don't "do something".
It seems like for since Obama elected the entire opposition party has tried to do everything in their power to oppose anything that the party in power has come up with. And when Democrats and GOP do agree on something, it's bills like SOPA and NDAA.
It hasn't been forever, but certainly much longer than Obama's term. I believe that it was under GWB that the stonewalling through threatened filibusters, and refusal to fill judicial appointments, really heated up. Obviously that was spearheaded by the Democrats, by which we can see that both parties can be petulant and petty.
The Clinton presidency was full of pettiness, the Republican congress following their 1994 popularity wave were intent on destroying his two terms utterly, just because.
Excuse me for not believing a word of this.
> your "just because" comment shows me that your mind isn't open to the possibility that there could be rational policy objections that really need to be debated.
I'm fully open to this idea, but have not managed to find any, let alone any which would justify the level of dogged pursuit and of dismissal of concerns the Republican congress put the Clinton presidency through: Ken Starr (an unusually fervent Republican to handle a case possibly involving a Democratic president), initially appointed for the Whitewater investigation, expanded it in a broadside, anything goes investigation into anything which could touch the president. The Clinton presidency is also — as far as I know — the first one since Watergate for which many potential issues were quickly labelled -gates: Whitewatergate, Nannygate, Filegate, Travelgate, and of course the various callings of the Lewkinsky affair (monicagate, lewkinskygate, tailgate, zippergate, sexgate)
If you have policy-based justifications for these, I'm interested though not exactly hopeful.
Didn't Lamar Smith write SOPA? And he's the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee overhearing this debate? How is this ok?
Are you aware of particular things that Smith has done using the powers of his chair which seemed inappropriate? Listening to the coverage yesterday, it seemed like he wasn't suppressing debate or anything; there's little need given the overwhelming support the bill has on the committee. However, Lofgren and others repeatedly argued that hearings were required to get the opinions of technical experts ... and I might guess the chair has authority in convening such hearings?
Also, is there anything more boring than a tweet declaring boredom?
It could send a message: "Politicians, if you are so eager to block and censor internet activity, we are happy to show you first hand what it can do, starting with your re-election bid".
I'm lucky to be an American. But lately, our government is a real embarrassment.
The most dreadful thing is that this is a system we are selling all over the world, and more often than not forcing it on people quite literally at gunpoint. But as long as enough Americans are more or less content with their lives and happy enough with their social/economic status the machine will keep on working.
Does anyone have a complete list of these "pro-SOPA majority" handy?
Google - put your best brains on hacking the lobbying system. The world needs you.
And who are the retards that vote it up?
Please, make sure you also vote, when Fox reports that a Congressman farted with his mic on.