White House Refuses To Comment On Petition To Investigate Chris Dodd
politics.slashdot.org
politics.slashdot.org
Chris Dodd just stated more plainly what is 115% clear to all the recipients of this cash: "We are paying you to make specific legislative decisions in our favor. Stop doing that job and we stop paying." i.e. quid pro quo i.e. bribery. I'd really like to hear ideas of how we can stop this racket; I'm afraid asking Barack Goldman Sachs Obama to "look into it" isn't going to work (tho I did sign the petition).
The simple solution - in the sense that it's an obvious one, and a naive one - is to just forbid campaign contributions altogether.
It doesn't matter what laws you try to pass or what government you try to have. The entities who those laws threaten will fight against them.
What motivation does the smart people have if that happens? Entrepreneurs work hard and give up their social and personal lives to become successful and at the end of it if distribution of wealth happens who would want to do that?
So my comment was not just a remark but is a fact and he talks about wealth distribution any chance he gets.
One way to mitigate that is to ban independent advertising on behalf of candidates (SuperPACs), require all donors to donate into a common pot which candidates may draw equally from, and require all media companies to provide equal time to candidates on their networks.
A downside of this approach is that many insincere candidates may exhaust the common campaign financing pool. Requiring failed candidates to pay back a percentage of their spend may be a way to mitigate that (e.g. a "co-pay").
Doesn't this also create a pretty powerful disincentive for the non-wealthy to run?
As you pointed out, the challenge is to find the least bad one. In this country, many health plans require a co-pay of $10-$20 in order to see a doctor. The purpose of the co-pay is to deter would-be patients from flooding doctors with trivial inquiries who would then be able to bill insurers for their (wasted) time.
So, yes, a co-pay is a disincentive, but arguably less so than the disincentives present in the system it's proposed to replace.
Campaign contributions are becoming / have become de facto bribery, but without campaign contributions only the independently wealthy can stand for office.
How about limiting how much an individual entity can donate? We don't allow the rich more votes because they've got more assets so could we not also restrict the amount they're able to donate?
How about restricting donors to entites entitled to vote in an election? Whatever my opinion on (say) Julia Gillard, I'm not eligible to vote for her or for any of her opponents because I've got nothing to do with Australia. Logically therefore (and my knowledge of Australian electoral law is almost nil, so this point is purely hypothetical), what is the justification for allowing me to influence the election by funding candidates?
Corporations don't have votes beyond the individual votes of their owners and employees in spite of their legal personhood, and that's good. Likewise, I think there's a case to be made that as unenfranchised legal persons, they shouldn't be able to influence elections financially.
http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress/...
If you want to know what to do, a nice first step would be to buy and read Republic, Lost.
A strategy which requires a whole book to be explained sounds like giving up on anything simple and claiming we can go through 1001 non-radical steps to eventually get to a happy place.
This to me is a form of denial. You realize simple solutions can not be practically implemented and you convince yourself a marathon of tiny changes is the way to go.
(Disclaimer: I have not read that book.)
At least 3/4ths of the book beats you over the head with countless examples of the corruption, how it came to be, and why it's not technically illegal.
The very last part covers potential solutions, none of which have a great chance of success due to the vested interests but should be tried anyway. e.g. a constitutional convention is one way out, if we can convince enough states to call one.
What happens if we try them all and they (as expected) do not succeed?
If they don't have a great chance of success, why can't we find other solutions?
I can think of a way to get money out of congress: remove elections.
Think of it: serving in Congress could be like Jury Duty. Everyone's in the pool and every election cycle random people are selected from the pool and asked to serve.
With no elections, there are no campaigns to donate to. It would be illegal for any Congressperson to accept any gifts or money from anyone other than their paycheck from the government and a ban on working for, directly or indirectly, with any person or corporation that was affected by any bills in which the Congressperson participated or voted.
Would there still be corruption and political favors? Absolutely. People would still have a tendency to push for laws that would benefit either themselves, family, or friends or the industry in which they worked.
The lack of up-front monetary gain would likely have a significant impact but corruption is a problem of honesty and integrity which human nature tends to lack and tacks personal disciple to evolve.
Until mankind becomes entirely focused on building social welfare (what's good for all) instead of personal welfare (what's good for me), these problems will always be here.
I of course do not mean to say that democracy is The Answer to All Problems, but this idea seems to touch the very core of the political system in place.
And you would be handing much more power to unelected civil servants.
I think both parties going to OMOV and doing away with primary's go back to state delegates deciding who the presidential candidates are - Oh and I would ban mandating of delegations.
Until we start building social and political systems for humanity as it is rather than humanity as we might idealistically want it to be, we're going to have these problems -- not that I'm convinced that self-interest is really something we want to eradicate from human psychology. Markets already have features which effectively translate self-interest into the greater good, and so does democracy in the sense that if everyone voted selfishly, majority rule would benefit the majority. So let's focus on where markets and democracy aren't working the way we'd want them to and stop wringing our hands about how evil and selfish the human nature is.
An extreme example. Suppose a country consists of three tribes. Each tribe hates the other. Tribe A hates tribe B less than C. A & B vote to combine their interests in liquidating C. After C is gone the majority tribe then votes to kill off the smaller remaining tribe.
Given the grand scale of environmental destruction going on in the world I don't think its fair to say that markets (nominally free ones) have done such a good job of translating self-interest into the greater good.
What's good for each of us does not necessarily translate into what is good.
I don't think everyone pursuing their own self interest is at all a good thing when done on a global scale. I think the features of markets lead people like myself into knowingly buying products made by oppressed labor. It leads me to buy gas from companies that pollute on a grand scale in Nigeria and Ecuador. I think the self-interest aspect of markets is far more destructive than the positives are positive. I gathered from what you wrote that you think the opposite. Hence I tried to briefly explain why all of pursuing our self-interest is a bad thing, overall.
I think that's irrelevant. Humans have whatever natural inclinations they have. Propose solutions that work with them or shut up; misanthropically blaming human nature isn't constructive in the slightest.
Frankly, this is the same kind of unenlightened thinking that e.g. the Catholic Church applies to questions of public health. The Church thinks that the solution to AIDS is for people not to fuck; enlightened thinking realizes that people do fuck and proposes a system of preventative health care, including condoms, that addresses that reality. It's funny to see the selfsame leftists who condemn the Catholic Church for trying to keep condoms out of Africa apply the same basic fallacy to economics. If we just stop people from being self-interested....
Step 1 of fixing a problem is to understand the nature of the problem. If one thinks that selfishness is a good thing that leads to positive outcomes then the same destructive path we are on will continue. Recognition that everyone acting in their self-interest does not collectively yield good results would be a giant step forward into solving some of the pressing problems our species has.
The law not only has failed, but the lawmaking process has become 100% corrupt, therefor one should consider options that are not lawful.
The Obama White House is attempting to regrow the wall between political and constituent concerns and law enforcement concerns.
The Department of Justice should operate with the most minimal of political interferences (since I don't think it's possible to avoid them all together) with the goal of maintaining its independence.
That said, I absolutely do think that what Chris Dodd has been doing is not above board. I don't know who has jurisdiction or who to inquire with further, but the White House isn't the right place. I'd be interested if someone knows who in the DoJ would be the appropriate folks to contact.
They may not need to investigate it themselves, but helping the message get sternly to the right people should be appropriate.
Although, yes, one would think that it'd be in their best interest to communicate that if they had in fact done so.
For those interested, the anti-bribery statutes are at 18 U.S.C. 201 (http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/18/I/11/201) and subsequent provisions within that chapter (there are also other, conceivably applicable statutes that might be charged in bribery or corruption cases). As you can see, the wording in the statutes is extremely broad so, if so inclined, it's possible to make an argument that many, many things are bribery (although, realistically, "bribery" has been significantly narrowed by the courts).
This might happen if we ever get campaign finance reform and term limits, right after hell freezes over.
Yes, he's said that MPAA members are going to be less likely to make campaign contributions to folks who don't vote the way the MPAA . So what?
Do any of you contribute to candidates who do things that you don't like? Or, do you contribute only to those who do things that you do like?
Why should MPAA members be any different?
I note that candidates make promises like "if elected, I'll work to repeal DADT" and organizations do fundraisers for candidates based on said promises.
How is this any different?
I was thinking about how campaign finance works in how candidates tend to get paid during in elections less so than afterwards, but while people - in Texas in particular - get a lot of cronyist returns on their investments, maybe there is something to be said for in-office donations. Votes and campaign contributions are sunk cost, so you can't threaten with pulling them back, but you might donate to your politicians, once they do something you support, like how some politicians have been staunch opponents of SOPA/PIPA since the start and lead the charge against them.
Rather than just writing them a letter or giving their assistants a phone call, maybe consider donating some money?
The old incentive structure in politics is old to the degree of obsolescence, so maybe microdonations can serve to alter that or at least erode it over time? Think of all the people who've praise Senator Wyden, but haven't donated to him. Maybe that's something that should be considered.
If I could vote, I'd try to do what I could to bring SOPA/PIPA into the next election as a reminder of what they supported an do my best to explain it in plain terms to people, but I'm basically outside the American system, but let's a least not do something ridiculous that will have no effect aside from making one side in politics look like clueless teenagers.
After publicly proclaiming that he would not be working as a lobbyist, he became the MPAA's lobbyist for $1.5M. As you can see from the history of SOPA/PIPA, his influence peddling was nearly successful in ramming this legislation through with little or no substantive debate.
Before that, he was the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. While Chairman, he refinanced his homes in Washington, DC and Connecticut with below market rates reserved for "friends" of the Countrywide Mortgage CEO. Note that Countrywide was one of the biggest issuers of fraudulent sub-prime mortgages. He asserted that he had no idea that he was receiving special treatment.
Before that, he bought a vacation house in Ireland with a Bear Sterns executive who was convicted of insider trading. He used his influence with President Clinton to help obtain a pardon for his partner. He subsequently purchased his partner's share at a significant discount.
The fact that behavior like this typifies career politicians does not make the behavior ok. This guy should retire and be thankful that he doesn't live in an era where his actions would have landed him in prison.
> After publicly proclaiming that he would not be working as a lobbyist, he became the MPAA's lobbyist for $1.5M. As you can see from the history of SOPA/PIPA, his influence peddling was nearly successful in ramming this legislation through with little or no substantive debate.
Yes, but we're discussing whether it's wrong for the MPAA to announce that they're not donating any more money because SOPA wasn't passed.
The fact that Dodd was a corrupt politician is irrelevant to that discussion.
BTW - Dodd is arguably violating the law by being a lobbyist within two years of leaving office. But, that's off-topic.
The real question is how we can increase public representation in politics and ensure that politicians are knowledgable about areas they propose legislation in.
You can't effectively remove corporations from politics without lessening the influence of individuals. Focus on what you can change instead.
How is this any different?
Cause and effect.
Fundraising based on a promise goes like this: Candidate says they support this -> I want them to do this -> I give them money so they can get elected and do this. (The plan causes the money.)
MPAA lobbying goes like this. Candidate is not already promising to do this -> I want them to do this -> I give them lots of money so that they will do this. (The money causes the plan.)
However, it was comments here on HN that made me question just how different it is from, say, me deciding not to contribute to a politician's campaign because I don't like what he has supported. My final feelings are that there's a sliver of difference because (a) I believe that my actions are for the greater good rather than my own self interest, and (b) I'm looking at a larger picture than lobbying over a single issue. But in the end, I've not been able to prove to myself that those differences are sufficiently objective and measurable to be able to sustain the complaint against Dodd.
Yes, I am saying there is a fundamental difference between an entity giving $100 to a campaign and e.g. $5m (if you add in the RIAA). To ignore that would be like... like saying it would be fair to pit you against Boeing in an airplane building contest. (Kind of a weak simile, sorry.) The point is the field is not level and, most importantly, they are not supposed to offer quid pro quo.
It's perfectly fine ethically and legally to provide financial support to candidates who support causes you believe in.
The problem is when there is an express or implied exchange of official acts for the contribution, as when one says, "Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake,"
That is an exchange of contributions for official acts. That is unethical and illegal.
I don't see how that's a good thing. I'd rather you look out for yourself and leave my best interests to me.
The MPAA can say they're going for the greater good, too.
Has any petition there led to an actionable response from the WH? Curious.
I signed a petition against the White House's plan to put airport usage fees in place for general aviation, effectively charging pilots to talk to air traffic control. This is a Really Bad Idea (I'm happy to delineiate why in future comments if there is interest but for now I'll play the "I'm a pilot, trust me" card).
The response was just a politely verbose version of "f*ck you, we're going to do it anyway."
So I joined the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association PAC and started contributing money that I'm sure will be used to bribe the right people. Sad that it came to that, but the White House has decided that they have a good idea, logic be damned, so they're bulling ahead.
Well, I'm interested.
The obvious guess that comes to mind is that pilots are now incentivized to avoid communication with ATC, consequentially reducing ATC's effectiveness. Is there something more subtle going on?
More interesting question is why the WH thought it was a good idea. Who was lobbying for it? I was under the impression that whatever union or union-like organization is built around ATC folks is pretty adamant about promoting safety stuff, and would never tolerate something like this.
Before I get to what that is, here's the real problem: you have to contact ATC to file an instrument flight plan. If you're flying visually, interaction with ATC is limited to communications with the airport's tower, maybe with one of the major ATC centers if you're departing an airport with designated approach/departure frequencies (i.e. a Class B or C airport).
Visual flight (VFR) into instrument meteorological condition (IMC) accidents are fatal somewhere between 75% [1] and 90% [2] of the time. For the reason over the last two decades barriers to instrument training have been steadily decreased: used to be you had to have 200 hours in the book before you could get an instrument rating. That was decreased to 125 in 1986 and in 1997 the flight time requirement was dropped altogether [3].
The reason for this is that flying instrument flight plans have a lower accident rate [3] than pilots flying VFR. Furthermore, pilots on a VFR flight plan who run into IMC and are instrument rated can contact ATC and file a pop-up IFR flight plan, interacting with ATC to establish vectors around convective areas (thunderstorms) and into an instrument approach.
Accident rates increase when barriers to instrument flight are erected. A good example of this is when the Commemorative Air Force barred pilots from filing IFR flight plans. They reversed this policy after irreplaceable historical artifacts were lost due to pilots trying to dodge under weather to make an airshow or get home.
Now, to the examination of the WH's communication on the matter and to your question of whether something more subtle is going on: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/response/why-we-need...
The example in the letter of the "large commercial aircraft" vs a "corporate jet" is invalid: the administration is conflating the excise taxes that a FAR Part 135 commercial operation pays per passenger vs the fuel taxes per gallon that a FAR Part 121 corporate flight pays.
The "something more subtle going on" is revealed in the language of the letter. This is going to lead into my sharing a political perspective, which I know is verboten on HN but is not avoidable in the context of this little digression.
They exempt piston flight, military, emergency, etc. And they single out a corporate jet as an example of a flight not paying its "fair share" for use of ATC resources. It's a not-terribly-subtle attack on corporate aviation.
I could defend the validity of corporate aviation, but I won't at this juncture: the problem is that their attack is poorly targeted and will have considerable collateral damage. For example, there are hundreds of small air-taxi operations that operate out of FBOs around the country, like the one from Addison, LA to Shreveport, LA that does four flights a day every day of the month. That's an additional $200 a flight x 4 x 30 for an additional $24,000 that the operation is going to have to come up with. Given the thin margins these operations run on, these user fees place the jobs of the pilots, mechanics, and FBO personnel at risk.
Furthermore the WH is pretending that Air Traffic Control is the only thing that the FAA funds in order to justify their claim that it isn't fair that a Southwest 737 pays more taxes than Apple's Gulfstream V. But the taxes that the FAA collects go toward airport maintenance grants, maintenance of the aging VOR-VORTAC system. Generally, support of the air transportation grid. The ATC is just one significant facet, but not the only facet.
As to your question about the ATC unions, they don't have a voice as the WH can (and likely will) assert these user fees via Executive Order.
[1] http://www.humanfactors.illinois.edu/Reports&PapersPDFs/... [2] http://www.aopa.org/asf/hotspot/vfrimc.html [3] http://www.shashek.com/Flight_Logs/Docs/iPilot_Articles/Shou...
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
Just a simple question. Can somebody tell me how this gratifies their intellectual curiosity? It seems to be politics and is certainly not an interesting new phenomenon.
It could have been written to ask "why the appropriate law enforcement body is not taking action after MR X admitted committing bribery" which satisfies the "to address a problem" criteria
Though the we the people site is doing a useless job of having the rules front and centre and explaining then in plain english for non insiders.