How Nancy Pelosi Saved the NSA Surveillance Program | Hacker News Reader

How Nancy Pelosi Saved the NSA Surveillance Program

thecable.foreignpolicy.com

136 pointsjoering283 comments

Even though this didn't pass, it's still bad for Pelosi. If you're minority leader and you don't even manage to get half of your party to vote against an amendment introduced by a republican, despite extensive lobbying, what good are you?

There has to be at least one tech industry person with beaucoup bucks and an interest in politics that can take on Pelosi. Every Democrat insider would oppose a primary challenge, but I can imagine a scenario where someone with a lot of resources could bypass the establishment and speak directly to voters.

Jerry Yang comes to mind. He could perhaps even mobilize the Taiwanese population in SF.

I think the catch-22 is that you'd need a lot of money to run outside of the political system, but SF voters are anti-capitalist (at least, a fair number are) and wouldn't elect a rich person. Of course, Pelosi has $58mm, but she didn't earn it through something big and impressive, but through normal sketchy congressional investment dealings.

> I think the catch-22 is that you'd need a lot of money to run outside of the political system, but SF voters are anti-capitalist (at least, a fair number are) and wouldn't elect a rich person.

San Francisco has a history of electing wealthy people to public office. Reality disagrees with your stereotypes.

Her husband is a businessman that owns a real estate firm.

She made a lot of money from various non-public stock deals, such as Visa, which were pretty shady. A lot of people in congress do.

Marital wealth is less "obvious" to voters. Voting in a person who actually made a bunch of money through business is much more overt. Inherited wealth is also safe by comparison.

Oh my god. So every thing that a republican introduces defacto must be defeated by the democrat? This is exactly what's wrong with your so called democracy. The house it too big and the egos can't rise enough to engender real debate, so the debate moves to a hidden back rooms of a few key power brokers polarized to clear opposites. What a broken system of thought and argument.

Techies in NoCal think they carry a lot of weight. If they really do, she will be voted out of office next election. If she gets elected again it will indicate either tech hasn't the voice it thinks, doesn't vote, or are confused on what's important.

I hear ya, but will a credible opponent arise in that district? no democrat will run against her given her clout. is any republican electable in sf?

Don't hold your breath. SF is one of the liberal strongholds. Reps probably won't even bother to go there - unless of course they see a real chance (see Scott Brown) but they wouldn't.

Which means Pelosi is free to do anything she wants, as her own party would never restrain her (especially at the time she promotes the agenda of the President from her own party) and Reps have no real political power to oust her. Be thankful to the people of California for this gift that keeps on giving.

Last voter data I saw has registered Republican's in the low teens as a percentage of registered voters.

The only way I could see a Republican winning SF is if he/she were a fiscal conservative/social libertarian.

> Last voter data I saw has registered Republican's in the low teens as a percentage of registered voters.

Not that high; per current registration data [1], 37,719 registered Republicans of 437,529 total registered voters, so Republicans are 8.62%. Low teens is about what the typical Republican running in San Francisco gets on election day

> The only way I could see a Republican winning SF is if he/she were a fiscal conservative/social libertarian.

If the political mood in San Francisco was running in a way that social libertarian positions were strong enough that they'd get enough liberal voters to hold their breath and vote for a fiscal conservative, then a left-libertarian would probably end up as the Democratic candidate in the general election, and win. (Although the main effect, given the way California's "open primary" works, would likely be a contested primary among Democrats resulting in the two candidates that make it to the general election both being Democrats.)

I suppose, though, if you the the surge of social libertarianism happens after the primary but before the general election, and the Democratic candidate isn't a social libertarian, you might end up with a chance for the Republican. But that's a pretty freakish scenario.

[1] http://www.sfelections.org/tools/election_data/

Also note that's "the typical (republican running in San Francisco)", as distinct from "(the typical republican) running in San Francisco", who would likely get even fewer votes.

She wouldn't even debate the republican in 2010...

http://youtu.be/D0JrUhHv8kI

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/10/15/pelosi_won...

Apparently techies in NoCal are either a very liberal bunch, or they aren't paying attention. Pelosi should have been gone ages ago, but she wins every time by a huge margin.

SF voters are largely not techies. People who vote tend to be boomers or older, and organized (union, other political types, more organized or regulated industries). Techies tend to be younger, more transient, often non citizens, etc, so not a great voting bloc, even in SF.

Her district, CA-12, is SF City and County proper; there are probably only 50k techies by any definition in a city of around 800k. I'd estimate around 10-15k voters. Out of that group you probably have a higher than usual number of libertarian or green or other third-party voters too; probably far fewer party-line Democrats.

I know a good number of boomer techies...

More seriously, we should get the unions riled about this. Increased police powers and surveillance have not, historically, been kind to labor.

Do police like increased police powers? http://iupa.org/ - Police AFL CIO (unions of course)

They're not necessarily big on handing them to the NSA.

True, while warrants are not necessary for the NSA to snoop, they don't like sharing with local LE.

Depending on the quality of your local police, they have nothing to gain and a lot to lose.

I think it's safe to assume that lawmakers in the pocket of the surveillance state are going to continue to be 're-elected' as many times as they wish.

I think it's dangerous to assume that.

Both of California's senators sponsored PIPA. Tech is a weak force compared to Hollywood, mostly because it is apathetic.

CA should be two states, at least...

The thing with west coast states (and others, but shut up!) is that, as they were "settled" later than other states, they tend to have very dense urban areas and very sparsely populated rural areas.

This is OK in the House, where people have reasonably proportional representation (although districting is notoriously prone to corruption), but the senate seats and electoral votes tend to belong to the urban areas.

I'd be more than happy to cede everything east of about 121ºW to Nevada. It wouldn't necessarily resolve the problem, but it just feels right.

Oddly enough, people have multiple priorities in life. For most people their economic prospects or issues related to freedom of choice, or stopping abortion happen to be far more important than what the NSA does. These people are not confused as to what they think is important. As surprising as that may seem to the HN echo chamber.

More generally, I'd note that actual political change often takes decades of struggle. One sees a lot of bitching on this topic, but very little "I sent a check to EFF" and even less "We are organizing for action is this way."

I doubt anyone startup success is attributable to actionless moaning.

I live in SF and have met Ms. Pelosi. I am against 90% of her policies. I tweeted this today @NancyPelosi Shame on you for voting to continue to fund the NSA and unwarranted spying on all Americans. The only answer is a constitutional amendment to add term limits for both houses. I'd like to see 2 - 6 year terms for Senators and 4 - 2 year terms for Reps. Our legislators were not meant to have jobs for life. Do your public service and then get back to the real world.

> "Well, I didn't vote for the PATRIOT Act the last time it was up," she said today, at her weekly press briefing. "I don't want anybody to misunderstand a vote against the Amash resolution yesterday."

Er, I don't think there is any way to misunderstand a vote. It's really as simple as it gets. I doubt that some supposed underlying strategy holds more truth than the vote itself.

People can bitch and moan all they want on HN, but how many actually took the time to call her office? I did and the aide wrote down my support of the amendment. If the 1000s of readers of HN had all called, she probably may not have voted against it (but may still have convinced others to do so).

What we need is someone to run against her. Someone sane and not a cuckoo. She's old-school, represents the establishment, etc.; someone young, tech savvy and willing to spend the time could put up a tough fight.

Anyone thinking of running against her: I can promise you that I will work for your campaign for free and pound the pavement like crazy. Let's do it!

Hey now, why isn't there a platform where people can get in-kind crowdfunding for campaigns? Just like open source projects get a lot more help in terms of man-hours than money, so could people from the tech community running for office.

That's a good idea: crowdfunded elections for the underdogs.

DailyKos has been doing this for years.

To clear Foreign Policy's lightbox, use this bookmarklet:

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Courtesy of Sean McLemon (HN username smcl):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5644021

Very gutsy move considering her congressional district is San Francisco. Are there enough local techies to vote her out of office, or is the anti-Republican bias too high?

A Republican has basically no chance in San Francisco. (In local politics, it's kind of amusing. Anywhere but SF, Gavin Newsom would have been a Republican (except on the LGBT issue); basically in SF politics the Democrats are the right wing, and the Greens are the left wing; the Republicans are essentially as relevant locally as a party like UKIP is in the UK).

A Democratic primary challenger won't work because she is minority leader.

The best option is probably a Green Party or other left third party, overtly allied with the Democratic Party in the house otherwise.

Can you explain why it matters to SF that she's minority leader? Why is that reason enough to not allow a Democrat challenger?

Usually there is a lot of value to a district or state in having a powerful member of congress (the right committees, leadership roles, etc.), in terms of what things he or she can bring back to the district. It's unclear how much value SF actually gets from her; SF people probably care about union and (especially) environmental issues, but don't particularly need direct government spending ("pork" or real). LGBT (marriage equality, etc.) and immigration are probably the other big issues, and "traditional left values" like abortion access, racial/etc. equality, etc., which arguably a powerful representative in the senate is likely to support -- and sending one from SF to do it rather than a potentially more conservative democrat from elsewhere should help those issues.

However, even on those issues, Pelosi is a pretty worthless congresswoman. I don't think there's much real value in having her in Congress for anyone (except her and a limited number of donors), but perception and reality may not be the same.

Seniority, power, ability to control the agenda (theoretically to the benefit of the district she represents), potential to be speaker. These are strong selling points against a primary challenger who would start at the back of a very long line if elected.

Having someone who's that powerful in the House is useful for other Democrats in California. She has influence and connections that can be used to help raise funds for other Democrats and make political deals. Whoever replaces her as her district's representative would be a newcomer to the House with very little political influence.

I don't think the Democratic Party could actually prevent a challenger to Pelosi from running, but they could put all their support behind Pelosi, which would probably ensure her victory.

Because party leader being voted out by local voters would be a huge fail for the whole party. Which means any challenger would have to work against his own party, not with it. Chance of winning a challenge to an entrenched opponent while your own party is working against you is very low, and how you can actually be a candidate from Democrats if the Democrat party does not support you? If you're really that independent, you should be running with the other party then. Being in the party implies some cooperation with the party structures.

Of course, in politics many weird things are possible, and people can win election of a party seat despite the party not supporting them. But doing it in Democratic stronghold against one of the leaders of the party... Highly unlikely.

But potentially with the massive support of the tech community.

Which is maybe helpful for money, but not really for votes. Much stronger voting blocs in SF are LGBT, "traditional liberal", union, Chinese, and hispanic/latino.

I think the active opposition by a challenger's party would make it harder to run as a democrat in the primaries (where the party can fuck a candidate a lot more) vs. in the main election. A viable third-party candidate could probably get the 10-15% Republican vote as well as ideally strong wins in some of the major blocs (by being latino, gay, etc. himself or herself), which might be enough in the general election.

Pelosi herself is also rich ($58mm net worth), and has the full backing of the party, so it would be difficult for a tech-financed third party candidate to really win. OTOH, SF is a relatively small city, so a grass roots campaign shouldn't be expensive with lots of volunteer labor.

I don't think tech could do it alone, but I don't think party opposition from outside would dominate when money is taken out of the mix. It would, quite obviously, need to involve getting the voters in the district on board.

Note that with CA's current system, the top two vote-getters go on regardless of party, so the dynamics are a bit different... I'm honestly not sure exactly how it all shakes out, but I don't know that anyone else is either.

She will receive the Democratic party's full support against any challenger.

It's a huge advantage.

Obviously anyone can challenge her in the next election, but it's going to be an uphill battle. The only way it's going to work is if the challenger has a REALLY active grassroots movement behind him/her, and even then Pelosi is probably going to outspend you 10:1 or worse.

went through the same thought process and concluded that for exactly the reasons you stated, pelosi is all but immune in 2014 and beyond, which is honestly a disgusting thought if you think about it. I used to think that public service would be one way I could give back to the country, like how a professor or mine did back in the 80s but I'm afraid our political institutions have changed dramatically since those days for the worse.

Being minority leader might actually hurt her in this case - not only does she support bad things, she influences the rest of the party to support bad things. So voting against her is especially worthwhile.

Hey San Francisco-- do the nation a favor and stop voting for this disaster. She's an embarrassment.

Maybe the people of San Francisco aren't single issue voters. She has been a very strong supporter of gay rights, for example.

As would be virtually any replacement.

Actually, that might be a great way to get a third-party challenger in SF -- so far there have only ever been two openly gay people elected to congress as non-incumbents (i.e. they came out while already in office, but got re-elected), in Florida and Wisconsin. If anywhere is a good place for an openly gay person to run for congress, it's SF. I assume an actual gay or lesbian person would have higher LGBT cred than Pelosi.

Yes well she is also a politician and chooses what portions of the Constitution to uphold based on what will keep her in office [1]. This was the part of the constitution she decided to uphold two days ago.

[1] http://www.examiner.com/article/nancy-pelosi-congress-must-u...

I'm pretty convinced you can find supporters of gay rights in many political circles[1], you don't have to elect this disaster for that.

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/01/cheney-offers-his-s...

Please don't elect that disaster either, though...

Get a Log Cabin republican to run...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log_Cabin_Republicans

> She has been a very strong supporter of gay rights, for example.

Unless those gays would rather not be spied on.

Submitting links that are subscriber-only kind of sucks. Yes, one can do the googlebot trick but one shouldn't have to.

Maybe it requires JS to work, I was able to read it fine on Firefox+NoScript.

Though, now that I think about it, I remember making this same complaint a couple of months ago when Chromium still compiled here.

Works for me, Debian Squeeze 32 bit, official Chrome 27.0.1453.93 (that's no longer being maintained by Google). I'm running Adblock Plus, nothing else relevant I think.

Not that I disbelieve you and all the others who've reported this about this site, but what do you see?

I think the OP did the right linking to the original article. If this is suscriber-only you can take the time to subscribe or circunvent the blocking. BTW I use getpocket.com, it works fine.

It's merely a JS based modal box. You can use your web browser's devtool/inspector to delete the two divs, one for the black transparent overlay, and one for the sign-up modal.

I wish I had those two minutes back.

Thanks for the tip. Did exactly that in Win 7 / Maxthon Browser.

Or you can simply load (or refresh) the page and when you can see the article, but before the overlay appears, hit the stop button in your browser.

It also displays fine if you have the NoScript add-on.

>Submitting links that are subscriber-only kind of sucks. Yes, one can do the [insert trick here] but one shouldn't have to.

Works perfectly fine for me. Centos 6.4 with Chrome 26

worked just fine on Firefox for android

set ids TB_Overlay and TB_Block to display:none

I just automatically hit escape or press cmd/ctrl+r to try again; works 95 percent of the time

The American public is losing the battle of words. We need to start calling these policies what they are: fascist

Pelosi and others who support the NSA surveillance dragnet are American fascists.

My understanding of historical fascism is that it includes a strong sense of national identity combined with a muscular state and usually some sort of narrative of national superiority.

When's the last time someone flew an American flag un-ironically in downtown SF? We're nowhere close to fascist.

When's the last time you made a politically incorrect statement to an American citizen living outside of SF?

At first I agreed with you, but on a broader basis your sentiment just doesn't match up with reality.

Because patriotism is being used to justify evil. If you don't support the "Patriot Act" then you must not be a "patriot", apparently.

That's not really a useful definition. More specifically fascism elevates the interests of the state over the interests of individuals. While similar to communism in that regard, fascism uses private economic production rather than state ownership of production. So hallmarks of fascism are things like state-granted monopolies to specific companies, organized cartels, and heavy handed industrial policies. Fannie Mae, U.S. Farm programs, and subsidized green energy loans are little slices of American economic fascism.

And the second you use a word that most Americans need to look in a dictionary to understand, you've already lost them. In my opinion - you need to find a way to combat the concept that "if I'm not doing anything wrong, I have nothing to hide - and they're doing it for my safety" rationale in a very real, tangible, personal way.

If you can win that argument in a convincing-enough way that people you've convinced actively refute that concept to others going forward - only then will you start to win the battle of words.

Unfortunately, I fear that may only start to happen if (when?) some of the data collected under these programs is abused or leaked.

the battle of words isn't a battle of who can make the most inflammatory historical comparison of their opponents

>>Pelosi and others who support the NSA surveillance dragnet are American fascists.

No they aren't. It is rather strange to call Pelosi a right wing xenophobic ultranationalist....

It's a shame the article doesn't go into why she worked to scuttle this amendment even though she can sometimes be a harsh critic of intelligence programs.

my thought exactly. even the letter to the president seems like a toll made precisely to respond to press inquiries like this one

She worked against the amendment because the President was against it.

It's all about partisan hackery.

Do any of you think it would it be useful to have a site where it would be possible to donate time to different campaigns on certain sides of issues?

Imagine if you had a place where you could donate engineering time to a campaign for someone who voted to defund the NSA, or donate your time to the campaign of someone who is running against a rep who voted against it.

Think... a marketplace where you could donate your expertise, be it engineering, SEO, SEM, design, etc to campaigns on the sides of issues you care about.

the article states that pelosi is wary and concerned about intelligence, but doesn't give any real concrete examples. the only thing that can be construed as such would be "I didn't vote for prism last time it was up" which doesn't mean all that much to me.

is she actually a surveillance skeptic or is this a facade? her recent actions don't supple this claim at all.

Sigh. Other than from a purely theatrical perspective, the vote wasn't close at all. Even if you think this amendment could have magically gotten past the inevitable Senate filibuster (and I don't see how), the margin in the House was nowhere near the two-thirds majority required to override the guaranteed veto.

The veto isn't guaranteed - this is a defense appropriations bill, and the President can't veto just this amendment. The eventual alternative without an override, if both sides stick to their guns, is no funding for any NSA activities (or drone strikes, or anything else...).

.. and there's a street in SF named after her: Nancy Pelosi Dr.

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