Slashdot Mirror
Domain: porkbusters.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to porkbusters.org.
Comments · 11
-
Re:My top 5 priorities, off the top of my head
I could definitely get behind that. Make everything transparent. All votes for/against/abstain/whatever get recorded and made public. All provisions slipped in are tagged with the name of the Senator/Representative who entered it. All holds on votes must be public as well. (See http://porkbusters.org/secrethold.php )
Congress and the President are supposed to be working for *us*. If my boss were to ask what I did on a project and I answered "I can't tell you. It's a secret", I'd be fired. Congress should be forced to report to their bosses (the American People) just what they are doing in office. -
Re:Good newsWhile Kos frequently rips on the opposition (just like the above sites) Kos also actively tries to organize the liberal base. He lists potential democratic candidates in each congressional district and puts in requests for fundraising and volunteers. From my observations, the left-wing sites like Kos's seem to focus more on organizing the liberal base in general, while right-wing and libertarian sites focus more on rallying specific issues. For example, there's things like Vets for Freedom (based around pro-war support) and Porkbusters (based around pork barrel funding). There's also the flurries that occur whenever some major journalistic funniness is going on, such as Rathergate or Reutersgate, or the Duke lacross/Nifong scandal.
-
Re:The National ID did not do it...By having provisions about strengthening the border? There was a lot of enforcement in this bill, including this nation id thing....
A huh. You're completely ignoring point #2 I made. Which is pretty bad considering I only made two points. Let me refresh your memory...
The non-enforcement of current immigration laws on the books.
It doesn't matter what provisions you put into the bill if you don't enforce them. And the past 20 years has shown, they will not enforce them at a Federal level. This is what has gotten us to our current situation! How could you have missed this? Did you think that there wasn't federal laws that could effectively deal with illegal immigrants?
This is why those who want a border fence want a a solid "physical object" fence instead of a "virtual" fence. It's easy to get rid of a virtual fence by adjusting the funding. A physical fence remains there until torn down.
And all the vitriol about "get of jail free" is just ignoring the reality absoulte majority of thses people are just hard working , poor , desperate people.
The "get out of jail free card" is being written by Congressmen and Senators, for Congressmen and Senators. The vast majority of them are multimillionaires, if not all. But nice effort in twisting my words to make it look like I'm attacking Mexicans.
"We didn't let them" means status quo will stay for at least next 2 years - till citizens vote out republicans who seem to be unable to pass any single piece of legislation which is not pork for their corporate handlers.
And now you're officially a partisan hack. I'm a member of "Porkbusters", trying to remove pork and corruption from the political process. If you think this is just a Republican problem, you're mind-bogglingly ignorant on the situation, and sadly underestimating how bad things have gotten...
http://porkbusters.org/
Majority was not enough to pass it. Dems do not have 60 seats in senate. - Bill was killed by 53 to 46 votes . -It was republicans who killed it. When Dem get over 60 seats and senate and similar split in house then I think things will at least start moving.
From the CNN article:The controversial bill won support and derision from both sides of the political aisle. Those voting in favor included 12 Republicans. Sixteen Democrats voted against it and 18 senators switched their votes from an earlier vote to advance the bill on Tuesday.
Hm. It looks to me that if those 16 Democrats voted for it, it would have passed. They only needed 60 votes. Heck, if half of the Democratic dissenters voted for it, it would have passed.
Oh, sorry, did I just rupture your simplistic slogan? Ignore what I just said. Obviously the immigration bill isn't a fantastically complicated piece of law that will have a huge impact in every state. The problem is that the Republicans are meanies and ruined everything! -
Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.
There will be a change in government soon.
Next election, the Republicans will take over Congress again, and deliver... Unlike the Democrats who haven't done a thing except try and shove more pork down America's throat.
That's the real scandal.
http://porkbusters.org/ -
Re:Is it just me
Why does the state need so much control when it can so easily be voted out within 4 years?
Precedent.
As you slide the Overton window, people become acclimated to whatever arguably wrongheaded idea you want to implement.
Just to drop an example, it is practically impossible to float a serious policy question along the lines of "should the federal government tax the income of individual citizens?".
Regardless of your opinion of whether a more states-rights approach would make sense the IRS is here to stay. "The savage civil servant's beady eyes"[1] glow with pleasure at the thought of shaping public behavior through tax policy. The change of administration, like a shift of wind at sea, has no effect on the current below the whitecaps.
However, Al Gore's little internet invention may become a feedback loop to restore some liberty, if http://porkbusters.org/ has any impact.
[1]http://www.google.com/musics?lid=8yCLpO47IjD&ai d=SJuXU29t9uD&sid=SiGK3i_JPcK -
Re:Online gambling A-OK but don't forget the nativ
Their revenue? The Native Americans only share a duopoly on gambling because they're able to take advantage of regulatory arbitrage and states haven't figured out that they'd collect more profit from taxes on privately-run gambling. They're no more entitled to it than AWB was entitled to export all Australian wheat or Carlos Slim is entitled to pwn Mexicans' wallets.
And your suggestion to direct revenue from gambling taxes to education is faulty -- that's likely to be a federal tax, and we have too much federal involvement in education as is. (No Child Left Untested, anyone?)
(Full disclosure: I work for the federal government. That means I have a heightened awareness of how good we are at pissing away taxpayer dollars.)
-
Re:Proof
There was an impressive investigation conducted by Porkbusters.org in affiliation with numerous other bloggers, to uncover the congressman who put the 'secret hold' on the bill. It was possibly one of the most direct examples of bloggers influencing political events since the blog began.
It turned out, by a process of elimation, that it was Ted Stevens who held the bill. And don't forget this is the guy who was building the infamous Bridge to Nowhere-- $315m to connect an island (pop. 8000) to the mainland, replacing a 7-min ferry ride.
Alaskan politics is f*cked if you start looking into it. The governor Frank Murkowski has a 19% approval rating
-
Re:Proof
There was an impressive investigation conducted by Porkbusters.org in affiliation with numerous other bloggers, to uncover the congressman who put the 'secret hold' on the bill. It was possibly one of the most direct examples of bloggers influencing political events since the blog began.
It turned out, by a process of elimation, that it was Ted Stevens who held the bill. And don't forget this is the guy who was building the infamous Bridge to Nowhere-- $315m to connect an island (pop. 8000) to the mainland, replacing a 7-min ferry ride.
Alaskan politics is f*cked if you start looking into it. The governor Frank Murkowski has a 19% approval rating
-
Grass-roots Effort
The real story here is that the Porkbusters group of bloggers are the people who kept this issue visible enough to get it passed over the efforts of Ted "series of tubes" Stevens and Robert "reformed Klansman" Byrd. I'd have thought
-
Re:Think Happy Thoughts, Ignore Reality
By voting for advocates of fiscal conservatism and the free-market who are Republican, I can be "voting against" President Bush just as much as someone who votes for a candidate who believes in an even more gargantuan national government and a far greater socialized economy can be "voting against" President Bush.
"The difference between theory and practice is greater in practice than in theory"
Part of the compromise inherent in our representative democracy is that you're guaranteed some bathwater with your baby.
We end up voting not to maximize the baby, but minimzed the current and projected bathwater.
Perhaps the internet can eventually provide better feedback, as http://porkbusters.org/ would seem to indicate.
One hopes. -
Porkbusters