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Online Politics - Will it Work?
molo asks: "This is the year I will be entering the work force, and I've realized that I need to vote to protect my rights as an American, an individual and a programmer. For that reason, I ponder this question:
Which candidate is better for geeks (and the associated geek jobs and issues)?
There is plenty of political FUD being spread from all sides, and to help you weed through it, here are some links for each of the candidates: Bush on Technology and the New Economy, Gore's High-Tech Economic Agenda, Gore on Technology & Science, Nader on Corporatism, Buchanan's Issues and Browne's Issues (anything relevant on these last two?). While I realize that there are a lot of differences between the candidates, can we try to limit this discussion to geek issues? Its hard to make heads or tails of these guys, and I'm curious what the rest of the community thinks."
RomulusNR asks: "The other day I visited Vote Smart, mainly to do a comparison of Nader vs. Gore (sorry libertarians, I'm a lib'ral) on their opinions on major issues. To my discouragement, I discovered two things while visiting the site. One, is that no major presidential candidate has filled out Vote-Smart's presidential issues test, even after repeated urgings from Vote Smart, high-profile political colleagues, and major SIGs. No, not even Mr. Internet Inventor himself. The other thing I noticed made me think Vote Smart had become thoroughly useless... in that practically every schmo with designs on political attention and the bother to get their names on their state's presidential ballots, is listed on Vote Smart. If VS's list is to be believed, there are about 60 candidates for the presidency as we speak -- about 55 more than I could think of."
I don't agree with the two-party system, but not even the most politically divergent democracies in the world have that many independent parties (at least not with their own candidates). It would be impossible to carry out an election with 60 competing candidates.
Which makes me wonder two things. One, if the Internet allows every schmoe to declare themselves a presidential candidate, will it help the political process? Will it even have an effect, with all those also-rans diluting the third-party pool? Two, if all major (or even remotely viable, like Nader) political candidates are going to simply ignore grassroots Internet 'informed politics' attempts like Vote Smart, what good will they be able to do?"
(and I'd use <font size=+5> if
<attire type="flamesuit">
The last thing the system needs is a bunch of morons who are too lazy to go down to the local polling place being able to vote. Much of the bad legislation around comes from politicians knowing that the average voter is clueless and will vote how he's told by TV.
Personally, I like Robert Heinlein's suggestion: you should not be allowed to vote unless you can find the roots of y=9x^2+12x+4. Now I know a lot of people will point to Jim Crowe laws (discrimination at the polling place to prevent blacks from voting) but guess what? Those days are OVER. GET OVER IT!
Also, I see a lot of teenagers bitching that they cannot vote. OK kid, tell you what. When you have proven that you have some degree of responsiblity, that you understand what it is to support yourself and see large amounts of your money being taken from you by force by well-meaning fools who will use it to assuage their own guilt, when you understand the consequences of your actions and the fact that some mistakes will outlive you, then you can vote.
</attire>
www.eFax.com are spammers
One advantage of using computers in the voting process itself is that they may make "instant run-off" style elections (aka preferential voting, aka australian-style) more user-friendly. The only coherent objection to these is that they might confuse some voters. With a computer holding your hand during the process (then printing out a hard-copy which you hand-carry to the ballot box to prevent fraud), this objection would evaporate.
(instant runoffs work like this: instead of just picking one person to vote for, you rank candidates in order of preference. For the "first ballot", only first choice votes are counted. But if nobody gets an absolute majority, a instant simulated runoff election is held. The lowest vote-getter is removed from the "ballot" and everyone who voted for that person is counted as voting for their second choice. This process continues until one candidate gets an absolute majority.
That way, you could vote for 1.Nader 2.Buchanan 3.Bush 4.Gore (or whatever) and be confident that your vote wasn't "thrown away" because if the vote came down to Bush and Gore you'd be counted voting for the frat boy. This would make 3rd parties more viable, and give even minority parties a strong negotiating stance ("Hey, Gore: change your platform to not fund Star Wars or the Columbian military, or we'll throw our second-choice votes to Bush en masse as a protest").
(of course, with the electoral college, things get complicated. But there is a unique, stable way to map in-state virtual run-offs among N candidates into binding directives on state electors for N ballots, and that's actually good, because the conversion could proceed state-by-state.)
Preferential Voting: easy as 1-2-3
I am reminded of a quote by Issac Asimov. I'll have to dig it up, but paraphrased, it essentially runs like this: "Someday in the next hundred years we will wake up and realize that, without really trying to do so, we have created a world government." I think the implication of the context was, this could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on who defined the role of that government. But I agree with Asimov. It WILL happen. Having some input from the actual inhabitants of the planet would help. Otherwise it's going to look like one of those dreary futuristic worlds where corporations own everything and governments don't really matter.
Wait a minute . . .
"Could we tax, uh, thingy? You know?"
It bothers me IMMENSELY that you feel that people who do not share your opinions can be harmful, and should be prevented from exercising them. Who shall you decide is too young? Too idealistic? At what point did you become the arbiter of 'valid' opinion?
Also, your denouncement of communism contains some interesting logic. You state that
1. People are greedy.
2. Communitsts have no incentive to work but that which is given them by the nation state.
3. Therefore communism is a failure.
I don't quite understand how this works. It looks like you've strung a bunch of specious generalizations together in a general denouncement of human nature, not communism. We know people are greedy. What does greed have to do with communism? You can't be greedy in a communist state, can you? It's a 'share the wealth' system, is it not?
What does incentive have to do with it? Are you saying that greed is a good thing to have, because it's an incentive to work? How does this translate into a more productive economy? It seems to me that the capitalist system we use in the US doesn't do a lot for encouraging a productive economy. The beneficiaries of our economic efforts are stockholders, not the people who do the work. For them -- a pittance. For the stockhodlers -- a huge profit. And if no huge profit -- a lawsuit. This fact is gradully dawning on people, and as a result it seems speculation and gambling are the most popular activities of the last few years. Get-rich-quick schemes are all the rage. Everyone wants to win the lottery. Or get stock options. Or in any way avoid actually working for pay.
And what do teachers in government-funded public schools have to do with it? Are they all communists by association with the government? Or with the public funding? Or what? And again your implication that the young cannot think for themselves and should not be allowed to -- where do you get this?
I ought to conclude, in parallel with you, that people who don't understand their own opinions ought not be allowed to express them, but that's not the point of a democracy. The point of a democracy is that you get a say in your own destiny because the power of the government derives from you not the right of kings or by some arbitrary declaration. Your way would have us arbitrarily declaring that certain classes of people do not have the understanding to vote. And it does indeed seem an arbitrary marker you've chosen. You've displayed little better understanding of history or the definition of communism or its consequences than the young idealists you would exclude from voting.
I think the real danger of communism was that the needs of state were declared to be more important than the rights of the individual. This was the same danger of Fascism and in fact every other horrific dictatorship of the century. The economic models were of little to no consequence. Russia's economy failed for multiple and complex reasons; one of those was that we were forcing them into a spending game with our defense budget, another is the fact that their major landmass is a frozen waste and not exactly the world's 'breadbasket.' People ascribe the United State's economic success to our fantastic democratic system. They seem to forget it was based on slavery for the first three hundred years, and that our agricultural resources are some of the richest in the world. We're damn lucky to be in the geographical place we're in, and it's surprising how people can be lucky and not know it.
Boiling the failure of Communism down into the simple syllogism you describe above is not only shunning the issues but it's painfully ignorant as well. The real failure -- well, I can think of few things more destructive to a society than suppressing conflicting opinions. When a citizen fails to benefit from his implicit contract with society, he has little incentive to hold up his end of it.
And for the record, I think the Holocaust still stands as a more important historical lesson. Not because the Nazis did it. Because the rest of the world stood idly by and let them for so long.
Lieberman is big on censorship, the v-chip, and has put a lot of pressure on the movie, tv, music and video game industries:
8 055,00.html
1 0-01.htm :
http://www.wirednews.com/news/politics/0,1283,3
Also, from http://www.freedomforum.org/news/2000/08/2000-08-
In April 1998, the Virginia-based Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression gave him one of their Jefferson Muzzles, an award presented to those who show insensitivity to First Amendment principles.
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Vote Libertarian and win a free country!
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I AM, therefore I THINK!
Like, when was the last time anyone paid attention to the Constitution in this country? Many things the federal government does today are not authorized by the Constitution. Why start caring now?
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no one has mentioned john hagelin??
Ooi! Brother. Go to Imbi and get yourself a copy of Linux then, it's the only legal thing there.
And quit chanting reformasi please, and move on.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
Right now still not enough people are on-line to make a real diffrence but canidates will go online for the gimmic value alone.
When I ran for office (local office nothing big) in 1997 I put stuff up on my home page and the local paper published my web url. I lost becouse I botched my campaign and didn't get my message out at all (excluding my website).
Websites are going to be sereous as a good mesure of voters are on-line and some day soon enough voters will be on-line to make an impact.
Voter information groups have websites as it's cheaper and easyer to provide information over the web but will continue to provide information in the more expensive printed form for those who request it.
Maybe I'm wrong on the impact of on-line voters sence the number of people going online is increasing all the time and at some point soon it will matter. It will matter long before the gimmic value dies off.
As for the Canidates.. In my view Bush and Gore are not very good tech canidates, I belive one third party canidate has a better grasp than the rest. (Do the research.. shouldn't be hard to figure out who I'm talking about as the rest are pritty clueless... if you can't indentify him then maybe I'm wrong about him...)
As for me.. I know who I'm voting for... and I expect he'll lose... but I'm voting anyway
I don't actually exist.
Something I've been thinking about lately is the problem of why Libertarians seem to be "closer" to Republicans. I think I've come up with the reason: all of the Republicans' stupid ideas are harder to implement than all of the Democrats'.
The Democrats' stupid ideas basically boil down to "take more money from everyone with a job and give it to people without jobs." This is easy: you raise taxes. This is especially easy once you have everybody's guns.
The Republicans' stupid ideas basically boil down to "take freedom away from everyone who doesn't agree with us." This is hard; it requires a police state, and you also have to raise taxes to do it. Plus you have the minor problem of everyone still having guns (which makes the police state hard to create).
Therefore, the problem Libertarians face is that Republicans aren't as dangerous to the things we believe in as Democrats.
My Blog. Sela Ward can sell me long distanc
Clinton/Gore has done jack for the environment
and its hard to see why groups like Sierra, etc
still bother with them. Talk is cheap folks
and thats all they have done. And if you want
to take it to the 'geek' level, how many of you
paid attention to the 'Silicon Hell' article a
few months ago that detailed the incredible
toxicity of the semi industry? I guess when it
comes to the environment, Al and Bill still hold
very dear 'its the economy stupid'.
Religeon has, in most cases, started far more wars than fixed screwed countries. Want an example? Look at ireland.
Ireland hasn't been fucked up by religion - thats just the establishment line. Note well: the beef in Ireland is British occupation. Colonialism.
The Brits have been squatting on Northern Ireland for centuries. The facts are that Brits largely practice Protestantism and the Irish largely practice Catholicism, thus allowing for the totally erroneous portrayal of this situation as a "religious war" by the late 20th century media. This has got to qualify as one of the most successful disinformation campaigns ever seen. Ask almost anybody in the USA what the problem is in Ireland, and they'll say its the Protestants and Catholics pitching bombs at each other.
The real deal is that the occupied Irish are still pitching bombs at the imperialist British invaders centuries after the fact. It's an ages-old, familiar situation around the world, and it has squat to do with religion.
"I will gladly pay you today, sir, and eat up
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
I think the most pressing issue these days is the effect corporate power has on the political system. Look at any of the recent online/computing/internet issues and they all lead back to massive corporate power controlling government, whether it is the MPAA raiding a kid in Norway, the recording industry redefining freedom of speech, or Microsoft slapping on huge premiums and entering into illicit anti-competitive dealings with computer manufacturers. I've traced these issues back to inordinate corporate power corrupting politics...and when I got there, I realized that it was the foundation of many other non-computer/internet related issues. The fact is that until the system is reformed, and special interests removed, the system is NEVER going to work for any of us. It won't work for us geeks, it won't work for anybody. So that is why I'm voting for Nader. Both of the other candidates talk a good talk, but they won't walk the walk. They are both funded by hundreds of millions of dollars from PACs, corporations, and special interests. How much money did you donate to them? Do you think you could possibly compare to the influence bought by those hundreds of millions?
Where Nader strays from my beliefs (well, it so happens he doesn't, but let's just make a hypothetical), he makes up for it and more for being the only one with genuine integrity and passion for fixing the system, and for allowing it to work the way it was meant. I have faith that when the system is fixed and people can have their voices heard, things will be better all around, even though there are those with opinions that run counter to mine. This is the basic premise of free speech: allow everyone to talk, and the good of the whole will eventually outweighs any bad of the parts.
Please open up the debates (http://www.debatethis.org/), and give all candidates a voice. Americans deserve more than just two choices.
And if you want anecdotal evidence of character of the candidates' just check http://www.netcraft.com/whats/ to see what they're running (Bush runs Windows 2000 + IIS, Nader runs BSD/OS + Apache...I find that rather indicative).
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
However, there is a problem with this sort of test: there is no way for it to be really objective. There is such a wide spectrum of issues that what is a relavent current issue for the writer of the quiz may not be a meaningful issue for the voter.
Would the quiz cover local current events like polluted water in the local reservoir? Or would it instead focus on world events? Then which kind of events? Economic? Social? Political? How would you measure the quality of information they have recieved on the issue?
The pool of questions and the range of options are too broad; there would wind up being a bias in the test, even though it would not be deliberate. It's somewhat unreasonable to expect people to be informed on enough issues that they could reasonably pass this sort of test (which would have to be somewhat long if it were to cover all types of issues fairly).
I agree that an informed voter is better- if I don't know what canidates stand for I don't vote for or againt them. However, I don't think a quiz can be used to filter out uninformed people. The whole concept reminds me of the Jim Crow- type tests...
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brave little toaster
"Remember, don't try this at home until the statute of limitations has expired."
Folks,
I think people should be asking this question: is the Internet going to affect how you vote because of faster dissemination of information?
What is happening with the Internet now is that not only are smaller political groups getting far more publicity than before (because you no longer have to actually print out newsletters to send to readers--they can the information online), but the Internet has become increasingly a "balance" to the mainstream media itself. The success of the Drudge Report already shows how this has drastically affected news operations around the world; the rise of news/commentary sites from almost every political persuasion in the last five years on the Web has also done much to shape public opinion.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
For Heaven's sake, that was NOT Brutus! That was Galileo. Who, incidentally, was NOT burned at the stake, but just barely so; thanks to close connections he had at the Vatican, he managed to convert what would have been a death penalty to what amounted to an intellectual life sentence: he was forbidden to meet his fellow scientists and talk about his ideas. Which, nevertheless, he went out of the "court" famously muttering, "Eppur si muove..." (and yet it moves).
The Church, however, was really well known for applying the Barbecue Principle to any political, moral or scientific dissidents. What we really don't lack is a long list of scientists and philosophers -- who could be considered, IMHO, their ages' gees -- either killed or terrified out of their wits by this compassionate institution. If you MUST have names, Savonarola and Jan Hus come immediately to mind (both were burned, in Firenze and Prague, respectively); and Spinoza was a virtual recluse in the confines of his own head.
But all of this is, of course, pretty irrelevant, considering that a few centuries later a Pope stands out and says OOPS, SORRY, GUYS...
Eat right. Exercise. Die anyway.
To go off on a thread. I liked the view put forth by Heinlein (or however you spell) in Starship Troopers that only veterans would be able to vote and serve in the government.
His reasoning was that only the veterans could serve because they had put their lives on the line for country and because of this, were less apt to make decisions that would hurt the country that they had risked their lives to protect.
He said it much better, but I can't find a link. Food for thought.
-Chris
If I am a kook because I use my personal website to relay my beleifs, then Damnit I'm glad that I am a kook.
Why you are convinced that I have never created anything of inherent value in my life I do not understand. Other than that it is a meaningless insult to me.
I assume that your last comment is telling me that you are supportive of lars' crusade against napster. FYI, I do not and have never downloaded any metallica songs, and the majority of MP3's I do have are legal, that is to say that I own the CD's. I do beleive that artists should be compensated for their work.
In a noninsulting way, I do wish to know why you consider my site to be an eyesore, rather than tell you to go fuck yourself I would like to learn how to improve my site. Nerdnetwork is my first website and if I do others I want them to look good.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Hey - good observation.. GORE IS A SCHMUCK ALSO no surprise there.
I'm in quite a conondrum currently as to what to do with my vote. I'm turning 18 just this year and up until a week ago would have had no trouble voting for Gore, simply to prevent Bush from taking the office. But then of course Liberman is announced for the VP slot and that just makes the Democratic ticket unpalatable for me. Both of the major parties are presenting conservative tickets, Liberman is in favor of a missle "defense system", he's anti abortion, and he's been one of the major activists against video game violence. Gore likewise is in support of a missle defense system and of course everyone's favorite "compassionate conservative" (and bumbling idiot). I mean I frankly don't think we deserve anything less than Nader, I mean it's like mainstream america is happy to have anyone that they don't think will be boffing interns in the whitehouse, i've often heard the quote among bush supporters that "maybe daddy will help him out", excuse me George Bush Sr. isn't running again or is he? See that "personal video" at the GOP convention, notice that it had more frames of his daddy and Regean than of W? So i'm going to go waste my vote on Nader, he may not even be on all the state ballots yet but at least I won't have to feel guilty.
I don't know about others on /. but I think that there are other issues that are more important than where the politicians are on tech issues.
The internet is new to most people. Any sort of debate on internet issues will create the typical political FUD slinging. Do we really want this?
I think that we should wait till some of this new technology does not scare John Q. That way we can all make informed votes.
Lets give it 4 more years... then we can start to expect the true 'net canidates.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
Now, what you are saying is that people who don't want to physically exert themselves also won't want to mentally exert themselves enough to decide who to vote for. That's just not true. I spend most of my time coding, which takes alot of hard thinking to do right, even though I am lazy physically. I do it soley for my own enjoyment, too. Many people are like this, especially geeks. Voting over the internet would be perfect for us. I don't think that there is any connection between physical laziness and mental laziness.
So, in summary, if people could vote over the internet, then more people would vote. Specifically, the physically lazy yet mentally active people who were too lazy to leave the house before even though they cared about the issue.
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I've been thinking about this, and it makes me wonder if the term "third party" is really sufficient any more. Clearly there's a difference between a national third party with a numerical chance of winning or a shot at enough of the popular votes to get matching funds, and a third party with a candidate on the ballot of a couple of districts in one state. Perhaps the latter should be refered to as "fourth parties" or maybe "vanity parties" or somesuch. Something to indicate the quantitative difference between them and the Greens and Libs or Reform.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
if the Internet allows every schmoe to declare themselves a presidential candidate, will it help the political process?
Um...the internet doesn't allow every schmoe to declare themselves a presidential candidate...the constitution does. Remember, if you're over 35 and were born in the USA - you, too, can run for president.
but then again, one needs to remember that the american public doesn't technically pick the president. The electoral college does. Lucky for us...they've gone along with the popular vote every time...well, most of the time.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
I have read that Liberman has over a 90% positive voting record according to Planned Parenthood, and under 10% according to a pro life group. He may have been anti-abortion-rights in the past, but it seems his modern stance is fairly pro-choice at least legislatively.
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
I absolutely need to know which candidate is best for me! Screw the soccer moms and retirement geezers, it's time for me to get a piece of the public pie. Right now!
The last thing I want is a government for the people. I want a government for me. I don't care about police and fire salaries, or manufacturing jobs being shipped overseas. I just want my tech stocks to go back up. Who cares about Pinochet and Castro, I want to know which candidate will strap Bill into the chair.
It doesn't much matter how much the candidates kiss up to the television and print media, as long as they don't touch the internet media, I'm fine. Al and Tipper can label and ban Dr. Dre all they want, I don't care anymore, cause he's against napster, and that's all that counts.
I don't care about Russia, China, India or Pakistan. I don't care about the price of the dollar against the yen or euro. The WTO can rule the world as long as they don't rule me. Bush can execute the mentally disabled and Gore can continue skimming tobacco profits. Why should that concern me? It's not tech related. I just want to sleep in my little coccoon for the next four years. If any candidate can promise me that, they have my vote.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
If you look past your preconceptions and prejudices, you might be surprised. William F. Buckley, an extremely influential conservative, said that The War on Drugs is Lost, and that we need to take a different approach to the problem.
So does this mean that GWB's presidential platform will include substantial reform of the 'War On Drugs'? No? Then the point stands.
If you'd like to see Nader in the debates, sign the on-line petition:
http://green.votenader.org/cgi -bin/petition-sigs.cgi
(a good example, IMHO, of how technology can influence politics)
It's not about, i cant use linux or what , it about they want to invade our contry , surely i have my ownlinux box, but what happened if the next compeleted e-gov use non priprotetry protocol? such as "asf" for education nntlm via http of it webbase gov application ?
-- Hasbullah bin Pit (sebol)
There's a more important point, though. An incredibly important point. In the next 4 years, we're looking at a possible replacement of as many as half of the Supreme Court. Some major liberal justices are about to retire, and if you look at the cases of the past, the ones where freedom has won (and abortion is the most obvious of these), the decisions have been 5-4. If one liberal justice retires, and Bush is in office, we will be looking at a reactionary backlash, a major dent to freedom, which could last two or three decades before we can really win the Supreme Court back to the side of progression.
I don't think we have a choice if we want to maintain a Supreme Court with any chance of preserving our freedom. A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush. Gore is the only candidate who is likely to put liberal justices on the bench, and thus, despite his other problems, is the only acceptable candidate in my view. Jeff
Clinton hasn't done much for the environment, which is one reason why I used the word "finally", but I don't think you can blame Gore for that; the office of vice president is mostly ceremonial, and they don't usually have too much policy influence. And I'm quite aware of the toxicity that the semiconductor industry generates; I submitted a story which partly dealt with that, but it was rejected.
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Hey, I agree with most of the things you said, but why did you have to pick on Cromwell?
He finally dethroned the royal family from absolute power (dictators, not autocrats)
He could have been like Lenin, and shot the entire royal family (except anastasia.. hehe).
Bye!
Then the gov is in deep trouble. And you can vote them out in the next election.
Or better still, go and do something about it.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
This is true because, although he says nothing specific about technology, that is because he sees it as just another medium for speech and thus it receive the same treatment: complete freedom as allowed for by the First Amendment. No more of this insane 'the Internet is special, so let's regulate the hell out of it' stuff. Plus, he'll do some cool stuff like go for a really tight budget and improve our freedoms (I'm looking for more Second Ammendment rights and a movement to repeal the Sixtenth Ammendment (that's the income-tax one, unless I have my ammendments wrong)).
-- Gordon Worley
I know this goes against the prevailing "We'd have Nirvana if only everyone voted" attitude on /., but everyone who thinks Democracy is the final solution in the quest for "better government" needs some sense (and a dose of reality) knocked into them. Everyone points to ancient Greece as an example of when democracy worked, but their experiment didn't last very long. There are alternatives to the Holy Democratic Society, Demarchy being one of them. So, in reply to your post, having most people vote through online voting is just like asking for some serious social unrest.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
I've noticed that over the years, with few exceptions, the two parties have converged on most things. There's still differences, but both of the candidates are going to go for the big money on the important internet issues. I would imagine neither of them have any idea what DeCSS is, let alone it's importance. Napster they'll say is bad and move on to the next question. The others don't have a snowball's chance in hell, so nobody cares. I think it's telling that none of the major candidates thinks that Vote Smart and similar services are worth acknowledging. Meanwhile, they're willing to hire web designers to create their own web pages to show how progressive and interested they are in the Internet.
http://www.issues2000.org/Ralp h_Nader_Technology.htm
| Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
Check out the parody (http://www.gwbush.com/) of Bush's official site.
I especially liked Chap 7 of the "Unauthorized Bush (Sr.) Bio"
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
Actually it's more like 3 million, and he only spends about 25k/year. Get your facts straight.
My first reaction was: it is not an election year. But hey, it's a US site, so fair enough. But then I thought - maybe people in other nations should be allowed to vote in the US presidential elections. After all, we are affected by the decisions of the US government. Remember "no tax without reps"? Maybe "WE the people of planet earth ..." should get a say.
I am anarch of all I survey.
What you are proposing would end up as an Oligarchy. Power would eventually end up in the hands of just a few people, and they would make sure that it stayed that way. You might want to look into the democratic alternative of Demarchy, "a political system without the state or bureaucracies, and based instead on randomly selected groups of decision makers."
james"Elections serve to legitimize the system of rule by the state. Because people believe they have participated in choosing their rulers, they are much more willing to accept the system of rule itself. In fact, one explanation for the introduction of elections in the Soviet Union was to provide legitimacy to a failing system."
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
I don't suppose Gore actually attempts to take credit for inventing TCP/IP or the FTP protocol or anything like that. At least I hope not; that would be as pathologically delusional as Reagan "remembering" being there in person, in uniform, when U.S. soldiers liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945.
I have a old book published in 1990, Dvorak's guide to PC Telecommunications (John Dvorak & Nick Anis). It's full of quaint tips on how you can hook up your 2400 baud modem to connect to a variety of BBSs. It came with two 5-1/4 discs with PKZip, Qedit, and Telix SE, a terminal program for DOS. Recently I was dusting my bookcases and I took a glance at it for nostalgia's sake, where I found this comment. In the first chapter, Introduction to Telecomputing (page 9), Dvorak & Anis write the following - I quote the entire paragraph for context and flavor:
The current horizon in communication speeds is linked
to the development of the Integrated Services Digital
Network (ISDN) currently just coming to market via the
local Bell operating companies. These essentially
digital telephone links, capable of 64000bps
communication, elimante the need to modulate
data into tones (see the ISDN discussion in Chapter 19).
At 64Kbps (kilobits-per-second) PC communication
should become nearly effortless. Senator Albert Gore of
Tennessee is advocating the development of a national
data communications highway connecting universities,
laboratories, and educational facilities, transmitting
at a rate of 3 gigabits (10 to the ninth power) per
second. That's fast enough to send the Encyclopedia
Britannica over the telephone from one computer to
another in less than a minute!
That's the way two professional tech writers saw it back in 1990 or so. Evidently they considered Gore's political sponsorship of that yet-unnamed "data communications highway" was significant enough that they mentioned his name, and no one else's, when they alluded to it.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
I didn't know that Nader advocated Communism. :P
That's like saying Bush advocates Fascism. FUD.
Especially Telling is the return on investment big companies get from buying politicians, which makes 50-100% returns from the stock market look pathetic. Also check out the list of companies who have bought BOTH Bush and Gore
Joor candidate for prez. is owned
You're wrong; technological developement thrives in periods with relative social stability, where lots of people get a chance to an education/information. Most North-Western countries are founded on principles established by christians such as freedom of religion and speech, it is true, check out your countries history if you don't believe me. Historically christianity has provided the North-Western world with such a stable social framework in genereal - if you want to argue over details FINE - there are flaws here and there. Your comments about Rome and the inquistition are too generalized; why don't you PROVE it, Rome was already in decay when they became 'christian' and have you studied it enough to say that becomeing christian accelarated the decay ? The inquisition ? They mainly burned people that WERE real christians and rebelled against the Spanish state 'church'. Northern European christians fought wars against them and when they won established freedom of religion and speech principles. American 'pilgrims' came and studied this phenonemon and integrated it into the usa or whatever it was called back then. (4th of July ?) How about studying some history ? Weh
HAHAHA!!! Hope this guy can get this site going. Looks perfect for me. http://www.politicians-suck.com
But what if everyone did vote? Then you'd have people thinking, "well, I've done what I can with my vote, and it obviously didn't work. Time to go break stuff," and I think there would be lots of civil unrest - protests, riots and the whole nine yards... Things are relatively peaceful when only a fraction of the populace tries to get their way, but what about when everyone tries to enforce their opinion?
Sounds like, well, now.
You support greater disenfranchisement of the populace for greater imaginary security, then?
Super scary indeed.
--Perianwyr Stormcrow
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
1) DARPA's projects are more a matter of their internal organization than anything any politician has had any influence over. Newt Gingrich learned FORTRAN in the early 70's because he forsaw somthing similar to the Internet eventually forming-- but while he encouraged that kind of research, he never pretended to have been responsible for it.
Many people have already pointed out that much of the real progress on the Internet came as a result of people dodging regulations and oversight-- not because of them.
2) The administration Gore is a part of has produced the Clipper Chip, restrictions on encryption export, lawsuits defending the Communications Decency Act, encouraged trial lawyers to sue virtually everyone for everything, nearly gave everyone a National ID Card, and now gives us Carnivore. Gore is like that guy in marketting who kept telling you how to code your product, and then when you ignored him and the product was a success, claimed the credit.
3) I don't know what you mean by 'frat boy image'-- I think your dislike of Bush is just painting him as that. Bush's view is that the government should stay out of people's coding-- which I pretty much agree with. I don't like everything he stands for, but he's the best that's out there. It takes about five years for an effective bill to get signed after wading through all the bureaucracy-- and two or three years for the conditions of technology to change. So I don't see what legislation could be passed to regulate the internet which wouldn't be obsolete two years before it was signed.
George W. will let coders code while he worries about running the government agencies we have. Gore will try to push for the same things Clinton did: Clipper chip, national ID's and Carnivore. If he did know more about technology, that would just make him more confident that he could regulate it. Gore's talking nice to us now because he's running for office. At least Ralph Nader doesn't already have a track record of being against us.
I do wish that they would all fill out the Vote Smart questionaires. Most of the congressmen did-- I remember using it to check up on Jerry Doyle (Garibaldi on B5-- running for Congress from LA).
Not sure if Brin's idea would be the best way to go, but no doubt Earth had plenty of neat ideas. When I found Slashdot I immediately wondered if the moderation system was inspired by Earth.
Yeah, this is topic-drift in action...moderate as you see fit.
numb
Unfortunately, a "plain reading" of the constitution contains the statement that listing out certain rights doesn't deny or disparage other rights. That means that the liberal tradition of protecting more rights than those spelled out is in fact constitutional. You cannot be fully conservative in interpreting a document that is liberal with itself.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
Too bad it's Sunday and no one will read this. If it's true (I just finished deleting a few urban legends from my email box), it informed me. Assuming all the facts are true, the most cynical possible spin on it would be something like this:
Someone with a connection to Oak Ridge (in Al's home state) or DoD or somesuch puts a bug in Al's ear that they'd really like some pork for a network project they're working on. In an effort to dress up the pork, Al (or one of the other co-authors or co-sponsors) tosses around some language about this bringing computing to the masses. A few decades of sweat, genius, and innovation from people who had nothing to do with Gore, and voila! Al's claiming he invented the internet...
Even in that cynical light, Al doesn't come off looking too bad. Making laws that help your constituents and your election most immediately, but that include provisions that could let everyone benefit is how it's supposed to work. Sure, if Al's not there, someone else figures out that two computer heads are better than one, but the point is that he was there and he did do it and he didn't hold it up or insert some lame-ass provision about late-term abortions or whatever.
I'm not ready to have him replace Vint Cerf, but I think Al can take some credit. (Assuming the above is true.)
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
But what if I end up going with Nadar? Nader actually supports same-sex marriage, so will he get me into hell just as well, or will it count as a protest vote and not be damned. I need to know this from a spiritual expert such as yourself.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
First of all, the biggest threat to privacy, freedom of speech, and freedom of expression is government regulation of the Internet.
.com businesss) comments, or the government preventing the existence of WWWboards due to the fact that they may offend someone?
Yes, it *will* happen at some point in the near future. No, Bush and Gore are only going to speed regulation, not inhibit it.
Which is better, a business censoring a post because it contains negative (in the mind of the
The only time-tested solution to problems has been to complain to the government when something doesn't go your way, thus limiting business, and then eventually limiting citizens themselves.
For this reason, you might be able to understand the Libertarian approach to topics. That can be found at:
http://www.lp.org/issues/internet.html
I'd provide an actual link, but I only want the seriously concerned voters to go there.
Democrats and Republicans both have incorporated small regulations in each bill they pass for the Internet. This has got to stop.
There are two types of people in this world. Those that say, "Somebody should do something," and those that say, "Nobody should do nothing." Both types fear that "Anybody could do anything."
Right now the voting system has a number of ins and outs that are not general knowledge (though public schools are *supposed* to cover this), there is something called the electoral college. The way it works is this, all the votes from a state are tallied up and that *should* indicate to the senators from that state which way to vote in the electoral college. It is in fact the electoral college that elects a president, not the population. Even though the popular vote from the state should dictate the states vote in the electoral college, the senators are not obligated to vote for the canidate that has the popular vote in their state. Nor is it publicized which way the senator voted in the elecotral college. This accounts for presidents that are elected without the popular vote, senators will vote for their friends regardless of how their state voted. Originally the purpose of the electoral college was to facilitate an easier tally, with the understanding that the senator would vote as dictated in the popular vote, in order to retain the favor of the population in their respective states. But the combination of lack of publicity and lack of information about popular voting and the electoral college makes it hard to understand what is really going on in the voting process. With the advent of the technology age, all of this became outdated, tallying the votes is no longer time consuming. Votes could merely be automatically entered and tabulated, providing fast and accurate results, even for the whole nation. So in effect that little box has made the electoral college obsolete, and the electoral college stays in place inspite of this. The internet also makes it possible to bypass the tedium of having to find the voting stations that invariably seem to be located in some tiny elementary school in the middle of nowhere. So potentially more could vote with less hassle and more accuracy, and without the electoral college. While many claim that those without access to the technology would be left out are overlooking a few major points. Access to the internet and technolgy is pretty available at this point, and right in the same areas where the traditional voting takes place : schools. Most public schools and college have computers and internet access, as do public libaries. It doesn't seem to be discrimatory to simply move the official voting stations to these places, replace the pull knobs in the voting booths to point and click. Heck you could even make inforamtion on the canidates available at the same site, either on a website or pamphets to read while waiting in line, rather than hordes of people screaming a name at you on your way in. Imagine a simple an easy way to promote informed voting with the choice of onsite and remote voting, while making the popular vote the one that elects the leaders rather than their buddies on capital hill. For this reason alone, expect the outcries of discriminaton and objections from politicos to keep this on the back burner for as long as they can manage (and also notice who it is claiming that using technology to revamp the voting system is discrimitory--they look like politicians to me). But for me, i can't wait for technology to make my vote become more than to a mere sugestion to a politician.
Separation of church and state is not libertarian, or even Libertarian, AFAIK. The Constitution says that no official religion be established. The current mode is very anti-Christian and intolerant. The Objectivists might have a beef with a return to more open expression of reigious values, but I doubt many libertarianish Republicans would.
Abortion is as controversial among Libertarians as anyone, Republicans have raised H1-B quotas every chance they get, and "suicide rights" are often wrapped up in a rather ugly "kill the old and sick" mentality that stems from a view that anyone too old to break dance has no quality of life. That's part of the reason I want the right to keep that .357 under my blanket in the old age home in case any whippersnapper decides I drool too much to be worth keeping around.
And about the SAAB, I test drove an old SAAB when I bought my 900SE. The old ones suffer from a '70s design: chassis too flexy, dashboard layout too wierd. Already owned a BMW 2002, didn't need another nostalgia trip. At least the SEs have the SAAB turbo engine - no Opel V6 for me thank you.
I thought Republicans were for medicare medicaid soc sec and other privatization? I thought NAFTA was a Republican-signed treaty? Less government is less corporate welfare - got any better solution? OK, you got me on flag burning: I say light up if you want to. But really, how far up your priority list is that? Before or after gay marriage? Which brings me back to the point: most small-l libertarians would prefer to deal with ideological purity issues after they get to keep more of what they earn, which is right up there in libertarian priorities.
I wrote parts of this stuff
... on Larry King Live, he claimed to have invented the Internet. Later on, his spokespeople claimed that he was exhausted, was speaking off-the-cuff and made an error. I'm inclined to believe him, just because it's so boneheaded of a mistake to make that I can see how it'd take someone to be falling-down tired to make it.
I don't think I'd like to see online voting in national US elections, at least not yet. My main problem with it is that it's possible that whoever is running the servers for where you vote had absolutely no idea what they were doing. In that case, they are prone to attacks. Even if they are getting simple DoS attacks, it may prevent a lot of people from voting. It's really hard to DoS a physical poll location.
;-) Browne, Buchanan, Bush, Gore, Hagelin and Nader are all getting at least some coverage (though I've seen the least for Browne), though I'm not sure who's on the ballots (that varies state-to-state).
Just think what could happen if a certain troublemaking group got all of their members to vote at a certain time (say, they got everyone to vote within an hour-long window), and the rest of the time, they were DoSing the servers. That could have dramatic effects.
I do think that online voting could get a lot more people out voting, as it would only be a 5-minute job, whereas physically going to a poll location, standing in line, etc., could take quite a while.
Regardless, I think this year will have a higher number of people out there voting. However, it's hard to know how things will go. There does appear to be a broader field this year in the Presidential race, which I believe will increase interest. (to be fair, I'll go alphabetically
Hmm.. I should ask -- does anyone have good information about how the Electoral College all works? I know that there are 535 votes in it, but how do those votes get made? Is it just a single person's choice, or do they choices get made by seeing the popular vote in a particular area? Does it vary from state-to-state?
--
Ski-U-Mah!
voter.com has been balanced, timley, informative and enlightneting.
Personally, I can't wait for the debates on the issues. I'm looking forward to hearing Leiberman and Gore get on stage to hammer out their divided points of view on so many issues. :)
So you agree to this ?
It locked up its secrets, only revealing them to those already thoughly indoctrinated.
Your logic is screwed;
I don't mean to start a flame, but I see in the artical that he "advocated" a faster means of communication for the internet. To tell the truth though, I didn't realize he had been that envolved. From the clip I saw where he said that, I was under the impression that he was on "such and such" committie which had some vauge connection to the start of the internet.
;)
but for the most part just ignore me, I've got a bad case of verbal diahrea.
My feeling is politics on the internet will never really have much effect. Why? Because the computer has a power switch. Any voice that preaches real change or what needs to be done (which will upset much of the population) can be easily ignored or just backed out of.
http://Leknor.com/
Leknor
http://Leknor.com
Leknor
http://Leknor.com
"So many idiots, so few comets"
Not that I know anything about Malaysia, but I think Korea's experience with MS might awaken some local tech businesspeople to the potential pitfalls of MS "helping" the government. I'm sorry I don't have a link, but Linux Today did a whole series on it a while back. Look for articles regarding the president of MS Korea resigning.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
A point well taken... I should have said "push through legislation" or "propose legislation".
I would love to see Slashdot geeks get political this season. Did Gore say he invented the Internet? No, but a lot of otherwise informed people think he did. There is no place like Slashdot (chock-a-block with logical folk) to get "news" like that sorted out.
Who does Microsoft want to win? All kinds of stuff like that to think about. Pick the next pres by moderation!
Honestly, lots of candidates was the way the founding fathers intended things; unfortunately the monopoly of traditional news sources and the two dominant parties have made it so the American public don't really have a choice. Hopefully people will realize that the internet allows them to really find out about the candidates, instead of just listening to their carefully scripted lies. Perhaps people will then learn to ignore the major media and realize that their vote does make a difference, even if they vote for someone that "can't win". I mean really, only 49% of those elligible voted in 96', so there's plenty of room for anyone to get elected. So vote for whomever you think is best, not one of the the dominant party stiffs that have been rammed down our throats.
-brian
The politicians have found an issue to devide us like no other, it's an issue that many people hold so dear to their hearts that they would concentrate on it beyond any other and could never be swayed in their view. An issue that could not be imperically solved as a matter of science. That issue is abortion, and it has given the politicians full reign to do whatever they like while keeping the public at large distracted.
It comes down to when you believe a cell or collection of cells is no longer just a collection of cells but a human being. We all agree that killing a human being is wrong, we all agree that killing a collection of cells with no sentience is not wrong; Such as killing bacteria, an infection, or what have you. There are those that believe that human life occurs at conception, others believe that it occurs at birth and others at some time in-between. One side considers the act murder, the other side argues that the fetus is not alive and bringing an unwanted child into the world is wrong.
Lets face it... If abortion were completely outlawed today it would just mean those seeking abortion would go to the black market or to another country to have the procedure done. If abortion (all forms) were completely made legal then those opposed to it would do what they could do interfere with the availability and safety of the procedure.
So while we throttle each other over pro-choice / pro-life and over an issue we'll _never_ all be able to agree on the politicians are out taking away your god given rights outlined in the constitution and making special rules for special (read influencial) people.
I have never seen a greater social engineering en-masse as the issue of abortion has created. They pull this wool over our eyes so they can go on doing things that affect us constantly, things like raising our taxes while doleing out moneys to special interests from corporate welfare to forign aid to sensitivity training (I'll now note that all sides of the spectrum are guilty of taking public moneies to further their private goals).
The surgical operation of abortion is an act a relively small part of the population actually indulges in and usually not repeatedly. But it gets a great deal of political attention while laws and rights lost that affect all of us every day are ignored.
I can't put mickey mouse on my webpage because disney's lobbyists convinced congress to extend copyright nearly indefinately. 50% of what you and I make goes one way or another to the government in taxes to support programs we may not believe in. That affects me around 40 hours of every week. Politicians complain about high oil prices and forign dependence on oil while passing legislation restricting domestic oil exploration. That affects me every time I drive. We are selling missle technologies, selling strong cryptography, and giving favored trading status to mainland China. This is a country we should be shunning given their opposing idealogical views on government and their use of slave and (political) prisoner labor (theres something there for everybody). The government can give cisco routers with full encryption to red china but I'm not allowed to give a friend in australia a copy of PGP? Are you shitting me??
I tried to keep this as neutral as possible, in hopes that it will provide an interesting read to all sides of the political spectrum. I just hope we and the rest of 'joe sixpack' america can look beyond the surface and see what the real issues are.
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
The overall problem, as I see it, is too many choices for a single choice poll.
This is your democratic voting system. You get one choice, and only the first or second place votes really count. If you voted for the third place candidate, your vote is lost in the noise.
On the other hand, if multiple choices are allowed, your vote could be the winning vote, and overturn the incumbent's lead.
Ideally, the ballot should say:
1st choice: [Reform]
2nd choice: [Republican]
3rd choice: [Communist]
..or whatever your heart decides.
With the above system, your vote always counts on some ballot for some party.
Voila.
Every vote will count.
Sorry, but retail FTF politics is way more fun. As someone deeply involved in politics, there's just something about the human contact that makes you listen to the political choices.
Basically, an attractive person of the opposite (or appropriate for you) gender just makes you that much more willing to volunteer, attend parties, donate money, and listen to silly things.
Will in Seattle
I recently did a study of the Internet and voting habits... it's not anywhere near publishable yet, but I'll get to it eventually. Basically, what I found is that Internet voting is probably a long way off in terms of security and economic feasibility. However, what the Internet will do is allow easier and cheaper campaigning and donations. Ironically enough, the two candidates who really "got it" in terms of leveraging the Internet were Bill Bradley and John McCain. (McCain made a *huge* return on investment from his web site through online donations.) Bush's web site did very well for him in terms of donations, as did Gore's.
As for where the major candidates stand on technology, look at their economic and political views. IMHYCIAMLCO (in my humble yet completely informed and most likely correct opinion) Bush actually represents the best hope for maintaining Internet freedom. His brand of laissez-faire capitalism will ensure that bad things like sales taxes on net purchases don't occur. His moral views make him a possible supporter of mandatory filtering, but I think he'll probably be more likely to let individual libraries and schools decide. (Remember, Republicans aren't the tools of big business like a lot of people think - it was Orrin Hatch, a Republican, who finally stood up to the RIAA and Hilary Rosen.)
Al Gore is probably more "in tune" with technology, but he's also more likely to use the net as a source of tax revenue, which would severely damage e-commerce. He's also just as likely as Bush, if not more so to enact mandatory filtering legislation. Gore's activist-government views are probably in the long run bad for the Internet. (Want to see DeCSS go by-by? Gore's your man. The Democrats are heavily funded by the big studios and record companies. The RIAA and the MPAA members are all big Democratic contributors.)
Buchanan probably thinks computers are tools of Satan. He'd definately not raise internet taxes, but he'd probably enact draconian censoring legislation.
Nader would probably be fairly hands-off in Internet issues, which makes him a good candidate on this issue. I disagree with 99% of what he says, but at least he's honest about his liberal philosophies.
Google is my friend:
How the Electoral College Works
--
Ski-U-Mah!
So you agree to this ?
It locked up its secrets, only revealing them to those already thoughly indoctrinated.
What are you talking about?, give me an example.... If you're gonna say something about the medeval catholic church; they burnt christians and stopped people from reading the bible; they were NOT what christianty was intetnded to be Once they were overthrown christianty has done a lot of good READ HISTORY if you don't believe what I'm saying....As far as I can see you're the one that's indoctrinated
It is true that certain ineventions were thought pf as evil etc. But Christianity did provide the FRAMEWORK for social stability
Get ready for a caged, smack down, table slamming debate between vice president Algore and Jooooooooe "the hammer" Leiberman. The Rock, Triple H, Steph and the crew will be the opening act for this "gooooooorefest 2 thouuuuuusand".
Hear Algore and leiberman smash heads on school vouchers.
See Leiberman and Algore attack each other on saving social security.
Hear Algore scream for mercy as joooooe the hammer leiberman takes credit for the internet.
See Leiberman scratch out Algores eyes as they disagree on partial privitization of social security.
Just one rule: nobody leaves the cage untill all the issues are hammered out.
Sunday . ..sunday . .sunday ! !
[/loud fast radio voice]
Economic leftists need to study history. (While social leftists are fine.) Your website shows me that you have yet to form your own opinions on important matters and this is exactly why the young and idealistic do not deserve the right to vote. They can do too much harm.
Okay, and since the old are wise and pessemistic about new candidates, lets ban everyone over, say, age 40, so these restrictions affect (or will affect) you sometime soon.
Of course I don't beleive that. I'm just writing it to show the hypocrisy of your last statement. A concept that perhaps you don't understand, maybe his website is under development?
You, sir, do not have the right to tell anyone whether they deserve to vote or not. We all live in the same fucking country, the person we elect affects us all and just because we are younger than you does not make us automatically dumber. If you want to see a website made by a 15-year old, that looks good, go to my website at www.nerdnetwork.net. Attaching someones design is a petty, stupid thing to do.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Bush declares US a christian state?
SHUDDER
That is fucking scary dude. I think bush being advised by Anti-porn.
I also found another intresting news story about george and antiporns friendship at http://www.stileproject.com/june17.html
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
If we switch to online voting, it is almost inevitable that there will be a hacking attack on the site, thereby making all the votes from that site unusable.
If online voting gains enough popularity, the goverment might consider closing the physical voting booths so those who don't or can't afford to have a computer cannot vote. Which means they won't elect a candidate that represents them, and the issues they care about, thus turning the online voting booth into Billionaresforbushorgore.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
I don't know anything about Brown, but I want to reply to something you said:
-----
While not a geek, he does understand the economy, and the high-tech sector has been one of the less-regulated (which is why it's so hot), and I'd much like to keep it that way.
-----
I'm not so sure this is true. Remember, if it was not for a huge goverment program related to cold war defense spending, we wouldn't have the internet at all. I'm not just talking about Arpanet either; I'm talking about all the money the goverment spent developing the entire high tech sector. We needed high power computers and networking to develop weapons, crack Soviet codes, and for a million other reasons related to the cold war effort. Only the goverment has the resources to take on projects that are really expensive, or may not bear immediate profit. That's why the space station is a goverment sponsered project. In 20 or 40 years, maybe space flight will get cheap enough, and the private sector can take over.
Some types of regulation is good, particularly when it's about standards, fair pricing, and worker rights. Lack of regulation is why the US is much further behind other countries when is comes to wireless. Don't even get me started about salaries. I know right now those of us in the tech sector are enjoying ourselves; lots of work and competitive wages. I wonder what we will all be saying in a few years. Maybe when all our software jobs are farmed out overseas, or given to H1B1 visa holders, we'll be screaming for Nader's (or someone like him, I'm not recommending him for president) help. Maybe then we'll want to unionize. You never know.
Just don't try to pretend the tech sector is somehow magical and immune to the same problems other areas of the economy are. It always happen like this; some new great thing comes out, workers enjoy a period of power during the disruption, and then the old institions realign themselves to absorb the new idea and everything returns to the way it was. Read your history if you don't think I'm right.
Peace, or Not?
It's not that the people should elect experts on the issues. Even in ancient times, I doubt that this was possible. For one thing, it's impossible to know what all the issues are going to be during a politician's tenure. For another, there are just too many issues for each representative to be an expert in all of them.
No, rather than electing experts, people are supposed to elect representatives whose judgement they trust. You are selecting someone to represent your interests at a governing body--but you don't always know exactly how each of those interests will present itself. You don't really want an expert in there, whose personal views you may or may not trust... instead, you want someone who you can rely on to make decisions in your stead. Think of representatives more as proxies than as managers. That's all they are supposed to be.
I'm not saying it works that way now--you're spot on when it comes to special interests and other observations--but that's how it was originally intended. And that's the problem with advocating a technocracy. Frankly, there is too much involved in governance which simply comes down to a matter of personal opinion rather than expert technical decision. Experts cannot help much with such decisions. The ephemeral 'will of the people' is not subject to a technical decision. People are not always, or even often, logical.
No relation to Happy Monkey
with parental consent I think one can be drafted at 16 or 17 i think.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Politicians rarely vote for or against a specific issue, not because they don't want to make their stance on the issue clear, but because the items they vote on are based on the combination of many issues. I doubt that anyone, at this point, would dare say anything against technology, so everyone is pro-technology. That helps. Is pure research more important than cutting taxes, or health-care? These are the questions we want the answers to, especially since they don't have yes or no answers. Simply being For or Against something usually doesn't mean much. When views are put at odds against one another, how are the conflicts going to be resolved? We want to have some idea as to how our politicians are going to respond to various stimuli, right?
The way I see it, specific stances on issues are not as important as the logic a candidate uses to arrive at his/her conclusion. Reading GWBush/Gore's webpages, all the information I can find regarding issues is a stance, and what they plan to do about it (complete with specifics). While this is nice, the webpages give no information as to what the candidate is willing to compromise to ensure the bills passage. They tell me what and how, but not why. In essence, both candidates are using a formula, that you don't get to see, then giving you sample output based on input that doesn't show up in the real world. Thanks, but no thanks. I want to know why you came to those conclusions.
Even though every issue supposedly has two sides (why else would it be an issue?), you may believe that there is only one acceptable stance. That is to say, you can't even begin to understand the opposing viewpoint. In this case, knowing that a candidate holds the opposing view makes it easy for you, since you can just cross them off your list. With false premises, who knows what other wrong conclusions they can reach. I may have one belief in regards to abortion, but I can understand the otherside. I cannot begin to understand the arguments regarding the death penalty. How could I ever vote for someone that finds these arguments valid?
For the most part, I see no reason to get hung up on issues. Issues are similar to colors used in a painting. Being for or against an issue says whether or not a painting does or does not contain a specific color. You can't approximate a painting simply by the colors it uses, which is all you can learn by looking at the issues. You don't vote for issues, or buy paintings based simply on which colors it uses. You vote for a candidate like you choose a painting, based on actually seeing the painting. For the most part, the presence or absence of a specific color doesn't make that big of a deal. As long as people can hide behind the issues, how can you figure out what/who they are?
my idealism will be the death of me
This election starkly pits a Geek against a PHB. Bush is supposed to be the normal guy pitted against the geeky Gore. It seems impossible for the media to observe that someone can be both likeable _and_ a geek. People who can't find a flaw in Gore's thinking or integrity choose to label him "stiff" or a "wonk." I can't imagine any group more likely to have suffered from this insipid tactic in their own personal experience than Slashdotters.
A Geek who votes for Bush is ratifying the unspoken principle that good people don't think and thinking people aren't good. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, because Bush is PHB all the way on the issues. But there I go name calling.
BTW, how do you delete a post on Slashdot? I mispelled a word in the subject of my last post. Darn!
What I want to know is:
:) )
Will America work after Bush or Gore is elected?
(note: I'M BEING FUNNY HERE - LAUGH - I'm not trying to troll
Republicans are only libertarian when it comes to the destructive shortsighted behavior of huge corporations. We wouldn't want the jackbooted Big Government thugs oppressing oil companies by making them treat their workers with dignity, or stop destroying our environment.
I am not a conservative, but I respect conservatism as a philosophy. To me, conservatism means letting the economy run itself without government intervention and upholding a strong respect for morals and the law. Not my cup of tea, but worth listening to.
But Republicanism != conservatism. Republicanism means using conservatism as an EXCUSE to give breaks to anyone who will contribute to our campaign warchests and lavish convention parties. Conservatives have no choice but to vote Republican, the same way liberals have no choice but to vote Democrat, when neither party represents either's views at the federal level. That's why John McCain, a true conservative, allied himself with Democrats to try to clean up campaign financing. The Republicans, of course, killed McCain-Feingold because they knew it would stop their sponsors from buying elections every year.
grep -ri 'should work'
Would the quiz cover local current events like polluted water in the local reservoir? Or would it instead focus on world events?
That would, I suppose, depend on the type of election -- local, regional, or national. If you've got more then one tier, you take more then one test.
Then which kind of events? Economic? Social? Political?
Well, why not all of the above? Such a system wouldn't have to ask "hard" questions, just questions on the "major" issues. True, the system tends to self-define the "major" issues, but one could expect even one apathetic to the current trendy debates to at least be aware of them.
(Keep in mind that I'm not really serious about this; it is more of a thought exercise then anything else.)
The pool of questions and the range of options are too broad; there would wind up being a bias in the test, even though it would not be deliberate.
I think you could avoid a bias by using random selection of topics and questions. You might "bias" the test against people who aren't very current on the issues, but that is rather the point, after all.
The whole concept reminds me of the Jim Crow- type tests...
That comparison is inescapable, but I think there is a difference: The Jim Crow laws tested (relatively) unrelated, general skills, because an unwanted demographic (recently freed slaves) did not have those skills. The idea here, instead, is to actually establish an objective and rational requirement for suffrage. Namely: Are you familar enough with the canidates and their stands on the issues that you can make an informed decision? The question of whether it is even possible to develop such a metric is, of course, the crux of the matter.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I've been very happy with Jesse as Governor, although I didn't expect him to win. I expected things to go Humphrey, Coleman, Ventura, when it actually went Ventura, Coleman, Humphrey.
;-)
Looking back, I still think Humphrey would have been a good choice. He did a lot of good stuff for the people (IMHO) when he was Attorney General of MN. I think he would have continued to do good things. IMHO, Coleman would have just sat there and looked Kennedy-esque. However, Ventura has not been afraid (most of the time) to rile things up, and that's the way our representatives should behave, again IMHO.
Now, you look at the current list of candidates. How do you think they'll behave? Bush: sit there and look pretty. Gore: sit there and look pretty. Buchanan: Rant about moral corruption. Hagelin: sit there and meditate
I still know next-to-nothing about Browne, so I don't know what he'll do. Nader has been making noise for a long time, and I would expect him to continue to do so as President. That's why I'm voting for him.
Of course, that isn't the only reason. I like a lot of what he has done regarding getting corporations to produce decent products rather than producing scandalous profits. Perhaps he is overboard on some parts of his platform, though don't forget that our Constitution is designed to handle that. We're supposed to have representatives that test the boundaries.
--
Ski-U-Mah!
You said it brutha! Jesse can kick your governors ASS!
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
The original idea behind representative democracy is that the candidates would be experts on issues that the general public would have no time to learn.
:) This should be a fun thread :)
But this turned out not to be the cast. They are as ignorant as the rest of us. They know about politicing, about personalities, but they don't know much about Policy.
An MBA friend of mine told me that a good manager needs to know two things: 1. What to do 2. How to get the right people to do it.
Successful politicians are adept at #2. They are clueless about #1.
Instead, their conception about what to do comes from lobbying groups - don't read me wrong, KatzFans: I'm not just talking about corporate lobbies. Even so-called "grassroots" groups are often known to push an agenda that is good for the "vocal minority" but bad overall.
Who understands #1? I'm probably not going to make a lot of friends saying this BUT... there are people who study the issues, and the effects of various actions. You may argue with the methodologies, you may argue with the results, but our best ideas of what to do come from the so-called "empirical" social scientists. Yup, maybe even that word "empirical" hides the fact that they pull stuff out of their asses - but everyone else does this, with the exception that everyone else's ideas don't necessarily fit the data!
Winston Churchil famously states that democracy is an awful system of government, but it's better than anything else.
But what we have isn't a democracy. It's an elected aristocracy. What separates politicians from me and you is blood (how did Al Gore and Dubya get started in politics).
What I propose is a better system is an elected technocracy - what would separate politicians from me and you is that they have studied the causes, effects and solutions to various problems affecting society. These "Philosopher Kings" would know that "#1 most important thing" for managers to know. What to do.
Discuss amoungst yourselves
Well said.
The USA has got so bad that I wouldn't be suprised if UK subjects were to start celebrating "Thank God We Got Rid Of Them Day" on July 4th
Christianity most definitely did not provide framework for social stability. Religeon has, in most cases, started far more wars than fixed screwed countries. Want an example? Look at ireland.
Christianity has always viewed science as evil. Look up brutus sometime. He was killed by the church because he beleived that the earth revolved around the sun.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Communism is approximately four inches to the left of Nader's campaign. It seems as though Communism is a system with no government; whereas Nader seems to be advocated increased government regulation of corporations. It seems as though corporate accountability-- done through democratic means-- improves democracy, whereas communism appears to be an anti-democratic system. I think you are missing the distinction between liberalism, socialism, communism (marx's idea), and communism (in russia)... And out of curiosity, how does the fact that Ralph Nader is a rich, old, white guy (worth some $36 million) fit the belief system of all his leftist supporters? Along with most of the people who have been President in this country, yes. Notice, for example, that he has a women vice-presidential candidate, however. Also, could anyone who doesn't take lots of campaign contributions from special interests run without large personal wealth?
> And finally, there's more important issues than your own job, geek toys and freedom to ignore IP.
Yep. IMO the primary reason the liberties of the citizenry keep eroding in the USA is that people tend to vote for the candidate who promises them the best deal in terms of material goods.
I suppose a nation of people who vote away their freedoms to have a bigger stick of butter on their plate deserve what they get, but I wish they would wait until after I die before they did it.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Republicans are an increasingly Libertarian party nowadays. Ideologically pure Libertarians might sneer at them, but the main attractive element of the Republican party is that they are less statist than the Democrats. Republicans have evolved away from the sort of bluenose moralizing that is more symbolized by Tipper Gore than anyone else this election. And the record of FBI and IRS abuse by Clinton is alarming to many. By the Nixon yardstick, Clinton is three orders ofmagnitude more abusive of govenrment power.
A related attraction among the same not-so-firebrand libertarian conservatives is that the Republicans hew closer to the Constitution than do the Democrats. Now if you think the U.S. Constitution is an outdated institution, or a "living document," or the dead ideas of dead white men, then that holds no attraction. But there is a sizeable number of people in the U.S. dedicated to restoring the plainly understood ideas of the Constitution to everyday use. Which comes down to the idea that nations, much less international institutions, should stick to making and preventing war, and leave almost everything else to governments that are closer to the people.
Lastly, Republicans increasingly represent competency in government. A Republican mayor cleaned up New York, and George Bush helped Texas move up the education rankings more quickly than anyone thought possible.
In contrast, the Democrats still never saw a tax that wasn't too low. They are still beholden to trade unions that, in the U.S. anyway, are rife with corruption and mob influence, and are now confined to highly regulated old industries and government employees becuase they have failed almost universally to attract any New Economy workers. I cannot think of one way in which the Democrats have changed since the 1960s - if anything, the whole union/public-sector orientation is less mainstream than when unions mattered and public education worked.
All this, of course, is my view. But I'm a pretty typical Republican in these times: Gap chinos, not Sanz-a-belt polyester slacks; Drive a SAAB, not a Buick; Download MP3s (legally, from MP3.com), thinks the DMCA is awful. I am why Republicans are hard to demonize. We look like you.
I wrote parts of this stuff
Regarding political tools, http://www.issues2000.org might be helpful; it lists each major candidate's stand on just about every conceivable issue. I haven't really examined it in-depth, but it appears pretty objective and even-handed.
As for who is the "geek" candidate, I'd say Gore probably fits the geek image better than anyone else (George W.'s frat boy "might not know much but I can hire advisors" mentality seems diametrically opposed to what most geeks hold dear). And yes, Gore didn't invent the Internet, but he was instrumental in getting government funding for DARPAnet, and as far as politicians go, he's one of the most informed on technological issues. Personally, I'd like to finally see someone in the White House who's on the right side of environmental issues (while I believe George W. would pretty much try to gut the EPA, which is what Reagan tried to do in the 80's).
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I dont know about everyone else, but I'm voting for gore, he invented the internet.
Part of the reason for making voting available
through the Internet, has to be increasing
the number of voters.
I'm not really sure about the election system
i the US, but here in Norway, online elections
has been discussed as well.
The reason why it hasn't gained that much support,
is that most of the people that don't vote, probably isn't the kind that would be bothered
enough to vote online either.
The problem with an election isn't to get people's
asses up for the election, but making sure that
people KNOW enough about the candidates to make
the election interesting.
Making people vote isn't helpful if they only
vote randomly.
I've had the option of voting for several university-elections, but the campaigning is so
small and uninteresting that nobody votes, even
though it is exceptionally easy, and only takes
a minute.
I don't know anything about the candidates, so
why should I vote?
Voting online may help a tiny bit, but the real
issue is getting enough people interested in politics to actually CARE who wins the election.
I think it's probably worth mentioning for the benefit of the US voters that the Reagan-Bush dynasty makes the rest of the world more than a bit nervous. When palpable idiots get elected, it's because they're being "run" by more competent people behind the scenes. (The fact that Reagan was a millenialist with access to thermonuclear launch codes didn't help any).
A few people have mentioned that they think voting for a minority candidate is a "waste": not so. Visible support for a minority candidate causes the majority candidates to shift policy in the hope of preventing too great a vote loss. When the Front National (French Nazi party) started polling double-digit percentages of the popular vote, French politics lurched to the right for a while as the main parties tried to keep voters who might otherwise have drifted within the fold (sound familiar, M$ watchers?)
Thus a vote for [minority candidate of your choice] actually helps the agenda that that candidate is pushing, whether or not he or she stands a chance of getting fifty-percent-plus-one of the popular vote. It is in this way that our Liberal Democrat party, whose best electoral performance was at the '97 elections, when they came a close third, keep the two main parties more or less honest.
-- AndrewD
A Maze of Twisty Little Laws, All Different.
I will vote Nader! Oh, wait a sec... I can't vote! I guess I'll just be sitting at home staring at the tube to see what happened on the what's-her-sexy-face's show, or maybe just take the SUV up to ambercomie and fitch to get some new gear to impress the honnies... Better make sure I get home in time for curfew, I'd hate to be out having fun when the people I didn't vote for say I shouldn't.
The reason that sound like crap is because it is. I'm 16, that's the world they give me, and I'll tell em where to shove it, or at least I would if I could vote. Don't follow the stereotype that all kids are morons who belive whatever channel 1 tells them to. I think the passive and active neglect/repression/discrimination of minors and the elderly (this is know as "Agism") is way out of control. Nader (and biafra) are going to try and make it so I can talk back to the people who keep telling me how to live.
We're all Americans, so why don't we all get to determine the decisions that affect America? People say he's a joke and will only undermine the democrats' percentage of the vote, letting bush in so it can be the 1950's all over again. That's the same thing as saying "I can't stop pollution all by myself, so i'll just chuck the beer can on the side of the road". Didja hear about seattle? Or washington? Or Philly? or soon to be LA? People can change things if they belive they can, and unity is key.
Sorry if that's a little too rantish... i just wish I could vote, and I encourage you to vote for Nader and help stop agism
So quick with fear you tiny fools!
If you look past your preconceptions and prejudices, you might be surprised. William F. Buckley, an extremely influential conservative, said that The War on Drugs is Lost, and that we need to take a different approach to the problem.
As for the other issues that you mentioned, many Republicans disagree about the proper role of the federal government. The Republican Party is not monolithic. There are libertarians, evangelical Christians, small business owners, gun owners, pro-lifers, isolationists, social conservatives, economic conservatives and many other groups. The same is true of the Democratic Party. You have to look at both parties and pick the one you feel most comfortable with.
Any time someone says that the X party is in favor of, or opposes, a specific issue, you can bet that the truth is more complicated.
I'm a Republican and a card carrying member of the ACLU and the NRA.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I do not know that it is such a good idea to stop technology and roll it all back to 1900 or 1920 or whatever to statisfy the implementation of the demand.
Another problem is the inherent insanity that many people have on the subject of world government. Many people are deathly afraid of losing the integrity of their culture, be it, american, latino, micro-serfdom, or whatever.
Political leaders have been using this tactics since the dawn of time. There is a tremendous fear of immigration in the USA. Alot of folks look at the standard of living south of the border, and do not want people who produced that culture living in the USA.
It echoes the situation of a person who has won the lottery. Every unknown relative, high school friend, etc. since the dawn of time wants to take advantadge of the winner's good luck. never mind the scam artists, etc. who are all to willing to spend tremendous effort in trying to rip people off, and loath putting in similar effort to actually being creative and productive, etc.
To some extent, the USA is seen as having won the lootery of history, and every one wants a hand out, their piece of the action (and yes, lootery is a deliberate ironic mispelling)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Many of you are rightly worried about which candidate will be the best to vote for in terms of the jobs, the technology, and the freedom we all value so much.
The "we all" phrase is the one that got me. It to me implies an assumption that *everyone* is a USA citizen, that *everyone* here agrees with the party line here on the three issues mentioned, and that "many" people seem unable to make up their mind without the help of Slashdot. They've all got web sites, you know.
I would hope the majority of readers here are intelligent enough to make up their own minds without needing a spoonfed opinion because, for instance, candidate X said "Linux Rocks".
And finally, there's more important issues than your own job, geek toys and freedom to ignore IP. What about environmental issues, Son of Star Wars (which both main candidates seem to support, but seems set to trigger a new arms race) or crime and punishment? These three issues will affect your life more than any Slashdot-specific hot topics.
For everyone else who missed the entire point of that humorous post, Kang was a hideous alien bent on enslaving the world in a Simpsons halloween special. The aliens had killed the Democratic and Republican candidates and disguised themselves as each. However, before elections they and their motives were exposed. Of course, voting for someone whose top policy isn't consuming/enslaving the human race would be throwing your vote away if they aren't Democrat or Republican.
Shame on you for not recognizing, nay WORSHIPing every on-topic Simpsons reference.
Trying to find out where a candidate stands on an issue anymore is extremely difficult, given the current poll-worship and fear of saying anything concrete. For example, take a look at Gore's technology statement and Bush's technology statement (linked to above). Other than the differences in style, they are virtually identical. Basically along the lines of more technology in classrooms, tax cuts for R&D, etc. Other than Bush having a bit of more content, I don't see too many differences between these two candidates. Nader goes off on corporate responsibility, and looking at Buchanan, he doesn't seem to have a clue about technology.
Yawn!
I think that no matter how you vote for President in this election, the outcome in technology will likely be the same as if you had voted for the opposite candidate. I think that this is because the presidential candidates have so little to say about technology and how they are going to promote it. They have bigger things to worry about (Social Security debate and capturing the AARP's vote). The people who have been making the decisions about technology have been typically a little bit down the governing ladder. (Senate committees, FTC, FCC, etc.)
So, if you're planning on passing your geek vote, close your eyes and pick. The result will be the same.
Personally, I do believe that it is a bit foolish and (if I may) Katz-ian to base your whole vote on how a candidate may stand with respect to "geek issues". Vote for the candidate who you think will best represent you interests and whose philosophy you agree with. Chances are that if your philosophies are compatible, you'll be voting for a leader who, when presented with a "geek issue", will make a decision that you would agree with. Personally, I think that there are bigger issues at stake here than the "geek issues" and will place my vote accordingly. For the curious, I am interested voting for a candidate who will advocate greater personal responsibility on the part of the citizens, government, and business and will stem the growing philosophy of "nothing's my fault, i'm f-ed up because i'm [oppressed/poor/intellectually challenged] and i need the government to take care of me". But I digress.
-Chris
Just thought that I'd point out that the root of y=(9x^2+12x+4) should be reduced to it's simplest form (3x+2)^2. Allot of poeple are posting (3x+2)(3x+2) as the answer, the engineers at our firm would go crazy if they saw this. I'm voting for Bush myself. Technology will continue to move forward despite who the president is. Just look at the free software movement and how M$ has done it's best to thwart that. Didn't work. On a more personal level, my father was a bubblehead for a good part of my childhood. And while most of America today would consider him a "bad father" because I only saw him 4 weeks a year, I praise God that he was willing to put himself in harms way for me (and you). I shunn anyone who would degrade him for his sacrifice, he could have done the easy thing, but my father grew up in a day when sacrifice was a way of life. I will not throw away the meaning of those sacrifices by voting for somebody who is willing to throw the country that I was raised to love into further moral degridation. I may be a geek, but there is much more to live and die for than just technology.
People make verbal mistakes. It stretches credulity to think that Gore might feel entitled to credit for creating the Internet. A lot of people feel the way you do and I think the reasons are:
Gore made the famous quote to Wolf Blitzer in an interview. Blitzer didn't call Gore on it, and Blitzer is not known to be a shrinking violet. Blitzer probably didn't think much of it, and I don't either. I'm sorry, but one wording goof in one interview should not outweigh years of early, vocal support for the Internet.
The Internet and techies in general have a friend in Al Gore, based on real documented evidence. You don't dump a friend for a syntax error in this community -- or it's not much of a community.
If you want to walk around with a closed-source brain chip, paying taxes to a world government and living in a small apartment, because the land is too important to the environment and we are not allowed to own private property, then vote for the republi-rats.
If you want freedom and government out of your life. Harry Browne and the Libertarians are the only answer. Just check out the Libertarian platform found at http://www.harrybrowne.org -
The Quotable Harry Browne: on Abortion: "There is nothing in the Constitution authorizing the federal government to deal with abortion in any way. The federal government shouldn't subsidize it, encourage it discourage it, or prohibit it. And it shouldn't try to overrule whatever the people in any given state decide to do about it." "Government doesn't work. It doesn't protect adults on the streets. It doesn't protect children in the schools. Why should we think it's capable of protecting unborn children?" "Given the government's record with the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs, we can assume that a War on Abortion would lead within five years to men having abortions."
The Quotable Harry Browne on the War on Drugs: "There are no violent gangs fighting over aspirin territories. There are no violent gangs fighting over whisky territories or computer territories or anything else that's legal. There are only criminal gangs fighting over territories covering drugs, gambling, prostitution, and other victimless crimes. Making a non-violent activity a crime creates a black market, which attracts criminals and gangs, which turns what was once a relatively harmless activity affecting a small group of people into a widespread epidemic of drug use and gang warfare." "Before World War I, any child in America could walk into a drug store and buy heroin. It was sold as a pain-reliever and a sedative, in measured doses, just as Bayer sells aspirin today. The child didn't need a note from his parents or a doctor's prescription. And yet, despite this unrestricted availability of drugs, there was no drug problem in America. But when the government made drugs illegal, it created a black market -- providing enormous profits in return for running the risk of prosecution -- which led inevitably to the muggers, the pushers, the gangs, and the violence." "The Republicans & Democrats have put so many people in prison for victimless crimes that there's no room left for the violent criminals -- the murderers, the rapists, and the child molesters who are now going free because of plea bargains and early releases. Libertarians want to end the insane War on Drugs that has created a criminal black market in drugs, financed gang warfare, and brought violence and terror to our cities -- just as during the alcohol Prohibition of the 1920s. Libertarians want to empty the prisons of the pot smokers and other non-violent offenders, and keep the violent criminals off the streets -- restoring the peaceful America we had before the federal government became the nation's #1 "crime fighter" in the 1960s." "I have never met anyone who thinks we're winning the Insane War on Drugs. Nor have I met anyone who believes we will ever win it." "Many of the politicians who say that marijuana is a "gateway" drug (leading to cocaine and crack use) apparently smoked marijuana themselves when they were younger. By their logic, that makes them crack-heads and we should pay no attention to what they say." "When we turn to the government to stop someone from ruining his life with drugs, we convert a personal tragedy into a national disaster." Making Your Neighborhood and Your Children Safer by Ending Drug Prohibition America's crime rate has risen almost continually for the past 30 years. We are told that the rate of violent crime has dropped lately, but this is only in comparison to recent all-time highs. In truth, violent crime is still much worse now than it was before the War on Drugs began in the 1960s. There are more robberies, muggings, shootings, rapes, murders, and violence of every kind. And none of the politicians' grand schemes to reverse this trend -- whether mandatory sentences or more cops on the beat -- has restored the level of safety our country once enjoyed. Is the situation hopeless? No. The solution is as simple as removing the cause of the problem. The War on Drugs began in earnest in the 1960s, and so did the rise in violent crime. We have seen this before -- during alcohol Prohibition. But when alcohol Prohibition was repealed the crime wave of the 1920s subsided. We can expect the same thing to happen when drug prohibition is repealed. The reasons are many and compelling. If we repeal drug prohibition we can release from prison the marijuana smokers and other non-violent drug offenders who are now serving mandatory 15-year and 50-year sentences. Our overcrowded prisons will then have room for the murderers, rapists, and child molesters who are now being set free on early release and plea-bargains to terrorize your neighborhood. We can free up law-enforcement resources to fight violent crime, instead of chasing people who may harm themselves but are no threat to us. We can end gang warfare. The Drug War has produced a huge black market, providing untold riches for anyone who will flout the law. This money finances criminal gangs who would be powerless without drug money. Legal drug, tobacco, or alcohol companies don't conduct gang warfare and drive-by shootings, but criminals will do anything to secure a rich monopoly territory. We can reduce corruption. With so much black-market drug money, criminals easily gain immunity by making weak law-enforcement officers rich. We can make our schools safer. Brewers and distillers don't recruit children to hook other kids on liquor; nor do they give them guns to take to school. Neither would legal drug companies. When I grew up in Los Angeles before drug prohibition, the worst schools were safer than L.A.'s best schools are today. We can end muggings and burglaries by addicts. Illegal drugs that today sell for $100 might cost as little as $2 if we legalized them. Legal producers would have no need to circumvent the law and competition would drive drug prices down. That means addicts would no longer need to steal to support their habits. We can bring back respect for decent behavior. Because nothing can win the Drug War, it is constantly escalated -- destroying more of your liberties with asset forfeiture laws, drug testing, and invasions of your financial privacy. This has caused too many Americans to disrespect the law itself -- feeling that any kind of law breaking, victimless or violent, is justified. And we can make it possible for addicts to seek treatment from doctors without fear of criminal prosecution. Problems? We have much to gain, but what do we risk? Do we risk increased drug use? The available evidence suggests that the rate of drug abuse was much lower when drugs were legal than it is now. And America did not suddenly become a nation of alcoholics when alcohol prohibition was repealed. Quite the contrary -- alcohol use actually seems to have gone down. Are we afraid there will be ads for heroin on television? We shouldn't be. Why would any pharmaceutical company tarnish its reputation by running such ads, and why would any broadcast network offend its audience by accepting them? Are we afraid our children would have easier access to drugs? Well, how could they have more access than they do now? Drugs are being sold in our schools. And most street dealers are themselves teenagers. But all this would end if we repealed drug prohibition. So why do politicians fight so desperately to continue this insane War on Drugs? Could it be because the War allows them to continually expand their power over our property, our bank accounts, and our private lives? While Republican and Democratic candidates use the Drug War to outbid each other -- using our liberties as the stakes -- Libertarians identify the War on Drugs for what it is: an excuse to make big government bigger. Libertarians can see how much safer America would be without the nightmare of Prohibition -- just as the crime rate plummeted when alcohol prohibition ended. If you want your city, your country and your children to be safe, help me end the insane War on Drugs. Your vote for a Libertarian President will send a clear, unequivocal message that the Drug War is a failure and you want the government to quit invading your life on the spurious pretext of fighting drugs.
The Quotable Harry Browne on the Income Tax: "The federal government has destroyed American education, is in the process of decimating our health-care system, and has put millions of Americans into permanent welfare. Reducing the federal government to just its constitutional functions will not only allow us to repeal the income tax, it also will stop the systematic destruction of America." "It's easy to see how someone has been helped by money taken from someone else, especially when we can't see the people whose lives have been hurt by taking that money away. We can't see the family who now can't afford braces for their child's teeth, or who must move into a smaller home, or who can't afford a college education for their children, or the businessman who has been driven bankrupt by government regulations and taxes. As long as you ignore the people who have been hurt, any government program might seem worthy." "The income tax has destroyed the concept of financial privacy. It has demolished the idea that a man's home is his castle. It has provided unlimited funding for politicians to wreck lives and property. It has forced one-earner families to become two-earner households -- leading to decreased parental supervision of children; loss of family values; and increased crime, promiscuity and drug use. So long as the government has the power to invade our lives, rummage through our records, and take what it wants from our income, we will have only as much freedom and take-home pay as the politicians condescend to let us have." "We shouldn't be talking about what government should do or what we wish it could do. We should recognize what government can do. And the government has proven that it makes a mess of virtually everything it touches. So whatever it is we may want government to do, we have to look for better ways to achieve it." Free from the Income Tax The income tax is the biggest government intrusion into the lives of the American people. It forces every worker to be a bookkeeper, to open his records to the government, to explain his expenses, to fear conviction for a harmless accounting error. Compliance wastes time and money. The income tax creates an enormous drag on the U.S. economy. But in order to get rid of the income tax we must also get rid of hundreds of unconstitutional federal programs. However, history has proven that we can't remove them one at a time, because each program has beneficiaries and supporters who will fight for it -- while the average American is too busy paying his taxes and running his own life to lobby for the elimination of any government program. We can rally the American people to our cause only by combining all the spending cuts into a single package that includes the total repeal of the federal income tax. That way most people can see that they'll save far more in taxes than they lose in subsidies. By combining the reduction of government with the repeal of the income tax, every voter will know that the price for keeping today's federal programs is to continue paying the income tax. Every voter will know exactly how much he can gain by eliminating the complete package of unconstitutional programs. This is the basis of The Great Libertarian Offer: Would you give up your favorite federal programs if it meant you'd never have to pay income tax again? This is in marked contrast to what the leaders of the two old parties want. By promising you "tax cuts" without reducing the size of government, they are only rearranging the cost of big government. One way or another, you'll have to pay for it; the Russians certainly are not going to do it for us. In the same way, proposals for a flat tax or a sales tax are merely attempts to rearrange the tax burden. And because they don't reduce government itself or force the government to live by the Constitution, they leave the door wide open for government to continue growing and the tax burden to continue to worsen. I want to end the income tax and the IRS, and replace them with nothing. By reducing the federal government to its constitutional functions we can do away with all direct taxes -- and finance national defense and the federal judiciary with the level of tariffs and excise taxes already being collected. Are tariffs and excises good taxes? Of course not. The only good tax is a dead tax. But so long as we have a government, it will require taxes to pay for it. The question for now isn't what a perfect system would be, but what we can do to restore the American system of truly limited government, very low taxes, and maximum personal liberty. If yours is an average family, when the income and Social Security taxes are repealed, your take-home pay will increase by $10,000 or more a year. Think of the additional liberty this will provide -- the liberty to spend more time with your children and assure that they learn the values you cherish, the liberty to pursue your dreams unhindered by a government that prevents you from accumulating capital, the liberty to do good works with your own money. Republican and Democratic politicians believe that money belongs to them. Yes, they argue about tiny tax cuts and posture as your friends. But the burden of proof is always put on us to justify keeping some of the money we've earned. So long as we keep voting for Republicans and Democrats, they will continue to take almost half the national income and squander most of it on programs to please their political allies. Only when we have a Libertarian President will you have a real friend in Washington.
The Quotable Harry Browne on Social Security: "Social Security is inherently unsound for the simple reason that it's a political program run by politicians for political purposes. It will never work and it will never be truly solvent. The only answer is to take it completely out of the hands of the politicians." "Social Security brings a new dimension to the field of annuities, insurance, and retirement. There are no long, complicated contracts. No actuarial tables to pore over. Instead, Social Security operates on a very simple principle: the politicians take your money from you and squander it." "Phasing out Social Security over many years won't work. The first time the stock market dives, the Democrats and the Republicans will use that as an excuse to take over your retirement once again." "You're told the government has to run your retirement for you because some people are too irresponsible to do so for themselves. But it's wrong to take responsibility for your retirement away from you simply because some other people are irresponsible." The Truth About Social Security I know a dandy way you can make a lot of money. Here's the idea: Offer a retirement plan that pays a pension more generous than people can get elsewhere. Every payday each customer will pay you a small portion of his paycheck -- say, 2%. You promise that when he reaches age 62 you'll send him a monthly check equal to what he was making when he retired. As the money comes in from your first customers, spend it and live a lush life. You really won't need to keep money in reserve for your customers' retirement. When the time comes to pay them, do it with money you receive from new, younger customers. So long as you keep attracting new customers to pay into the plan, you'll be okay. If you have trouble attracting enough new money to keep your promises, then just change the rules. Either raise the retirement age to 65 or lower the promised benefits. Or raise the amounts deducted from your customers' paychecks -- from 2% to 5% to 10% to 15%, however much you need. Of course, if you try this the government will shut you down, haul you into court, and send you off to prison. You'd be operating a Ponzi scheme -- named after Charles Ponzi, who set up a similar plan in Boston in 1920. He promised to pay investors 50% profit on their money in just 45 days. Gullible people poured money into his plan. But he couldn't possibly earn enough on the money to equal the rate of return he promised. So when someone wanted to withdraw his principal and interest, Ponzi simply paid him from money received from new investors. Eventually he couldn't meet the demands for repayment, and his scheme collapsed. He ended up in jail. But another such scheme was started in 1935, and this one is still going. It's called Social Security. It, too, is a Ponzi scheme. When Social Security was established in 1935, a trust fund was set up -- to keep the money collected in taxes, so it could be returned with interest to each taxpayer when he retired. But it took politicians only four years to change the rules. Politicians can't be expected to keep their hands off a large sum of money. So in 1939 they transformed Social Security into a "pay as you go" system -- one in which the amounts paid to beneficiaries come from taxes collected from other people the same year. The Social Security tax you pay isn't put aside as a nest egg for you. It is paid out to others older than you. The money your grandmother receives from Social Security comes from your paycheck. And if you receive anything from Social Security, even if you've been paying into it for 40 years, what you get will be taken from the paychecks of younger people. Social Security differs from a Ponzi scheme in only two ways: The politicians won't arrest themselves. The politicians can change the rules whenever necessary to keep the scheme going. And, in fact, the rules are changed almost yearly. The tax rate is increased about once every three years. The portion of your wages subject to Social Security tax has risen twenty times -- from an original maximum of $3,000 to the current $60,600. And the benefit schedules are changed frequently. Consequently, what was once a $60 annual tax is now as much as $9,271. But the game is getting tougher. As life expectancy rises, a larger and larger share of the population is retired. That means each person still working has to support more people who are collecting. This leads to a Social Security crisis every few years. It becomes apparent that current rates of taxation and benefits will lead to insolvency within a few years. To fix this, a bipartisan commission is appointed, taxes are raised, benefits are changed, and Social Security is pronounced completely safe and secure for another 50 years. But time seems to go by rather quickly in the political world. The 50 years seem to last only a few years -- until it becomes apparent that current rates of taxation and benefits will lead to insolvency within a few years. So another bipartisan commission is appointed, taxes are raised, benefits are changed, and Social Security is again pronounced completely sound and secure for another . . . Well, you get the point. The tax rate has risen sevenfold since Social Security's founding in 1935. Today your employer must deduct 7.65% from the first $60,600 of your income each year. In addition, he has to match that dollar for dollar. So roughly 15% of the first $60,600 of your employment earnings is lost to Social Security. Lower Benefits? Most people think Congress would never renege on its promises to Social Security recipients -- no matter how bad federal finances become. But when the only alternatives are to raise the Social Security tax rate to 35% or 40% -- or to cut off food stamps to the poor -- there may be no choice but to cut Social Security benefits. The politicians who once were so keen on sharing the wealth will now ask you to share the pain -- at a time in your life when you may not have the option to go back to work and make up the difference. Or Higher Taxes? Economists Joel Kotlikoff, Alan Auerbach, and Jagadeesh Gokhale project that rising costs for Social Security, Medicare, government pensions, and interest on the debt will require future generations to pay the government 71% of everything they earn during their lifetimes. The only alternative is for government to renege on many of the promises it has made. What kind of lives will our grandchildren have if they can keep only 29% of what they earn? It isn't just rhetoric when someone says we're passing the bills for government spending on to our children -- although we may think our children will pass the bills on to their children. Each generation may pass the debt on, but it can't pass on the interest. That has to be paid yearly -- and it keeps getting larger. Every generation already is suffering from the government spending of earlier generations, and the bills get larger and larger. Our parents paid around 35% of their income in taxes. Now the Census Bureau says 47% of the national income goes to federal, state, and local taxes. What will it be for the next generation? 55%? 60%? 71%? Ignoring the Problem The politicians refuse to acknowledge any of this -- and so nothing is done to stop the costs from mounting higher. Politicians still cite Social Security as a crowning achievement of the New Deal -- as proof that "government works." Both Democrats and Republicans use Social Security as a political football -- warning the elderly that their opponents will water down their Social Security or Medicare benefits, while denying any intent to do so themselves. And both are afraid the denials won't be believed. Public Skepticism The public knows better. Polls routinely show that about two thirds of the American people don't expect to receive a dime from Social Security. Even among people who are only 15 years from retirement, two out of five don't expect Social Security to survive until they start drawing their pensions. The public is right. Social Security is broken, and it soon will collapse. The Perfect System But until we know what Social Security should be, there's no basis for reform. If we were starting from scratch, what kind of system would we create? Obviously, it should be a fully funded system. The money you put in should be saved and invested on your behalf. And what you receive when you retire should be based on what you put in. With this system, your pension wouldn't rely on taking money from future generations. Actually, a fully funded system already exists. In fact, there are many of them. They are lifetime annuities offered by private insurance companies. You pay into the annuity over the years, the insurance company invests the money for you, and it pays you a lifetime pension when you retire. When you own an annuity, you have a firm contract with an insurance company. You know how much you have to pay every year -- and, unless you agree otherwise, the amount you pay never changes. You know how much you'll receive when you retire -- and, unless you agree otherwise, the amount you'll receive is guaranteed. This is the voluntary, contractual, non-political way of providing for "Social Security." When you have an annuity, you don't have to worry that Congress will change the rules. Many employers already provide pensions for their employees. If there were no Social Security system, competition for the best employees would inspire a great many more to do the same. What Should We Do? Private annuities work. They've existed for hundreds of years. Government doesn't work, although it has existed for thousands of years. Political Social Security is a fraud that can never be fixed. It is headed for bankruptcy. The only question is what to do about it. In looking for a solution, we must face up to one inescapable truth: Given the current tax rates and the promised benefits, there is no way everyone can get from Social Security what he's been told he will get. Most of the trillions of dollars paid into Social Security over the past 60 years have been spent. The money can't be retrieved. The promised benefits can be paid only if the Social Security tax is raised sharply. Or the tax can be kept where it is now, but only by reneging on the promised benefits. So we really have only two choices: Keep patching up Social Security, either by raising the Social Security tax until it reaches, say, 70% -- or by reducing benefits steadily until they're the equivalent of about $100 per month. Or . . . Act now to stop the problem from growing. Stop promising increased benefits, and get government out of Social Security entirely, so that no one will ever again be cheated by it. Social Security will always be a tool for politicians to one-up their opponents by promising bigger benefits now and leaving the necessary taxes for their successors to impose. So it will be a chronic problem until we get it out of the hands of the politicians. And the longer we wait to do this, the more painful it will be when we do. How to Save Your Retirement, Rather than Social Security Republican and Democratic politicians keep talking about "saving Social Security." But why should we want to save a bankrupt system that's a bad deal for everyone participating in it? What we really want is to free you from the 15% Social Security tax, while making sure that no one dependent on Social Security today loses what has been promised. Because expectations for receiving Social Security benefits are so low, we may be able to solve the problem at a relatively small cost -- if we get the government out now. Millions of people depend on Social Security today. They worked for decades. Their plans assumed that Social Security would provide some part of their retirement. I believe these people must receive what they were promised. But I don't trust the politicians to do it. Instead, the government should buy from a private insurance company an annuity for everyone who depends on Social Security. The annuities should provide lifetime incomes similar to what Social Security has promised. How much will this cost? A mountain of money. The exact size of the mountain is something only the government has the information to calculate. But, based on the amounts now being paid out each year, I estimate the cost to be roughly $5 trillion. This is, in effect, the accumulated deficit of 60 years of "pay as you go." Because there the government doesn't have enough money to cover all the liabilities, I believe annuities should be provided only for those who truly need them. This means some kind of simple, non-intrusive means test must be applied to each retiree. Those that don't rely on Social Security shouldn't aggravate the problem further. The maximum monthly Social Security benefit is $1,433; there are many retired people to whom that isn't a critical amount. People over the age of 50 who are nearing retirement and who have made plans based on receiving Social Security should also receive annuities. Those annuities would be smaller and wouldn't begin paying out until age 65. Of the current retirees and those over 50 who qualify for the annuities, I would hope that a great many would waive the right to an annuity and get along by other means -- although we can't count on that. In the next section I'll discuss a way to pay for the annuities without providing any additional burden on you and other taxpayers. And what about those under 50? To them we offer the greatest gift possible: You will never again have to pay the 15% Social Security tax. You will be able to fund a real retirement for yourself -- putting aside 5%, 10%, 15%, or whatever you want from your pay -- instead of paying 15% to Social Security. By starting before you pass 50, you can easily accumulate the necessary capital to provide a benefit at least as large as Social Security had promised. What Kind of America? We need to decide what kind of America we want. Do we want a country that sinks ever more deeply into debt -- in which generations fight with each other over a constantly shrinking pie? Or do we make the changes necessary now and get America back on track again -- so that people are no longer wards of the state? We can have a country in which our citizens are responsible, self-reliant, and self-respectful. With regard to Social Security, we have only two choices: Get Social Security completely out of the hands of the government -- and do it quickly. Give everyone a fresh start with a guarantee that from now on he'll get what he's promised. Leave it all in the politicians' hands -- and put up with periodic crises, higher and higher taxes, and more and more hostility between the generations. For me the choice is obvious. Your vote for a Libertarian President will be a statement that the Democrats' and Republicans' puny plans for Social Security aren't good enough. You want the freedom to plan a secure retirement for yourself.
Interesting commentary.
An addition: While I like much of Joe Lieberman's record, he has a dismal record on free speech, joining with Bill Bennett and others in trashing pop culture and advocating censorship. Given the absolutely pathetic record of the Clinton administration on the First Amendment and related issues (DMCA, COPA, crypto regulations, V-Chip, and so on) I fear that Gore/Lieberman may be bad news in that regard.
The only GOOD news about Joe L. is that he's in favor of allowing gays to serve openly in the military, which is a fairly pro-freedom thing to do.
Nader has a good record on the First Amendment but his opposition to free trade makes him totally unacceptable in my book.
Bush/Cheney are trying to look nice but may themselves be just as bad, with their record on other civil liberties such as gay rights, and I would doubt seriously that they would go to the mat for the First Amendment. And the justices they'd nominate for the Supreme Court would be likely to permit speech regulation (in the tradition of Byron White) - yuck.
So the choice is a pretty bad one, all things considered. Where's Jesse Ventura when you need him?
sulli
sulli
RTFJ.
Algore = political tool
"Also, I see a lot of teenagers bitching that they cannot vote. OK kid, tell you what. When you have proven that you have some degree of responsiblity, that you understand what it is to support yourself and see large amounts of your money being taken from you by force by well-meaning fools who will use it to assuage their own guilt, when you understand the consequences of your actions and the fact that some mistakes will outlive you, then you can vote."
We're not all bad.
I personally, have never gone on a shooting rampage at my school, run anyone down, stolen anything, or any other bad stereotype that you could probably think to associate with the word teenager.
Why the hell do you think we're bitching, anyway? Teenagers are the last minority to be unable to vote. The rest (blacks, women, etc) have had their voting rights granted. Would we want to vote if we didn't care about our country?
Currently a man can go to war, fight, be wounded or die fighting for his country and still never have the chance to vote. If his country meant nothing to him, he would have moved to canada to escape the draft. Such a man loves their country.
Another statistic maybe you should look at is that 1/3 of all teenagers are actually more informed of the current issues than their parents. Who would you want electing, ignorant middle aged americans or educated, aware teens?
In 22 years the youngest of todays teenagers will be able to run this country. I hope they will be more accepting of the younger generation than you.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Regardless of where you stand on this and other issues, such strong opinions are usually the sign of a closed mind.
"As a Senator, he introduced legislation which expanded investment in research networks, such as the NSFNET. "
a quote from hobbes internet timeline from 1986. "NSFNET created (backbone speed of 56Kbps) NSF establishes 5 super-computing centers to provide high-computing power for all (JVNC@Princeton, PSC@Pittsburgh, SDSC@UCSD, NCSA@UIUC, Theory Center@Cornell). This allows an explosion of connections, especially from universities."
As you'll notice from the timeline, DARPANET was brought on-line in 1979, well before Gore had a chance to vote on anything even remotly related to it. Yes, he approved funding for a 56k backbone , but that's hardly pioneering work.
I don't care to join in on any Christian bashing, but I have studied some history, and I don't come to the same conclusions that you do. To wit:
> You're wrong; technological developement thrives in periods with relative social stability, where lots of people get a chance to an education/information.
I would like to agree with this, but it seems far too general. For instance, aviation technology grew by leaps and bounds during two world wars, and nuclear technology, computational technology, crypto technology, synthetic materials, etc., all benefited much from the disorder of WWII. I'm a big fan of social stability and education for the masses, but I think sometimes it is disorder, and trauma, that prove to be the mother of invention.
> Most North-Western countries are founded on principles established by christians such as freedom of religion and speech, it is true, check out your countries history if you don't believe me.
Actually, many of "our" (USA) traditional liberties can be traced directly back to pagan Indo-European traditions. E.g., direct participatory democracy was "invented" in pagan Greece. The Romans, under the Republic, elected their representatives (essentially by vote of all men elgible for military service), and also elected Tribunes to protect themselves from unjust laws and arbitrary acts of the other elected officials. (In the abstract, the Tribunes played much the same role for them as the Supreme Court does for us when ruling on a civil rights case or striking down a law as unconstitutional.) These privileges in the historical nations are apparently derived from an even more primitive substrate, e.g. in the extremely barbarous Germanic nations the "kings" apparently ruled at the grace of the "citizens" (= military class).
Moreover, it is not obvious that the USA's supposed freedoms of religion and speech are to be attributed specifically to Christian values. Many Christian cultures have certainly enforced specifically opposite values. I think instead the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights should be attributed to the fact that 13 sovereign states were surrendering a big part of their sovereignty to a newly created central government, and wanted to protect their own cultural values against the whims of that government and/or the other states.
> Historically christianity has provided the North-Western world with such a stable social framework in genereal.
True, but almost every religion has done the same for its own society. And that system seems to work because religions, when well entrenched, established a "norm" that is in fact very coercive, since it is believed to be handed down from on high rather than worked out by humans as a compromise solution to essentially unsolvable problems. (The burning of witches and heretics and mistreatment of various other types of "deviant" is not necessarily a theological problem. Rather, it is a "social" problem in the sense that nonconformists threaten the comfortable stability of society.)
> Northern European christians fought wars against them and when they won established freedom of religion and speech principles. American 'pilgrims' came and studied this phenonemon and integrated it into the usa or whatever it was called back then.
Actually, the "pilgrims", who are idealized in American mythology as dissidents who fled to North America for political asylum due to their "persecuted" religion, are the same party who, back home in England, overthrew the government in a religious revolution and put the dictator Oliver Cromwell into power about a generation later. This is not, IMO, a very compelling endorsement of Puritanism. Nor does it support any portrayal of them as champions of liberty.
That's not to say that their case has not had an impact on the Bill of Rights; rather, it points out that history does not usually suffer simple moralistic interpretations without filtering out a lot of relevant fact first. (Indeed, I suspect the Cromwellian episode was still relatively fresh in the Founding Father's minds when they wrote the BoR, since the whole sorry affair had only wound down about 100 years before. It probably stood in their minds much as the American Civil War does in ours, and one of their foremost thoughts would probably have been "How do we design a government where that kind of thing will not happen?", just as we probably would ask w.r.t. the ACW, if we were to write a new constitution today.)
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Bush on:
Abortion & Life Issues
Pro life with exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother
Set the goal that all children should be welcomed in life and protected by law
Supports parental notification, banning use of taxpayer funds for abortion, and banning partial birth abortion
Supports efforts to increase adoptions
Opposes doctor assisted suicide, believes the role of a doctor is to relieve pain and suffering, not to end life
Make permanent the $5,000 adoption tax credit
This guy is living in the dark ages. A regular God-Fearing schmuck, or at least thats what he intends us to believe, he maybe as Aethist as you or I. But their are alot of pathetic fools still afraid of death and confused about existance (read: mental midgets who believe in any major religion (outside budhism/taoism (which arent 'religions' anyway))
My question is that tax credit for someone who ADOPTS or offers a child for ADOPTION
Although Id bet he means the former not the latter, he didnt say.... selling babies for tax credit is an interesting idea, we should investigate the possible benefits of doing so.
Get over it.
I can think of a few things that online voting will solve.
...just take a look at slashdot.
1)Potlitical Action Commite Payola.
Its easy for PACs to get 100 people in their pockets, try that with 250 million.
2) Corruption.
On this large a scale, it will be impossible for big business to scuttle a law that is harmfull to them, but good for the people/planet with blackmail, extortion, payoffs, etc.
3) True Representation.
Just about every American is told from childhood that their vote makes a difference; This is not true in our current 'once removed representational democracy'. It would be true in an online setting where one voice = one vote.
It is possible at this moment to rid ourselves of the corrupt body politic with some well written software, high quality security (biometrics anyone?), and a distributed forum and polling engine.
This communication is secured using Rot-26 Encryption Algorithm, Unauthorized decryption will be subject to laughter.
I don't think it is the wrong word: I mean it in quite a limited analytical/historical sense: this 'idea' is a fascist idea, and really is in modern political philosophy/history understood as that. I imagine it has its antecedents in Aristotle or Plato but in the modern political lexicon it is linked specifically to fascism.
I've never really 'got' Heinlen, whether he's being serious or whether he wrote Starship Troopers as a satire on a totalitarian/fascist state. Certainly I found the Paul Verhoeven film to be a satire in this regard
...weaned, as it were, on the webs of ritual... (Mervyn Peake)
What does this mean? "geeks" at this point is still a largly economic lable. "geek politics" can be linked almost directly to their econmoic status (both the amount of money made and how they make it) and certain international and trade issues. On the social issues that most divide the two major parties and in some ways polarize 3rd parties, geeks have no consensus that I have ever noticed. There is a good libertarian streak, but there are plenty of xtian geeks, gay geeks, pro choice geeks, pro life geeks, pro or anti dealth penalty and geeks of every other stripe. Note the Greens vs Libs arguements we have had here already, with both being touted as a "geek" party.
So, we will vote as voters, just as diverse as if we were a writers forum or a mothers forum. But the political sniping that is sure to emerge from this thread despite all hope will be fun to watch.
- Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
And they are either ignoring these conversation on purpose or because they are stupid, because they are being spoken loudly and publicly here at slashdot and other places. (My two personal favorites are the interview of Al Gore's webmaster which in turn inspired my partner in crime to write a whitepaper which was dissected on slashdot.)
We should not have to sift and sort through crappy web sites to find where Al stands on napster or where Bush stands on immigration; they should be engaging us on our terms in the online places where we are. (Beats pressing the flesh in Duluth, hunh?)
Hey democracy lovers, add Quorum as a c
I'll tell you who I'm not going to vote for -- Bush!!!
a. He's not the man for the job.
b. He's a Christian.
c. The Wrong skills run in his family.
On a more serious note, I believe that the libertarian or green party best suit the technology industry because of their hands-off attitude. This is the reason the web has become so prosperous -- the government is not involved!!! As far as mainstream candidates go, Al Gore would be the lesser evil when compared to Bush.
"That government is best which governs least"
Henry David Thoreau
Yup, except for the war on drugs,
Ahem. Should somebody walk up to Mr.Gore and ask him whether he thinks the war on drugs is a Bad Thing and must be stopped? Or any ranking Democrat, for that matter?
That's not a Republican-Democrat difference. That's political scaremongering vs. real life difference.
Oh, except for corporate welfare.
We have the wonderful Democratic tendency to sue whole industries into the ground to balance that...
Oh, yes, and federal involvement in education.
Err isn't it mostly Democrats who think that the main qualification to teach is a union card and that charter schools are the worst abomination this country has ever seen?
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
In My country , current Prime Ministor (DR.M) was invite Microsoft and Bill Gates personally to join MSC, Multimedia Super coridor.
He want malaysian to be IT literated, BUT i think his definition about IT is "windows". And by inviting M$ to join MSC, then malaysian can be computer literated.
I totally disagree with him, not just because of the Anwar Ibrahim Case. A lot of people hate him because of this case, and lead toward "reformasi"
Back to technical political issue, Malayian Current government has lack of awareness about the danger of inviting M$ to the MSC. Mahathir want the technology, Bill can give technology but, it make the whole country depend on M$:(
Malaysian can live with monopoly. wierd huh ? Back to past year , the privatiation of Telecom Dept create a big monopoly of telecommunication buiness to "Telekom Malaysia Berhad". people seem like dont care.
And Next, microsoft.
After the monopolist of primier media and the alternative front/oppoition cant use the media. the oppoition have to use the internet just to inform about their press statement, and other event.
name like
Pemantau
Laman Reformasi
MalaysiaKini
Harakahdaily
Jiwa Merdeka
Become common,
But it wont solve the problem. The Geek still need what the geek need. If the government change, it wont help much.
Does The alternative front alert , microsoft want to invade the country? the answer is Yes And No.
one of most popular opposition media on the net (harakahdaily.com), using ".asf" do deliver it's webtv. And i dont know why. Everybody know asf is totally M$ propriety format, (case)
Bill Will Happy, event if the gov changes, he still can be supported.
But there are a litle bit releaf, when some of top Reformasi website use linux as publishing engine. Linux User , vote for anwar :)
Barisan Nasional^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HAlternatif
hehehe hehehe
-- Hasbullah bin Pit (sebol)
There are lots of sites (like Issues 2000) that have information about presidential candidates, but don't forget the power of Congress and state & local governments.
Freedom Channel is one of the few sites that has issue statements from candidates for president, senator, U.S. rep and governor. The issue statements are video (so you get to look 'em in the eye), and there's additional information and links for each candidate (plus extensive profiles of Congressional incumbents from National Journal's Almanac of American Politics).
Freedom Channel is non-partisan and non-profit (with foundation support). They don't exclude third party candidates like many of the big-media sites do. They're a terrific starting point to learn more about any national, statewide or congressional candidate.
Well, it looks as though all the information is out there, either in tables (the roll call votes) or existing databases (the bills themselves).
;-)
Surely, it's just a SMOP.
Jeff
It's called the United Nations.
It needs some minor changes though. The Security Council needs to get rid of the veto-options and take in a couple of changing members. Also, the USA should pay their huge debt (they still haven't done so!) to the UN. And so on.. minor details.
After those things are taken care of, it'll be just a matter of one country, one vote, no vetos. So for instance, the Island of Tonga has as much voting power as for instance the USA. "No vetos" prevent big countries from messing things up based on their own selfish agenda.
As for the many countries, many different cultures issue: if you look at the European Union now, the member states are not a homogeneous mass. They have their own local legistlation. For instance, cannabis is legal in Holland, whereas in Norway it is not. We need a similar system of committed countries to form the core of UN, but it has to be based on true democracy, ie. NO VETOS.
It's very surprising to me that so many readers here are avowed socialists. Much of the focus of converstations on this site deal with our individual liberties and how the current, moderately socialist (some would say highly) government is slowly stripping them away.
Socialism is about stripping you of your individual liberties and making you merely a part of the whole. You are only important in that you serve that society, and are completely expendable if you cease to serve that function. These were the underlying principles in Stalin's USSR, Hitler's Germany, and Mussolini's Italy. Yet we continue down those same paths due to an idealism that everyone is gauranteed a happy, trouble free life.
But you're not gauraneed that. Life is fraught with difficulties that you must overcome as an individual. If any party represents the views most loudly intoned on slashdot, it is the Libertarians, whose views are quite simple. You, the individual, are responsible for your life. You, the individual, are most qualified to make your own decisions. Liken this to an example of Linux. If you don't like the way it runs, you change it, and you're changes affect no-one save yourself. This is precisely what Libertarians want to bring about. A country based on individuals and individual liberties.
Do not be fooled by socialist plans that claim to be for the greater good of all. Socialism is meant to prey on our feelings of sympathy for those "less fortunate". But, without exception, socialism has produced a more "empowered few" scenario than any other socio-economic system.
In the end, the only way to ensure that all people are taken care of is to allow them to care for themselves. When they are allowed to be free, they will always have time to assist those who are truly misfortunate.
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have" - Thomas Jeffeson
Isn't what you just said a pretty good description of UN, only more powerful?
And to make your point, UN doesn't work very well at all times and is sometimes just considered a tool for NATO countries (US?) to play with (Iraq, Somalia, Yugoslavia).
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"I'm surfin the dead zone
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"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
Ahh, but this is not a democracy. It is a constitutional republic. America as a democracy is a fallacy indoctrinated through the government controlled schools.
BTW, while it is true that the president cannot "enact" legislation, he has the power of executive order, a power Clinton has used quite often to get around congress and generally flaunt the rule of law. As a White House insider was quoted, "Stroke of the pen, law of the land. Kinda cool!"
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have" - Thomas Jeffeson
The NY Times has an article which contains a snippet from Clinton's interview yesterday on Fox:
I'm actually glad that the Gore camp has finally been able to get over the embarrasment caused by the media circus that took over Gore's comment. Check out this old Telecom Digest post for an interesting synopsis of how Gore's comments were mis-interpreted, and he was mis-quoted.
This does underscore what for me is a big issue in this campaign, the marked difference between what the two cadidates have done with their lives. I think when we compare the two of them, it's clear that Gore comes out looking very good.
Bush hasn't really been very successful at anything. He ran a so-so oil company, which was built primarily on his father's contacts, and with money from people who knew his father. He joined the Texas national guard during the Vietnam-US war, arguably the defining event of his generation. He managed to get elected to the post of governor of Texas, one of the weakest in the country .
In contrast, Gore served in Vietnam, despite the doubts both he and his father had about the war. He spent 9 years in Congress, 7 in the Senate, and 8 as vice-president. In all of those posts, he was an active participant (like most of the Congressional class of '76). Gore was one of the first to introduce into the political mainstream, and champion, issues that are so important to us today. The environment, the net, campaign finance reform (the Buddhist temple fiasco was uncharacteristic, btw, no one asks what contributions church visits result in).
I don't think the differences on fiscal issues between the two candidates are great. In fact, Gore, with his stated commitment to a balanced budget, seems to me more of a fiscally sound bet. Bush's tax cut is of course a great buy for wealthy individuals, you get over 1 trillion in tax breaks for only 200 million in up-front cost. Great pay-off. Both cadidates are pro-business, except Bush is pro-oil and tobacco business more than Gore is. The manner in which some big-businesses buy politiicans, who then turn around and say they are encouraging entrepreneurship is extremely distasteful to me.
The social issues space is quite murky as well. Gore does want more tools for parents to control and understand what their kids are doing/watching. A lot of busy parents feel the same way, and I personally think this is understandable (and yeah, I agree with peacfire as well). Gore's been beaten on the head over his switch from moderate pro-lifer to pro-choice. Some of this can be ascribed to personal growth, perhaps as he's seen his daughters grow up, but it also correlate well with his easing into national politics, so it may be dis-ingenuous.
What turns me off completely about Bush though, is the manner in which he has defended the Texas legal system as it runs rough-shod over the rights of defendants in capital cases. The attidue seems to be that if a Texas jury finds a defendant guilty, then nothing should stand in the way of his/her execution. Given the numerous problems with the public defender system in Texas, and the sheer number of people on death-row, and who have been executed, I'm certain Texas has executed someone who is innocent. People within the US do not realize this, but Texas' record on capital cases is considered a major problem by Human Rights agencies, the UN, and people in other countries.
In sum, I don't think Bush deserves to be president, he hasn't done anything significant, and this country doesn't give credence the principle of succession.
-- Equity lord of the Trill Consortium
You say that a world govenment is far from reality, sir? I beg to differ. (please let me differ, pretty-please?) What you meant to say, I'm sure, rather than:
...is that there can be no world government without a consolidated religion and a consolidated race...
...ellipses are a way of life...
Until we can see beyond religious and racial issues
As we step boldly into a pile of steaming... er, that is, into a new world shamelessly bereft of physical boundries, you will see that humanity will gather and unify around the raging garbage fire that is our planet. We shall all band together as the shining apocalypse slowly embraces the supple and nautily heaving bosom of mother earth, groaning from the...
You may now resume sanity. If it makes you feel any better for these few seconds I have stolen from your life, I think I originally had a point, somewhere...
In the clip, Gore is rattling off a list of reasons people should vote for him. The Internet comment is spoken in a blase tone in the middle of a list. Gore is just taking credit due him and saying it badly. People overreacted to it -- as people do.
Why don't we use the same test that the INS gives to people who apply for citizenship? A prospective voter should have a basic knowledge of the history of the United States and the structure and function of the govrnment. See this page for a Washington Post article on the INS test, including sample questions.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Oh, except for corporate welfare. Except for the war on drugs and corporate welfare, the Republicans are pretty libertarian.
Oh, yes, and federal involvement in education.
OK, except for the war on drugs, corporate welfare, federal involvement in education, interventionist foreign policy, marital and other rights of homosexuals, internet censorship, ballot access, medicare and medicaid privatization, separation of church and state, the nature of juries, abortion rights, immigration, protectionist trade policies, victimless crimes, property tax, zoning, suicide rights, and flag burning, the Republicans are pretty libertarian.
But they do drive SAABs, I'll grant you that. (Post-GM SAABs, which are SAAB-lites.)
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[shrug]So does Pat Buchanan.[shrug] Does this make him a huggy feeling warm lovable liberal teletubby? Hardly. Your response to Naders VP choice is just another example of symbolism over substance in liberal culture.
If you want the gov to keep it's hands off the internet and out of your personal decisions and lives in general, vote Libertarian. They are the only party offering you the freedom to make your own decisions. The other parties sit up there on their platforms telling everyone how better they can run their lives for them, what kind of schools they should go to, how much taxes they should pay, what that tax money gets spent on, you name it they think they have the right to tell you how it should be done, pretty UnAmerican if you ask me... Libertarians are the only ones who will restore this country to the ONCE great nation it was. Vote Libertarian!!!!
Republicans are an increasingly Libertarian party nowadays. Ideologically pure Libertarians might sneer at them, but the main attractive element of the Republican party is that they are less statist than the Democrats.
Speaking as a typical libertarian... I am really turned off by the contemporary Republican approach to foreign relations, which seems to be basically 'peace through firepower' and lots of alliances and military occupations. IMHO, we are pissing off a lot of people when we bully other nations around, and we are becoming more and more a target for terrorism, which is almost impossible to defend against.
The libertarian position on national defense and foreign policy has always made a great deal of sense to me. It basically boils down to a strong defense for our shores, free trade with all nations, and no entangling alliances or deployments in other countries. In other words, focus on defending our shores and quit making the rest of the world angry.
The War on Drugs is another big issue with me, but as you've mentioned there are some Republicans that are coming around, albeit solely for practical instead of moral reasons.
I also have a lingering problem with the Republicans over censorship and the Moral Majority / Christian Right crowd. Those people tried to ban my music when I was growing up. I agree, that influence is dwindling, but I'm still pretty wary of it.
Finally, there are a whole host of other issues on which the Republicans talk the talk - privatizing Social Security, bringing competition to education, right to bear arms, lowering taxes, etc. - but don't deliver the goods. I'm simply beyond impatient with them on these things. I'd rather devote my time and energy to building a third party movement that will actually do something to reduce the bloat and intrusiveness of our government, than to sit around and wait on either of the two major parties to do anything.
So, I wish the Republicans were more libertarian, but it seems to me as if the Republicans and Democrats are just drifting closer together in a big centrist lovefest as each party makes concessions to the other.
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I picked up a copy of "De Re Metallica", a very old and classic book on mining and metallurgy. Originally written in Latin, it was translated into English by Herbert Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover (Herbert's wife). Not knowing much about Hoover, I was surprised to see his name on the book.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
The problem I think most Libertarians have with the Republican party is that it is contaminated by the religious right. What right-minded libertarian could vote for a party with a pro-censorship, anti-choice, pro-christian platform?
No serious libertarian could place their vote for either the Dems or Repubs..
PaxTech
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
I like Robert Heinlein's suggestion: you should not be allowed to vote unless you can find the roots of y=9x^2+12x+4.
I think David Brin's idea, from his novel Earth, was better: You need to keep up on current events in order to be able to vote. After all, being able to find the root of a quadratic equation, while useful, really doesn't have that much bearing on political choices. But an understanding of "current events" at least indicates that you care enough about the issues to keep track of them, which is about the only objective yet meaningful qualification for suffrage I can think of.
Now, David Brin's system used a global computer system which monitored your usage of news media systems, which probably has too many privacy concerns to be practical. But perhaps some sort of randomly-generated, ten-question, current-events quiz could be used, and you have to score X% correct or better to vote.
This also lets you remove age requirements, as Heinlien pointed out: A nine-year-old girl may be able to vote while her father cannot. Which is fine and dandy, I think.
Also from Heinlien's Expanded Universe was this idea which I just loved: The test could be given in the same enclosed booth as the votes cast, so no embarasment is risked. Or, you could use it to improve the species: If you fail the test (whatever it is), the booth still opens -- but is empty!
(Not very nice, but you have to love the concept!)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I would like to agree with this, but it seems far too general. For instance, aviation technology grew by leaps and bounds during two world wars, and nuclear technology, computational technology, crypto technology, synthetic materials, etc., all benefited much from the disorder of WWII.
I agree that I was too general, (although not as general as the posts I was replying to) however I would like to say about the WWII thing that it wasn't the chaos that caused technology to advance but it was the massive effort put into research and development. War economies allow these types of efforts to be made. In non-war economies stability offers a better framework for technological advance than chaos.
In Holland we fought a war over Freedom of religion against the Spaniards that at that time occupied Holland. After we won we established principles like freedom of speech and religion (be it in a rudimentary form)
Weh
It seems to me as a long-time Slashdot reader that the two main political trains of thought here are represented by the Greens and by the Libertarians. Nearly all of us are firmly against censorship and harsh law enforcement (i.e. "Geek Profiling"). I suppose many of us were hurt earlier in our lives by "conservative" social attitudes.
It's on economic issues where we seem to differ. A lot of us, probably more so for those outside the USA, favor policies that encourage a fair distribution of wealth and social services for all citizens. But there's also a big Libertarian contingent, who feel that if the government keeps its hands out of the economy, prosperity is the result, and that if I earn something, no government should be able to force me to share it with anyone else.
I'm more in the Green camp ideologically (not yet decided between Gore and Nader, but that's another post), but I have nothing but respect for the US Libertarian Party due to their honesty and smart campaigning. The Democrats and Republicans do everything they can to keep everyone else out of debates, so that they can set the debates' parameters, and the Libertarians have done the best possible job of getting their voices heard in spite of having the deck stacked against them. The televised debates NEED to include Ralph Nader and Harry Browne(And probably one of those Reformers, but they can't seem to get their act together), if any substantive issues are going to be discussed.
grep -ri 'should work'
The US is the place where all the best technology comes from.
Aren't you forgetting Japan?
US leads the world in .. well, everything
Including murder, shootings, and most other crimes.
countries like Germany and London
Maybe if you weren't so isolationist you would realise that London is a town and not a country.
is the Internet going to affect how you vote because of faster dissemination of information?
The question is, what information is being disseminated faster? The same brain-dead journalistic cruft that's been disseminated for decades, that's what.
Face it, despite the fact that the Green Party has a website, they still really have next to no chance. The fact that their message is getting dissseminated faster isn't making people accept it any faster.
not only are smaller political groups getting far more publicity than before (because you no longer have to actually print out newsletters to send to readers--they can the information online), but the Internet has become increasingly a "balance" to the mainstream media itself.
This sounds like the Internet I like to think about. It might even be the Internet that I use. But it's not the Internet that, unfortunately, most people use.
Most people are now going online to find online versions of traditional media. MSNBC is the greatest example. Going online to find the rare gems is not the cool thing about the Internet, to the masses.
So therefore, it follows that Democrats are going to www.gore2000.com, and Republicans are going to www.georgebush.com. Democrats are not accidentally stumbling upon www.greens.org, and thereby deciding to vote for Nader.
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Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
We are in a country where our elected leaders are supposed to be there to represent us but in reality, they don't get where they are by doing that. The only people that they represent are those people with special access, people who control purse strings that can be opened for those campaign budgets.
We, a country that was founded because of a situation where there was "taxation without representation" have created almost exactly the same situation that caused the initial revolution! The hypocracy makes me sick.
Minnesota did something unheard of a couple of years ago, we elected a Reform Party candidate, Jesse Ventura to be our govenor. We did this knowing that he was not "normal" gubenatorial matterial. We had two other choices, both of whom were cut out of the same matterial as Gore and Bush. In a very real sense, the election of Govenor Ventura was a political revolution.
Yes, we have been the butt of jokes but our govenor can probably beat your govenor up! We also have a govenor who has added some real common representation. He really does play by a different set of rules. The changes are slow in comming but we can see them. I don't necessarily agree with all of them but I can see that he is really looking at things from the common person's point of view. He has made a few mistakes along the way and alienated powerfull groups (like the religious right) and so I don't know what his chances for re-election are but, I can at least say that I support him because he does represent me.
I think, that it is time for the common man to demand the same from Washington. I suspect that the internet is going to play a powerful part in that. Even if it is just to allow us a fast way to track our lawmakers, it is something. But if we can have a real influence on what they do, that would really be something!
Geeks, Unite!
Nothing has stalled human development more than Christianity. This isn't meant to be flamebait because it's true. Look at Rome, which shortly after becomming a Christian nation, collapsed leading us into the Dark Ages. Look at the Crusades. Nothing stops innovation more than killing everybody (at the time the Muslims were the technological leaders of the world). Look at the four years big George Bush was king. We went to war and had a shitty economy. There's no since throwing progress away in favor of something that doesn't even exist.
http://www.wired.com/news/p olitics/0,1283,38207,00.html
Interesting record: supporting surveillance, data collection, and Clipper, but also cracking down on federal websites that abuse privacy.
sulli
sulli
RTFJ.