Hardball Tactics For The Geek Lobby

sfjoe writes: "The San Francisco Chronicle has this story on how to effectively make the point about online freedom of speech. In a nutshell, until a legislator gets slapped around (electorally-speaking) for kowtowing to the narrow corporate interests, nobody in Congress will take online civil liberties seriously. On the other hand if, for example, Senator Disney gets his balls whacked (electorally-speaking), monstrosities like the DMCA will start getting bottled up in congressional committees. The NRA has been doing this for years and it works."

Comments

2002 targets

[Rev Snow]

Representative Adam Schiff of California.

Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska.

They are the highest profile supporters of SSSCA who are facing election in 2002.

Re:2002 targets

[astroboy]

Senator Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, is widely considered to have a safe seat. While it's certainly worth keeping an eye on, especially given that the ANWR drilling, which he campaigned hard for, didn't survive the Senate, he is in pretty good shape -- he won with 77% of the vote last election, and already has about $1.4 million in the war chest for this election. you'll never guess where he got it. There aren't any serious opponents.

Schiff is a more interesting possibility. He's a rookie representative, just come from the state senate. He won in 2000 largely by spending possibly more than anyone in US history on a House of Representatives election ($10 Million (search for Schiff)). It's hard to say if he has a safe seat or not, since it's a new seat created by redistricting. Oh, and if you want another reason to dislike him, the guy he defeated went on to be chief of everyone's favourite gov't agency, The US patent office. It looks like Schiff will be facing Jim Scileppi, although you have to be skeptical of a political site hosted at attbi.com.

Right. Let's make an example of someone

[sl956]

The person whose cage we should be rattling is in California. Dianne Feinstein.

That's damn right. From 1997 to 2002, she raised $22,750 from Disney (4th contributor) and $18,100 from AOLTW (7th contributor). I think GeekPAC can raise much more than that. And throwing that money on his opponent would be a good complement to grassroot actions (grin). I don't like senators to be for sale, but so it is. Then why not just buy them ?

disclaimer: I sent my check to GeekPAC two days ago, and I'm not even an american citizen. So what are you waiting for ?

Re:Voting records

[mcwop]

Try here. It has roll call votes for congress, and lists specifc names under the yeas and naaas.

Congress - Office of Clerk Roll Call Votes

Re:Voting records

[Dr.Hair]

The best site on the web for looking at voting records and how various special interest groups rate politicians is Project Vote Smart.
They also send out a questionnaire to all candidates which includes questions on tech policy. In fact the policy questions are pointed enough that the political parties were telling their candidates to not cooperate last election with Project Vote Smart. It's easier to waffle on issues when you are as amorphous as pankcake batter.

Two words: Jack Brooks.

[einTier]

Why don't you look this guy up. He was a very popular politician from Texas, and was a US Representative from 1953-1995. People in his area really thought he was going to be in office until the day he died.

And then came along the 1994 Crime bill. In case you don't remember this bill, this was the infamous bill that banned "assualt weapons" without a good definition of what an assualt weapon was and banned gun magazines over 10 rounds. It barely passed, but passed nonetheless.

Jack Brooks onveniently forgot who brought him to the dance and who kept him there. He voted against the bill, even though many of his constituents were either directly NRA members or sympathetic to the cause. He did not serve another term. Though no one directly said it, it was considered general knowledge that his vote on the crime bill was the critical issue.