Slashdot Mirror
Senator Prevents Action on Online Privacy Bill
securitas writes "The NYTimes tells us Senator Trent Lott forced the Senate Commerce Committee to adjourn this morning as it was on the verge of adopting an online privacy bill requiring ISPs and commercial Web sites to get customers' permission before they could disclose important personal information. That would include financial,
medical, ethnic, religious and political information along with Social Security data and sexual orientation. I urge Trent Lott's constituents to make your voices heard on this. Same goes for readers whose senators serve on the Senate Commerce Committee." Salon and EPIC have written about
Hollings' bill.
And the worst part about it is, he is from my state. I was unable to vote at the last election due to age, but you can sure i wont be voting for that bastard when his term runs up.
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
Get the attention of all of the task force members.
http://rpc.senate.gov/httf/fastfacts.htm
I'm a Mississippi voter (shut up), and so Trent Lott is my senator. Right after the hearings for the (then) SSSCA with Eisner et al, I wrote a letter to Sen. Lott saying how much I didn't like that bill. I figured, "Hey, he's one of the top Republicans. This bill is sponsored by a Democrat. As much as I dislike Lott, he's bound to agree with me!"
Not quite. I got a letter back three days ago. It was a bit behind the times, still referring to the SSSCA. It basically said, "Yes, there is a bill. Yes, there was testimony. It was very useful. Your opinion is important to me." Considering how reviled the CBPTA eventually became and when the letter was sent, it shouldn't exactly take a lot of political initiative to stand up against that kind of bill. But from the letter it didn't look like he exactly opposed it or anything.
I realized there are lots of problems with Hollings most recent bill, and maybe that's why he's doing that, but I wouldn't call Lott privacy- or tech-friendly by any stretch of the imagination.
*shrug*
Rules are rules, and both parties have abused them quite often in the Senate, where the rules are written in such a way as to make obstruction relatively easy compared as in the House.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Using this procedural rule is actually quite common for Lott. He has invoked this rule several times over the past year to tie up the business of the senate. He did this after the nomination of Judge Pickering was defeated in Committee.
Of course, Lott also snipes at Daschle constantly for not clearing legislation in a timely manner. Go figure!
This is not the sig you are looking for...
With all the buzzwords: Threat to US internal security, 9/11, axis of evil, rising energy prices, saddam, and castro?
S
"I've said it before and I'll say it again: Democracy simply doesn't work." -Kent Brockman
I'll just adjust my cynical hat for a sec, and loudly proclaim, "These ^%$#!ing people in Congress consistently vote in favor of large corporations, at the expense of normal people like you and me. A CORPORATION IS NOT A PERSON! Last time I checked, we were by THE PEOPLE for THE PEOPLE, not for the corporations."
This kind of crap just makes me sick.
I am now writing a letter (with a pen, on paper) to send to the committee. I urge EVERYONE ELSE to do the same.
Hello! This is yesterday's news. Today's News.com article has more up-to-date info, and it says that Lott's tactic only delayed things by one day.
"If I could live to be several hundred
I could take a walk and really wander, really wonder."
Read the Salon article. And remember who is sponsoring this bill. There may be more to this than meets the eye.
And yes, I am a Mississippian, and a conservative, and no, I don't really like Trent Lott.
Contact info for the committee is here.
(Shoulda put this in my rant. Sorry.)
Likewise with the Online Personal Privacy Act. It is masquerading as pro-consumer when in fact it is pro-business. The new legislation is similar to laws passed in Europe that divide your personal information into two types. The first is "sensitive" information, such as your financial and medical history, race, lifestyle, religion, political affiliation, and sex life. The second is "nonsensitive" information, and among that will include your name, address, and records of anything you buy or surf on the Internet. Under the act, business can't collect or divulge the sensitive bits without your express consent, but anything classified as nonsensitive can be freely collected and sold at will.
I guess anything that Hollings touches is evil.
Heh, maybe lot just uses hotmail and doesnt want his email service declared illegal and shut down.
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
This is not even an issue. The senator knows that every upstanding american citizen is:
- financial: a hard-working taxpayer
- medical: leads a clean life
- ethnic: is from good stock
- religious: is a proud and dedicated churchgoer
- political: supports his president 100%
- social security: skeptical of its goals
- sexual orientation: damned straight
So you see, there really isn't any unique information to keep secret. The proposed legislation is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine.when the committee next meets? If I was a committee member, I'd be sure to throw this one at him just to piss him off more.
Before you get up in arms about the injustice of this move you might want to *READ* the salon article mentioned. Yes, this bill is something that's needed, but just like the Microsoft anti-trust settlement what you have after the fact could be more dangerous than before
This law would make them get you to opt-in for what is considered "secure" information.
HOWEVER, it is very loose on what is considered "secure" information and gives free reign for those same people that it's trying to supposedly stop a legal right to sell and/or give away personal information
Given that NyTimes only lets one person on at once using the same user/password combo, is it not a little pointless for everyone to post their passwords on slashdot?
Most of us will make up a random username anyhow, and let it set the cookie. I can't remember if it needs a valid email address or just "an email address" but most of us have spamtrap email accounts for that purpose *
Now what would be -really- useful is for someone to write a PHP script that goes to the signup page, enters random information. signs you up, then logs in and goes to the page you originally wanted. Then we could just point all the links to mydomain.net/ReferToNyTimes?StoryID=x
And no, I can't be bothered to get into that arms-race with their signup mechanism. You can if you want!
* sooner or later, all the free email places will go and those which remain will want your national ID card number, so some of us will have to stump up domains that everyone can use for this stuff. Like, anything sent to temp_*@mydomain.net gets posted on the web for example, and you direct all your crappy passwords there.
I don't have time to look for the article I read, but isn't Hollings' bill actually a pro-business bill in disguise? IIRC, the kinds of data listed in the quote are protected, but other kinds of data, such as what you buy, are not. I think the article I read pointed out that it's meaningless, because with data on what you buy, companies can figure out a lot about you: your religion, your politics, medical information, perhaps your sexual tastes...
Read the bill, or at least the comments WHY he shut it down.
I think that it shouldn't happen. This bill legalizes sharing of much personal information WITHOUT authorization.
It also legitimizes those constantly changing TOS that "by continuing to use the service you agree to"
This is NOT a personal privacy bill, this in an anti privacy bill.
Disagree with me if you want, but at least see what the bill and issues are BEFORE you go off half cocked complaining about this.
The Senator from Disney is sponsoring this bill, which many others have pointed out.
Lott may have done 'the right thing' by trying to keep this bill from passing. There was another /. article not very long ago More on Internet Privacy Legislation and a link from it A law to protect spyware that shows how this bill is not all that great for our privacy.
One point that the article makes is that this bill would "place a congressional stamp of approval on precisely the kinds of practices that purveyors of spyware are eager to engage in" and "the nonsensitive clause is a huge gaping loophole through which business will ride roughshod."
Before we blast Lott for this, we should get a good idea of what the bill does based off of something other than its name (which of course was given to it by Sen. Fritz Hollings!)
I'm not saying that Lott is working for our better good, or even that he is thinking of people like us, but we should take a good look at this thing before we complain that someone kept it from passing.
AHP
Just a simple FYI if anybody wants to track down the bill text on thomas.loc.gov -- it's S. 2201, otherwise known as the "Online Personal Privacy Act".
If you want a PDF version from the GPO, this link may work for you.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Now what would be -really- useful is for someone to write a PHP script that goes to the signup page, enters random information. signs you up, then logs in and goes to the page you originally wanted. Then we could just point all the links to mydomain.net/ReferToNyTimes?StoryID=x You mean something like this?
It's true--he had to adjourn to his office to check his list of contributors. How else is a senator supposed to know which vote to cast?
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
Dammit, mod this to 5 and bookmark it. You didn't just write that, did you?
"...--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
We have prepared on analysis of this bill andit is online here, much easier than reading through the 30 pages, a condensed outline version. We oppose the bill and sent a letter to Sen. Hollings yesterday saying so, we also cc: to all members of the Committee (inc. Sen. Lott). You can also read our press release from our front page here.
We do not want to see the Internet, and Internet commerce treated differently than non-internet commerce. We do not want discriminatory effects placed on the Internet, and wide ranging new regulations and sever legal penalties that will bankrupt many firms. If you conduct any business with a web site, you should oppose this bill!
In a related story by CNN (near the bottom) Rep. Stearns of Florida has introduced a privacy bill in the House which, in my opinion, is quite nasty. Here's what he has to say about it on his own site:
Quite revealing, in my opinion.So he can order the creation of an army of clones, but he can't give us online privacy?
I know more than you drink.
Or maybe you could just register and have your own login. What, exactly, do people have against registering on that site?
I wouldn't call Lott friendly period. :)
...would be to have a general agreement drafted by the populace (users/customers) which serves much as the GPL servers us, call it the GTOS. The users/customers (the populace) can say to the business community, "We want you to use the General Terms of Service and we won't be your customers unless/until you do."
Those businesses which give the customers/populace what they want get the customers, the others go out of business.
By using this type of mechanism the populace can determine the terms of service for information usage. We obviously need a way to cut the U.S. government out of the equasion since they only seem interested in serving up what their campaign donors want and the rest of us be damned.
Just a thought.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
It voted to require the Federal Trade Commission to develop privacy rules for offline businesses as well, and reduced the maximum amount consumers could win for privacy violations from $5,000 to $500.
This is just absurd. Assuming that a violating company only got 1% of people suing, and a fraction of them winning... this means that the average cost per customer is really about $5. This is an acceptable "cost of doing business".
Seriously, all they seem to need is a perceived threat to privacy ("Senator Prevents Action on Online Privacy Bill"!!) even if the same bill was critized a while go on slashdot, and is sponsored by the senator from disney.
Please, follow someof the links before jumping in to agree with the post ...
Lott against privacy, Lott baaaad !!!
what's next ?
Hollings pro-privacy, Hollings good !?!?
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
Why is anyone surprised by this? The Republican party is much more interested in the desires of big business than they are in protecting the citizens.
Businesses want to be able to sell information that they collect about you. They want to sell your name, address, phone number, and e-mail address to other businesses so that you will be inundated with spam e-mail, junk mail, and telemarketing calls while you try to eat dinner or watch a DVD.
The Republicans in Congress think it's fine for drug stores to sell information about what prescription medications you take. They are the same ones that have fought for insurance companies, even ones you don't do business with, to have access to all of your medical records. So they are not going to have a lot of concern about Yahoo selling your name, address, phone number, and e-mail address to some "business partner."
When it comes to issues of privacy and consumer rights, the Democrats are, by and large, far better.
no, no. Even better. I am an 102 year old afghani cleric who does manual labor in webservices. Sure, they get demographic info from me, but I specifically make it as worthless as possible, a random generator may produce a profile that make sense - I would much rather completely ruin my data (and do for any of these stupid profiling crap they push on us).
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
Geez people. It's actually a BAD bill that we DO NOT want passed.
Trent did the right thing.
/.ers.
The whor^H^H^H^HSenator from SC is not to be trusted to ANYTHING in the publics interest. He did a nice job naming it though, Orwellian doublespeak at its best. Even fooled some
These days, even the party of Bill Clinton seems willing to trade our rights for a few campaign bucks.
What's the world coming to?
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
You want to know why the politicians don't pay attention to geeks? Because you're clueless. You're no more informed about the issues than your common couch potato sucking in the CNN lies.
Last week you were all rallying around your privacy rights. This week you pan the guy that killed a bill that would have taken away your privacy rights. The geek coalition is just as malleable with ten second sound bites as the soccer moms and suv dads.
Go find out what this bill is about before you start clamouring for its passage. It serves you a bowl of shit and you're happy because there's a doggy biscuit mixed in. Sheesh! Oh boo hoo that filthy republican took away my doggy biscuit...
I'm definitely going to let Trent Lott know how I feel. I'll let him know that I'm glad he kept my best interests in mind in that den of weasels they call the Senate. I want a real privacy bill, not this half-assed excuse for a placebo.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Indeed, the govt overtly- not just implicitly - condones the use of tobacco products - in fact, many state govts have budgets built on the financial foundation of taxation of tobacco use. Consider this sad fact when you state that regulated / taxed / condoned evil is better than a world where one can mount a defense legally. What if Congress decides regulation and taxation of spyware is the appropriate outcome? How hard will it be to get back privacy rights after that?
Additionally, tobacco sales outside the US are essentially unregulated - in fact, they are aided and abetted by the US govt, to improve the balance of payments and ensure that the tobacco companies can make their liability litigation payments ad infinitum. Privacy, in my opinion, should be considered just as much a 'human right' as freedom from predatory marketing of inherently unhealthy (and useless) products. Of course, human rights are usually the first victim in the pursuit of cash flow.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
The Green Party? They are, just as you allude to in your second sentence, Communists/Socialists/Marxists/whatever you want to call them.
Some people having more money than others isn't a problem either, by the way. Some people work 60 hours a week, some work 40. Would you suggest that those working 60 should earn less money per hour than those working 40? And how about what those people do with the money they earn.
There's another problem. Suppose we earn the same amount of money. If I invest/save my money, and you buy a car with yours five years from now who has more wealth? I would, because I've earned interest and my wealth appreciated in value, while you drove your car and your wealth depreciated in value. Should I then forfeit some of my money to you so that we're equal?
I'm all for the law being applied to everyone the same. That's quite different than "equality" consisting of robbing Paul to pay Peter.
All socialism amounts to is a desire to have some entity exercise absolute control everyone's thoughts, time, and property. You socialist moderators might try rebutting me rather than modding me down for expressing one different than your own.
the news relase i had read on the parlimentiary move by Lott was more business oriented. it basically gave the impression that Lott was doing this because of pressure by companies saying that this would cost them money and that cost was not in the consumer's intereste. there's only one person i dislike more than Trent Lott and thats Tom DeLay! that guy, literally, looks like a weasal. (im from texas, and actually am in the district next to DeLay's. and any of you mississipian's out there, dont worry about the flak, us texans get the unfair end too.)
------
[insert funny
I don't think its particularly inconsistent.
I believe there is no natural right to own ideas. Thomas Jefferson seemed to agree.
I also believe that allowing someone to profit from their inventions/artwork will provide an economic incentive to create more, which will benefit all of society. So, we allow inventors and artists to have exclusive control over their inventions because it benefits society by helping to assure future works.
Personal information is of a different nature. It isn't an invention or artistic work. It wasn't created by the person it was disclosed to. Society as a whole won't benefit by knowing what cereal I eat for breakfast. Advertisers/Governments/whoever have no more right to know the average height of women I like to have sex with than they do to find out by staring in my second floor bedroom window.
That is to say, I have a right to privacy.
I'm interested to hear what you think about my distinction.
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[insert funny
The scary thing about our representatives is this:
What if they truly do represent the will of the overwhelming majority? In other words, what if we had a clean slate, and could choose again? Would we end up with EXACTLY the same idiots and criminals in office? Or different ones with the same relative characteristics?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Bah, I am more then happy to tell them that I, a lower class american, am doing something besides watching MTV or using (insert drug of choice here.)
:)
Hell, I'd love to see on the news;
"New survey shows that largest percentage of New York times readers reading the politcal section earn under $30,000 annualy."
Kick ass.
Too bad it isn't going to happen though, heh.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Thank you, I'll make sure that he doesn't get my vote next time around, of course I'll write him first, he might change his opinion if there is a large enough backlash.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
are you kidding me? these congressmen dont give a flying monkey spunk about their constituents, they care about the lobbyists who finance their elections, the ones that keep them in office.
yeah, so i'm negative, but its right
Beer, now there's a temporary solution -- Homer Jay S.
creating a uid with your standard throwaway data works fine.
This doesn't.
Here's what I got when I pasted the url into the service:
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If the NYT really wants to know that I'm a pterosexual zoroastrian from Moldova who makes flatulence for a living (1500 quatloos/second), they're welcome to the it.
Damn! This is going to cost me a karma point!
to answer your "civil rights" question, I think with competition the north would actually be *more* open than the US currently is, as they would insist on 100% rights protection, for all class/race/ect, whereas the south might be letting women vote in the last 50 years.
just random conjecture
I live in a giant bucket.
Being a former Republican, I know this. Why don't we look at this so-called bill before we crucify Sen. Trent Lott...also, for preliminary analysis, I think the bill is crap because that fuck Sen. Hollings supports it: the same person who sponsored the SSSCA. I've converted to a moderate libertarian, mainly because of the Christian Right Wing and the Pro-Business-no-matter-what wings in the Republican party, which are two of the three wings in the Repblican party. The other wing -- the one I like -- is the wing that's main focus is crime, and says if someone kills, rapes, or molests, he should be fried (i.e., George W. Bush, referred to as the executioner by Jay Leno).
Anyways, I'm no longer a Republican b/c I disagree with them on a number of important issues: abortion and gay-rights being the most important. I also think democrats are assinite on this issue; the "hate-crimes" bullshit supported by Democrats is crap: Murder (not including vengence murders for raped daughters) should be punished by death, no matter what. Same thing with rape, child molestation, torture, wife-beating, and in my opinion, any other violent crime. Perhaps even an impalement or two for the serial killer/rapists...in Translyvania, when Vlad Dracula ruled, he impaled all criminals; needless to say, there wasn't much crime during his reign. I also think Democrats are full of shit on racism issues: if I own a private company, and the public owns no stock in it, I should be allowed to have whatever assinite hiring/firing/customer practices I choose. If I have assinite practices, people will protest, and I'll go out of business.
The "Pro-Life" wackos in the Republican party freak me out. Especially these fucks who say, "Parents should have to consent before their child has an abortion". This parent's rights crap. Parents rights means that the parents have the right to use corporal punishment on their children, but teacher's don't (and if they do, the parents will rip off their balls and skull fuck them). Parents rights means that parents have the right to check to make sure their kids aren't wearing thongs, but that perverted sick fuck Vice Principle's of schools like this bitch Rita Wilson don't. Parents rights, however, does not mean the poarent has the right to deny their child basic human rights. Forcing a person to give birth is cruel and inhumane, especially a teenager, who'll probably have to have a C-section. Put another way -- and here's something these brainless Pro-Life fucks can understand -- If you think its a parents right to force their child to give birth, then you must also think its a parent's right to force their child to have an abortion. Doesn't seem right, does it?
On taxes, I tend to agree with Republican's -- I work hard for my money, and government fucks don't deserve it. Neither do these poor fucks who are "in need", or "the children". What did some poor person ever do to deserve my money? The bum will probably spend it on drugs anyways. The same losers we pay welfare to are also probably the people that use that welfare check to wait in line 5 months to see Star Wars: but that's okay, the force is with them, right? On the other hand, Democrats do have a point that money means alot more to the middle class than to the rich: take away 40% of a billionare's yearly earning, and he can still live a great life. If he runs into financial problems, fuck him. Fifteen Porsches, a few Ferraris, a Limo, and a private Jet are not necessities. Personally, I think anyone who makes an income of over a million dollars a year should not be allowed to declare bankrupcy for the next 20 years. Businesses also shouldn't be allowed to declare bankrupcy. Bankrupcy is for some poor/middle-class fuck who never pulled in the kind of income to deal with a moderate amount of debt. Its not for fucks like MC Hammer who racked in 10 million a year and somehow run out.
So, back to taxes, I think that the amount of money we pay in taxes should be proportional to the fraction of how much money we made in a year, versus the entire "income" of the nation in a year, GNP. If I account for 0.00000001% of the GNP, then I should have to pay proportional to that; maybe it would be something like 100 times the fraction of "your money"/GNP. So if I make twice as much money as you, I pay twice the percentage of taxes. This way, I never end up making less money per year after taxes than someone who racked in less than me (which is bullshit).
The armed forces and the environment are things I'm independent on. They're both important, but neither should be placed above balancing the budget (the government shouldn't be allowed to have a non-balanced budget; its irresponsible and sets a bad exmaple). Also, "protecting the environment" at the expense of people is bullshit; sorry, but those fucking sucker-fish in Ohio aren't important enough to deny farmers needed water. The military I see as being more important, but I think we should spend money more wisely. I'm not talking about "Star Wars" here; that was just a plan by Reagan to get the Russians to give up. I'm talking about just making smart decisions.
Unlike Democrats, I believe in a free market. This business of subsidation and all sorts of other communistic non-sense is crap. But a free market does not mean without rules. A free market does not mean we allow the kind of crap Enron, Global Crossings, and MS partook in. Lets make an analogy to cards. A free market is like a game of cards where all sides are playing fairly and no one has an innate advantage. What the Democrats want is to look at the players and subsidize the dumbest one's by giving them extra chips or something. What the Republican's tolerate is when one fuck is pulling cards out of his sleave.
Anyways, back to the issue at hand -- digital rights, consumer rights, and privacy issues. On these issues, the majority Democrats and Republicans stand in unison: against US, the WE THE PEOPLE. Now, on to this bill. As I said before, I doubt this bill is anything that's good for us. I know this is a little bit of a fallacy (i.e., messenger with message), but what are the odds this bill actually increases privacy is that fuck Hollings supports it? Hollings is as much an arch-enemy to digitally-rights minded people as is Bill Gates.
So, lets look at the situation. Upon skimming the Bill, I've determined its not bad, and fault Trent Lott for stalling it. However, the bill is clearly weak. The penalty for disclosing "non-sensitive private information" is $200 dollars? What a crock of shit. My privacy, even if "non-sensitive," is worth more than 200 dollars. The right to privacy is gaurenteed by the fucking constitution, shouldn't violations of it warrant jail time, just like violations of the right to life? Upon showing the harm a person suffered, he's entitled to "the monetary loss from the damage" or "$5,000". Again, weak. Larger fines (I'm talking 10k minimum) and jail-time should be a minimal. On the bright side, repeat offenders can be fined up to $100,000. On the other hand, that up to should be "a minimum of"! Then there's the "exception", pure bullshit. In the case of this bill, the "exception" should be a mitigating factor in the defense. The exception is: "Neither an action to enjoin or restrain a violation, nor an action to recover for loss or damage, may be brought under this section for the accidental disclosure of information if the disclosure was caused by an Act of God, unforeseeable network or systems failure, or other event beyond the control of the Internet service provider, online service provider, or operator of a commercial website." An "act of god"? What religious bullshit is that. Congressment continually illustrate the pin-headed imbeciles they are by wording like this. Accidental disclosure, or network/system failure are in the control of ISP's. You entrust ISP's with your private information -- its their responsibility to make sure its secure. If your information is leaked because they stored it on a Windows machine protected by a character-only 8-letter password, they should be liable. This should be a mitigating factor in punishment, not a defense. The section on "Applications to the Senate" is vague. The section on applications to federal agencies is crap, as it creates exceptions: Federal Agencies should be under strict rules just like everyone else.
In short, this bill is toothless. Its simply an attempt on the part of that fuck Hollings to gain back some good standing with the same consituency he lost face with for supporting the SSSCA and the DMCA. I'll post a more detailed critique of the bill upon further analysis.
However, despite my criticisms, this bill is better thn the current situation: which is, no rules at all. But that doesn't excuse half-measures. Either get all the way on or all the way off. Don't try to straddle the fence. Shit or get off the pot.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
This is the same bill that would allow most of our information to be shared unless we opt-out and only protects the information that is already protected.
/. was willing to put on a story to get people worked up.
Jeez, I didn't realize just how much of a spin
DO NOT SUPPORT THIS BILL!!!
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Hello folks, is this thing on?
This bill doesn't do much of anything to assure us of privacy. If anything, it ensures that spammers and the like have the legal rights to track us. This bill basically divides all information into two categories (personal/important and non-personal/unimportant) and sets an opt-in for the 'important' information while not even guaranteeing an opt-out for what it considers 'unimportant'.
Of course you're asking yourself, "what's he mean unimportant?" Glad you asked. Your name, address, record of any and all purchases, etc.; important, personal information you're probably thinking. Wrong. Don't feel bad, I made the same mistake at first. Then I looked at who was pushing this thing (Fritz Hollings (SSSCA/DMCA/etc)) and I smacked my head and said, "oh, now I get it." The only information spammers care about is the information NOT protected by this bill.
Gee, I have an idea, let's forward all spam email to Fritz Hollings' email address and see how he likes his own medicine. It amazes me that the citizens of South Carolina would allow such an anti-freedom, anti-constitution, anti-consumer, anti-individual, pro-corporation, pro-media (christ, he's referred to as the "Senator from Disney) to continue representing them. I somehow doubt that the majority of the citizens of South Carolina would vote for most of what he pushes if they knew what he was pushing.
I say we give into Hollings. I mean, all he wants is lots of money, a large plantation, and plenty of people he can humiliate and beat down at will. Can't we get that for him so he'll go away? To me, it's absolutely insane that such a person is allowed to remain in office. We should have some sort of monthly review board for every member of Congress so that when they completely abandon their constituents, they can be removed from office quickly and quietly, making way for a human being with a heat that pumps blood instead of oil.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Actually the rules for things like this are much stricter in the house, since its larger there are more rules about how debate will work on each specific bill. One of the committees in the house gets to set the rules for how debate will work, so when they don't want to have a bill go to debate that committee simply doesn't assign it a rule. Like all other systems politics is a game, and there are ways that things work. Controversial stuff generally gets added to big pork laden bills like farm bills or defence bills. Stuff that the majority doesn't want to be seen debating or voting against dies in comittee. And things that either party wants to campaign on gets debated on for a long time, allowing many opportunities for soundbytes, both for and against. All in all I believe its a pretty good system, most of the time the laws that the country wants get passed, but the means that it takes to get there can be quite annoying.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Both of them are for the desires of the most wealthy .01% of the population who pay for their campaigns. Witness the track record if you don't believe me! We should have finished paying down the debt so that this burden won't fall to the next generation. What did we do? We gave big tax breaks, largely to the weahtly. Both republicans and democrats voted for this!
The Democrats fought Boy George on this issue and did everything they could to moderate the extreme tax cut bill that Bush signed. Most Democrats voted against it and it passed on party lines. The Republicans, unfortunately, controlled both houses of Congress at that time, filling the halls with such mental giants as Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms.
It is the Democrats who have worked hard to keep from gutting the welfare programs. They are the ones that have fought for graduated taxes so that those that could afford to pay more taxes did and those who were less able did not. It was under Reagan that the gap between the CEO's salary and that of the workers widened to a chasm.
As to paying down the debt, that was going along quite nicely under Clinton. At the time, the Republican Congress tried to take credit for balancing the budget, but as soon as we had a Republican President and a Republican Congress, we saw the Republican cut-taxes-and-increase-spending take over.
That leaves the bottom 50% paying less than 8% of the income tax. Real equal, huh?
I don't know where you got the idea that taxes should be "equal." If it takes $X per year to adequately support a family and someone earns $X + 10%, they can't afford to pay out 40% of their income in taxes. Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates, and Michael Eisner can afford to pay that much and more without it impacting their quality of life in any way, shape, or form. It makes no sense to expect someone who's barely scraping by on a low-wage job, living in the cheapest efficiency they can find, and eating macaroni and cheese every night to pay the same percentage in taxes that millionaires like Goerge W. Bush and Dick Cheney do.
Some people work 60 hours a week, some work 40. Would you suggest that those working 60 should earn less money per hour than those working 40?
No, I'd suggest getting the government to step in and protect workers from excessive hours -- even if some workers are dumb enough that they want to work that many. In France, it is illegal to work more than 35 hours per week. Since we put in more hours, on average, per week than workers in any other industrialized country, maybe it is time to pass some legislation, like the French did, to improve our quality of life.
Suppose we earn the same amount of money. If I invest/save my money, and you buy a car with yours five years from now who has more wealth?
I do. Because we both have a 60+ mile round trip commute and you lost your job because your old clunker car would not get you to work reliably. You kept taking time off to fix your car rather than buying a new one that was more reliable and appropriate for someone of your income. Management was embarassed when customers showed up and parked next to your rusty, orange 1978 AMC Matador. Your coworkers were uncomfortable going to lunch with you when you insisted on driving. People complained about the smoke and smell from the exhaust of your car. And, while my VW Golf TDI averaged 45MPG on diesel, your Matador got 11MPG on premium fuel, which more than ate up anything you made by investing your $17K.
In the course of the five years, I got promoted and got good raises. You were seen as a flake who did not have his life together. You were always taking Mondays off because you'd start a car repair on the weekend, need parts on Sunday, and have to buy them on Monday to finish the repair. Management was convinced you had a drug or alcohol problem because of your absenteeism and the fact that you were obviously having to spend that money on something like drugs or alcohol -- otherwise, you'd have replaced that car.
That's quite different than "equality" consisting of robbing Paul to pay Peter.
No one is "robbing" anyone. The government needs a certain amount of money to run the programs that have been voted into existence by our elected leaders. Would you have them take 33% of the income of a widow that's barely making ends meet just so that she's paying the same percentage as Bill Gates? Would you have her unable to feed, clothe, and house herself just so that you could even out the percentages? Would you have someone from a poor family who is working their way through college drop out so that you could take a higher percentage of their income?
There is a similar bill that is close to passing as a state law in Minnesota, according to this article in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press. (Saint Paul - the "other Minneapolis"). Seems it has AOL and the other large content providers somewhat upset. Tough rocks, say I.
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment â" Buddha