Slashdot Mirror
Grubb for Congress. By Weblog.
An anonymous reader writes: "Wired is running a story about a (Libertarian) candidate for Congress in North Carolina whose platform explicitly supports P2P file-sharing activity. She's running against one of the big supporters of the Berman P2P hacking bill." The weblog community is all excited over her because she drank the Kool-aid.
Will she break the 5-vote mark?
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
Another useful link here. GeekPac are attempting to use the same tactic as the big corps by trying to raise funds to push some less corporate "influenced" candidates (read sock-puppets) into the parties.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Well... They almost got the link right...
0 .html
But, they linked to the 2nd page of the story..
For those too lazy to do it themselves or too stupid to realize it here's the link.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,54693,0
Tell congress to love your kid."
Sheesh, that almost beats the Dilbert.com mission statement generator in saying nothing and sounding fancy... but sstill not quite:
"Our challenge is to proactively enhance mission-critical services as well as to seamlessly disseminate world-class data "
'Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test' Tom Wolfe
In this case I think it just means buying into something, i.e. having her own weblog.
Spencer Ogden
I ask your patience, as I am developing this blog with little assistance and no very little about today's computer technology.
Hmm...I'm going to assume this was a deliberate spalling error to endear her to the
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
The idea is not to do away with all legislation,
you're thinking of anarchy. Libertarianism seeks
to reduce legislation to the origional consitutional
roles or protecting the population from force and
fraud. The gub'ment does a piss poor job of most
of the stuff it's involved in. What's needed to
prevent exploitation and toxic dumps is to make sure
that the true cost is stuck to the entity making the
purchase. If you polute, you must pay to clean it up
and pass those costs on to your customers. Then
you'll have an incentive not to polute, or at least
come up with a cheap efficient way to clean it up.
libertarian = liberty from excess government? or just a convenient platform to get attention?
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
If there were no regulation, our world would be an over-exploited toxic dump.
Yeah, the Soviets had a much better idea with state control. Chernobyl was a paradise.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I am a Libertarian
I don't believe in music piracy
I do believe in P2P.
I disagree with how the RIAA/MPAA is trying to solve their problem.
If you don't agree w/ me, reply. I agree w/ the idea of copyprotected music. It is a produced object. Something that has time and money invested to produce an item that really does have actual value. If I produced a song that I specifically did not want to give away for free, I would try to keep it off P2P networks. I would contact those who are sharing these files and explain that they don't have permission from me to distribute this.
Now, let me step back and say. I do understand fair use. If you purchase my CD and rip it to MP3 that's fine. You purchased the CD, you purchase the rights to listen to the music but, you did not purchase the rights to re-distribute my works in a way I don't see fit.
OK.. Now step forward again. Why don't I like the way the MPAA/RIAA is protecting their property. There are/have been laws on the books that protect the copyright holders rights to published works. These laws explicity spelled out the fair uses of these works as well as protecting the creators. These laws worked for years on end. The change in technology didn't change the laws. The change in technology didn't make these laws less effective. You could easily still bring suit against a P2P user for sharing your music under the current legal system, it's just harder to do. So instead of attempting to protect their rights the hard way they simply bought laws to help them. These laws(DMCA, etc.) are what I have a problem with.
I abhor the creation of laws that violate my rights in any way shape or form. It is not the purpose of government to pick and choose winners by passing favorable laws it is the purpose of government to protect my rights.
When seeking to avoid drowning, one should also be wary not to perish of thirst.
That wouldn't be a Libertarian issue. The quickest way to get a bunch of Libertarians arguing among themselves is to bring up intellectual property. Half of them will be against it, and half will be for it.
The phrase "drank the Kool-Aid" is a reference to the cults whose followers drank poisoned Kool-Aid to commit suicide, because they were true believers in the cult and its charismatic leader. So to "drink the Kool-Aid" means you believe enough to stake your life on that belief.
Probably a bit exaggerated when it comes to weblogs, which are hardly a life-or-death proposition; but still, it shows she believes enough in the collaborative technology to use it as the centerpiece of her campaign. (Not to mention the fact that as a Libertarian, she probably has only enough funds for her 56K modem Internet account to get the campaigning done!)
tar: illegal option -- a
Try `tar --help' for more information
But hey, I got an idea:
[jukal@doh jukal]$ man -k grubb
grubb: nothing appropriate
Damn!
Read her weblog, and Grubb seems like an honest person, with great ideas and views. Enthusiastic. Libertarian. We need more of those kinda people...
Will work for bandwidth
Jim Jones actually used Flavor Aid®, not Kool-Aid to kill all his cultists.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
because in the end, grammar doesnt really matter. Sure, it may be somewhat indicative of their intelligence but most certainly not of their ability to help lead our country. We don't need ivy schooled ceos. We need farmer bob. We need to get back to the basics of PEOPLE representing PEOPLE. Not elite representing the common people. "Politician" shouldnt really be a career choice. Or, if it must be...it should come with a more reasonable civil service salary so as to discourage all but the truely service-oriented to run and serve.
Vote = Corporation - Money
;-)
Does this equation simply mean that to get a vote, a corporation must pay some money? We already knew that!
cpeterso
I suppose I'm being pedantic, but why should I read a spelling flame by someone who doesn't know to capitalize proper nouns?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
libertarian = liberty from excess government?
Yes, that's the core idea. Less Gub'ment, more liberty.
A smaller government both oppresses the people less and co$t$ less.
Of course, NO incumbent will have anything good to say about such a concept.
Unfortunately this doesn't draw much largesse from big corporations looking for favors, which is today's primary source of campaign funding, so you won't see many Libertarians on TV, or doing well in many elections, either.
Get ahold of and check out the list of contributors to both candidates of any major political campaign. SURPRISE! The _same_ companies are hedging their bets by supporting _both_ sides! No wonder there's not a gnat's ass worth of difference between their policies!
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
The quickest way to get a bunch of Libertarians arguing among themselves is to bring up intellectual property. Half of them will be against it, and half will be for it.
That's not the only issue that will do this. Ask about abortion. The Libertarian party does not take stances on many major issues, leaving individual candidates the liberty to choose whatever viewpoint they want.
This is called "Freedom(pat.pend)". Unfortunately it's too complicated and threatening to be palatable to most Americans, hence we see the domination of the Demicans and the Republicrats.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
Jim Jones actually used Flavor Aid®
Yeah, that makes sense.
It's cheaper than the name brand stuff, but just as good.
You know how churches are always on a tight budget.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
I think not. Although, I would consider supporting Tara Grubb, but do you actually expect me to believe that Tara is a capital-L Libertarian? Not a chance. Take, for instance, this quote: "I belong to the WORLD Party and so do you". Highly indicative of a person that wants to claim Libertarian without actually holding Libertarian beliefs (and barely libertarian-little l-beliefs).
There are actually only 2 uses of the word libertarian on her weblog. Where did you get the idea that this woman was a Libertarian? Please!
Whoever submitted the initial post, could you please change "Libertarian" to read "libertarian"? You should know better.
For the love of God, please vote for her!
Vote for her because her ideas rock.
But also vote for her because she is running against Howard Coble, who is in the back pocket of the RIAA.
If you love the First Amendment and hate the DMCA, send Grubb to Congress!
Can Grubb boot Congress? *ducks behind the couch*
... like the big guys in the RIAA and MPAA using their power and influence to shape laws for the protection fo their industry. We shouldn't have big corporations deciding how we use our computers.
Plus, I really think corporations should offer maternity leave, enough so that I think the government should intercede to provide tax incentives.
Hence, I am running for congress as a Libertarian, because only the Libertarians truly understand the way to deal with corporate power is to repeal every regulatory counterbalance imaginable.
In the end, The Market will cure all our ills.
Red All Over: Rambling Missives from an Aspiring Revolutionary
When the last time a Libertarian came even close to getting elected to Congress?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Ok, I assume you meant to be talking about Jim Jones and the People's Temple.
Of course you are completely wrong in this coloquialism. It is not a reference to the People's Temple suicide pact but Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
How am I so damn sure? Because Jim Jones and the People's Temple did not drink Grape Kool-Aid, but cyanide laced Flavor-Aid, a cheap Kool-Aid rip off.
Moral of this story: Do some research before making up facts.
What is music when you despise all sound?
I don't think "GeekPAC" is necessarily the best name one could've picked if you want to be taken seriously. What's wrong with something a little more professional, like say "TechPAC"?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Yes, I agree that the path to less pollution is to actually attach an accurate price tag to it so it appears in the ledgers of companies. I don't agree that that would happen in a lassiez-faire market, though. Long term effects are not acurately reflected in the finances of a typical company.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
There is nothing wrong with P2P. Nothing. What the real problem is, is knee-jerk Congressmen who see the music piracy war as some sort of drug war that they can actually win. (I'm reminded of the Disney executive who thought that DRM software can be installed in the processor "because all the bits go through there, right?") They realize that it's easier to shut down P2P companies than to actually go after the music pirates.
The problem with a P2P subscription service is that the money for subscriptions goes to the RIAA. Meaning? Independent artists get gypped. This means the easier way for them to make money is to side with the RIAA, who apparantely hates the idea of people listening to music for free.
What's my solution? Micropayments, in a different form. $2 nets you 100 song downloads, and the P2P service monitors the completed downloads, and logs what artists are being downloaded. So for every song you download, 2 cents goes to the artist.
Let's say that, on average, a typical ~obscure~ song gets 100 downloads per day. That's $2 right there for the artist. Now, spread that out over 365 days. $730 in the pocket for the artist. That's a pretty penny for our musician pals.
And if he gets popular, and starts getting 500 downloads per day? $3,650 a year. Those 2 cents add up. A very popular artist who gets, perhaps, 1,500 downloads per day would be looking at $10,950. And remember that people would still be buying CDs.
Considering that the average musician actually sees about 6 cents out of every CD sale, I doubt they'll argue against this idea.
-Evan
Try looking here.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Well, then all he needs to do is read his spam, and find out how to ADD THREE TO FOUR INCHES -- GUARANTEED!
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
I'll bite.
It isn't the legal system, it's our political system. It is outrageously expensive to run for office here. Even candidates for House seats -- like Grubb -- often spend 7-figure sums for advertising and other campaign publicity. Get into state-wide or national offices and the cost escalates. We can't seem to get our collective head around real campaign finance reform, and spend endless cycles of legislative energy talking it to death.
End result: If your running for office, or in office planning for the next campaign, the first thing on your mind is going to be paying for it. Whether or not that constitutes bribery is, I suppose, a matter of definition, but there's no argument that it influences politicians behavior to the detriment of the public.
As for lobbying: If you want a politician to pay attention to you, the first thing you have to do is get in front of his or her face. I.e., on the calendar and in the office. By and large, any organization or "movement" with one or a few specific interests it wants to push isn't going to sway votes in Washington unless they have an office in D.C. actively working on their behalf. (Yep, that's called "special interests".) Of course, when a there's a genuine groundswell of opinion shifting with a constituency on a particular issue, even novice politicians pay attention (or lose the next election.)
So... i agree with Plotkin and Lessig that if those opposed to the DMCA/RIAA/MPAA/Berman et al legislation don't start playing the game, there's little chance that many politicians will be moved to change their votes. They would if this issue becomes visibly important to the broad U.S. electorate, but that kind of awareness isn't there . Elections are still won on bread-and-butter issues. Copyright infringement isn't one of those issues.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
...the businesses selling all that outrageously expensive media time -- and also donating big money to politicians -- are usually the same media corporations raising a fuss about copyright infringement. In the end, it gets back to oligarchic and monopolistic control of technology versus dispersed control of technology.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
i have been following Tara Sue for about a week now. Ed Cone, an opinion writer for the North Carolina News and Record introduced her to the online world last Friday and has been mentioning her on an almost daily basis.
Dave Winer and others bloggers who have been writing for some time now about the need to find a challenger against Howard Coble quickly linked with support. Tara Sue has become an online ray of hope for many.
________________
All my sig are fjdklafjkldafjkldafdaklf
Or are you opposed to people giving money to congressmen to further their commercial interests, and if so, doesn't that make you a communist?
What if you can't maintain peace and free trade without intervention?
Do you give up on peace and free trade for the sake of non-intervention or do you intervene in order to maintain free trade and peace?
You do realize that if you don't stand up to the bullies in other countries while they are in other countries, they eventually come spread mayhem here. (see 9/11--however sad--for some realism)
"Piter, too, is dead."
Not to rant, but most other countries behave the same, or worse. I've lived in 3 countries in addition to the U.S. Only one (the UK) actually held free elections, and I don't see many UK politicos running for sainthood.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Legalizing drugs would be a good move, I cannot even begin to tell you how much money could be saved by doing so. I don't do drugs and never have but if others wish to do it than so be it.
Got Code?
Put her in the chair, we need to see what she is made of.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
This is called "Freedom(pat.pend)". Unfortunately it's too complicated and threatening to be palatable to most Americans, hence we see the domination of the Demicans and the Republicrats.
Parties aren't about freedom. They're about like minds gathering to achieve goals. The idea is that if you pick the group which is the closest to your personal ideals, you'll see more things that you want happeneing and less that don't (assuming that you get them in charge.)
Until we manage to change campaign finance & how votes are counted (instant runoff, anyone?), third parites are little more than issue-raisers for the two big ones--who promptly raise up and take sides on any issues with significant debate on it.
I am free to do whatever the hell I want, and vote for whomever I want--but the only way to get someone I want in political office is to find a bunch of other free individuals and get all of us to agree on who's the best person for the job--so we can get someone we can tolerate in instead of someone we despise.
It used to not work this way--for all of eight years, until George Washington refused to run again.
if you don't like it - don't buy it
Before buying a record[1], how do you expect to know whether you will like a recording or not, except by sampling a few singles through file-sharing networks? I'm not claiming that this justifies abuse of P2P technology, but what other solution is there?
[1] USA copyright law defines "phonorecord" to refer to a slab of vinyl, a CD, or any other medium in which a sound recording has been fixed.
Will I retire or break 10K?
One of the libertarian ideas is selling the national park system to private parties.
Any estimates on what you folks figure America's park system is worth? Or is it just "for sale to the highest bidder"?
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Well to me personally the difference is that the library has temporarily transferred the rights of listening to the music to the borrower. It can be clearly defined that when one person or entity has paid for the use of the music, and only one person or entity is using that music at any given time.
Software companies, even Microsoft, used to state in their standard EULA's that you were allowed to make several copies of their software as long as it was only being used in one location at any time. These allowances (which imho should be declared as implicit anyway) have now dissapeared from the EULA's -- possibly because the companies believe it's too hard or inefficient for them to enforce. Instead "independent" organisations like the BSA, the MPAA and the RIAA have been formed by the corporate cartels to crack down on and frighten by legal threats anyone doing what the company decides it doesn't like, under the guise of IP law and in a way that they hope will never be decided on at a court that actually matters.
A peer-to-peer information sharing network doesn't naturally have this transferral of rights, because the information isn't moved. It's copied. Letting someone else use it doesn't prevent you from using it at the same time. If you look at a typical peer-to-peer music sharing network, this is exactly what happens. A few people buy something, and their versions of it are duplicated and shared many times between many thousands of people, all of whom are using it simultaneously and independently when often very few people have actually paid for it. Irrespective of how right or wrong anyone might believe it to be, this is nothing like how a library works.
Wow, I totally agree with her hollywood stance, and her views on children and giving parents opportunities to better raise them. I hope she fleshes out more details and issues in her campaign.
From what I saw on the weblog, she's young and enthusiastic and intelligent and has a lot of potential. I hope she has the power to learn and grow from her interactions with the people she meets on the internet. A lot of people will be willing to help out.
She definitely needs the ol' slashdot interview treatment eh? And I'd like to know where to send the campaign donation, because she's getting one from me. (But only after I hear more of what she has to say, of course.)
Go Grubb!
So you never have drunk anything with alcohol or caffine, and have never taken an asprin or cold remedy? No laxitives? No perscription medication?
I think you meant illegal drugs. We live in a society where its tough to get through a week without taking any drugs whatsoever. So it really shouldn't suprise anyone that a lot of people end up abusing them. However, our biggest drug problems come not from the illegal ones, but from the legal ones. All the illegal drugs put together are just a drop in the bucket against the big 2 of alcohol and tobacco.
Grub for congress? Lilo works fine, damnit!
Bootloaders don't need shells, and they certainly don't need to run for congress, damnit!
Tthe going rate is about $10,000,000 per park.
That's what Bill Clinton charged the Phillipine coal producers in capmaign donations to lock up the single largest reserve of clean coal in the United States into a national park in Southern Utah, right before he shepparded legislation through congress requiring coal-fired power plants use cleaner coal.
-- Terry
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Firstly, even you use of the term "piracy" with respect to copying some bytes betrays our disagreement as I think it is rediculous to equate sharing mp3s with illegally boarding a ship, murdering the crew, raping and murdering the passengers, stealing their cargo, and sinking the ship when you are done.
You do us a disservice when you assume that anyone in the tech community which disagrees with the abuse and corruption of government by corporate interests must, of course, be a Libertarian.
No. But the thousand of innocent civilians who died in Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua, Palestein, Iraq and a whole host of other nations we have exploited for all of recorded American history weren't a part of the "WAR" either.
This country would do so much better if people actually read shit instead of watching the fucking television hoping to become educated members of society.
It is appearantly fasionable and politically correct to just DENY about 75% of our history and interaction in the world.
If you fail to see why people outside this country have a much more valid reason to hate us than we do of them, YOU are the idiot my friend(s).
It's all written down. It's called history. It doesn't look favorably upon us. Other than the section referring to most exploitative, most repressive, most warmongering....etc...
Wake the FUCK up people. This gov't that is supposedly protecting you is doing the opposite. It's so fucking sad...and no one even notices...
You start from the wrong premise.
The problem is not copying, the problem is paying the creators for their work.
Historically, some companies have tried to solve this problem using various techniques (publishing, advances, royalty payments, advertising-supported broadcasting, pledge drives). All of these are predicated on economies of scale for large runs, and high costs of entry for competitors.
When a new technology comes along that changes these economics, it is time to look fora new model to solve the underlying problem, not construct a technical and legislative framework to restore the old barriers.
I didn't assume she was a libertarian until I heard about her... and everyone said she was. Yes I agree she could be more laissez faire about a few things, I thought so too after I read the blog. But, that is also the only thing I've read from Grubb.
Who is libertarian and who is not? I myself am a liberal to the most part, but I'm probably moving towards libertarianism more and more. Question is if there's a complete and absolute definition on what libertarianism is? To me, some libertarians seem to be less libertarians and more liberal, and some of them seem to be anarchocapitalists. I am pretty sure that if you ask two libertarians whether we should have a central government or not, one might say "yes" while the others say "no". Then even those who are for a central government will very likely have different ideas as to how big it should be and what authorities it should have. And what about intellectual property laws? It seems to me that some libertarians want IP laws, others do not.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that libertarians aren't identical copies of each other and their views may differ. But that thing about 6 months maternal leave is clearly NOT for the government to decide.
Will work for bandwidth
A Libertarian named Carole Ann Rand.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Radio
1. I called several stations and tried to request some of the songs on the albums from which they regularly play songs, and the DJ said: "Sorry, we don't have those songs because they were not released as a single."[1]
2. The sound quality of radio is no indicator of the sound quality of the CD itself because of all the dynamic squeezing the engineers do to fit the sound within the limited dynamic range of FM radio. Many CDs sound like crap because they're mastered to sound louder than other CDs, not to sound better than other CDs.
MTV, VH1, CMT
For one thing, music videos are made only for singles, so we're back to the same problem as radio if an album has only one or two singles. For another, if I don't have the money to buy an album based on one song, how can I have the money for cable television?
friends who have a copy of the CD
Most of my friends live far away from me and often aren't willing to mail me their copy. Is this normal?
concerts
Should I be expected to be willing to drive 200 miles (320 km) to a venue where 1. the band is playing, and 2. no alcoholic beverages are served? Many bands play mostly at bars, and not all people in my exact situation are old enough to enter bars in their home jurisdiction.
commercials on TV for SamGoody
Again, the problem of only singles.
CowboyNeal Karaoke Night
Again, the problem of geographical distance.
[1] My favorite song (nine inch nails - into the void) on one of the albums I have bought on recommendation from one of the few friends who live near me (nine inch nails - the fragile) was not released as a single in the United States.
Will I retire or break 10K?
"...with great ideas and views"
Aren't you a wee bit nervous of a politician who makes statements like "The history of the Middle East is the history of oil".?
I am really worried about a politican who thinks history = 90 years. This feels so close to the views of the European 19th Century powers that believed that African history started when they colonised the continent. Don't forget the earliest cities in the world (Ur, Akkad..) are in Iraq, the birthplace of our civilisation; there is 5000 years of history there. The foundation of the USA started there...
Hmm, just because somebody can use a weblog doesn't mean they are all right.
But if neither of the major parties is interested in the issue, then one of them will make a pretense of addressing the issue. E.g.:
Say the issue is a grossly overbearing federal government. The one party, say the Republicrats, will claim to be in favor of it, and the other will be mute. If, however, they get in, you will see, at best, a few small gestures made in the direction of reducing the size of the government (largely in precisely the areas that people in general *DON'T* want it reduced), and then something will come up and the plank is quietly buried.
A sarcastic hip-hooray.
The dominant political parties are about freedom. They're against it.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
What's a vofe?
How is that you are supposed to "find" these individuals? Through an act of God. Promoting and expressing your views to people in a meaningful way almost necessarily requires the expenditure of money. To restrict people's ability to use their _own_ money to finance the spreading of political ideas (speech) is a clear violation an individual's fundamental property and free speech rights.
No, it isn't. Why should someone who's rich be "more equal" than I am when it comes to political office?
The government allready provides matching funds to anyone who can rally enough support. What "should" be done is to expand this, so that every candidate gets an equal share of funds. We could even set something up so that voters could note that "I'd like to hear more from this candidate", and some simple math (# of "yes' votes for each canidate = # of shares of the pot) could be used to divy up the election funds.
Let private citizens make donations to this pot as well, if they've got so much money to burn and want to "speak" by doing such.
We don't allow people to simply give money to people who promise to vote a certain way. We shouldn't allow people to simply give money to someone they want elected, either.
The politicians (and lawyers) in a our republic have made it their business to sacrifice people's rights to others in the form of welfare-state laws and other looting, don't you think that people will want to influence that process to avoid getting screwed by the government? The problem is not that people are trying to influence the way that politicians desecrate our individual liberties, but that the government is allowed to take the freedoms away in the first place! There is no moral way for a politician to sacrifice people's rights, no matter weather he accepts bribes or not. Campaign finance reform is just another slide down the slippery slope towards statism.
(did you mean "Satanism" or "stalinism?" I'll assume you meant "destruction of the American way of life" and respond accordingly.)
No one's rights are absolute, and various circumstances and events can cause what are normally given rights to be suspended or superceded by the rights of other people. You normally have the right to your posessions and capital, but if you use them for felonius actions you can lose the right to them. I normally have the right to go wherever I want, but your right to privacy in your own home negates this.
Let me take a stab at defining the two sides of hwo to look at government (I'll endeavor to choose terms that lack prejudice.) On one hand we have the pragmatists, that view government as simply a dollars-and-sense thing, that think in terms of individual rights, and that view equality as "equal abilty to move about unrestrained by government or uncompensated service."
On the other hand, we have the idealists, that view government as a thing that holds the trust of the people more than a fiscal entity; they think in terms of universal rights, and view equality as an "equal opportunity" thing.
Realistically, neither one of these sides is any better than the other when taken to the extreme. "Pragmatists" taken to the extreme are lazzie-faire capitalists, that wind up with monopolies and gross disproportions between the rich and the poor, and a general lack of real advancemnet in any sector of society.
"Idealists" taken to the extreme are communist, that wind up with totally corrupt societies where the only way to get ahead is to break the law, and have a general lack of any real advancement in nay sector of society.
The formula that has proven to work the best is a confrontational system between two sides that favor different ratios of "pragmatism" vs. "idealism." This lets us have a place where we look out for everyone, but we also let people tweak the system to get ahead. There might be a better system around, but we sure as heck haven't found one working anywhere in the world just yet.
The world is a lot more complex than you think it is, and it's hardly a manner of "sacraficing people's rights." The right of you to spend money on whomever you want to win office is tempered by my right to hear every candidate equally and make an informed vote. The right of you to keep your golden parachute is tempered by my right to have a descent chance to survive. The right of me to protest is tempered by your right to live in peace.
It's simply not a matter of sacraficing rights, and it never has been, in the whole of history in any situation you care to name. It's about choosing who's rights and what rights take priority in what circumstance. Currently we in the United States trust the government with that power, because it sure as hell works better than leaving it to indivudal citizens to battle out who's rights take priority in a world without the rule of law.
Considering that the Supreme Court decision in the late 1800s, in which they ruled that corporations have the same rights as individuals (sans the right to vote), was directly responsible for the vast majority of the corporate ills we are forced to deal with today, I'd say that rolling back to the late 1700s wouldn't be an entirely bad thing. There are certain amendments to the Constitution, like the abolition of slavery and women's right to vote, that should remain. But others, like the income tax amendment, should probably go.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
The 2000 US Senate seat here in Minnesota was pretty much bought and paid for by Mark Dayton. He inherited ~$100 million at birth that his family made from Dayton-Hudson (now Marshall Fields, they also own Target stores). I've got nothing against wealth, but his trust fund isn't even taxed at all in MN (it's a resident of South Dakota for tax purposes). I went to a debate (with 7 candidates!) where the incumbent, Rod Grams, was dressed in a nice suit, what you'd expect a US Senator to wear. Dayton wore jeans and a plaid shirt, trying to look like a working man. That's ironic because Grams literally grew up in poverty on a farm, without a father, and worked his way up to a TV news anchor before he was elected. Dayton had a lawyer and tax accountant before he was born, and would never need to work in his life (he did work by choice, but mostly as a political appointee). He ended up spending $12 million of his own money in the campaign.
On the other hand, in the 2000 presidential election court battles, each side set-up funds to defer legal expenses (see this article). Bush raised $13.8 million while limiting donations to $5000 each. Gore, on the other hand, didn't limit the amount of individual donations, and raised $3.2 million. Most of his donations were over $5000 each ($2.8 million). Bush raised more than Gore's entire fund from donations smaller than $200 each! Which candidate had the grassroots support?
My point is that there are no easy answers for campaign finance reform. Sometimes rich people buy their way into office, but sometimes the system works the way it was meant, and people use their contributions as a form of political speech.
It doesn't mention anything about group donations, but Bush raised 4 times more money while limiting the amount of each donation to $5k. Most of Gore's of the money (87.5% by my calculations) came from 84 donations over $5k (avg donation of $33.3k). Of those 84, 30 were from CA and 23 from NY. Most typical "community groups" and political foundations are headquartered in Washington DC, so they at least didn't play a big part in the fundraising.
I wholeheartedly agree.
Your version may be correct; I've not read the book.
My source of info is The Word Spy, a fascinating site and one that's usually trustworthy with etymologies.
But once you talk about supporting the idea of a government that is well-armed enough to enforce it's will on people, you are making a huge departure from the standard Libertarian Party line.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
The standard Libertarian line I've always heard is that if the government needs to use threat of overwhelming force to make people obey a law, then that law is not one the people actually want and it shouldn't exist.
And that's why I stated that this concept of making polluters pay an appropriate price reflecting the actual cost of the damage they cause will NEVER happen under a libertarian government. Making such costs work requires a number of practices that go against Libertarian dogma, one of which is forcing the market to incur a cost by artificial government rule that would not have been incurred otherwise. (While it might be true that there is a *real* cost associated with polluting, the marketplace left to it's own devices has failed to account for it. Based on past history, I have no reason to believe that it would happen unless the government forces it to happen.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Fair comment Hedgehog, but this is the kind of USA politician which scares us in the rest of the world. We don't mind if they are your local mayors or town councillors and are in charge of the local park or keeping teenagers from becoming muggers but for goodness sake don't let them have any influence over international policy, which I believe would be one of this person's roles. So I do think it matters what her opinions on the rest of the world are.
Lazy thinking like this gets other people more directly affected rather twitchy, it really undermines any positive work other US politicians may be doing. We're all pretty shocked / bemused over here by Rumsfeld's comparison of Bush to Churchill. "Poorly read" and "lazy thinking" seems to be the general consensus.
We're just worried that such poorly educated people are in charge of the world's greatest military arsenal, what happens if they get a dumb idea in their heads?