Congressional Elections - Who's Good for IT Folks?

rlp asks: "Most of the articles appearing in Slashdot's new political section pertain to the U.S. Presidential election. However, most of the political issues facing American IT people are issues that are dealt with (or more often caused by) Congress. Therefore, my question is: who are the heroes and villains (for U.S. IT people) in Congress that are running for office this year? How does your local Congresscritter (or the person running against them) feel about copyrights, privacy, data security, H1-B, outsourcing, software patents, Open Source, tech education, R&D funding, anti-trust, etc?"

Comments

There isn't a pro or anti IT party

[DesScorp]

Doesn't really matter, because IT has become such a neccessity, and such a commodity, that it's silly to say "who should I vote for? who will support IT the most?". It's a non-issue. It's like saying "gee, which party will support accountants more?" or "which party supports telephone use?". It just isn't one of those economic sectors thats on one side of the spectrum politically, like trial lawyers.

Re:There isn't a pro or anti IT party

[Otter]

It's not news that the "outsourcing" issue draws heavily on thinly-veiled racial scapegoating. But I'm not sure who is making less of an attempt to conceal it: you or this idiot.

Re:There isn't a pro or anti IT party

[orthogonal]

It's not news that the "outsourcing" issue draws heavily on thinly-veiled racial scapegoating. But I'm not sure who is making less of an attempt to conceal it: you or this idiot.

I think you missed my point, friend.

I'm not scapegoating the Indian worker: he's making a rational decision to take a better job so he can better feed his family, and you or I would do the same in his place.

My point was to demonstrate that -- whether the issue is outsourcing of the IT sector, or John Ashcroft's cavalier (roundhead?) attitude toward civil liberties, or the DMCA, or anything else -- those who blithely ignore politics quickly sooner or later find themselves at the mercy of those who do pay attention.

Many of us in the "tech sector" pretend to disdain politics -- it's a luxury when can just barely afford to get away with as the "American Century" draws to a close.

But one way or another, the butcher's bill comes due, either at Omaha Beach or at Tarawa or Concord or Lexington, or to mix metaphors, in a bread line.

Re:There isn't a pro or anti IT party

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I don't know why people like yourself are so happy to racebait everyone. If they were lily-white blonde Indians taking the jobs from us, it would hurt every bit as much. Mentioning that they're from India is a reference to which country is benefiting from outsourcing, that they have a different skin-color is incidental.

Duh.

property rights?

[crow]

Do you mean intellectual property rights? Or just property rights? (Or both?)

Liberals tend to value the needs of society above those of the individual, and hence, sacrifice property rights for environmental protection. (Often this is good; sometimes it goes too far without compensation for property owners, but that's another debate.) Perhaps that's an angle that we can use in lobbying our Congressmen on the Democratic side--emphasize the societal benefit of looser IP laws.

Re:property rights?

[max born]

Liberals tend to value the needs of society above those of the individual.

Apparently not when it comes to pushing legislation in exchange for campaign contributions.

It was senior Democrats like Diane Feinstein who helped pass the DMCA. During the period the DMCA was up for debate, the Democtrats actually received more financial contributions from the entertainment industry than the Republicans. Checkout open secrets for details.

I think it mostly comes down to who contributes the gratest amount gets their pet legislation favored more.

I have the honor

[captnitro]

I have the honor of living in the district of Rep. Rick Boucher

It feels odd to have to feel "lucky" that my congressional representative's The Real Thing. Frankly, I don't like guys that run for congress because they think it's a good gig.

It doesn't matter

[solman]

There are only about 30 seats with even a remote chance of changing hands. Realistically, there are about 15 competitive races, and five of these were created by the retaliatory Republican gerrymandering of Texas.

Thanks to a combination of Gerrymandering, Entrenched incumbents, and the McCain-Feingold legislation (which prevents parties from using soft money to neutralize the advantage of entrenched incumbents) congressional races are entirely uncompetitive. Charlie Cook today says that there is virtually no chance of the house changing hands.

So who cares where the candidates stand on the issues when only a very few people actually have the oppotunity to cast a meaningful vote.

Re:It doesn't matter

[N3WBI3]

Kind of makes you wonder if we really do have a democracy.

G*d I am so sick of people saying that.

1) we dont have a democracy, we have a Federal Republic which elects its leaders
2) Just because people dont vote the way you would like (high turnover) does not mean the power does not reside in tehir hands.
3) In 1994 The republicans shocked everyon by capturing a huge number of seats from incumbant democrats in the house, and a decent number in the senate. So yes people can and have made major changes in the seating arrangements for members of congress.

Russ Feingold for WI

[Joe Tennies]

Let's just say he's the only guy in Congress to vote AGAINST the Patriot Act. From his website (russfeingold.org): Senator Feingold supported 90% of the provisions of the PATRIOT Act, but too many provisions were deeply troubling. Certain provisions may infringe on the rights of law-abiding citizens, while doing little protect our country against terrorists. If he ever runs for President, he's got my vote.

Gerrymandering

[dpilot]

I'd really love to see some sort of mathematics applied to Gerrymandering. Something to the tune of limiting the perimeter of a district to 3 or 4 times the square root of its area. Some sort of allowances would need to be made for irregular state borders and natural features like rivers or mountains. For that matter, I'm not that hung up over the number 3 or 4, just some reasonable limit.

It would be really fun to look at some Congressional districts and find their Gerrymander-Factor=perimeter/sqrt(area).

Naturalized Citizens are not the problem...

[nlinecomputers]

American Corporations use H-1B, L-1 visas to bring in "guest workers" to undercut the American Job Market. Once a person becomes a NC he is no longer a cheap commodity labor. He's part of the expensive American Labor force.

Either way we shouldn't be robbing the world of valued labor to feed our greedy corporations. How bout we(USA) stop supporting dictators that run their countries so bad that the people flee them.

Or how bout we stop raising our National Debt so freeking high that our Dollar has more buying power overseas then it has here.