Kerry's Record On Electronic And Civil Rights

An anonymous reader writes "John Kerry lambastes John Ashcroft and the Patriot Act, positioning himself as a crusader for civil liberties. The question is, how much substance is there to his rhetoric? This article was an eye-opener to me, in evaluating just that. Slashdotters tending to be passionate about the Patriot Act, encryption, and electronic monitoring - subjects this article tackles with respect to Kerry."

Comments

Re:irrelevant

[demachina]

"In that case, you're also likely to be someone for whom there's no doubt that Kerry will be at least a marginal improvement."

I'm pretty sure Kerry will be bad, different bad, and the calculus of badness is pretty hard so I'm not sure I'd be so bold as to say Kerry will be a "marginal improvement", I'd just stick with they are both going to be inevitably bad. What do you expect when you have two spoiled rich kids, Yale grads, Skull and Bonesmen, elite of the elites, never done an honest days work in their lives.

Though I should qualify there is a big plus in having different parties controlling the White House and Congress because grid lock is a big plus when both major parties have gone insane and are completely corrupt, since it slows them down, they can't make major policy changes and are confined to colluding to hand out the massive pork to their friends. Gridlock is kind of like a straight jacket for the criminally insane. So if the Republicans hold Congress, having Kerry in the White House would probably be a marginal improvement and vice versa.

Me I'm taking the long view so I think it would be best if Bush/Cheney win, the Republicans get 60 seats in the Senate, build their lead on the House, and get the Supreme Court stacked early in the next term. It would be especially good if the election looks really tainted, rigged and stolen.

Why you ask? Have I gone insane? Well no, you see I'm pretty sure the Republicans will tilt in to an insane binge of right wing extremism in the next term if they hold power and especially if there is another terrorist attack to use an excuse. In fact I'm willing to bet they will stage their own attack if Al Qaida doesn't oblige, like the Anthrax letters. Terrorist attacks are pure gold when you are trying to seize power.

Why is this good? Because things might get so bad it might wake up sane Americans that their government is no longer of the people, by the people or for the people, and it doesn't really matter which party has power because they are both screwing the people. If Kerry were to win people might say, whew, glad thats over, and not realize Kerry and the Dems are screwing them pretty much the same as Bush and the Republicans, just with a different style.

Maybe, just maybe, if things gets really bad people will wake up and unite to do whatever it takes to take their government back, either peacefully through a real third party, or if it appears the Republicans are stealing the elections using as much force as is necessary, something which I'm pretty sure all the founding fathers would bless. The founding fathers knew and feared tyrannical government and they thouroughly expected one would eventually seize power in America despite their best efforts in the Constitution to prevent it and we are pretty close.

The U.S. is in desperate need of a renewal of its Democracy and ping ponging between really bad Republicans and really bad Democrats is precluding that rebirth. America needs a Master Reset and a reboot to clear a corrupted system.

Re:Well..

[nelsonal]

It's not as much of a tax break as it sounds. Most countries tax income earned domestically. So take Diagio (the parent of Guiness) they tax the income it earns in the UK. The US taxes the income of Anheiser-Busch globally with a tax credit for foreign taxes paid, with a major loophole (if you reinvest the proceeds in the foreign country you can deferr the taxes). The loophole is designed to allow companies to earn tons of money in foreign countries, but they have to spend it in the foreign country--hence the pro-outsourcing tilt of the group. Both sides should know that it mostly equalized our tax law with foreign competitors (which US companies scream bloody murder about) as opposed to really supporting outsourcing.
As an example take a Toyota factory in Ohio the US would tax the domesitic subsidiary of Toyota for the profits from the cars built in the factory and Japan would not. If Ford were to do the same thing in Osaka, however, the US would tax income both from cars exported to Japan and cars built in Japan. This puts Ford at a bit of a disadvantage to Toyota, and lots of companies lobbied hard for the tax break to equalize them. Now you know a bit more about the "outsourcing tax break."