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White House: No Kerry Supporters at IATC Meeting
An anonymous reader writes "Time Magazine is reporting that the Bush Administration is removing U.S. delegates from the Inter-American Telephone Commission because they gave money to John Kerry in last year's election. A Bush spokesman admits it's true: 'We wanted people who would represent the Administration positively, and--call us nutty--it seemed like those who wanted to kick this Administration out of town last November would have some difficulty doing that,' says White House spokesman Trent Duffy. Employees of Qualcomm and Nokia are among those who have been removed from the commission."
Ya know... I don't get into political stuff much, but this shit has. got. to. stop.
It really *does* seem as if we're becoming more Facist every day (look it up, it's not a troll)
Sounds like Nokia isn't putting up with this. Their VP is totally correct- an international meeting on telecom is not a partisan matter.
Bush is biting the hand that feeds him and the Republican party. He will change his mind once the telecom companies start threatening to close their pocketbooks. If not, this will only help the Democrats in the future.
Fourteen Defining Characteristics Of Fascism
...the George Lucas tragedies are merely on TV.
-Valiss
The State Department has traditionally put together a list of industry representatives for these meetings, and anyone in the U.S. telecom industry who had the requisite expertise and wanted to go was generally given a slot, say past participants. Only after the start of Bush's second term did a political litmus test emerge, industry sources say.
I'm not up on US politics, is this a usual thing done by most parties when in government or is this something strange?
Yes, this is a very strange thing to be happening in the United States.
It is a direct violation of the First Amendment, as it seeks to punish individuals in their professions in a direct retaliation for participating in a political process.
This will lead directly to employers checking your history of political donations before they hire you. If you can't attend telecom standards meetings, we'll just hire someone who can.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Neither Reagan nor Bush '41 would have, either.
Hell, I don't think Nixon would have done this.
America needs to pick the most qualified, most brilliant engineers it can to represent at these meetings. You can be the most qualified person in the nation on telecom, but if you supported Kerry, you dont belong according to the WH. It not even like this group manages aid or something, they fucking design specifications.
Politics is beyond ugly, its now officially fugly.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
The shame is that the President is removing the people who *should* have input into this sort of thing based on personal retribution.
This isn't an area where partisan politics should play any role whatsoever. The message being sent here is that if your company wants to remain "in the game" with the competition, you'd better fall in line and support the President and vote GOP. It's nothing less than the use of the executive power that We the People entrusted the President with to force compliance with the GOP party line. This isn't how democracy operates.
The sad thing is that you can't seem to see this.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Here
Read it. Its more informative that the short writeup above.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
George Washington knew what he was talking about when he advised against political parties in his farewell address.
Before you rant on in the lastest bash-Bush thread, ask yourself honestly: is this any different?
It is, and here is why: Members of the Cabinet, Ambassadors, Judges, etc. are all offices that the President is given the power to fill by the Consitution (provided the Senate gives its consent).
Deciding who is allowed to attend a non-political, non-partisan industry event based on their history of campaign contributions is not a power given to anyone by any law of the United States. In fact, the opposite is true: this violates amendment one of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees U.S. citizens the freedom of speech.
President Bush can certainly appoint whom he likes to those offices which the law allows him to, but he cannot "punish" people who supported his political opponents by denying them access to events for no other reason.
The wonks are the people who actually know how to make policy -- know what options are on the table, which of them might actually work, which have been tried before and didn't work, and so forth. In immense detail. If you read /., you are probably a wonk (or at least could be a wonk -- if you have a life, you aren't a wonk).
Hacks know one thing and one thing only -- politics -- and they do it 24/7. They are the kids who spent high school impeaching each other on the student council, and then got into college and did the same thing in student government. Now they have a real government to play with, and play they will. Nothing else matters to them. If you know someone who merely claims to read /., they are a hack.
The hacks have triumphed because of the "permanent campaign" that was brought about by C-SPAN and the cable news channels. If a politician thinks that it is vital to respond to everything within a single news cycle, they by necessity surround themselves with hacks -- wonks actually have to spend time learning things and thinking things through! Can't have that now, can we?
"All successful systems accumulate parasites" -- Hal Hixon
Mr. Clanton was referring to the possibility of taking legal action against Sinclair for violating campaign advertising laws (the reasoning was that Sinclair's "documentary" could be construed as an in-kind donation to the Bush campaign, and therefore illegal).
The Bush administration, on the other hand, is punishing U.S. citizens for exercising their first amendment rights.
My question is, what exactly do they have to do to get an exception to Goodwin's law passed? I mean, so far we've got documented evidence of:
- Internal travel documents/no fly lists ("Transportation safety")
- Spying on your neighbor programs ("Information Awareness")
- Arresting people and holding them with due process ("The War on Terror")
- ...and occasionally torturing them (ditto)
- ...that sometimes leading to them dying (oops)
- Supression of dissent ("Free Speech Zones")
- Orwellean double-speak (see above)
- Supression of opposition (Locking the opposition out of the legislature)
- Arresting opposing party candidates weeks before the election (Clark & Badnarik)
- Manipulation of the media (including paying analysts to "support" their policies)
- Fibing to start wars
Ask yourself this: do you suppose the average Hanz Six-pack circa 1940 thought his country was anything like the country we now can't discuss without invoking Goodwin's law?Personally, I think they've earned an exemption...
--MarkusQA successful GOP strategy of discouraging corporate funding for the Democrats would be sufficient to keep them out of the White House perpetually.
This is also novel because it quite clearly proves that the ACLU right about the abuse potential of the new campaign finance reforms. (I never really believed them myself until now).
Traditionally speaking these kinds of relatively low-level technical spots -have- been filled without a whole lot of view toward political affiliation. Clinton appointed plenty of Republicans to positions like this. Bush Sr. appointed plenty of Democrats, and so on. This isn't a function of poison, it's a function of pettiness.
I don't think it matters what side of the spectrum you call home. This isn't good for America.
That Kerry wouldn't have done the same?
This is exactly the kind of thing I was saying in 1998. "But surely," I said to everyone, "Bob Dole would be enjoying fellatio in the Oval Office if he had won the 1996 election!"
See? I'm fair and balanced.
More the framework than either of those. Really, the problem seems to be one of scaling to me. (as a computer person) We've got a system that was designed to elegantly run with approximately 10^ 7 or 10^8 users, and we're at 10^9 users + now. Thus our processes are all scaling badly. We're having problems with overload on certain portions, and underwork in others. When you get a system as big and complex as ours is, and resources are no longer as abundant as they were in the beginning, management of the processes and rules aligning said system becomes much more complex. This would not be that much of a problem if we were training people to be effective at designing and managing infrastructure and then electing them to office based upon the criteria of, "How good are you at making our society work well." Instead our criteria are rather.... skewed. I don't give a damn whether someone was a crackhead when they were 25. Can they make good decisions? Generally, the answer is 'No, but they have a good face for focus groups.'
And if you really look at American politics, the only people willing to take the mudwar that is a modern campaign are the most driven and focused upon a single goal. This is not necessarily the best trait in a leader of 200 million people, let alone 'the free world,' a title our President has made obsolete.
I'm so angry at the way our politics work I can't even think about it.
My little site.
This indicates two things: 1) That the republicans can do whatever they want, no matter how immoral or how illegal, and they can get away with it. 2) Partisan politics is being institutionalised. They are willing to take a short term loss (bad press about this story) to put long term pressure on supporters of their opponents. Their goal is to create a work environment where, to get anywhere you will have to be a member of the republican party.
Usually political parties only think forward to the next election. This shows tha the republicans have the goal of making it so they are the only party in america.
Do you honestly believe that the founding fathers encoded violent revolution into the bill of rights?
I'm not exactly a gun nut here... in fact, I don't really like them. However, Jefferson wanted to encode precisely that. Here are a few quotes:
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the Atmosphere."
"what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that his people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms...The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
Etc. Jefferson was at the view that all governments will inevitably become corrupt, oppressive, and/or unrepresentative of its citizens; and when that time comes, the people must rise up and overthrow it. I think he'd actually be pleasantly surprised at how long America has gone without a revolution.
Are there any deer in the theater tonight? Get 'em up against the wall.
I just started browsing through this discussion at -1, to see if insightful conservatives with valid viewpoints were being squashed by slashdot groupthink.
They aren't.
If you can honestly defend this action, you have less critical thinking skills than a Jonestown suicide victim. It's not that big a deal, as I don't think it's going to kill too many people just because a few engineers couldn't make it to the meeting, but it is plainly and completely wrong.
If you can bring yourself to think that it is right, then you must correct your thinking. I am sure that I have similar backwards notions in other areas, and I would welcome such corrections from the right source. Some guy on slashdot is clearly not that source, so I'm not asking you to give me the benefit of the doubt. But please, consider that you might be wrong. Double check, just this once.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Egads! Another person on /. making a poor analogy. I'm so surprised.
Sinclair was attempting to violate a campaign law using a thinly veiled categorization of their ad as a "documentary." It was illegal. They knew it. Others knew it. They got called on it. End of story.
No one was threatening them for supporting Bush; they were threatening them for being loose with the law.
I'm so tired of hearing people say things like, "<sarcasm>Oh, it's Bush so it must be evil!</sarcasm>" Yes, as it turns out, a lot of the things that Bush and his administration have done are evil. Sorry if that hurts your feelings, but it is very plain and undeniable. Some people are just afraid to admit it, because it will make them look like an ass for supporting him in the first place.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to red, gold & green)
Actually, I think that's exactly what they had in mind. They'd just done it a few years earlier, so they probably didn't consider armed rebellion to be automatically a bad thing. They didn't expect the government wouldn't try to stop an armed rebellion. They just wanted to ensure that if most of the citizens were part of an armed rebellion, the government wouldn't be able to stop them.
I beleive they realized that military power ultimately trumps any other kind. That the only way to garauntee the government would not become opressive was to ensure that ordinary citizens, if they acted collectively, would be the dominant military force in the country. In their day, that could be acheived (and was, by them a few years earlier) so long as those citizens had access to weapons.
These days, citizens can not become the dominant military force in the country. Unless we have the right to bear nuclear weapons. Which the second ammendment pretty clearly grants. If I'm part of a well regulated militia, my right to bear arms shall not be infringed. Saying, yes, but not those arms is obvuiously infringing. Since that would obviously be insane, we've engaged in all sorts of legal contortions to reduce the second to more sane levels. It would make much more sense to amend the constitution to drop the second, and admit that we have lost that garauntee against oppressive government, so we'd better pay attention. But the Bill of Rights has atained such a sacrosanct status, that that will never happen. So the NRA will keep playing their stupid game of opposing all gun regulation, no matter how sensible in the guise of defending our constitutional right to bear arms. And no politician is going to commit the heresy of admiting that the rights the founders intended to grant in the second amendment are already gone, and nobody sane would want them to still be around anyway.
Yes, that is EXACTLY what they did. Having just fought an oppressive and tyrannical government themselves, they wanted to make it as easy as possible for the citizens to overthrow future tyrannical governments. Their letters on the subject make this absolutely clear.
They knew (as you apparently do not) that as every government grows and ages it gets corrupt and tyrannical and eventually must be overthrown if the people are to retain their rights.
"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government." (Thomas Jefferson Papers p. 334, 1950)
"And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms...The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Letter to William S. Smith 13 Nov 1787 (Jefferson, On Democracy p. 20, 1939; Padover, editor)
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive" -- Thomas Jefferson
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go around repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in their struggle for independence." - Charles A. Beard
"The greatest calamity which could befall us would be submission to a government of unlimited powers." --Thomas Jefferson, 1825
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
The world has seen many fascist regimes, Nazi Germany was only one instance. But even that extreme case had western defenders up to the war - King George, Henry Ford (iirc), the Kennedy father or grandfather (when ambassador to the UK), and more.
A few years ago Free Inquiry published a summary of 14 characteristics of fascist regimes. One copy here. I think you can make a defensible case for 13 of the 14 points, with the final item a false negative.
I suggest reading the full article for details, but for the impatient here's the keynotes:
The main exception I see is the supremacy of the military. This administration talks them up, but its actual treatment of our troops is contemptable. We've all heard of soldiers injured, discharged, then told to repay their enlistment bonus since they didn't complete their term of service. Or told to pay hospital fees while recooperating from loss of limbs. (The argument was that they shouldn't have gotten a food and housing stipend while living on hospital grounds but not in a hospital room, or something equally lame.)
Most disgusting has to be the recent bankruptcy bill. Somebody noticed that it did not include an exception for servicemen forced into bankruptcy as a consequence of being called to duty. N.B., under current law creditors are supposed to forego collections of any national guard troop called up. But the Republicans in control of Congress had some petty rule that they wouldn't accept any amendments to this bill and they gave the shaft to our servicemen.
(P.S., I know that the sexism point is debatable. We have Condi Rice.... but she's from the oil industry. A supertanker is named after her!!! Some people see covert sexism in the policy on birth control, abortions, even the refusal to accept court rulings on Terri Schiavo's desire to avoid a persistent vegetative state.)
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I see this term used, "Founding Fathers" quite a bit as if they were a monolithic bunch. They weren't. They were quarrelsome and scrappy, and often disagreed on a number of major and minor issues.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
I won't address why your precepts are wrong here, as other posters in this thread have done an excellent job already. It's the last bit of that sentence I'd like to correct. "There aren't any [citizen militias]", you say? Well, if you are a male between the ages of 17 and 45 (I assume you are a U.S. citizen from the wording of your post), you are a member of the citizen militia of the United States. Don't believe me? Look here: USC Title 10, Chapter 13, Section 311.
In any case, there are many smaller, slightly-more-organized groups of armed citizens. They have been for a long time and still are occasionally called upon by local law enforcement to assist in emergencies (natural disasters, for example). It's true that a lot of these so-called "militia" groups are crackpot vigilantes (and sometimes white supremacists as well), but they are fortunately a minority. If any of these groups on their own decided to try to overthrow the government, they would be quickly dealt with. That's the whole point; the founding fathers did not envision the citizen militia as a bunch of small groups of paranoid vigilantes. Rather, the citizen militia is simply the entire body of the armed citizenry, who can in dire need, as a last resort, when every other system put in place has failed to secure the rights and fair representation of the people, exercise their will upon the government by force.
Actually, it was Alexandar Hamilton in the Federalist Papers who argued against "factions".
"Given the nature of man, factions are inevitable. As long as men hold different opinions, have different amounts of wealth, and own different amount of property, they will continue to fraternize with people who are most similar to them. Both serious and trivial reasons account for the formation of factions but the most important source of faction is the unequal distribution of property. Men of greater ability and talent tend to possess more property than those of lesser ability, and since the first object of government is to protect and encourage ability, it follows that the rights of property owners must be protected. Property is divided unequally, and, in addition, there are many different kinds of property; men have different interests depending upon the kind of property they own. For example, the interests of landowners differ from those who own businesses. Government must not only protect the conflicting interests of property owners, it must, at the same time, successfully regulate the conflicts that result from those who own, and those who do not own, property."
Federalist papers 10
In other Papers he argues that factions are a dangerous thing when used to oppress the minority. So while it wasn't George to begin with it was Hamilton (one of the creators of the US Constitution).
Next!
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
Just reading Slashdot presents an excellent argument for doing exactly what Bush has done. Why should the US send people that have such a bitter hatred for the president? Such inherant negativity can only be detremental to productive meetings.
I can just see it now...
ENGINEER ONE: I think we should allocate more bandwidth in the 400-500Mhz range.
ENGINEER TWO: No, that's not anti-Bush enough.
ENGINEER ONE: You're right, I forgot about our bitter hatred for the president for a second. The protocol should be designed to express our ominous political views.
ENGINEER TWO: What if we shifted the bandwidth to the 750Mhz range?
ENGINEER ONE: That's a little more anti-Bush, but not quite enough...
ANNOUNCER (OFFSCREEN): That's right, if *you* gave $250 to John Kerry, your bitter hatred for the president would have been a detriment to this otherwise productive meeting. If you ever give money to a party not in power, don't expect to take part in the specification of obscure technology protocols. It's for the good of the country.
Disrupt paychecks? FYI, paychecks for junior grade servicemembers are for booze, hookers, and playstation games. All you are going to get is a lot of pissed off men with rifles. How about instead you try to disrupt the logistics train; oh wait, that'd take a hell of a lot more effort.
You might have something with this. US Servicemembers are men (and women) of honor. However, It'd have to escalate quite a bit before lethal force would be required. Actually, faced with the situation I'd find it rather funny watching the crowd on their asses in super-slime engulfed in CS gas. Where's your gas mask?
The problem with your analysis is that you define a soldier as a version of you with a rifle. This is not the case. Today's military is an all volunteer force. Men and women take the titles of Soldier, Sailor, Airman, and Marine because they are motivated to action. You're not dealing with conscripts or mercenaries.
To quote my Drill Instructor from boot camp, "The Marine Corps is a dictatorship designed to defend a democracy." Even in today's connected world, a military is a military. Servicemembers have a drastically different set of social obligations than the average citizen. Don't underestimate the mind-control, those helmets aren't made of tinfoil.
---k--
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