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Interactive Campaigning ala Wiki
brettlg writes to tell us LinuxInsider is reporting that Utah Democratic hopeful, Peter Ashdown, is hoping to leverage his knowledge of the internet and small business resourcefulness to take down the incumbent Senator Orrin Hatch next year. From the article: "Peter Ashdown is the founder of Xmission, Utah's oldest Internet service provider (ISP). His Web site includes a blog and a monthly live chat session. But Ashdown's site takes public participation on his campaign Web site one step further -- opening his platform to all. The site is based on the "Wiki" open-source model made famous by Wikipedia."
Is wiki such a good idea in politics where partisanship is everywhere.
Peter Ashdown, is hoping to leverage his knowledge of the internet
seriously, is it so hard to just 'leverage' the word 'use' instead. I run into leverage freakin' everywhere whenever something has to sound important.
He's gonna get flamed worse than Stormfront. Edit wars, anyone?
The problem with this idea is it's just a magnet for people to tamper with his page - Wiki had to block edits of Bush and Kerry during the 2004 election. There isn't the mechanisms to revert changes and viewers can get a bad impression. Just now, for instance, I noticed that somebody defaced his website by posting a picture of a really geeky-looking white guy.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Or in Pete's office, they say 'launch' a campaign.
i ty/cybercrime/story/0,10801,82317,00.html
Good luck Pete, nobody in their right mind wants the incumbent Senator Orrin Hatch who once advocated putting malware on people's computers in order to stop them from downloading songs.
See: http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/secur
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
He is the guy behind a lot of the DRM bills like DMCA, TPM enforcment, extending copyrights etc.
I hope he gets choped.
"Any legitimate purchaser of media or technology should be able to use their property as they see fit without government intervention. Technology progresses rapidly and we need technologically savvy lawmakers who can lead us in sound policy making. Currently, there are legislators who repeatedly attempt to pass laws reigning in the Internet and other technologies. They do this at the beck and call of multibillion dollar industries by expanding the definition of copyright. Industry which refuses to adapt to technology should not be protected by making that technology illegal. Smaller music and film companies use the Internet to their benefit and should not be penalized by the behemoths' refusal of progress. Lawmakers tilting the playing field do not encourage small business and home innovators to take risks, and thus hold back our economy." from http://vote.peteashdown.org/bio/
:)
He gets my Vote... if I lived in Utah, also one of his previous jobs was a Computer Tech, which makes him over qualified for Politics... but oh well
"If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried"
Remember, msft is the major player in the scox-scam. Msft is financing the entire thing. And remember that msft tried to keep that secret.
Frankly, when considering it's msft, I wonder if it's possible to be paranoid. Think of all the bizare and brazenly illegal activities that msft can been caught doing: fake grass campaigns - including letters from dead people, faked video evidence in DOJ trial, the entire ODF fiasco in MA. . .
That said, remember that Hatch's kid works for scox. Also remember that Hatch is on the judicial commitee, which means that Hatch has significant say-so over the careers of the federal judges in Utah.
Anybody familiar with the scox-scam knows that these judges have been insanely pro-scox from the start. The fact that obvious farce is still going strong after nearly three years speaks volumes. The trials don't even start for another 1.5 years.
.. but this is definitely going to end up counteracting any positive coverage he gains from the site. At best, he ends up with a lot of negative posts from people who support his rivals. At worst, he ends up drowning in noise.
Also - bandwagon, jumping on?
Public debate doesn't belong in a wiki. That's what message boards are for. The wiki is for content and conclusions made from the end result of flame wars or debates. Controls need to be implemented so the content is of good quality (like a rating system). Its the same reason Wikipedia is not considered a legitimate source of info.
Hatch has advantages, one of which is his seniority. The fact that he has been in office so long means that he can bring home more bacon. The new guy, were he to win, wouldn't be able to bring home so much bacon.
Anyone who is getting bacon from Hatch would tend to not want the new guy, figuring that he'd be losing out.
The tech is a minor point -- the bacon hits people in the pocketbook.
"Bacon" here is political slang for "benefits that your politician brings to his community via the political process."
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Ahh Orrin Hatch, who previously brought us gems like the Induce Act. I hope people will vote accross partisan lines in this election and get rid of clueless Senators like Hatch. Next up, House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner's Digital Transition Content Security Act. Hold your politicians accountable!
"I like Wikipedia but I thought Wiki were made famous by c2.com."
I'd have to respectfully disagree. Although c2.com existed prior to Wikipedia and is a great place for people to get started with wiki, I'd certainly say that Wikipedia made the technique famous - at least outside the geek community.
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
I've met and talked to Orrin Hatch many times, and his daughter-in-law is a good friend, but he needs to go down. He has this strange knack for making the wrong first decision every time. Sometimes someone points it out to him, and he back-pedals (stem-cell research); but by and large, he has consistently made this country a worse place to live in.
That said, Pete Ashdown isn't the man to do it. See, I've met him on several occasions, and while he is a techie and may get those questions right, he is not a people person. At all. Much like Orrin, he himself is first on the priority list. XMission is a wonderful ISP, and far and away the best available in Utah (I wish someone as good as them existed in Upstate New York), and I thank Pete for that. Stick to tech.
I just hit up his wiki at:
a ge
http://vote.peteashdown.org/wiki/index.php/Main_P
And under the main article it clearly states:
"I AM PETER OF GAYTORIA HEAR MY ROAR"
So I think partisan politics is the least of his worries with an open wiki. Heck... Even encyclopediadramatica isn't an open wiki.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Yes, just like the open source movement has taken down Microsoft on the desktop.
The Rise and Fall of Online Community
(I'm sure to get modded a troll or something, but...) I have my share of dislike for Hatch too -- he led the charge to get Clinton impeached, while angrily dismissing all complaints about the ludicrious amounts of money being spent by the independent counsel (over $50 million by the end). He's the archtypical right-wing nutjob, BUT - read And the Band Played On. Hatch was personally responsible for getting the Senate to approve most of the AIDS funding during the early years of AIDS, when the Reagan administration was adamantly refusing to spend anything on AIDS (the administration claimed it was spending "$100 million for AIDS related research." But since even the common flu can kill you when you have AIDS, they were counting basically everything they were spending on any disease. In reality, the only agency doing any research on AIDS was the CDC - something they were not set up for.) Anyway, as the book says, Hatch was one of the few right-wingers who wasn't willing to play politics with health-related issues. So he (an extreme-right winger) was at the forefront of getting money for AIDS research at a time when it was primarily a "gay disease".
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I typically vote Republican and have voted for Hatch in the past but I feel that Pete's attention to his customers (through XMission) will translate to his constituents. I will definitely vote for him this fall.
Who am I to blow against the wind? -- Paul Simon
At Pete Ashdown's site page on economic issues, he claims "The United States of America has historically been an economic superpower and an innovator of technology. We harnessed electricity, invented the light-bulb and the television, but what have we produced lately?"
Let's see: The iPod, the SonicCare toothbrush, the Tivo, the E-Z pass, and there are these little things called CPUs produced by Intel and AMD.
U.S. resident inventors received 85,238 out of 165,485 U.S. patents in fiscal year 2005, which isn't too bad for a country that has only 6% of global population.
He then goes on to add: "Meanwhile the international community is closing in on energy production through fusion, and guess where the first operating plant is being built -- not in the U.S.A." Despite the fact that the plant in question, ITER, is a multinational project with partial American funding and scientific support! Moreover, ITER is not going to be an "operating plant," it will be a "fusion experiment" and is in no way a real prototype of a fusion plant.
Furthermore, he states "The Chinese are gearing up to clean our clock economically with no oil dependence at all." Based on empirical evidence, Chinese economic growth is compatible with US economic growth. Moreover, while the Chinese are beginning to investigate nuclear fission, and they have plans to build huge numbers of coal-burning electic power plants, they have no plans to eradicate their oil usage.
Mr. Ashdown appears to be AN ECONOMIC IDIOT.
Where is that Wiki...
I too predict doom, but Tom Daschle would argue with you about ranking incumbents with important chairmanships.
But if he wants a real shot at getting elected, he had better have a plan to get his face seen on TV, get endorsements, get on the radio, put up yard signs, flood the voters with mailers, get volunteers working the precincts door to door, and all the other old-fashioned tactics.
Seniority...funny.
... You call him home!"
Orrin Hatch's original campaign slogan (the one that got him elected) was "What do you call a senator who's been in office for over 18 years?
Ironic now that nobody in Utah remembers it (well, all of his opponents remember it...)
Utah is the reddest of red states. Pete Ashdown is facing an uphill battle selling his party's platform of secular socialism, white flag diplomacy, and state sponsored infanticide to the Mormons.
This was legitimately modded flamebait, but I think it's worth responding to as though it were serious, because I think Ashdown is handling this very real problem very well.
I live in Utah, and Utah *is* the reddest of red states. Republicans hold more than 75% of both legislative houses, and it has been higher. The Republican party owns this state. It's so bad that my father in law, who is about as conservative as they come, is an active member of the Democratic party because he believes that we have to restore some balance and foster some debate.
Ashdown is handicapped by his party affiliation, but I think he's taken a very clever approach to managing it. If you read through his issues statements, in pretty much every case where the Democratic party's official position would sink him in Utah, he falls back on a States' Rights argument (which is a very popular position in Utah).
For example, on Abortion, he basically says that abortion is a terrible thing (which almost no one will deny), that we should focus on programs of education and prevention to avoid the need for abortions (again, hard to deny from either side), that the federal government shouldn't make decisions for women (make the Dems happy), that Roe v Wade was wrong (make the Reps happy) and that the legality of abortion should be left up to the states.
That's clever, because if you leave abortion rights up to the Utah state legislatures, legal abortions will be hard to get in Utah (though I doubt Utah would actually outlaw abortion). Further, Utahns have never been very happy about federal government interference, and States' Rights is a popular notion here. Utah didn't join the union to become a state, Utah joined to stop being a territory -- states have greater self-determination.
So by taking this position, Ashdown can simultaneously say that he agrees with the Democratic position that abortion should be safe and legal, and also say, effectively, that Utahns should have the right to restrict it, plus he can also get another boost from the popularity of States' Rights.
That's a formula that can work with all sorts of issues that are relatively unpopular in Utah, without completely alienating the Democratic base (which is also quite a bit more conservative than in most places). To do it he has to come out strongly in favor of States' Rights, and that's not a Democratic party position, but neither is it something the Democrats openly argue against.
He still doesn't have a chance in hell of winning against a well-connected political powerhouse like the 30-year incumbent Orrin Hatch, but it's a good strategy.
FWIW, I'm pretty conservative, but I just sent some money, ordered some bumper stickers and I'll put up an Ashdown sign in my yard after the snow melts. He deserves support, even if he is going to lose.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Here's the thing: I know a Republican state delegate or two in Utah, and the rumor around town is that Hatch doesn't have a whole lot of support from the conservative end of his own party.
Now, the end I speak of is obviously not going to vote for a democrat of any stripe -- these are the people who think Clinton was a communist and the entire aim of the democratic party is to abolish religion and property rights.
What *would* be ideal would be if Hatch faced a primary challenge -- and lost. Ashdown would probably still lose, but it'd be a more interesting fight. I think he ought to be quiet up until the Republican Primary is over, or appear weak in some way -- and then come out swinging.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Oh come now, my record reviews weren't that bad.