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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."
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"
(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
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...
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.
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