Best Super Tuesday Candidate for Technology?

Petey_Alchemist writes "With Super Tuesday coming up and the political field somewhat winnowed down, the process of picking the nominees for the next American President is well underway. At the same time, the Internet is bustling through a period of legal questions like Copyright infringement, net neutrality, wireless spectrum, content filtering, broadband deployment. All of these are just a few of the host of issues that the next President will be pressured to weigh in on during his or her tenure. Who do you think would be the best (or worst) candidate on Internet issues?"

Comments

A Good Reference

[longacre]

Popular Mechanics' Geek The Vote '08 has a nice rundown of each candidate's tech policies.

Re:A Good Reference

[Fear the Clam]

Pity one has to go through 50,000 page views to read it.

Re:A Good Reference

[Wowsers]

The best candidate is...

Let's see, eni meeni mini mo...

Re:A Good Reference

[Stradivarius]

News.com has candidate interviews on technology policies.

Re:A Good Reference

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems out of date. EG Republican candidates have said a lot more about space than they seem to get credit for, especially leading up to the Florida primary. Not much of it was particularly substantive, but neither were Obama's and Clinton's policies.

Re:A Good Reference

[jbmartin6]

Since they are all liars, nothing about their 'policies' is worth anything. Remember GW Chimp telling us he wanted a more humble foreign policy? I suppose Popular Mechanics would have told us that was his 'policy'.

Re:A Good Reference

[trianglman]

I can't say much about the Republicans, there are still too many for me to really break this down effectively, but I have put the Democrat candidates' policies on a number of issues (technology included) on my blog. Obama clearly breaks away for general policies, although there are some areas that all (well, now both) of them could be more clear (or give any policies).

None of them

[ccguy]

I hope to be wrong, but apparently it's impossible to run for president without the support of the same people and companies that are damaging the development of internet.

If you need funding from companies that would shut down internet if they could, how can you possibly do anything that actually helps internet development?

Any candidate that has received money (directly or indirectly) from a RIAA/MPAA affiliate or a telco (for example) is out of the question when it comes to internet matters.

Re:None of them

[Yvanhoe]

The talent of a political candidate is proportional to the strength of the reality-distortion field s/he can maintain during the whole campaign. An genuinely idealist with a clear line of action that never ever bends facts or his/her opinions is sure to never get elected.

Re:None of them

[cduffy]

Any candidate that has received money (directly or indirectly) from a RIAA/MPAA affiliate or a telco (for example) is out of the question when it comes to internet matters.

If that's your concern, wouldn't the candidate getting his funding from a much larger number of small-money individual donations make more sense than the candidate getting most of her money from a smaller number of bigger donors? (Damn English, not having grammatically correct genderless singular pronouns).

It's not like receiving any money at all is akin to taking an oath of fealty -- but you're certainly right that there's at least some level of correspondence between supporters and actions, so watching where the money comes from is a worthwhile effort. I don't expect Obama to support every item on my agenda even though I've donated repeatedly; why would you expect fealty to the telcos if any funding amount from them (if it exists) is far, far less than what's given by small, individual donors?

Re:None of them

[cduffy]

An genuinely idealist with a clear line of action that never ever bends facts or his/her opinions is sure to never get elected.

Yes, I agree that Ron Paul has no chance.

However, there's a different between being unbending in one's ideals and being unbending in one's understanding of the world; the latter leads to an inability or unwillingness to understand or empathize with the motivations of one's opponents, and that leads to the political environment we have today. Much of what makes Obama appealing is his willingness to think things over from perspectives other than his own and strike considered compromises that still accomplish his intended goals while making people who disagreed feel like they weren't completely steamrolled. Hillary strikes me as the win-at-any-cost type -- but winning at any cost means making the other side lose, and that leads to still more division and partisan hatred.

Re:None of them

[Jane Q. Public]

If Paul has no chance, it will be precisely because of all the otherwise well-meaning people who keep saying "Paul has no chance".

The "wasted vote" is a myth, or at best a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you do not vote for who you WANT to win, then someone you do not want will win. Period. It is as simple as that. Thinking about it any other way is nothing more than second-guessing, or mental jerking off.

Re:None of them

[barfooz]

No, it's not because 90% of the country says he has no chance, it's because 10% of the country says he has no chance and the other 80% say, "Who's Ron Paul?"

Re:None of them

[Jane Q. Public]

It is not the fault of English! You simply should not have constructed your sentence that way. Try:

"Wouldn't the candidate getting funding from a much larger number of small-money individual donations make more sense than the candidate getting most of the money from a smaller number of bigger donors?"

No singular pronouns necessary. Or desired, for that matter. That just throws in unnecessary complications, just like most of the candidates.

Re:None of them

[cduffy]

Support IRV and there really will be no such thing as a wasted vote. Right now, however, the spoiler effect is very very real.

Re:None of them

[cduffy]

It is not the fault of English! You simply should not have constructed your sentence that way.

Good point; I'll try harder next time.

Re:None of them

[Mr. Slippery]

it's because 10% of the country says he has no chance and the other 80% say, "Who's Ron Paul?"

No, it's because 10% of the country says he has no chance, 10% says he's a batshit crazy racist loon, and 70% say, "Who's Ron Paul?" If the 70% find out, most will join the "batshit crazy loon" group, which is why the "he has no chance" group is exactly right. It's long past time for people to get over the infatuation with Paul.

Re:None of them

[Anonymous Coward]

Or that 90%+ of the population might understand that, in today's global marketplace, you cannot have the world's largest economy and be isolationist at the same time...

Re:None of them

[Brandybuck]

There ARE candidates who have not taken any RIAA/MPAA money. Not everyone is an establishment canddiate. One of them is on my signature. I would suggest you check out Ron Paul. But even if he doesn't fit your ideology, there are others. Kucinich dropped out, but you can always write his name in. Or go with a third party candidate (Libertarian, Green, Constitution, etc), none of whom will be getting any corporate cash.

This isn't throwing your vote away, because this isn't a horse race. You're not trying to outguess the pollsters, you're casting a vote for the person you feel best represents you, even if they have no chance of winning. In fact, the best way to make your vote "count" is to cast it for anyone other than the establishment candidates. Every percentage point independents and third party candidates get is a a clear signal sent aloft.

Re:None of them

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

The problem is you vote for who you want to win, with no ability to say who you don't.
Random numbers and names pulled out of my ass as an example:
30% of the people wanted Ron Paul to win and hated Romney
30% of the people wanted Obama to win and hated Romney
40% of the people wanted Romney to win.

More people didnt want Romney to be president, yet under our system he would win.
Arguably this is what got Bush in office.

Now I'm not saying you shouldn't vote for Paul, just that it isn't as simple as voting for who you want to win. Personally I feel a little lucky that at this point in the election, I don't really dislike any major candidate on either side. I like some more than others, including some that have already dropped out, but theres nobody that I'd strongly vote against if I had the chance.

I do have to say though that it's pretty sad that even Debian has a saner voting system than the US presidential elections.

Re:None of them

[NeutronCowboy]

If Paul has no chance, it will be because his positions are interesting at best, and laughable at worst. I like libertarian approaches to a lot of things, but there are some things that a government has to provide if it doesn't want the nation to slide into feudalism.

Re:None of them

[cathars1s]

Paul has no chance because the majority of Americans disagree with him on major substantive issues like his foreign and monetary policies.

Re:None of them

[Nefarious Wheel]

Damn English, not having grammatically correct genderless singular pronouns)...

The best compromise usage is replacing "his or her" with "their". Try it, it works. The implied plural works for an either|or situation because there is more than one option.

To recast: "...more sense than the candidate getting most of their money from a smaller number of..."

Re:None of them

[cetialphav]

If Paul has no chance, it will be precisely because of all the otherwise well-meaning people who keep saying "Paul has no chance". I don't buy this at all. Simply put, Ron Paul's views are out of the mainstream. Ron Paul has views which most voters simply don't agree with. He also has the additional downside that he sounds like a kook sometimes. I'm not saying that many of his ideas don't have merit; but I think the way he communicates them makes him sound like a rambling, raving loony. In the last debate, he went off on some crazy diatribe lamenting about how we have moved away from the gold standard and that will be our downfall. He did this when the discussion was about Iraq. Consider that there is no serious political discussion about the fundamentals of our monetary policy (the question has not been raised in a single debate). This makes him seem unstable. Ron Paul is going to go down in history as another in a series of unusual independents like Ross Perot and Ralph Nader.

I'm not trying to bash Ron Paul. I like the guy, and was very happy that he picked up enough money to be able to stay in the race. He engages voters that would be turned off by most of the other candidates. He inspires passion, and he often forces people to face uncomfortable questions. I'm glad he is in the race, but I will never ever vote for him because I think he is flat wrong on most issues. I don't trust him because I think he is so idealistic that he will never compromise on anything. I suspect most voters see this in similar terms. He just isn't what they want in a president.

Re:None of them

[mitgib]

there are some things that a government has to provide if it doesn't want the nation to slide into feudalism. Which is exactly why the founding fathers put in place a way to amend the constitution. If it is not in the constitution, the Federal Government has no right to weigh in on it. If the People wish the Government to weigh in on it, amend the constitution so they can.

Re:None of them

[mrchaotica]

Or, you know, you could just realize that the masculine version is the neuter version, give up the political-correctness bullshit, and get on with your life!

Re:None of them

[ZombieRoboNinja]

I know this is hard to hear, but Paul won't win because most people don't want him to win.

A lot of his supporters seem to be under the impression that if we switched to a runoff-voting system, Ron Paul would jump to the majority position. I really don't think this is the case. He's a libertarian in some very satisfying ways, but his social conservatism alone would keep me from voting for him, and his positions on many other issues would drive off tons of other voters.

How many voters do you think want to abolish the DOE, bring all our troops home NOW (possibly leaving Iraq to dissolve into even worse chaos), repeal the Brady Bill and other gun-control laws, etc.? I know you personally may agree with all those positions, as may many on Slashdot, but do you think the majority of American voters are with Ron?

I agree that the electoral system needs reform, but saying that Ron Paul in particular only has no chance because people don't believe hard enough is misleading. He doesn't have any chance because most people don't agree with him.

Re:None of them

[Rebar]

I used to believe that, until I supported Ralph Nader in 2000, and George W. Bush won the presidential contest as a result of people like me thinking exactly like you. It is not "as simple as that."

In Florida in the year 2000, George W. Bush beat Al Gore by only 537 votes, while Ralph Nader drew 97,488 votes on the Green party ticket. Had Nader not been running, those environmental votes would have overwhelmingly fallen to Al Gore and we would have avoided the entire second Bush administration. I voted(1) Green on environmental issues, of all things, as if Al Gore wasn't green enough.

We got Bush instead.

Now I vote more pragmatically, not for who I think will win, but definitely not for an idealistic vote-splitter when there is a realistic shot of making incremental change with a realistic candidate.

God Bless the Freaks for they make the world more interesting, but don't vote for them in the general election.

(1) not in Florida so ultimately it didn't matter, but people just like me tilted the election to Bush.

Re:None of them

[mybadluck22]

What about the other 10%? Statistical error?

Re:None of them

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point. I would rather have myself win the presidency than any of the other candidates. Your strong argument has made my decision very simple -- I'm writing myself in.

A bit sarcastic, but you get the point.

Re:None of them

[yariv]

This is only true if don't care who, from the rest of the candidates, will win (as long as its not Paul).

Besides, there are many reasons why Paul won't win, and first of all is the fact that the issues covered here are almost meaningless in this campaign (at least as it seems from Isreal...)

Re:None of them

[7-Vodka]

You know, I'll bite on your cointelpro bullshit.
Nothing that Ron Paul has ever said or done is in anyway supportive of racism. He has for many decades supported individual Freedoms and Liberty which are concepts that are diametrically opposed to racism. Racism cannot exist when you have Freedom ideals that treat individuals as such and not as part of a group. Racism comes from creating groups of people and judging likewise.

Furthermore, Ron Paul is the republican candidate with the most support from minorities. It has been pointed out time and time again and unless you start accusing non-caucasians of throwing their support behind a racist candidate in some uninformed way (yeah right) you have no argument.

Everything that Dr. Paul has ever done and all the ideals he stands for seek the end of racism. The entire accusation was constructed by professional counterintelligence personel. The same types who run scenarios on stealing elections and what would happen if they were to assassinate Ron Paul.

Unfortunately for them anyone who actually looks into it or even just hears his side of the story will realize it's a joke.

Also, calling a respectable candidate who's served in congress for 20 years and has a respectable record a "batshit crazy racist loon" is quite possibly the worst ad hominem attack I have ever heard in my life. It shows you have no ground to stand on to debate his views without distorting them and have to focus on attacking the man.

But it's ok, the vast majority of people see through your games little cointelpro agent and we'll be knocking on your door soon demanding you pay your dues to our society.

Re:None of them

[drsmithy]

(Damn English, not having grammatically correct genderless singular pronouns).

Yes, it does. They just happen to be the same as the male pronouns.

Stop trying to live your life to the drum beat of political correctness.

Re:None of them

[Anonymous Coward]

[schoolyardchant]
cduffy and Jane Q. Public sittin' in a tree
...
[/schoolyarchant]
Sorry about that ... couldn't help it. Excellent dialog.

Re:None of them

[rujholla]

No its because however good some of his policies sound you can't go over the fact that the man is a nut job!!

Re:None of them

[cduffy]

Yes, it does. They just happen to be the same as the male pronouns.

Ehh... no. Thinking about the statement I was making, I could have easily made it about two hypothetical politicians -- and actually, I should have -- but I had in mind two very specific politicians (though admittedly I was speaking in terms intended to provide a more general tone), and in that case (with specific people in mind), using the male pronoun to refer to a female individual is not accepted usage.

Stop trying to live your life to the drum beat of political correctness.

I live my life as I see fit, and I'll thank you to leave me to do so.

Incidentally, it's A Person Paper by Douglas Hofstadter that convinced me to think seriously about gender inequalities in language. I've also dabbled in Lojban from time to time, which is interesting inasmuch as it allows one strict control over the information expressed.

Re:None of them

[gambino21]

This is exactly why we need to change the voting system, and as long as you vote for one of the two major parties the system will never change. The Democrats and Republicans like the current voting system, and they like it when they can point the finger at a third-party candidate and say "that is why I didn't win". Instead they should be thinking about changing the voting system, but they won't because that means third party candidates will have an even better chance to actually win and take away some of their power.

Re:None of them

[hiruhl]

The "wasted vote" is a myth, or at best a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you do not vote for who you WANT to win, then someone you do not want will win. Period. It is as simple as that. Thinking about it any other way is nothing more than second-guessing, or mental jerking off. Unfortunately, this is incorrect. Well, you won't get who you want in office, true, but you might have more desirable things happen than if you had been honest with your vote. Voting against your wishes in order to influence results is called "tactical voting" or "voting manipulation". It has been studied quite thoroughly for run-off election systems (and there are significant proofs about its usefulness -- look up "tactical voting" on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_voting). This also applies to our system, although our system does not lend itself so nicely to proofs.

Consider those who voted for Ralph Nader in 2000; if Gore had had Nader's votes (which is quite likely), Gore would have won. Now fast-forward through eight years of Bush, and five years of fighting in Iraq. Now, tell me many people could not benefit from voting against their true preferences. Clinton and Obama might suck big fat Enron nuts, but I, for one, think this war needs to end, and the supreme court needs a swift kick away from the right.

The fact remains that this country is full of people who are satisfied with the status-quo. As incredible as that might be to believe that anyone would be, you see it all around you. And the ones who are smart enough not to be happy with it do not have similar enough views to rally enough support for their candidate. Look at you and me. You seem to believe Ron Paul is a good candidate, so I suppose your views are roughly in line with Libertarianism. My views are more liberal. Then there are the right-wing and left-wing nutjobs. Pretty soon, it becomes obvious that the centrist Republicrats and Demicans are going to be the winners for a long time. Unless we switch to a system with more proportional representation (such as a parliamentary system), it simply won't pay to support a candidate with any sort of individuality. It really does make a lot of sense to use the tactical voting strategy. Unfortunately.

If you want something to support which all the freer thinkers can rally around, it is proportional representation. We all want our side to be represented, right? So forget about Ron Paul for now. Focus on realizing proportional representation. Just remember the establishment will fight it, tooth and nail.

Re:None of them

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, the decades-worth of the official Ron Paul newsletters exist regardless of mysterious government agents allegedly attacking Ron Paul, and Ron Paul's excuse that he didn't know what was in them is hardly believable. Think seriously about it for a minute. If this was any other politician, you would know they were lying through their teeth. But since it's Ron Paul, and Ron Paul says he never lies, it can't be a lie. Please. The American electorate isn't that stupid. Do you really expect us to believe that Ron Paul never noticed that the newsletter he founded, paid for, and sometimes wrote for was full of racism and bigotry? That he never picked up an issue or paid any attention at all? Why did he choose to pretend he never knew about any of this until 2001? In 1996, his campaign claimed that the quotes were just "taken out of context." A couple of years later, when it becomes an issue again, the line is that "Oh, Ron Paul never had anything to do with it! We swear!" And if Ron Paul is really so innocent, why does his campaign refuse to release back issues?

Also, respectable record? What do you know about Ron Paul's record? He talks about taking power away for corporations at the same time he sponsors dozens of bills to remove every conceivable regulation from them, from worker safety laws to antitrust laws. He talks about leaving abortion up to the states to decide on at the same time he sponsors bills to ban abortion on the federal level. The list of Ron Paul's two-faced pandering goes on and on. I ask you to please look much more closely at his record and compare it to his words.

Ron Paul is a hypocrite and a politician. He sets up his own personal version of the Founding Fathers to knock everyone else down. He lies, he earmarks, and there's good reason to believe he's racist and sexist. If not, and he really didn't know about anything in his own newsletter, he's definitely not capable of competently running the country.

Re:None of them

[hiruhl]

Mmm-hmm... Have you ever heard of the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbard-Satterthwaite_theorem

It has been shown by the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem that any voting method which is completely strategy-free must be either dictatorial or nondeterministic (that is, might not select the same outcome every time it is applied to the same set of voter preferences). - Wikipedia article on Tactical Voting IRV is not quite so glamorous as you might think. It is always subject to voter manipulation (unless it is dictatorial or nondeterministic, which we would assume our elections not to be). It pays off not to vote your true preferences, much as is the case with our current system.

(The better cure for the spoiler effect is proportional representation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation)

Re:None of them

[Anonymous Coward]

There ARE candidates who have not taken any RIAA/MPAA money. Not everyone is an establishment canddiate. One of them is on my signature. I would suggest you check out Ron Paul. But even if he doesn't fit your ideology, there are others. Kucinich dropped out, but you can always write his name in. Or go with a third party candidate (Libertarian, Green, Constitution, etc), none of whom will be getting any corporate cash.

None of the candidates have taken RIAA/MPAA money. People working in various industries, including the entertainment industry, have donated to all candidates, including Ron Paul, and that's what you see reflected on sites like opensecrets.org

Re:None of them

[superwiz]

He is about as isolationist as Germany, Japan, France, Italy, etc. He doesn't want to police the world. He never gave a speech in which he didn't mention that he wants to have an active and open trade with the rest of the world. If it works for the rest of the industrialized world, why is it isolationist if we propose that we do it as well?

Re:None of them

[Mr. Slippery]

Everything that Dr. Paul has ever done and all the ideals he stands for seek the end of racism. The entire accusation was constructed by professional counterintelligence personel.

What, Daily Kos is full of professional counterintelligence personel?? That's the wackiest conspiracy theory I've heard in years.

Unfortunately for them anyone who actually looks into it or even just hears his side of the story will realize it's a joke.

His "side of the story" is that he has no idea how those nasty articles got into the newsletter he published under his own name. Which would mean he's not even competent to run a 'zine, much less a country. Yes, his side of the story is a joke...

calling a respectable candidate who's served in congress for 20 years and has a respectable record a "batshit crazy racist loon" is quite possibly the worst ad hominem attack I have ever heard in my life. It shows you have no ground to stand on to debate his views without distorting them and have to focus on attacking the man.

He's not a respectable candidate; the fact that he served in Congress for 20 years proves nothing. And it's not ad hominem to attack a person's batshit crazy views on biology, medicine, religion, and government, or to point out his backdoor route to getting pork for his district.

But it's ok, the vast majority of people see through your games little cointelpro agent and we'll be knocking on your door soon demanding you pay your dues to our society.

Now I'm a COINTELPRO agent because I point out Paul's flaws? Shit, that's the wackiest conspiracy theory I've heard in my life. Yes, all these years of professing my politics on USENET, /., mailing lists, and so on, were just so I'd be in a position to denounce Ron Paul if he ever ran for President. My blog is an FBI front. Yeah. Time to refill the prescription for those anti-psychotic meds, my friend.

Re:None of them

[Jane Q. Public]

You are not the first in this thread to confuse Libertarianism with anarchy. They are not even remotely similar. Libertarians are not for "no government". They are for Constitutional government. They are against unnecessarily bloated and outrageously overgrown government (which one cannot honestly say about either of the Big Two parties these days). But that is far from "none".

I am not singling you out. For some reason, this is a popular misconception. But shouldn't you at least research the facts, before basing an important vote on your opinion? Because the opinion you seem to have is not based on fact.

Re:None of them

[XLR8DST8]

i'd mod this up if i could. this is what i tell everybody. political parties must be abolished. the electoral process has been sucha hype game. people never vote for who will run the country best, they vote for who they identify with. this country is so divided. each candidate pretends to be for or against certain elements of the population and attempts to demonstrate to their base how the other candidate is supporting the factions that are 'getting in the way of your dreams'. it's all a bunch of bullshit. if everyone voted for who SHOULD win instead of who was 'most likely' to win, or voted FOR who they wanted, instead of AGAINST who they don't want, the right candidate would emerge. people in this country are so conditioned and brainwashed it's disgusting. and this is how these assholes not only stay in power but profit whichever way the wind blows.

Re:None of them

[NeutronCowboy]

And I didn't define some of Paul's approaches as anarchy. I said that there are certain sections of government which Ron Paul wants to remove, but which I believe are necessary to prevent a slide back to feudalism - of which the education department is one. His entire gold standard idea is another (which, coincidentally, I think has nothing to do with libertarian principles).

Re:None of them

[TheoMurpse]

30% of the people wanted Ron Paul to win and hated Romney
30% of the people wanted Obama to win and hated Romney
40% of the people wanted Romney to win.

More people didnt want Romney to be president, yet under our system he would win.

Well, if you notice, in your hypothetical, while 40% wanted Romney, only 30% wanted Paul or Obama. Therefore, it is exactly correct that Romney should win. Because presumably, from your statements, 70% don't want Paul and 70% don't want Obama, while only 30-60% don't want Romney.

Re:None of them

[Jane Q. Public]

Do you think the Department of Education has actually done some good? How much money do we throw at schools today? Did you know that there is very little correlation between spending on public schools and student performance? In many cases there has even turned out to be a negative correlation.

George Bush's "No Child Left Behind" act has done a huge amount of damage to the schools in my state. I have seen students (one of my nephews for example) boast about their score on the state-mandated standards tests (required by NCLB), while not even being able to read, write, or do arithmetic at what I would have called "normal" levels when I was their age.

That's your Federal Government at work.

Ron Paul has aimed at institutions that have proven to be INEFFECTIVE. So what's the beef? If the departments are not doing their jobs, then they need to go away. Unless you really want to keep spending money on nothing.

As for the gold standard, why do you consider that a step backward? Do you actually enjoy runaway inflation and government debt? (Forget the "official" inflation figures... look at your grocery and utility bills, and rent). In many places in the U.S. today, cost of living is double what it was just 10 years ago. I don't care what the government says, friend. That is not 2% inflation! I have to disagree with you: not just no but Hell No! Our monetary system has NOT been working fine for the last 30 years.

All that is possible because of no solid monetary standard. And basing the dollar on its relative value to other currencies (the common practice today) is bogus! Just look at the international stock plummet the other day, largely triggered by a single French banker who thought he was also a programmer. And as a result, even some American stocks took a tumble of as much as 50%, if only temporarily.

Yeah, right. There's monetary stability for you.

A gold standard is at least a standard. Right now, we have none. And that hurts us. A lot.

And yes, by the way, a solid monetary standard is a Libertarian principle. Not necessarily gold, but it is the best example we have available, and the one most likely to be accepted.

Re:None of them

[script_daddy]

What, Daily Kos is full of professional counterintelligence personel??

No, but interestingly the site is filled with batshit crazy loons. Which kind of makes it hard to take their allegations of same against others seriously.

Re:None of them

[Jane Q. Public]

Consider this: he has no choice. Everybody already knows his position on Iraq, and nobody else is discussing monetary policy, which is a REAL issue that NEEDS to be addressed.

The other candidates have not been interested in what is a real issue and what is not; they are only interested in public perception. And the fact that he may come across as "a loony" to some of them -- when he is discussing real, important issues when others won't -- is a very, very bad sign.

The fact that the other candidates are not mentioning these things has NOTHING to do with whether they are real issues, or important issues. They would rather talk about popularized topics regardless of whether THOSE should be of real concern.

I do not agree with all of Paul's ideas (the abortion thing comes to mind). But of that batch of candidates, if he is NOT the one the people want to be president, then we should be very, very afraid. No, that is not intended as a joke. He is the only proven honest Presidential candidate who is willing to discuss real issues -- not just "popular" issues no matter how unreal -- before the American public today.

Re:None of them

[7-Vodka]

Actually, it is.

Re:None of them

[Captain Nitpick]

Let's hold a vote on a national method of transportation. 30% want a red car. 30% want a blue car. 40% want a motorcycle. By your logic, the correct choice is for everyone to ride motorcycles, when 60% want a car.

Because presumably, from your statements, 70% don't want Paul and 70% don't want Obama, while only 30-60% don't want Romney.

The statement "30% of the people wanted Ron Paul to win and hated Romney" implies that that 30% would prefer Obama to Romney. Likewise, the 30% who want a blue car would probably prefer a red car to the motorcycle. This is why alternative voting systems tend to actually ask for preferences, rather than saying "choose one".

You might be tempted to say that we should separate the question of car vs motorcycle and the question of color, and you would be right. But with political candidates, we can't. I can't go out and vote for a candidate to be in charge of war, another to be in charge of economic policy, another to handle diplomacy, and so forth. All these positions are rolled into inseparable bundles.

With the current system we can all end up riding motorcycles when most people would prefer a car of any color.

Re:None of them

[cetialphav]

The other candidates have not been interested in what is a real issue and what is not; they are only interested in public perception. That statement is completely delusional. I see the Republicans seriously debating immigration policy, deficit spending, the military strategy in Iraq, how the threat from terrorism should be addressed. These are not fluff issues. These are real problems, and they are the problems that voters care about. Look at the polls and you will see that among Republican voters, immigration is the number one issue. The Democrats are debating their universal health care plans, the problems with "No Child Left Behind", and how to get out of Iraq. To dismiss this and to suggest that Ron Paul is the only one to talk about important issues just ignores what is actually happening.

The issue of whether our currency should be backed by gold is an interesting question. Well, it is interesting if you are trying to get a PhD in economics. But if a candidate runs for president based on that they will lose. Sure, they will get all the voters who think gold is the way to go, but that is a small number and no one else cares. The gold policy has nothing to do with immigration, Iraq, terrorism, deficit spending, health care, or education. It doesn't address the problems the voters really care about.

if he is NOT the one the people want to be president, then we should be very, very afraid. He isn't and there is nothing wrong with that. There is no reason to be overly dramatic about this. Ron Paul is your guy, and that is fine. I (and most other voters) have a different opinion and that is fine too. That is how the system works. But Ron Paul is not some anointed prophet who will save the USA from certain doom. The country will continue on just fine regardless of who is elected. Different candidates will influence things in different ways, but there is no such thing as "the one true way" to run a country.

Note that I'm not trying to rag on Ron Paul. I'm not trying to convince people to vote otherwise. If you think he best represents your views, by all means vote for him. But he is not the only one with ideas; he is not the only one addressing issues; he is not the only honest person in Washington. To suggest otherwise, only pushes him further to the fringes.

Re:None of them

[EastCoastSurfer]

I agree with you on the Dept. of Education. It's a complete waste of money and just a big money pit with not real ROI.

I can see your point about moving our currency back to some standard, but I don't think the lack of a standard has put us in the mess we're in. I look at money as just a agreed upon way to trade units of work, so I don't have to work for each person I want to buy something from. If this is backed by gold, fruit flies, or tulips it makes no difference to me as long as everyone agrees to accept it as payment.

IMHO, the monetary problem stems from the fact that the Fed (Greenspan and now Bernanke and crew) have looked to the stock market as a way to judge the countries current financial situation, whatever it may be at the time. If the market is going up, then everything must be great! LOL Low rates and essentially free money are what got us into this mess with housing and the only way out is going to be some pain. Banks, investment houses and even people played fast and lose with their risk analysis. The Fed needs to quit lying about inflation, raise the rates to something reasonable, and let the chips fall where they may.

Re:None of them

[TheoMurpse]

Did you just assert that Ron Paul and Barack Obama overlap on the issues?

Re:None of them

[Jane Q. Public]

I stand corrected. You are right, those ARE real problems. But they are also, as I mentioned, the "popular" issues, not necessarily the issues that are factually the most important. Universal Health Care, as envisioned by the Democrats, is a major disaster waiting to happen. The only debate there should be why they are even considering it.

But even if, without thinking, I exaggerated my point somewhat, you reinforce it with your own statements: "Look at the polls." I have and do.

The "problem" with the No Child Left Behind act is that it should not exist. It has damaged schooling in my state to a degree I sometimes have felt is irreversable.

But in any case, back to my main point, which you continue to reinforce. Quote: "Well, it is interesting if you are trying to get a PhD in economics. But if a candidate runs for president based on that they will lose. Sure, they will get all the voters who think gold is the way to go, but that is a small number and no one else cares. The gold policy has nothing to do with immigration, Iraq, terrorism, deficit spending, health care, or education. It doesn't address the problems the voters really care about."

And that doesn't bother you any? You think that is okay?

Don't you see that this is exactly what I was saying? Except that some of them are real issues. I concede that.

Quote: "Ron Paul is your guy, and that is fine. I (and most other voters) have a different opinion and that is fine too. That is how the system works. But Ron Paul is not some anointed prophet who will save the USA from certain doom. The country will continue on just fine regardless of who is elected. Different candidates will influence things in different ways, but there is no such thing as "the one true way" to run a country."

Ron Paul is my guy for one primary reason: he has done what he said he would do. Consistently. Predictably. Honestly. NONE of the other candidates have done that over their political careers. If you are happy with that situation -- that is, hypocrites and elitists running our Government -- then fine. You are entitled to your opinion. But don't go shoving it at me as though it were some kind of moral high ground. It isn't. Paul is not "the anointed one" or anything like that. But he *HAS* a proven track record of political honesty and integrity, which you cannot say about ANY of the other candidates.

Quote: "The country will continue on just fine regardless of who is elected. Different candidates will influence things in different ways, but there is no such thing as 'the one true way' to run a country."

Of course there is no "one true way". Did I ever state that? BUT... if you honestly think that "the country will continue on just fine regardless", or if you even think that it has actually been doing fine, then you are much more delusional than you accuse me of being. It is not and has not been.

And I agree that Paul is not the only basically honest person in Washington. But he *IS* the only one running for President right now. If you do not believe that, you are welcome to try to prove me wrong about that. It would actually be a relief. But all the evidence I have seen so far has told me that this is correct.

Allow me to amend that statement a little. There may be other candidates who have been true to their beliefs, but those candidates have also turned out to be borderline religious nutcases. Yeah right. Just what we need leading the country right now (he said, sarcastically).

Re:None of them

[Captain Nitpick]

Part of the point of explanatory examples is to not confuse the example with reality. What's next, you're going to question the example's 30% national support for Ron Paul?

Re:None of them

[TheoMurpse]

I'm not questioning his specific numbers; I'm questioning the logic of his argument. That is to say, his logic was:

A% likes X, hates Y.
B% likes Z, hates Y.
C% loves Y.

C > A,B
A+B > C

Therefore C should lose.

It depends on your goal (maximize satisfaction or minimize dissatisfaction). If you want to maximize satisfaction, C should win. If you want to minimize dissatisfaction, A or B should win (and if A!=B in his example, we'd know who should win under that electoral goal).

Re:None of them

[NeutronCowboy]

Since I have no interest in discussing the gold standard in-depth (done that too many times already), I'll just ask you a few questions:
- Once the value of a currency is pegged to the amount of gold that nation holds, what happens when a new gold mine is opened? What happens when there's a sudden influx of gold into the market? (Hint: supply and demand).
- If gold supplies are static, what happens to the wealth distribution when populations keep increasing? (Hint: static pie, more slices)
- If gold is a currency, to be kept in vault, what happens to commercial and industrial applications of gold? (Hint: use is determined by cost)

Pining for the gold standard is like pining for the kings and emperors of old. Just because the current system isn't perfect doesn't mean you ought to go back to the one that was worse.

As for the department of education, I'll make the same comment: it isn't perfect, but the solution isn't to abolish it. If something isn't working, you fix it - the underlying assumption being that you're trying to reach a goal, and that you need to keep on trying to reach it. You don't just stop trying.

Re:None of them

[Captain Nitpick]

I'm not questioning his specific numbers; I'm questioning the logic of his argument. That is to say, his logic was:

A% likes X, hates Y.
B% likes Z, hates Y.
C% loves Y.

C > A,B
A+B > C

Therefore C should lose.

It depends on your goal (maximize satisfaction or minimize dissatisfaction). If you want to maximize satisfaction, C should win. If you want to minimize dissatisfaction, A or B should win (and if A!=B in his example, we'd know who should win under that electoral goal).

You have again assumed that group A would be completely dissatisfied with Z and B would be completely dissatisfied with X.

Satisfaction is analog, not binary. All we know is that group A gives X a high value and Y a low value. These satisfaction values probably won't even be 1.000 and 0.000. We don't know if group A would give Z 0.95, 0.05, or something anywhere in between. Plurality voting does not even ask the question. It assumes 1.0 for the choice you select, and 0.0 for everything else.

Let's assume groups A and B both pretty much like candidates X and Y (and assume group satisfaction can be calculated by a simple weighting):

• A - 30% - X:1.00 - Y:0.95 - Z: 0.00
• B - 30% - X:0.95 - Y:1.00 - Z: 0.00
• C - 50% - X:0.00 - Y:0.00 - Z: 1.00

Resulting satisfaction:

• If X is the winner: 30% * 1.00 + 30% * 0.95 + 40% * 0.00 = 0.585
• If Y is the winner: 30% * 0.95 + 30% * 1.00 + 40% * 0.00 = 0.585
• If Z is the winner: 30% * 0.00 + 30% * 0.00 + 40% * 1.00 = 0.40

To maximize satisfaction, either X or Y should be the winner.

Re:None of them

[Anonymous Coward]

If Ron Paul has no chance then America has no chance!

Re:None of them

[rlbond86]

Arrow's Impossibility Theorem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem) says otherwise.
Remember the "Nader Factor" from 2000? Those were wasted votes that got us 8 years of Bush.

Take your ideology somewhere else. Ron Paul is a wasted vote.

Re:None of them

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

I'm not saying C should lose, by this system it should, I'm just saying our voting system doesn;t let a lot of people accurately express their interest in the election leading to less desirable outcomes.

As for whoever questioned Obama/Paul overlapping on issues (I'm too lazy to reply twice): It's not as far fetched as you think.

The way I and a lot of others see it is that we'd rather have smaller federal government like Paul's platform pushes, but we don't see that happening and if we're stuck with a large government we'd rather see all that tax money go to healthcare and such instead of the places the republicans would put it.

Technology is a business

[Kohath]

Well, the only one who understands economics and business is Romney. Since technology companies and their employees are what makes "technology" happen, Romney is the best.

The others primarily think that business (including the technology business) exists to produce goods and wealth for them to tax so they can redistribute it to politically-connected unproductive folks.

Re:Technology is a business

[squarefish]

Based on the rate of return he's getting from his campaign, I think you're high as hell.
Besides, a mormon will not be president, probably ever. He's also been known to flip-flop a little.

Re:Technology is a business

[gerbalblaste]

Romney is great if you love telcos and hate net neutrality, hate CC and IP law reform. Just because someone ran succesful business doesn't make them informed about technology and IP law (especialy IP law)

Re:Technology is a business

[Kohath]

This will be quite the political discussion if everyone who doesn't say they love socialism and hate corporations (and hate the rich, religious people, the military, etc, etc, etc) gets modded to -1 Flamebait.

Why even ask the question if there's not going to be a serious discussion? Just make it a poll so the "moderators" can say "Ron Paul" or one of the socialists instead of voting to censor other perspectives with their mod points.

Re:Technology is a business

[thedbp]

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Anybody who backs the Federal Reserve System is in the pocket of the people that are making our lives a living hell. Period.

Re:Technology is a business

[Kohath]

I back the Federal Reserve system. When can I expect my check to arrive?

Also, this is the USA. We have a good quality of life in the USA compared to most other countries past and present. "Our" lives are not a "living hell". Since you are so demonstrably wrong about obvious, observable quality of life, what insight could you possibly have on the "cause" of that "problem"?

Re:Technology is a business

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't rate you down, but you took a question on Internet issues (examples from the story: Copyright infringement, net neutrality, wireless spectrum, content filtering, broadband deployment) and gave a cookie-cutter (and IMHO unrelated) answer based on what passes for the conservative platform these days (i.e., liberals suck more.)

Speaking for myself, I'd find your comment more satisfying -- or at least more substantive -- if you had elaborated on which positions Romney holds that you feel are important on Internet issues rather than taking what has become a predictable and irrelevant swipe at Democrats whenever the Republicans have nothing reasonable to offer.

Re:Technology is a business

[hoffmanbike]

you do not want Romney... he's fu cked mass up real good, took away pensions for retired and current state workers, is for STREGNTHENING IP, Copyright protections, and anti-privacy laws

Re:Technology is a business

[Kohath]

The question was about who was the best candidate on Super Tuesday. I gave a clear reason why Romney is the best.

I think you're saying:

"We hate telcos, we hate owners of IP, we want the government to control every policy on everyone's Internet (except at public libraries where the government should butt out even though they are government-run libraries), and that's the "technology" position. What's the best candidate that agrees precisely with those chosen positions?"

That's not much of a discussion, is it? Why not also tell us which candidate to vote for if you're going to proscribe every other issue position in the question?

Also, who said being a socialist was bad? Not me. If you think being a socialist is good, then Obama or Hillary are good candidates for you. If you think it's a mixed bag and that socialism is good only about half the time, then McCain. If you want to escape responsibility for any government decision but still claim to have a voice, then Paul. If you want technology businesses to succeed and innovate and grow and prosper, then Romney.

Re:Technology is a business

[Anonymous Coward]

Based on what I've seen on all the cadidates, I don't want any of them.

They all have pro's and cons. There is not one balanced moderate left.

Re:Technology is a business

[Kohath]

Wow, he took away pensions from government workers? That sounds like a good thing for everyone except government workers.

Why should anyone care about government workers? Do they care about me? Do they care about my pension? Why wouldn't government workers volunteer to give up their pensions so that I can have more money in my pocket? That's what they want me to do for them.

Re:Technology is a business

[jx100]

We hate telcos because they spy on us willingly, they have no problems filtering what we do with the internet for their own benefits, and they overcharge us.

We hate owners of IP because of the ridiculous lawsuits they start, and because they've turned the conversation from a respectful one that balances the needs of the IP owner and the citizen to one that rips into the latter for the benefit of the former.

We want the government to force net neutrality on everyone because we *know* that without it, the telcos *will* take advantage of their position and block traffic simply because they don't like it.

The discussion on these points has happened elsewhere, and we've come up with good, valid positions. It is not then unreasonable to find a candidate that shares these positions.

Re:Technology is a business

[Kohath]

It is not then unreasonable to find a candidate that shares these positions.

Then just tell everyone who it is. Why pretend it's a question?

Re:Technology is a business

[Kohath]

Democrats are not Socialists.

Obama and Clinton are.

Re:Technology is a business

[theglassishalf]

Might I recommend you look at Western Europe, or South Korea, or Canada for that matter, and then report back once you know what you're talking about? Obama and Clinton would be considered center-right in most countries, if not right wing. Get some perspective, (wo)man.

-Daniel

Re:Technology is a business

[mrchaotica]

"We want the government to control every policy on everyone's Internet..."

Here's what the anti-net-neutrality people don't seem to understand: the government already does control it! Unlike the fantasy they seem to want to believe, the ISP industry is not any sort of "free market" with "competition" or anything like that. No, instead it's characterized by an oligopoly of large players (e.g. AT&T and Comcast) which was created by the government through granting of subsidies and easements. At this moment the telcos and cable companies are getting all of the benefits of regulation (i.e., locking out all of their competitors) with none of the drawbacks (i.e., meaningful oversight).

In other words, if you're truly an advocate of the free market, put your money where your mouth is and get rid of all the regulation by ending the easements and demanding repayment of the subsidies. Or alternatively, finish the regulation by supporting net neutrality. Otherwise, STFU because you're either a shill for the fascists who benefit from the status quo, or a complete and utter idiot!

Re:Technology is a business

[VJ42]

one of the socialists ?? Living in the UK, I didn't even know the USA had an active socialist party until I googled it in order to reply to you; from my perspective the US politics has two centre right parties, one is just further right than the other. Modern English[sic]* politics is similar, we have three right of centre parties instead of two.

*The rest of the UK have their respective nationalist parties which can generally be described as left wing, but even then IIRC none are traditionally socialist (they all believe in the free market to some extent) but could probably be better described as collectivist.

Re:Technology is a business

[hoffmanbike]

Kohath, do you like having a fire department, licensed drivers, police departments, educators, prison guards, clean state parks etc...? if you want the fire department to show up in times of emergency you had better hope that your firefighters have the proper equipment to actually fight fire. How would you feel if you lost your pension and/or half your yearly salary? he took the money away and didn't put any of it back in just reserved it for "future use" i agree with anonymous coward my feelings; Obama seems the most level headed but lacks experience, most of the others have experience but aren't levelheaded, then there's huckabee and paul. huckabee = extremist and paul = expectations set way too high (though mostly good ideas in theory)

Re:Technology is a business

[jx100]

If we don't ask the question, how will we know who shares the positions? It isn't automatically a given that any candidate holds these positions simply because of political party. Obama largely does, but (as far as I know) Hillary does not, despite the fact that both are currently campaigning for the same position under the same party.

Re:Technology is a business

[Kohath]

To your first question: Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, and etc in that order.

How would you feel if you lost your pension and/or half your yearly salary?

The government already takes almost half of my yearly salary. I feel bad about it. And I don't have a pension -- I work in the private sector.

Re:Technology is a business

[hoffmanbike]

so you don't like licensed drivers, or educators? (i can understand the state parks if you never use them) so what if your private sector 401k was frozen, or your company went belly up (like enron), how would you feel then? that's the same plight numerous MA state workers face right now. (i too am private sector, but know many state employees who are not happy with romney)

Re:Technology is a business

[Kohath]

so you don't like licensed drivers, or educators?

No. A license does not provide the ability to drive. And "No" to government education -- education does not require government workers. And "No" to government parks staffed with government workers -- start a foundation if you want parks. "No" to government libraries too -- start a private foundation if you want libraries.

That would save a lot more than enough money for the police and firefighters and prison guards -- all actual legitimate government functions (though private-sector fire departments exist too) -- to have retirement plans. Plus we could all have huge tax cuts and freedom and choice.

Re:Technology is a business

[hoffmanbike]

i can dig that, i still think public schools and libraries are a good thing.. not nearly as good as they could be but much better then nothing. freedom of choice sucks if you can't afford your choice, or there are no choices.

Re:Technology is a business

[drsmithy]

?? Living in the UK, I didn't even know the USA had an active socialist party until I googled it in order to reply to you; from my perspective the US politics has two centre right parties, one is just further right than the other. Modern English[sic]* politics is similar, we have three right of centre parties instead of two.

Being Australian, with a fairly similar political spectrum to the UK, I would have expected a Pom to perceive the Democrats and Repbulicans as Right and Far Right ;).

Re:Technology is a business

[rujholla]

Why is this flamebait??? Moderators just because you disagree with what they are saying doesn't make it flamebait or trolling

Re:Technology is a business

[JavaLord]

Well, the only one who understands economics and business is Romney. Since technology companies and their employees are what makes "technology" happen, Romney is the best.

While I have a lot of respect for businessmen who build their own empires, Romney had quite a headstart since his father was a millionaire and had plenty of connections Mitt could take advantage of.

So, Mitt's 'understanding" of economics is basically 'have a rich, politically connected daddy'.

The others primarily think that business (including the technology business) exists to produce goods and wealth for them to tax so they can redistribute it to politically-connected unproductive folks.

I doubt McCain feels that way, I know Paul doesn't. I'm not sure about Huckabee. As for income redistribution going to those who are politically connected, that isn't all that true, would you say the people who receive welfare are politically connected?

Re:Technology is a business

[VJ42]

Being Australian, with a fairly similar political spectrum to the UK, I would have expected a Pom to perceive the Democrats and Repbulicans as Right and Far Right ;). In general, people here in the UK probably do, but I'm fairly liberal (economically) myself so that's probably just my bias showing.
For example in this country some of my beliefs are fringe and\or controversial, such as belief in more liberal gun control laws (not as far as the US though) & I'm not opposed to more private sector involvement in things like health and education as long as they remain free at point of use. However I'm still labelled a socialist by many Americans on the 'net because of that final point.
I usually tell them to come back to me when they've had actual socialists either in power or as the main opposition within living memory.

Al Gore

[ryanisflyboy]

He did create the thing, you know.

During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.

Re:Al Gore

[Daniel Dvorkin]

And Vint Cerf agrees with him.

Re:Al Gore

[zerocool^]

Al Gore did what every politician on the planet does. If he/she signs on as a sponsor, co-sponsor, or especially namesake of a bill that funds X, and X is successful, the politician later takes credit for creating X.

"I took the initiative in creating lower teen pregnancy rates"

"I took the initiative in creating cleaner air"

"I took the initiative in creating jobs by lowering corporate taxes"

or whatever.

"I took the initiative in creating the internet" is no more far-fetched than to assume a politician *actually* lowered teen pregnancy rates, *actually* used their own hands and knowledge to create cleaner air, or *actually* increased the number of jobs available in the US directly.

I wish this meme would die.

~Wx

Check the candidate web sites

[polin8]

I was impressed by Obama's technology issues page:

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/

The summary points are:

        * Ensure an open Internet.
        * Create a transparent and connected democracy.
        * Encourage a modern communications infrastructure.
        * Employ technology to solve our nation's most pressing problems.
        * Improve America's competitiveness.

The list is pretty much "policy speak" but the detailed initiatives indicate a good grasp of the issues and a reasonable stance on the direction we need to move.

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[ccguy]

Check the candidate web sites

Yeah, we can't be bothered to follow TFA link (let alone read TFA) when there is one and here you are asking us to do the research ourselves :-)

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[Anonymous Coward]

And he knows his complexity theory.

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[Lemmy Caution]

Technology is part of culture, too. And I believe Obama is probably the best candidate from the perspective of overcoming a lot of the old blue-state/red-state cliches and antagonisms. It may sound hackneyed to say this, but I actually did feel stirrings of patriotic (in the sense of commitment to a community, not in terms of jingoism, nationalism, or "national branding") feeling after his South Carolina speech. So much of the divisive rhetoric we see in forums are really perpetuations of crude stereotypes and tired arguments which rely on them.

If there is anything Obama connotes to me, above and beyond his policy positions (which I am generally OK with - though I'm also OK with a lot of HRC's positions, but can't stand her) its the return of a culture of listening, of not seeing conservatives or liberals as "the enemy", but as fellow citizens. It's an idealistic position, but maybe I'm a little tired of cynicism. "Cynicism is the only form in which base souls can approach honesty." - F. Nietzsche.

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[tomhudson]

Employ technology to solve our nation's most pressing problems.

Most pressing problems:

1. Lack of universal, affordable health care
2. Budget deficit has mortgaged several generations' future
3. Housing bubble bust, impending bank collapses, 2 million homes to be foreclosed, etc.,
4. Real inflation (not the BS numbers that don't count essentials like food and energy)
5. Foreign policy in a shambles

Gee, technology will sure solve these problems ...

Technology is only a tool. The political will to address the above problems has been seriously lacking during this century - on the contrary, its politicians who have created these problems in the first place.

Is Obama going to toss out the HMOs? I doubt it. Is Obama going to figure out some way to get investors to agree to write off over a trillion dollars of bad mortgages without causing a financial collapse? Gee, that's some "technology" - Steve Jobs would like his reality distortion field back ...

Actually, Jobs would probably have been a better candidate.

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[iminplaya]

It's called "charisma", and it's been proven to be very dangerous. It alters the mind.

If you want to end war and stuff you got to sing loud.

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[cduffy]

Lack of universal, affordable health care [...] Is Obama going to toss out the HMOs?

No, but he's going to give them competition. Private healthcare plans will remain available, but a publicly funded healthcare plan will be available in addition, providing competition. Individuals will be able to get rebates based on their income level to help pay for whichever healthcare system (be it a private company or the public one) they choose. This may not be "tossing out" the HMOs, but it's surely not going to make them happy.

Foreign policy in a shambles

Yup, it's a mess. However, Obama has a great deal of credibility in the foreign press, and being a relative newcomer to national politics (having most of his experience state-level and below) helps him disassociate himself (and his administration) from the US's disastrous policies of late. Indeed, his stated intention to avoid some of the US's more longstanding and counterproductive policies (like refusing to even talk to folks we disagree with) is likely to do some good.

As for economic issues -- yes, the US economy is a mess. Obama has a plan, of course -- every serious candidate claims they do, after all -- but I haven't looked at the details well enough to support it here.

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[Lemmy Caution]

Well, no. There are charismatic leaders who rely on division and antagonism. Obama is often awkward, though likable.

This really is a change of vision. It isn't about him per se, though he's the representative of this shift of perspective in the context of this election. The popular term of art seems to be "political realignment", but it also is an evolution of attitude, and it explains why he's popular among younger voters.

Consider this: during the Republican primaries in Florida, the lead delegates took such pains to paint their opponents as "liberals," and themselves as "true conservatives." What that tells me is that neither of them really want to be the president for that substantial percentage of the population that is, indeed conservative. They're happy with carving out a thin plurality that lets the squeak into office, and then let us sink into our national rancor. HRC is no different in this regard - she wants to be president based on her position with a coalition of interests she hobbles together: witness her attack on Obama's observation that the Republicans have, since Reagan, really been the "party of ideas."

This isn't to say that there aren't real divisions of interest and of viewpoint, but the way that those divisions are exploited, exaggerated and turned into fundamental sociocultural categories has been corrosive. It's not even partisanship per se, because there is so much cultural and identity baggage with it.

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[Heddahenrik]

Seems to need some hypothetical translation:

                * Ensure an open Internet.
This means that universities, ISPs and companies have to censor the access to the Internet so that it can be ensured that we still can have an open Internet.

                * Create a transparent and connected democracy.
The government should have total access to all your Internet activities.

                * Encourage a modern communications infrastructure.
The companies who bribe me and my friends should get money from the government.

                * Employ technology to solve our nation's most pressing problems.
Spend government funding on DRM and Internet filtering.

                * Improve America's competitiveness.
Strike down hard on filesharing and make it easier to get patents so that an even bigger part of USA can focus on being in court.

So... I'm not impressed as that can mean anything.

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[tomhudson]

Unless the economic issue is addressed, all bets are off. For example, you can't offer tax incentives to compete with HMOs if you don't have any money and need every cent you bring in; after a decade of spending 103% of income, the US consumer is beyond broke. The government? Once you bring the off-the-books accounts for entitlements such as social security back onto the books, the US has a federal deficit of almost $80 trillion dollars. That's obligations of a million dollars per family.

There's no way that's getting paid, unless the US does some massive inflating of the currency, which carries its own problems. The question isnt "if" the US is going to default - its a question of whether the feds formally default, or just inflate their way out of debt.

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[buffer-overflowed]

Obama's economic plan has gotten the best scores from a variety of financial publications. The stimulus portion is basically an immediate infusion of $250 per person making under I think $75,000 a year(although I'm not positive on that, it might be just a blanket check for simplicity's sake), with the option for an additional $250 if necessary. In the long term it's lowering taxes on that group, eliminating taxes on seniors making under $50,000, and adding payroll matching credits for Social Security. To make up for the budget shortfall he's going to raise capital gains, close some corporate tax loopholes/havens, remove the social security contribution cap(currently going to be $100k for the first year of his administration), and raise taxes on the upper end of the spectrum(>$250k/year). There's also been some mumbling about making Uncle Sam hate the self employed less.

Basically the opposite of trickle-down economics.

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[cduffy]

Yup. I've a few of his plans for trimming the budget, and not all are things that would be popular -- for instance, he's talking about serious cuts at NASA (mothballing work on the Constellation program) to fund his education plan. Obviously, nobody who cares about science likes cutting NASA -- but then, something's gotta give.

Now, that said, I remember back when we got a big democrat in the White House and we had a huge deficit and all the Republicans said the sky was falling and our economy would never recover... and it did, and the government actually managed to run a surplus for a while, until we got a neocon in office. Granted, that surplus was due in large part to smoke and mirrors, but it's a lot better than not even being able to show a smoke-and-mirrors surplus, isn't it? So -- I don't think the economy is an absolutely insurmountable problem, as long as it's addressed, and addressed seriously by folks willing to make hard decisions that will make constituents unhappy. Obama does have as part of his platform enforcement of pay-as-you-go rules, elimination of large classes of corporate subsidies, and increasing the social security income cap. Obviously, that's not enough to fix what's broken -- but in conjunction with having specific cuts planned to support his educational and healthcare programs, it's not a bad place to start.

And as for the hard decisions on what to cut -- part of the advantage of Obama's national unity push is to be able to get support for the hard decisions, so it'll be possible to get the political will to fix what's broke when it comes time to do so, even when that'll mean some tough sacrifices. I think he'll be a lot more effective at getting bipartisan buy-in when hard decisions need to be made than the candidate with the ridiculously high negative ratings coming out of the polls.

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[Anonymous Coward]

Step 1: Get elected president
Step 2: ???
Step 3:

• Ensure an open Internet
• Create a transparent and connected democracy
• Encourage a modern communications infrastructure
• Employ technology to solve our nation's most pressing problems
• Improve America's competitiveness

It's easy to sit back and say what he wants to accomplish, but I highly doubt he has any plan whatsoever to get it done; just like the underpants gnomes.

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[TubeSteak]

It may sound hackneyed to say this, but I actually did feel stirrings of patriotic (...) feeling after his South Carolina speech. Not to burst your bubble, but all those patriotic stirrings really mean is that Obama has 3 good speech writers.
The NY Times did a profile on Obama's head speechwriter, Jon Favreau:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/fashion/20speechwriter.html

TFA mentions that Obama's campaign brought onboard a guy who worked with Ted Sorensen, JFK's speechwriter, but I've read elsewhere on the internets that Sorensen has endorsed Obama & is lending a hand with speech writing.

Even if Obama doesn't have unique policy ideas, he has some quality guys putting words in his mouth.

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[polin8]

Did you actually follow the link and read the policy descriptions? That list is not policy descriptions, it's sound bites. There's significantly more detail on the site. Cynicism is an appropriate attitude to our political process and it's participants but if you don't take the opportunity to back it up with evidence it's just ignorance. So ... I'm not impressed by your lack of effort.

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[tomhudson]

Hopefully you're right. I just don't see any real solution to the budget + housing meltdown problem, beyond taking measures that would restore fiscal sanity, and which will be VERY unpopular, because they will involve a serious cut in the standard of living.

1. Is the US ready for a 5% "pay down the deficit" sales tax on every good sold? That would only raise a bit more than a trillion per year, but its a start.
2. Is the US ready for $4 - $5 / gallon gasoline?
3. Is the US prepared to end mortgage tax deductability?
4. Is the US prepared to change its drug laws so that they can start dealing with soft drugs as a social problem, rather than a criminal one, and cut the number of people in jail, and stop feeding the drug gangs' profits?

I don't see it. Everyone is going to go "Hey, I deserve to be an exception!" So, since people won't go for that, the only other solution is for someone to do a Kodos the Executioner? Because that's what its going to take - a couple million people foreclosed, a couple of big-name bank failures, and a couple trillion dollars of bad debt allowed to "work its way through the system.", or massive tax hikes, which are politically suicidal.

It was done in Canada - a 7% GST (Goods and Services Tax) on all sales. It had a brutal effect on the economy - the first "Made In Canada" recession - but it DID reverse the federal budget deficit.

From the second-highest to the lowest of the G-7, and for 2007, Canada posted a federal surplus of $11 billion, despite increasing expenditures by 6% to improve health care, etc. Only 13 more years to go, and net debt will be zero.

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[riseoftheindividual]

It may sound hackneyed to say this, but I actually did feel stirrings of patriotic (in the sense of commitment to a community

If you weren't religious before, congratulations, now you have a good idea of how religions rally their congregations.

Good feelings do not make a good president. There has to be more than that.

If there is anything Obama connotes to me, above and beyond his policy positions (which I am generally OK with - though I'm also OK with a lot of HRC's positions, but can't stand her) its the return of a culture of listening, of not seeing conservatives or liberals as "the enemy", but as fellow citizens. It's an idealistic position, but maybe I'm a little tired of cynicism.

With all due respect, idealists have a tendancy to call all realistic viewpoints "cynical", when those viewpoints don't support their idealist goals. We don't need more idealism now. We need more realism. The sooner you people who keep clinging to idealistic views and daydreams understand that the divisions in this country are idealistic in nature, the sooner we can actually get everyone back down to reality, discussing things that could actually change things for the better. Realistically speaking, exactly how do you see obama being able to stop the rank and file republicans from continuing division? Has he done anything to demonstrate that he realistically has an ability to do that?

Obama has a good marketing campaign, I certainly don't feel any illwill towards him, but he also doesn't have a track record that clearly says he'll change anything. If he wins, I will respect him as my president and he will have my full support until if/when he demonstrates he is just another politician, but I won't be voting for him personally. I'm voting for the only one candidate I know of who has a track record that gives a logical reason to believe in their stated platform. Good feelings and idealistic daydreams don't cut it anymore. Our civil liberties are being eroded and now is not the time to let good feelings get in the way of logic and reason.

Or if you're enamored with the mainstream view points as held by those who watch 4.5 hours of tele a day and engage in other incredibly mind numbing behaviors that define "normal" and "mainstream" in this country, I suppose it's always the time to go for the good feelings.

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[the phantom]

Yes, the writers wrote the words, but do you think that he would get up and say them if he didn't believe in them?

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[volkris]

So what you're saying is he wants to do his darnedest to make sure there's less money to expand businesses, less money to hire new employees, less available capital to grow the economy, lower returns on investment, and less retirement certainty... then just hope for the best?

Good plan from his point of view: once we have to all beg the government for sustenance, those in power will have really nice positions.

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[buffer-overflowed]

Poorer people tend to spend most of their incomes, hence stimulus at that level = greater money flow in the economy, which means more wealth for everyone. Also I seem to recall the 90s being pretty alright, why there was massive amounts of capital available for vague promises, and cutting taxes on the VC/wealthy population hasn't seemed to do jack shit, and never seems to do jack shit, so.... maybe be a bit less doom and gloom.

But hey, keep shooting for that voodoo economics gravy train that never fucking happens. Hey, I've got another great idea for you, the gold standard.

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[m3000]

The thing that impressed me the most was when I heard his podcast on Net Neutrality back in mid 2006: http://obama.senate.gov/podcast/060608-network_neutral/

And I thought "Wow, this guy gets it!" I had semi-followed him since the 2004 DNC speech, and in everything I read about him I like him that much more.

There is also an interview with TechCrunch that goes into a lot of details: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/26/qa-with-senator-barack-obama-on-key-technology-issues/
(a shorter summary is here: http://www.techpolicycentral.com/2007/11/barack-obamas-take-on-tech.php)

Also I LOVE the fact that his entire campaign is supported by individual donations (of which I am one of them, and it's also the first time I've ever given money to a politician). He's not beholden to any special interest group once he gets in.

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[volkris]

It's unfortunate that so many Americans share in that terribly oversimplified understanding of economics. It's a failure of our education system, I suppose, that people have such a vague understanding of how money works.

Tell me, what do you think "rich" people do with the money they don't spend? While the poor folks spend a larger proportion of their income, as you indicate, with plenty of it being skimmed off in taxes or heading overseas where the goods were produced, the more well off invest their money, providing capital that largely stays here in this country laying the foundation for further growth and wealth for everyone. Your point of view is completely backwards: it assumes "rich" people shove their money under their mattresses where it does no good for anyone when in fact their money is the investment that fuels our economy.

Remember: for better or worse credit is a vital part of our economy, and the capital to back credit doesn't come from purchases. It comes from investment, including deposits at banks.

But hey, let's address the good times of the 90s since the explanation is so simple. The 90s boom came about precisely because of enormous worker productivity gains as computers were better integrated into businesses. More productivity meant more efficiencies which meant (get ready for it) more available capital for growing industry and the economy.

See the connection? Our economy is best grown and supported through the availability of capital, whether it comes from increased efficiencies or through letting the "rich" invest more money, making it available for growth.

This notion that giving granny a couple more bucks to spend is the way to grow the economy is a flat out lie that appeals especially to granny and others who get a good feeling from the transfer of wealth.

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[weston]

So what you're saying is he wants to do his darnedest to make sure there's less money to expand businesses, less money to hire new employees

What this policy essentially says is that more of the money businesses use to hire or otherwise has to be won in the consumer market rather than lending/equity markets. There's evidence to suggest that in a recession lower/middle class spending drops less than investment does, so it makes sense to put the money where it will move.

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[Lord Ender]

Hey... all we need to do is invent some super-cheap energy source and things are cool!

It could happen.

In the meantime, I'm not holding any fixed-coupon bonds. Stocks or commodities are the only sane investments.

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[volkris]

Simple moving money doesn't necessarily lead to economic growth, especially considering international trade where plenty of the money can end up moving overseas.

Lending markets provide a great deal of the capital required for economic expansion, and if as you say lower/middle class spending doesn't drop as much then it makes even more sense to move to prop up the lending markets. There are various "easy" tools available to accomplish this including further lowering of capital gains taxes and other positive and non-negative incentives.

Focus on keeping money moving and you'll be doing it at the expense of encouraging further growth. At best the moving money approach largely maintains the current state while in reality it lends itself to "leaks". Instead let's look to the future, restoring growth by encouraging investment.

And all that's not even considering that the current problem is centered in the lending markets... let's fix it at the source.

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[buffer-overflowed]

You presume I have no understanding of economics simply because I hold to a demand-side instead of supply-side theory. It's you who doesn't seem to have a very good grasp on it, as you're painting a rather complex issue in black&white terms, which is the most typical phallacy of the modern conservative.

First off, investment occurs wherever there is opportunity. There is no guarantee that these opportunities will be domestic, we do a lot of foreign investature and a lot of foreign moneys flow into the US(for instance a lot of the currently held bad debt due to the housing lending crisis and credit crisis is foreign). So the idea that even a majority of it will flow into the local economy is contentious at best, flat out wrong at worst. That level is global chief, and we're talking US economy here. There's a side argument here about the inequalities inherant in globalization due in large part because of barriers to free trade, and barriers to the free movement of labor, but we'll ignore that for now.

Now, what do you think happens to the money granny spends at the store? It doesn't go poof overseas. Some of it does, but hey, it's a global economy. The vast majority stays here, and more importantly stays local and encourages domestic investment in order to make money off the resulting increased money flow and uptick in demand. The difference between this and cutting taxes on the upper percent is the manner in which the money flows.

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[volkris]

It's a fair assumption that you would have little knowledge of economics, as that's the case for most people who call for spending increases as a means to shore up the economy. Congrats: you seem to be in the minority who understands his opinion in the context of an actual economic theory.

As for answering what you said, there's a good deal that can be done at the federal level to encourage domestic investment, especially in the form of lowering factors that discourage it. We could even go so far as to work to make the US something of a tax haven.

Unfortunately our representatives have indicated no interest in fixing anything fundamental. Reid even laid it out on the table, naming as a top priority that the legislation be understandable to the common man. Lord knows that's not going to happen through better economic education.

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but also do not forget that he also has plans to reform the patent system in order to properly reward the inventors without letting abusive companies to monopolize over inventions and kill competition. Monopolization is killing the world therefore I think this one is very important, not only to th US but for the rest of the world.

Re:Check the candidate web sites

[buffer-overflowed]

We could, but making the US a tax haven, or cutting taxes on the "rich", in the short term reduces revenue(which means we should cut spending), and there's no guarantee of a resulting uptick in the tax base from investment to offset it. To raise spending you need to either raise taxes or raise the tax base, otherwise, government or not, once you start selling bonds to pay off previous bonds, well it just gets silly. In terms of US fiscal policy we probably should raise taxes or cut spending now, since the federal budget isn't balanced.

It's doubtful any political party is going to cut spending, so we need to raise taxes somewhere. And now we're into tax policy, where you can find dozens of economists to support just about any position you choose to take. Personally, I think it makes more sense to have a progressive tax code, for a variety of reasons, but we've drifted so far off of that there's no point in hammering that little debate out.

Obama good, Huckabee bad

[abburdlen]

If Obama is good enough for xkcd then he's good enough for me.

I imagine Huckabee is the worst on technology issues unless of course they were mentioned in the bible.

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[urbanriot]

I agree, Obama actually understands technology, patent issues and creative rights. I'm Canadian, so my vote doesn't matter however I've noticed other candidates seem to be less educated in these areas, or relying on basic knowledge; however Obama seems to have personal knowledge in these areas.

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[cduffy]

would take away your gun

I don't have a semi-automatic, which is what he's mostly opposed to -- and he's certainly much less extreme on the issue than Clinton. Consider the alternatives.

he IS a lawyer.

A civil rights lawyer. Don't you think that makes a difference?

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[daeg]

Luckily, gun rights are something that are easily re-granted through the court system and by future administrations. Economic and foreign policy, on the other hand, are much harder to fight for and to correct past mistakes.

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[Tyler Durden]

What's wrong with semi-automatic weapons? Laws against fully automatic weapons I can see, and they're pretty much banned for use by civilians in the US anyways.

Most fervent anti-gun people I hear from don't even know the difference between semi and fully automatic guns, so when they hear about legislation against semi-automatic weapons they're thinking of something completely different.

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[wellingj]

It starts with semi-automatic but where does it end?
But good point on the lawyer perspective. Its pretty clear that Bush and Company don't really get the concept of civil rights.

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[kayditty]

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Those things you mention are a form of safety. You make no sense to me whatever.

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[anti-human 1]

I tried to do a little checking on Obama, what exactly does he consider a 'semi-automatic'? Rifle? Pistol? I guess I just haven't found the context. From what I could find, it seems black powder and bolt/lever action are okay?

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[cduffy]

My understanding was that it was a technical term -- but having only a shotgun in my house, I'm not particularly well-informed. A post discussing some of Obama's positions is here. I haven't been able to find a reliable (non-biased) source for the Obama's anti-semi-automatic position, but it is clear that he wants to enforce existing laws and to make sure that individual cities aren't blocked from having their own gun laws which are more restrictive than the federal laws.

Either way, gun control is not even remotely close to the top of his agenda, even if he were looking at supporting legislation on the topic from the Presidential bully pulpit (which, again -- he's trying to go for bipartisanship, and this is a good way to ruin that, so I don't see this issue being pushed) he's stated in the past that whatever gun control legislation he develops would not require existing owners to relinquish their weapons.

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[ciscoguy01]

I don't have a semi-automatic, which is what he's mostly opposed to

Semi automatic, like a revolver for instance? A semi automatic is a weapon that fires one time each pull of the trigger, like a revolver.

That's from the popular mechanics article in the first post. Both Obama and Clinton are against your having a gun. I didn't make that up.

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[cduffy]

I'm not accusing you of making anything up. I can, however, point out that gun control is much higher on Clinton's agenda than Obama's, and that Obama has made it quite clear that he doesn't support forcing existing gun owners to relinquish their weapons, and that I personally doubt that he would make an issue of it in his tenure as President anyhow, given that the higher-priority items on his agenda require bipartisan support.

The "issues" list on his web site doesn't even have gun control as a bullet point; that's how low-priority it is.

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[cduffy]

What's wrong with semi-automatic weapons?

Nothing. I don't agree with this purported position on this issue... but in trying to find some solid basis to back it up, I'm actually having quite a bit of trouble doing so.

The only supported positions I can find vis-a-vis Obama's position on gun control:

• Existing laws should be enforced
• Municipalities should be able to impose their own gun control laws, overriding federal standards
• Obama will not support any law seeking to remove guns from their existing, legitimate owners

Either way, it's not a topic he considers a high priority -- which is good, because it's one where I (and a great many other people) agree with him substantially.

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[cduffy]

It starts with semi-automatic but where does it end?

Actually, I'm not even sure it starts with semi-automatics. See my retraction here, as I was unable to find a reliable, unbiased source which agreed with that position.

Obama's official, supported position on gun control appears to be simply that existing laws should be enforced, and that municipalities should be able to override federal law with more stringent restrictions should they choose to do so.

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[Breakfast Pants]

His wife is (was) an IP lawyer--she understands restricting those creative rights with the best of them.

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[rohan972]

The "issues" list on his web site doesn't even have gun control as a bullet point; that's how low-priority it is.

Or how much he would like to avoid talking about it pre-election.

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[The One and Only]

No, a revolver isn't semiautomatic. A revolver is a revolver. A semiautomatic pistol doesn't require you to cock it between each shot--if you cock it once, it automatically recocks when fired.

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[gambolt]

Under Howard Dean's DNC, the Democrats have supported a Federalist position on gun control. That makes a lot of sense. Let areas where there is a real scourge of gun violence ban guns (big northeastern cities, socal) an let people keep them in places where gun ownership is a big cultural issue (the south, and mountain states).

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true - the history left behind by mass shootings and the like leave behind traumatic scars that are just as difficult to overcome as those left by a damaged economy.

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[smartr]

I think we could all agree that deep down xkcd wishes Ron Paul would win, and Obama is simply his pragmatic choice.

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[cduffy]

He's talked about it, I just had to do some digging. See recent replies elsewhere in this thread.

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[ciscoguy01]

Why, I have a double action revolver right here. Semi automatic, to be sure.
Not that many would use it that way, but if you pull the trigger it fires, no matter what.

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[The One and Only]

Okay, you got me there. A double action revolver has a hell of a hard trigger pull if it isn't cocked though. Wouldn't count on that if I wanted to actually hit what I was trying to aim that.

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[wellingj]

municipalities should be able to override federal law with more stringent restrictions should they choose to do so.

I'm pretty sure the Fourteenth Amendment would have something to say about that in the event it goes to far:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.

So while a total gun-ban would be out, I guess I could see the point of full-auto ban. But the idea that a semi-automatic pistol can do more harm to more people than a man with a bolt action sniper rifle is kinda silly don't you think? But yea like your retraction said... moot point.

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[theguru]

My .38 snub nose double action revolver has about the same trigger pull as a stock .45 1911 semiauto.

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[Fear the Clam]

When my wife and I took our concealed carry shooting tests in Boston, all applicants had to fire double action using the Boston Police's revolvers. My wife would have much rather used her own Hi-Power.

On the semi-auto oddness, Texas differentiates between carry permits for semi-auto or revolver, so all applicants are encouraged to use semi-auto, even if they have to borrow one.

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[rohan972]

He's talked about it, I just had to do some digging.

So he's not determined to have it unknown, but he's not bringing it to people's attention. Many people won't bother digging. There can be a difference between how a polititian intends to act and how they think their stance will affect their election chances.

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[cduffy]

There can be a difference between how a polititian intends to act and how they think their stance will affect their election chances.

Yup. Being moderate on gun control (compared to Clinton) doesn't help him with the hardcore Democratic base, while being strongly in favor of gun control (compared to your average NRA member) doesn't help him with the oft-Libertarian-leaning moderates he'd like to court. It's not necessarily an easy line to walk, which is why I can understand him not bringing the subject up too loudly or often... though while his web site is still silent, it seems to be coming up more now that he's campaigning in some traditionally red Super Tuesday states.

Mind you, back in 1998 in the IL state legislature, Obama was much more loudly and publicly in favor of very strong gun control than he is now, and I think that he's indirectly supporting his intent to allow gun bans in inner cities (discussed in The Audacity of Hope) by leaving that course action to the state and local legislatures -- having stated that he supports allowing local government to enact gun control measures more strict than the federal standards should they so choose. That said, some of his recent statements directly contradict the boxes he checked on the 1998 State National Legislative Political Awareness Test -- and I think it's reasonable, when assessing an individual's position, to take the words that come out of their mouth to mean more than boxes checked on a form-based survey of their positions, and to acknowledge that people can change their minds on things over the course of a decade.

More recently, he's supported legislation (which Clinton voted against) to prevent the government from confiscating legitimately owned firearms in disaster areas (as happened post-Katrina), and he's publicly stated during his campaigning that he won't support legislation which confiscates firearms which one already owns (though this leaves room open to ban trafficking or sale).

So -- he's surely not going to get the NRA's support, but the hardcore anti-gun types aren't likely to be happy with his positions either. Personally, I'm opposed to gun control (other than, 'ya know, hitting what you shoot at) -- but I'm no single-issue voter, and I think that the places where I support Obama far outweigh the areas in which we differ.

Re:Obama good, Huckabee bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comment shows both a lack of understanding of the Bible and a prejudice towards those who do understand it. The Bible has many things to say that should affect a politician's policy views on all matters (not only technology). I believe the issue here is whether the President would do his best to ensure equality and justice and to prevent oppression/usury/corruption. Obviously no specific technological knowledge is required for this (and I'm sure that whomever the President is, he will have advisors to cut to the heart of such matters for him so that he can base policy on good information). Whether you believe it or not, the Bible is the authority on the subject of morality and justice and that is what all people care about (geeks included).

none

[Anonymous Coward]

The ongoing crisis in the financial economy is now reaching a critical level and we'll be lucky to make to the Nov elections without a complete banking collapse. It is going to be a rough term for whomever is elected.

Re:none

[Anonymous Coward]

It is going to be a rough term for whomever is elected.

Yes, I'm sure the rich men who are in bed with the Fed are going to have a very rough time.

</sarcasm>

2008 has me disillusioned, politically

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't exactly technology related, but the 2008 race has me depressed ever since it became clear John Edwards wasn't going to get his party's nomination. On the Democratic side you have a question of which shallow personality cult is best. On the Republican side, it's a question of who supports Bush's worst policies the most. Meanwhile the one guy talking about things I'd like to see implemented has dropped out of the race as a distant third. I'm a registered Democrat, but I think this reflects very poorly on what that party values, and, even though I feel strongly that the Republican candidates are much, much worse (in terms of, say, economic policy, or stem cell research), I'm considering not voting at all in 2008, because Obama and Hilary just don't have me the slightest bit motivated.

Re:2008 has me disillusioned, politically

[cduffy]

a question of which shallow personality cult is best

The media doesn't represent him that way, but Obama has plenty of substance; it just takes a little research to find it, rather than listing to the sound bites on the evening news. Go do your homework -- you'll be very pleasantly surprised.

Re:2008 has me disillusioned, politically

[amRadioHed]

That's true. I was planning on voting for Edwards all along but when he dropped out I switched to Obama. The more I've learned about him in the past few days the more I like him.

Re:2008 has me disillusioned, politically

[Anonymous Coward]

I appreciate your reply. The problem is, I have done my homework, and the more I know about Obama, the more I think he's only feeding the lines that everyone wants to hear and has no intention of backing up. He hasn't done anything remarkable in the Senate other than use it as a stepping stone to running for president. Some of his comments rub me the wrong way too, as if he has a very shallow understanding of topics that sounds plausible to most young people, or to those that haven't been paying attention over the years, but don't really hold up. Like his comments about Ronald Reagan. I recently heard also that NY congressman Charlie Rangel had called some of Obama's comments about the history behind Civil Rights Act "absolutely stupid". My own impression of Obama is of someone who's not in touch with the facts, has no concern with getting them right, and thinks that the country owes him the presidency.

I liked Obama in '04, when he was running virtually unopposed for Senate. I thought, here's a guy who does a good speech, and with mass appeal. I was interested to hear the pundits say then that Obama, half black, was popular with Illinois' rural white voters. But that and a good speech here and there doesn't make a good president. Electable, sure, and I have no doubt that Obama will sweep many of the primaries. But that only says that Americans are more interested in a popularity contest than getting things right.

Re:2008 has me disillusioned, politically

[cduffy]

I'm glad you've done your homework; since you're doing so, I'll do mine as well and go try to find references for what you're saying.

Charlie Rangel had called some of Obama's comments about the history behind Civil Rights Act "absolutely stupid"

That quote was defending Clinton after her comment implying that MLK was all talk; if you look at its context, it's surrounded by a mischaracterization of Obama's position as well.

Like his comments about Ronald Reagan.

You mean the comments which were blatently misrepresented by the Clinton campaign?

My own impression of Obama is of someone who's not in touch with the facts, has no concern with getting them right, and thinks that the country owes him the presidency.

If the sources you've given so far are representative of the factual basis of your impressions, I think you should be a little more careful about where and how you do your research.

Re:2008 has me disillusioned, politically

[wellingj]

Prisoners always grow an affinity towards their Captors.

Re:2008 has me disillusioned, politically

[amRadioHed]

+1 Insightful. That's explains why we all love Bush so much after being stuck with him for 7 years.

Piss off paultard.

Re:2008 has me disillusioned, politically

[Anonymous Coward]

That quote was defending Clinton after her comment implying that MLK was all talk; if you look at its context, it's surrounded by a mischaracterization of Obama's position as well.

Okay. I haven't seen the whole background on that. It just rang true with the opinion I already thought of the man.

Like his comments about Ronald Reagan.

You mean the comments which were blatently misrepresented by the Clinton campaign?

Yep, those. That the Clinton campaign has nothing to do with the fact that I don't like what he said and think it's a bad analysis. I just listened the video that you linked to, and my opinion on it has not changed.

How about a reply to this comment:

He hasn't done anything remarkable in the Senate other than use it as a stepping stone to running for president.

Re:2008 has me disillusioned, politically

[cduffy]

That the Clinton campaign has nothing to do with the fact that I don't like what he said and think it's a bad analysis.

I certainly see a lot of people who identify themselves as "Reagan Republicans", and think that a President needs to be pretty darned effective at representing a change in direction to strike that kind of chord. That said, let's agree to disagree on that one -- my involvement in politics in that part of my life didn't go past watching the evening news, so I'm not really in a position to make a call one way or the other.

He hasn't done anything remarkable in the Senate other than use it as a stepping stone to running for president.

To quote from this essay (which I strongly urge you to read in full):

So my little data point is: while Obama has not proposed his Cosmic Plan for World Peace, he has proposed a lot of interesting legislation on important but undercovered topics. I can't remember another freshman Senator who so routinely pops up when I'm doing research on some non-sexy but important topic, and pops up because he has proposed something genuinely good.

If Obama were in fact simply preening himself for the Presidency, this hardly seems like the kind of legislation on which he'd spend his time.

Re:2008 has me disillusioned, politically

[wellingj]

Putting our political beliefs aside, don't you think we are fast becoming prisoners with very little choices in our voting options? I watched almost all of the debates and these politicians for the most part agreed with each other on mainly everything and just squabbled over technicalities and their record. I hope this isn't an indication of the consensus with in the party system, other wise we already have railroad of a future already laid out before us by the parties. And that is what truly saddens me. The fact that no one will pay attention to any thing not considered the 'norm' is dogma. Is that what you want?

Re:2008 has me disillusioned, politically

[amRadioHed]

Oh, I absolutely agree our voting system is beyond fucked. My ideal candidates would actually be Kucinich or Dodd but none of them had a chance. Before we have a chance of some real change in our government our voting system needs to see some real change:

1) IRV. Our first across the line voting system does not work for more than two candidates.
2) Public funding of campaigns. Candidates should compete in something other than fund raising.
3) Get rid of the broken electoral system. It hasn't been anything like what the founding fathers intended for a very long time so we need to stop pretending there is some use to something that amounts to just a popular vote where some citizens count more than others.

Those are the big three. There are other things that would help too, such as debates being run by independent groups instead of these joke debates run by the big networks.

That said while Obama isn't my ideal candidate, and the media love fest early on was a huge turnoff for me, he is a strong and well qualified candidate from what I've seen. There are some important differences between him and Hillary. First of course is his continuous opposition to the War in Iraq. His mostly opposes capital punishment. He hasn't gone in detail but he also doesn't seem to be a big supporter of the War on Drugs as Hillary is. And from what I know he's never wasted his time worrying about flag burning or video games.

I also get the impression that he's intellectually honest, he seems to really care about facts and reason. He even firmly believes in evolution, unlike Dr. Paul. It actually surprised me quite a bit that Ron Paul doesn't oppose ID in the classroom.

Re:2008 has me disillusioned, politically

[wellingj]

I think what Dr. Paul would oppose is a federal mandate that ID or Evolution be taught or not taught in a public school. Why take the decision out of your hands and the hands of parents in the community and put it in the hands of 535 people who don't know you or your school? One last thing that you maybe didn't think about: (doesn't oppose ID in the classroom) != (doesn't believe in Evolution)

But I agree on most of the Obama's other points that you have put forth. I just can't agree with Universal Health Care through the government. The price will bloat because it is subsidized instead of market force working upon it. And guess who will pay for it in the long run? Middle Class Me, That's who.

Take away that and add a sensible foreign policy(which he already has), and control of the Federal Reserve(which no one besides Dr. Paul talks about), and I might have Caucused for Obama.

Re:2008 has me disillusioned, politically

[amRadioHed]

I actually do realize that not opposing ID in the classroom doesn't necessarily mean he doesn't believe in Evolution, but it does at least mean that he's taken a queue from Fox News on the definition of "Fair and Balanced". The simple fact is that ID is not science and were it not for political pressure from creationists it would never have made it into a single school on its merits alone. There is really no excuse for not being aware of that fact. If the Bush appointed judge in the Dover school case didn't even buy it then please forgive me for assuming that if you say you support teaching ID in the classroom it is coded language for your support of the ID movement and the Wedge Document and all that goes along with it. Sure I could be wrong, but the burden of proof is on you to convince me. If Ron Paul also supports teaching about the FSM in science class then maybe I'll give him a second look.

Now regarding health care, from everything I've heard (caveat: I'm no expert on the subject) the US spends more money than any other developed nation for its health care and yet our health care is far from the best. For instance, we are 29th in life expectancy. Andora beats us by 5.5 years in average life span. Now it is true that we have many excellent medical facilities, maybe even the best, but that is all irrelevant when nobody but the wealthiest percentile have access to it. I think the evidence shows that a well designed government program can be at least as good as our private system.

Re:2008 has me disillusioned, politically

[wellingj]

As comical as it may seem, I'm sure Ron Paul would have no problem what so ever if your school came to a consensus that FSM should be taught for what ever reason. He would still have a problem with a Federal mandate saying yay or nay to it though. And you are looking at the problem from the wrong perspective. He doesn't give a hoot what one locality does with its local laws, or what it mandates as education from its public schools. He just doesn't want the Federal government telling people yes or no, because under the Constitution it's completely within the local government's authority to do what they want as long as the rights of the individual aren't Infringed. So being a concerned citizen I could vote in my own locality yay or nay, and have a real impact. And a lasting solution instead of these huge, large schisms that we have in national politics. I mean think about if each state government could decide things like Abortion, Gay Marriage, Drinking Age, etc. it would kinda work out better wouldn't it? About health care:
Maybe our government can provide awesome health care. Maybe it could be cheap and affordable. That still doesn't make me feel easy that the fate of my health care and my ability to care for my own well being would be explicitly tied to our Government. I'd rather I paid for it so I can call the shots.
Also why can only the wealthiest percentile have access to the most expensive cars? This is just a hunch but, I think it has something to do with supply and demand. I don't think it should be any different across the board. To do other wise is to ignore another science in my opinion.

Re:2008 has me disillusioned, politically

[amRadioHed]

Ron Paul wasn't asked if he though ID should be allowed to be taught in schools, he was asked if he though it should be taught in schools. There is a difference and if he didn't support the ID movements attempt to get religion into schools under the guise of science he had the chance to say so.

For health care, I don't think the comparison between cars and health care is an appropriate one since expensive cars are a luxury. A cheap car does everything a car needs to do. You know, I sometimes wonder if there are any real libertarians who live in poverty. To me it seems an ideology that is only held by people who don't have any real financial worries. Would they reject any government assistance if something happened and they found themselves suddenly unable to support their families (illness, disability, etc...), or are they more like those people who fight so hard to make abortion illegal for everyone else but who still take their daughter to the clinic when she "makes a mistake".

Now obviously not everyone can access the best medical care and the wealthy will always have some advantage, I'm not advocating pure socialism, but we should look to the medical systems in Europe that are far more efficient and where everyone is covered. I can afford my health care just fine at the moment so this is not a personal matter for me, it's more of a moral issue.

(PS, sorry if this isn't the most clearly worded response. I'm trying to watch my Pats as I type this)

Ob. Quote:

[earthbound kid]

Don't blame me, I voted for Cowboy Neil.

Re:Ob. Quote:

[yuda]

So where can I get that on a t-shirt?

irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

whether the candidates personally support or reject certain tech. related topics is largely irrelevant, considering I doubt they will be presiding over a majority of the things themselves, with or without heavy corporate influence.

I would be much more concerned on their economic plans and how they plan to improve the economy to ALLOW for overall improvements in technology, than I would be on actual direct improvements to technology.

shit flows downhill, but so does money.

Barack Obama

[Doug52392]

Check out the Technology section of his website. He knows what's up with net neutrality and privacy laws, and vows to change it (although that's what everyone says, I think he could really help the tech world)

Hillary Clinton, however, could possibly crash the global economy. She wants to crack down on violent video games, which, due to the pins and needles the economy is on right now, could devastate the economy if a major sector of the gaming industry would collapse. She even supports "media literacy" in the United States (aka censorship).

In my opinion Obama could do a lot of good for America. He is not a conservative, so he would be more likely to reform and change stuff that is in dire need of it.

Re:Barack Obama

[tomhudson]

Hillary Clinton, however, could possibly crash the global economy.

Too late for Clinton to claim that - Bush has prior art with the housing bubble.

Housing prices have fallen every month for the last 11 months. Predictions for the next 3 years are more of the same - with the bottom anywhere from 25% to 50% from their peaks.

That's a lot of people who will be upside-down on their mortgages, with a trillion dollars of bad debt still to work its way through the system.

This isn't news - for more than a year, its been predicted that more than 2 million people will lose their homes.

Re:Barack Obama

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, we're all geeks here, and I like games, too; but let's not get carried away with a sense of self-importance.

The US video game market is perhaps $18 billion. Projections for total worldwide market by 2010 are well under $50 billion. The US economy is about $13000 billon, recession and all. Worldwide, about $65000 billion. Even a complete loss of the entire video game industry wouldn't dent the world economy, turning millions out of their homes and causing children to starve en mass.

Re:Barack Obama

[Sparohok]

She wants to crack down on violent video games, which, due to the pins and needles the economy is on right now, could devastate the economy if a major sector of the gaming industry would collapse.

You've got to be joking. I didn't know it was possible to be so utterly lacking in perspective.

Even if every single M rated video game were permanently taken off the shelves (which nobody is proposing) the total foregone profits in 2008 would be perhaps one or two billion dollars. In contrast, the subprime mortgage crisis has caused writedowns by major investment banks on the order of $10 billion -- per bank -- in the last quarter alone.

Or to look at it another way, the entire game industry makes no more than $10 billion in annual profits in the US, whereas total mortgage losses are likely to be well in excess of $200 billion -- with some estimates ranging beyond $1 trillion.

Martin

Re:Barack Obama

[Quasar Sera]

Hillary Clinton, however, could possibly crash the global economy. That's a pretty bold claim. Care to substantiate it?

Re:Barack Obama

[russotto]

This isn't news - for more than a year, its been predicted that more than 2 million people will lose their homes.

Mostly people who took out variable-rate loans when interest rates were at historic lows and housing prices at historic highs. This definitely sucks for them, but shouldn't stupidity have consequences sometimes?

Re:Barack Obama

[alan_dershowitz]

"Media literacy" means being educated to recognize the business motivations of media. So when it tries to deceive you into buying a product or identifying with an ideal by making you feel afraid or inadequate or by inflating your desires, you will properly evaluate their real message. Hillary Clinton is intimately familiar with the power of media and Image to deceive, both to her advantage via James Carville in her husband's 1992 Presidential campaign, and against her and her husband by right-wing talk radio and Fox News Channel.

The skill of recognizing when others are attempting to manipulate you for their own gain is the basis of "media literacy." It should be a required part of primary education in the USA and is probably the only thing I have ever agreed with Hillary Clinton on in my life.

Re:Barack Obama

[tomhudson]

Mostly people who took out variable-rate loans when interest rates were at historic lows and housing prices at historic highs. This definitely sucks for them, but shouldn't stupidity have consequences sometimes?

I agree 100% - which is why all the candidates proposing any sort of solution that involves any "tinkering" are just making things worse by delaying the inevitable.

People who are under water should realize that they bet wrong, and face the music. They treated a house as an investment, and not a home. A home is where you "hang your hat" - and that can be either owned or rented. A house, on the other hand, is a pile of wood, plasterboard, bricks, stucco, etc., on some dirt.

We're going to see a huge increase in "jingle mail". Also foreclosures and bankruptcies will continue to increase. The sooner people realize this, the sooner they can start rebuilding their lives, and the sooner banks will have to bring those toxic loans back onto their books.

Its only once everyone (including potential investors in the rest of the world) know the true numbers, that a solution can be found. Yes, there was criminal behaviour on the part of lenders, brokers, and real estate agents. However, under the legal doctrine of "unclean hands" many of the people who got "taken" were no better.

Liar's loans, ninja loans (no income, no job or assets), purposeful mis-statements - if you lied to get that loan, you have as much right to complain as someone who got ripped off because they got short-changed buying a rock of crack.

Millions of people lied. The honest ones have recourse - the dishonest ones will have to suck it up, and be happy that they're not facing criminal fraud charges (yet), rather than blaming others.

How come no politician is saying this simple truth - that if you lied to get your mortgage, you should be happy you're not in jail, and there will be NO bail-out for you.

Re:Barack Obama

[The One and Only]

Housing was vastly overpriced 11 months ago, and is slowly becoming affordable for ordinary folks who actually want to buy a house to live in (as opposed to real estate speculators and the rich). Combine that with an easy influx of US dollars coming into this country from foreign states trying to fix their own economic problems and this problem has long been in the works. It's bigger than even what Bush can or did do.

Re:Barack Obama

[tomhudson]

Housing prices have been out of whack since the dot.com bust of 2000.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/08/26/weekinreview/27leon_graph2.large.gif
http://www.dailyreckoning.com.au/house-prices-stable/2008/01/31/

ets return to Robert Shiller. His research shows that house prices in America, in real terms, are remarkably stable. For 100 years - from 1890 to 1990 - they went nowhere. In real terms, they barely changed in the entire century. Then, suddenly after 1997, house prices shot up by 71% in real terms.

What this tells us is that housing prices are not likely to remain up so high for too long. Historically, they kept up with inflation, nothing more. America is still a big place; there is no obvious reason why all of a sudden housing should occupy a bigger percentage of the nations assets and earnings.

Most likely, the gains of the last 10 years will be given back. But the process is long, slow and hard.

Were talking about trillions of dollars, so much bigger than the losses weve seen from subprime so far, says Shiller. He is not talking about the losses in implied wealth by the write-down of Americas housing stock, but about the real losses to financial institutions and investors who have bet on continued housing price increases. As housing rose, ordinary consumers adjusted their spending habits to the increase of wealth they thought they had. Lenders extended them credit - also based on the increase in perceived housing wealth. And then, the mortgage credits were packaged into various derivative instruments and sold all over the world - eventually bankrupting everything from Norwegian fishing towns to French pension funds.

We're not just talking sub-prime here ... a lot of ordinary people with good credit will also find themselves upside-down on their mortgages as houses continue to fall in value.

Jan Hatzius (right), chief economist at Goldman Sachs, made waves today with a note released last night that put possible credit losses from mortgage defualts at $2 trillion, due to leverage. Hatziuss anlaysis have drawn attention before: Back in March 2006, Hatzius said U.S. housing was overvalued by about 20%, based on historical relationships between monthly mortgage payments and median household incomes.

Of course, as interest rates rise, so do mortgage payments, changing the relationship between the monthly mortgage payment and median household income. According to that formula, we can expect that any house bought after 2001 will be upside-down before the decade is out, since, despite the feds best efforts, mortgage rates WILL rise, since they are now seen as a very risky investment unless the purchaser has at least 20% "skin" in the game.

Re:Barack Obama

[DigiShaman]

Too late for Clinton to claim that - Bush has prior art with the housing bubble.

Bush has NOTHING to do with the housing bubble. As such, he should have nothing to do with preventing it either.

If you want to blame Bush for this, your statement should read as: "Bush has prior art for *not* allowing the government to interfere with free economics"

Simply put, your comment is based on a false premise!

Re:Barack Obama

[Anonymous Coward]

So the economy would collapse if video games were censored? Go back to Digg.

Re:Barack Obama

[tomhudson]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2461415.ece

Economists have been critical of Greenspans 2003 decision to cut interest rates which, they argue, helped create the housing bubble, the collapse of which provoked this summers banking crisis.

So Bush wasn't president at that time?

Or here back in 2004: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/overcoming_the_bubble_economy.php

The damage from the overvalued dollar threatens to be even more dangerous. With President Bush largely maintaining the high dollar policy, the trade deficit and foreign debt have continued to rise at a rapid pace. The current account deficit hit an incredible $660 billion in the most recent quarter, more than 5.7 percent of GDP. This deficit will push total foreign debt to more than $3 trillion by the end of this year. On its current path, it will exceed $7 trillionapproximately 50 percent of GDPby 2009.

The deficit is actually $9 trillion, not $7 trillion, and that's a full year ahead of schedule. What ever happened to "the buck stops here?"

And I guess Bush never said this back in 2002, which was the signal to lower loan standards http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020618-1.html - my comments in italics ...

But I believe owning something is a part of the American Dream, as well. I believe when somebody owns their own home, they're realizing the American Dream. They can say it's my home, it's nobody else's home. (Applause.) And we saw that yesterday in Atlanta, when we went to the new homes of the new homeowners. And I saw with pride firsthand, the man say, welcome to my home. He didn't say, welcome to government's home; he didn't say, welcome to my neighbor's home; he said, welcome to my home. I own the home, and you're welcome to come in the home, and I appreciate it. (Applause.) He was a proud man. He was proud that he owns the property. And I was proud for him. And I want that pride to extend all throughout our country.

One of the things that we've got to do is to address problems straight on and deal with them in a way that helps us meet goals. And so I want to talk about a couple of goals and -- one goal and a problem.

The goal is, everybody who wants to own a home has got a shot at doing so. The problem is we have what we call a homeownership gap in America. Three-quarters of Anglos own their homes, and yet less than 50 percent of African Americans and Hispanics own homes. That ownership gap signals that something might be wrong in the land of plenty. And we need to do something about it.

We now know that not everyone who wants a home should be able to get one just because they can fog a mirror.

We are here in Washington, D.C. to address problems. So I've set this goal for the country. We want 5.5 million more homeowners by 2010 -- million more minority homeowners by 2010. (Applause.) Five-and-a-half million families by 2010 will own a home. That is our goal. It is a realistic goal. But it's going to mean we're going to have to work hard to achieve the goal, all of us. And by all of us, I mean not only the federal government, but the private sector, as well.

this was the initial go-ahead by Bush for the private sector to eas up on lending standards for mortgages

And so I want to, one, encourage you to do everything you can to work in a realistic, smart way to get this done. I repeat, we're here for a reason. And part of the reason is to make this dream extend everywhere.

so the mortgage industry came out with all sorts of snake-oil financial schemes, to extend the "dream" everywhere - ev

Re:Barack Obama

[Yusaku Godai]

Perhaps it should, to an extent, to those people, and to the predatory lenders as well. The problem is that this is affecting the entire economy in adverse ways, and *something* has to be done to dig some of these people out to try to reduce the innocent bystanders.

Re:Barack Obama

[Yusaku Godai]

Er, reduce harm to innocent bystanders, that is.

Re:Barack Obama

[bahwi]

The problem is stupidity does more damage(See the SocGen bank stuff) than just a bunch of people losing their homes. These are banks losing cash from the re-sale of homes and losing profit, investors losing money, losing interest in investing in the American market, businesses with those same investments cutting jobs and cutting back to make up for the losses. It echoes, that's what an economy does. It's never one person's fault or bad investment or idiocy, it's everyone's, for better or worse.

ronpaul

[Doc Ruby]

Ron Paul thinks anything the government does is socialism. He would never have let the government invest in the Internet the way that it did, and we wouldn't have one now (certainly not the equal-access Internet that's getting everyone online). He wouldn't do anything to stop telcos from blocking or slowing traffic that competes with theirs, or doublecharging servers and consumers (quadruplecharging, really) who already pay for bandwidth, but must pay extra for "on-time" bandwidth ("Network Neutrality").

Ron Paul would let corporations do whatever they want with the Internet, which includes AT&T's plans to violate Net Neutrality and snoop on content (to police for "piracy"), avoid equal access for competition, and every other dirty trick they invent in what passes for their "innovation".

The Internet is one of the most obvious places where the people need the government as our collective representative to protect ourselves from the powerful exploiters of the people. There aren't a lot of monarchs in a position to hurt the American people anymore, but we've got plenty of dictatorial, aggressive, imperial corporations. And Ron Paul's government would stay out of the business of protecting us from them.

Re:ronpaul

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up. Finally a refreshing bit of perspective. Ron Paul -- popular as he is amongst 20 and 30 something white Internet dwellers -- is the wrong choice in this election. Government regulation is not all bad folks.

Re:ronpaul

[Anonymous Coward]

So sad that a 100% truthful and accurate comment gets modded down as a troll.

Re:ronpaul

[Doc Ruby]

Moderation 0
    30% Insightful
    30% Underrated
    20% Flamebait

PaulBot trollMods don't want to talk about Ron Paul's abdication of our government power to protect us from corporations. They don't even want to admit it. They just want a stampede to corporate anarchy.

Re:ronpaul

[vertinox]

Ron Paul would let corporations do whatever they want with the Internet, which includes AT&T's plans to violate Net Neutrality and snoop on content (to police for "piracy"), avoid equal access for competition, and every other dirty trick they invent in what passes for their "innovation".

Umm... I though RP wanted to kick corporations out of the Federal Government. Hence, there would be no NSA ATT wiretaps or kickbacks to the telco/cable monopolies or FCC regulations as we know them now.

I think people forget that empowering the Federal Government just means that it leads to corporations investing more control over it. Although I disagree on Paul on many social issues, I will agree that the current situation in DC is pretty much forgone. The problem is that the Federal government is being used to solve problems which ends up being lucrative to a subset of parties.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that you will never acheive a neutering of corporations without fixing the root core of the problem which is "corporate personhood" which Ron Paul is highly against.

So yes, in theory Ron Paul would never support network neutrality legislation, but don't you think its very strange that many Google employees are highly supportive of him?

Simply arguing over who is going to pass bills that support technology or wedge issues is ignoring the 9 trillion dollar white elephant in the room along with the billion dollar war that appears to have no end in sight.

Unfortunately, neither of the major parties seem to acknowledge that we are in for some hard times and that the current economic and political system has some major issues that might be insurmountable in the near future.

I'm tired of people saying "I like 'X cannidate's' message! It inspires me!"

Not to goodwin this, but Hitler inspired people too and we really need to be pragmatic about the next leader. If not Paul, then someone else who at best is nothing more than good technocrat and not an ideologist who's going to drag us down even further.

Re:ronpaul

[Doc Ruby]

No, you're the one saying wiretapping is just the NSA wiretapping, and reducing all the Internet violations I mentioned to that one item Paul says he's against. Which, BTW, is exactly what Paul supporters typically do with their favorite Paul position, like ending the Iraq War, while ignoring his other positions that they should hate (like his opposing the church/state separation, or eliminating public education, or any of his other harebrained schemes).

Paul would let AT&T "police the Internet for piracy", while AT&T would do whatever it wanted with its content analysis snooping. Paul would let AT&T compete deliver on its announced extortions to violate the Net Neutrality that we need to be a fair and open society as well as an open, but fair market.

You want an example about a candidate whose message is inspiring people's deluded, short-sighted, tunnelvision "self interest", you don't have to go to Hitler. You need only look at Ron Paul, who's running for president of Sim City, not a huge, complex place like the USA.

Re:ronpaul

[wellingj]

But you also for get the 'Intellectual Property' issue.

When I talked to Ron Paul in Iowa about this he was most in favor of going back to the way things were, code under Copyright and mechanical/chemical inventions under Patents. That would do the software industry a world of good don't you think?

As for the AT&T "police the Internet for piracy" thing, I think Paul would allow us to police any company for any reason we wanted to with our dollars. That's something you can't really do with the amount of government subsidizing these days. It may take more time and effort on our part, but at least it would be under our control instead of only 535 people in a place that's far removed from the realities of the situation.

Re:ronpaul

[Doc Ruby]

Maybe Paul would make copyrights/patents work appropriately to their media, but he's not in the Congress, so he's got little say over that.

What I mentioned was AT&T snooping on content to "police for privacy", which is in violation of all the laws that the telecom industry has been built on for over a century. Paul's "hands off" government wouldn't stop that. It wouldn't even protect businesses that AT&T abuses its monopoly to prey on, especially the latest announced assaults on Net Neutrality. Since the president is in charge of the DoJ and the FCC among other agencies that are responsible for protecting us from that kind of abuse, those are actual presidential policies that matter. But you ignored them, and converted that into some anarchy fantasy that Paul supporters like to live in.

And while I guess Paul's government wouldn't get in the way of online gangs "policing AT&T" or whatever other "might makes right" adventures they want, that sounds like anarchy to me.

Because the actual effect of Ron Paul's ideology in the real would would be corporate anarchy. Remove the government that is even an imperfect defense against those criminal forces, and the balance falls to the corporate anarchists. Just like it did when they were called "aristocrats" or "invading tribes".

Re:ronpaul

[Doc Ruby]

OTOH, Ron Paul is the #1 candidate for The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's idea of "technology", which is probably the Psychic Friends Network.

Re:ronpaul

[75th Trombone]

Please provide, with sources, quotations of Ron Paul opposing the separation of church and state.

Re:ronpaul

[7-Vodka]

Go away you little neocon sponsored counterintelligence program troll.

I've caught you trolling a whole bunch of times about Dr. Paul and I'm wondering who your handler is.

Unlike this "doc ruby" Ron Paul is a real doctor and scholar with his own library and has authored several books. If anyone wants to find out more about Ron Paul just google him (or any search engine). Don't rely on this jackass to inform you, he's got more axes to grind than the canadian national lumberjack team.

Re:ronpaul

[Doc Ruby]

OK, as long as you tell me that when you see those facts, you'll stop supporting Paul.

Re:ronpaul

[Doc Ruby]

I'm a "neocon"? That's the craziest wrong accusation I've ever gotten here on Slashdot, and that's saying quite a lot. They're nearly always calling me a "commie" or "hippie" or something. I must be spending quite a lot of time making up all those libertarian-socialist posts over the years, just to finally see my chance to attack Ron Paul.

Oh yeah, "Dr" Paul - when was the last time he used a stethoscope on someone? Right - he's authored several books, so he must be right about everything. Just like L. Ron Hubbard. Coincidence? Of course not.

I'd also like to see some of these "trolls" you're talking about. Or are you just talking about some of the few Paul posts I've made that have some facts in them that your fried little paranoid conspiracy brain can't handle just disagreeing with?

Let me blow your mind: you are my handler. At night, after your Ambien kicks in, you email me with whispered secrets about Ron Paul's dark past. About holes in his illusory hermetic shield of ideology. Right now, the programming is just cracking a little, as Paul gets ready to surprise the world with his miraculous victory in the primaries and the general election. Don't worry that you're freaking out, posting nothing but trolls accusing me of being a troll. The next TV commercial you see for an oil corp will have your new coded instructions. Follow them carefully, and remember you've got to go to the highest bridge with the package, not just the nearest one. We shall overcome...

Re:ronpaul

[75th Trombone]

If they actually indicate he's opposed to the separation of church and state, sure I will.

Re:ronpaul

[wellingj]

I think you take Ron Paul's message to the extreme.
My point is that Ron Paul is not going to choose the company you give money to. If you aren't getting Net Neutrality and you want it, don't buy service through someone who doesn't offer it. Pretty simple really. And it comes to this, You will have to make up your own mind about who and what you spend your money on, instead of everyone just 'trusting' the government made sure you get a fair shake. It puts more onus on the consumer to be informed, but it also leaves more dollars in your pocket.

Besides do you really trust the government of today to "police for privacy" AT&T? I mean they are most likely in the same bed today, so how would removing government from that cozy system be bad?

And I really don't think Ron Paul's ideology would cause corporate anarchy, but rather corporate meritocracy. As it is now, some companies (or businesses) just game the system of government to get ahead. I think Ron Paul's brand of economics would prevent that, and force them to actually compete.

But we can agree to disagree.

Re:ronpaul

[Razed By TV]

Here's what I found, copied from http://atheism.about.com/b/2007/08/06/authoritarian-or-libertarian-ron-paul-on-churchstate-separation-secularism.htm
The quote shows up on other sources as well on google.

The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders' political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government's hostility to religion. The establishment clause of the First Amendment was simply intended to forbid the creation of an official state church like the Church of England, not to drive religion out of public life.

Re:ronpaul

[75th Trombone]

Oh yeah, that's from his article about the war on Christmas, which in a way I think is pretty silly, since I personally don't celebrate or agree with religious holidays.

But in the end his argument is not that the federal government should do any overtly Christian stuff, but that state and local governments should be able to decide for themselves what happens under their jurisdictions. Here's the quote:

I think we should read the First Amendment, where it says, "Congress shall write no law." And we should write a lot less laws regarding this matter. It shouldn't be a matter of the president or the Congress. It should be local people, local officials-we just don't need more laws determining religious things or prayer in school. We should allow people at the local level. That's what the Constitution tells us...

It boils down to whether "separation of church and state" refers to only the federal government or to state and local governments as well (along with whether it means "congress shall make no law" or "government shall make no mention"). As far as I'm concerned it originally meant the former (in both cases), and when Ron Paul says the idea of a rigid separation isn't there, he's overtly referring to the way it's always interpreted these days to mean the latter (in both cases).

So no, I don't believe he's flatly "opposed to the separation of church and state", he's just opposed to the 21st-century definition of that term, which is arguably way broader than the 18th-century definition.

Re:ronpaul

[aardvark007]

"I'm tired of people saying "I like 'X cannidate's' message! It inspires me!"

Not to goodwin this, but Hitler inspired people too and we really need to be pragmatic about the next leader. If not Paul, then someone else who at best is nothing more than good technocrat and not an ideologist who's going to drag us down even further."

The problem is that people are not going to vote for a pessimistic, or even a non-optimistic candidate. Would you? Really? If someone says "Look everyone, we are screwed and I will try to lessen the impact" and an opponent says "I will do everything I can to improve this (specific) situation by x, y, and z" who are you going to vote for? It seems like most people will choose the optimistic candidate even though they may not be as pragmatic. If not, wouldn't the candidates be more pragmatic?

Re:ronpaul

[Cancel-Or-Allow]

Why can't local governments have more sway in what these corps do? If the federal government steps out of control, wouldn't it be easier to get local governments to set rules at the state and city level?
Enough petitions get signed against Comcast for their bandwidth limiting, goes to the city's or state's PUC and tells Comcast to knock it off or leave our city. They either fix it, or another competitor steps in.

I really think that more can be done locally, much more efficiently than at the federal level.
One example was my cable company overcharging me, I sent an email to the devision in my city government that regulates the cable company and had the problem solved in a week.

I really can't think of one federal program that actually does anything more efficiently than local governments, with exception to the IRS.

So yeah, Ron Paul gets my vote.

Re:ronpaul

[Doc Ruby]

In addition to the evidence others already showed you in answer to your assurance that you'd stop supporting Paul when you saw his own words denying US government separates itself from church rule, there's even more showing precisely how Paul's opposition to church/state separation really goes even further, to merely hand churches state power.

Paul says the US government does not separate itself from church rule, he also believes that the bible is god's law, absolute and infallible, and disobeying it will destroy society:

L:How in your judgment,at all,do you believe the word of God limits civil government?...It is not the role of civil government at any level,to house,clothe,feed or educate anybody.What do you think are the limits,if any,by God's word on any level,civil government ?

P:No,I think that would violate the whole principle,of you know, self-reliance,and our whole notion of individualism,which I think is solidly found in the New Testament,and therefore that responsibility, whether it is for ourselves,or for our families,it really falls upon the role of the parent...

L: May I assume you believe scripture is God's word,that it's inerrant and infallible ?

P:That is correct.

L: ...Well I'm also assuming you also believe that disobedience to God's word can bring,or does bring judgment upon nations and people?

P:(Hesitates)That is true,and,uh,sometimes the judgments aren't directly correlated,people have trouble figuring that out,but I think defiance of God's law will eventually bring havoc to a society.

Also featuring a Ron Paul America that doesn't even permit public education, and I'd also expect no public hospitals. Because god says so, or we'll be destroyed.

Why not? Paul also wants the government to stop all marriages, not just between gay people - between any people. Handing the governance of marriage entirely over to the church. I guess sometimes church and state can be separated in Paul Country, as long as the church gets the whole franchise.

Yeah, he's got that separation exactly backwards. Instead of following the Constitution's protection of the people from making a religious argument or action some kind of privileged category immune to American law or regulation, Paul says whatever superstition you imagine puts your actions beyond the reach of law. "We the People Act" he wrote for the House to send into American law:

Prohibits the Supreme Court and each Federal court from adjudicating any claim or relying on judicial decisions involving: (1) State or local laws, regulations, or policies concerning the free exercise or establishment of religion; (2) the right of privacy, including issues of sexual practices, orientation, or reproduction; or (3) the right to marry without regard to sex or sexual orientation where based upon equal protection of the laws.

In Paul Country, when the priest decides, the judge shuts up.

Especially anywhere Paul's power is in effect, but is out of sight of the American media (but sets a working precedent across the entire country), Paul's USA sets religious acts above the law, as in his Religious Freedom Restoration Act:

Amends the Federal judicial code to deny the district courts of the United States, Guam, the Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands and the United States Court of Federal Claims jurisdiction to hear or determine any case in which any requirement, prohibition, or other provision relating to religious freedo

Re:ronpaul

[Doc Ruby]

AT&T and Verizon operate as monpolies (and don't give me the canard that there's more than one, so there's not a monopoly, which canard disqualifies its arguer from arguing actual economics). There's no "meritocracy". The people need the government to protect us from them, and from other corporations which have "person" rights, but not the liabilities (like arrest, jail, death, etc).

If you think people will have even the current level of protection from these predators without our government that we establish for that protection, you really don't know anything about economics or history.

I'm not the one taking Paul's message to the extreme. Paul is the extremist: he'd get rid of most of the government, including public education, and leave the church to move into the vacuum with "god's law", which Paul believes is infallible as written in "the" bible, and ignored at peril of havoc in society. I'm a reasonable person who knows we're not living in Sim City, but rather a complex society with seriously bad forces that we create a government to protect ourselves from. Paul lives in a fantasyland, and you Paul followers are dreaming it with him.

Typical Republicanism, despite the nonsense that Paul's libertarianism is any different from generations of Republican "Conservatism". It all throws out the government baby with the corruption bathwater. Of course Republican governments aren't the solution, they're the problem. But Americans pioneered creating our government to protect ourselves from domestic gangs (once called kings). We're not going to give it up just because some new labeled bottle of the same old corporate anarchy wine is attracting a generation of people with more money than sense to donate to a presidential campaign.

"Agree to disagree"? No, I insist that you face reality and drop your baseless agreement. That's just a passive aggressive way of saying "na na na I'm not listening na na na", while thinking "my mind is made up, don't confuse me with the facts". No wonder you're a Republican. And don't tell me you're not: you're boosting a guy who's been a Republican for decades, and wouldn't even leave when running for president as the nominee of another party. I know Republicans have so little actual integrity that you will say anything, carry any banner, so long as you've got an ad campaign you think will win, but I disagree to agree with anything like that.

Re:ronpaul

[Doc Ruby]

We already have that kind of local protection, as well as Federal protection when local cronies get their way. There's no other competitor, there's monopolies and cartels, cartels which band together to keep new competitors out as their mutual #1 priority. So long as we have national scale operators, we need national scale regulation to protect ourselves from them. Or one state's permissive policies in a right-of-way can hold the entire national right-of-way hostage.

Oh, and Ron Paul would eradicate the IRS, too. And he's all for moving churches into the power vacuum along with corporations. The guy's a disaster. Check out how his ideology would destroy your society before handing him your vote.

Re:ronpaul

[ciscoguy01]

The establishment clause of the First Amendment was simply intended to forbid the creation of an official state church like the Church of England, not to drive religion out of public life.

And that is exactly true, even from the unfortunate source.

The doctrine of separation of church and state was always to protect the church from the state. The danger of church and state was never a problem with the church. It was always a problem with the state.

There has been much discussion of prayer in schools. But there is no actual prohibition of prayer in schools, the prohibition is against a government employee (a teacher, for instance) up there at the front of the class leading a government approved prayer.
The students are free to pray in schools as much as they like, as long as they don't force anyone to do anything there is no stopping it. There is no way to stop it.

Re:ronpaul

[75th Trombone]

a Ron Paul America that doesn't even permit public education, and I'd also expect no public hospitals.

Ron Paul's America wouldn't prohibit either of those, it would just prohibit the Federal government from taking people's money to fund them. States or cities could do whatever they wanted.

The two bills you cited do not put religious acts above the law; they merely give the states their constitutional authority over such issues and get the federal government out of states' and people's business. If a state made something legal or illegal, that's their right, and Ron Paul would support that.

He voted against the stem-cell funding NOT just because he's pro-life, but because he votes against any unconstitutional federal government spending. I'm sure you've heard all those times he was the sole vote against giving people posthumous medals of honor; he did so not because he opposed those people or what they did, but because he didn't believe in stealing money from taxpayers to pay for the medals. If he was voting for a lot of other spending but still voted against the stem-cell funding, you'd have some kind of point.

Ron Paul is not my messiah, and I'm not voting for him. He is something of an ideologue, and I think on many issues he has no viable plan of action for if he were to become President. But just as he has a lot of nutjob idiot fanboys, he has a lot of frothing-at-the-mouth drivel-spewing detractors who twist his words and ideas into something a lot scarier than they are. For although his brand of libertarianism would give churches and religious people more freedom, it would give NON-religious people those same freedoms. It would allow people to use drugs for religious or non-religious purposes; it would allow religious and non-religious people to call themselves "married" to whomever they choose; it would allow everyone to choose whether or not their money would be used to fund stem-cell research; the list goes on.

Anyway. Feel free to waste your time writing another of your usual sensationalistic diatribes in response. I prefer substantive dialogue, but I understand that Slashdot is your outlet.

Lessig supports Obama

[damiam]

http://www.lessig.org/blog/2007/11/4barack.html

An excerpt:

First, and again, I know him, which means I know something of his character. "He is the real deal" has become my favorite new phrase. Everything about him, personally, is what you would dream a candidate should be. Integrity, brilliance, warmth, humor and most importantly, commitment. They all say they're all this. But for me, this part is easy, because about this one at least, I know.

Second, I believe in the policies. Clearly on the big issues -- the war and corruption. Obama has made his career fighting both. But also on the issues closest to me. As the technology document released today reveals, to anyone who reads it closely, Obama has committed himself to important and importantly balanced positions.

First the importantly balanced: You'll read he's a supporter of Net Neutrality. No surprise there. But read carefully what Net Neutrality for Obama is. There's no blanket ban on offering better service; the ban is on contracts that offer different terms to different providers for that better service. And there's no promise to police what's under the technical hood (beyond the commitment already articulated by Chairman Powell): This is a sensible and valuable Net Neutrality policy that shows a team keen to get it right -- which includes making it enforceable in an efficient way, even if not as radical as some possible friends would like.

Second, on the important: As you'll read, Obama has committed himself to a technology policy for government that could radically change how government works. The small part of that is simple efficiency -- the appointment with broad power of a CTO for the government, making the insanely backwards technology systems of government actually work.

But the big part of this is a commitment to making data about the government (as well as government data) publicly available in standard machine readable formats. The promise isn't just the naive promise that government websites will work better and reveal more. It is the really powerful promise to feed the data necessary for the Sunlights and the Maplights of the world to make government work better. Atomize (or RSS-ify) government data (votes, contributions, Members of Congress's calendars) and you enable the rest of us to make clear the economy of influence that is Washington.

After the debacle that is the last 7 years, the duty is upon the Democrats to be something different. I've been wildly critical of their sameness (remember "Dems to the Net: Go to hell" which earned me lots of friends in the Democratic party). I would give my left arm to be able to celebrate their difference. This man, Mr. Obama, would be that difference. He has as much support as I can give.

Re:Lessig supports Obama

[Mawginty]

Wow! I didn't know that. I knew about government transparency and net neutrality, but what I didn't know, and what Lessig's blog post is convincing me of, is that Obama wouldn't be an evil copyright overlord. It seems like ALL of the interests in Washington are arrayed such that no one fights for access to copyrighted materials. Those constituencies that depend on public domain materials for their living (mostly researchers, resellers, and artists) are a disparate group unable bring political brunt to bear on their issues. Now, there are more important problems facing our country than the fact that the copyright is too long. But I do like the idea of a friend of Lawrence Lessig's in the Whitehouse.

Re:Lessig supports Obama

[strredwolf]

The XKCD author also found out about it and went Obama.

Re:Lessig supports Obama

[gambolt]

They taught together at The University of Chicago law school. They are very much cut from the same cloth.

Ron Paul

[d3ik]

- Only person running that voted against the Patriot Act(s)

- Only person running that voted against Sarbanes-Oxley

- Opposes the DMCA

- Opposes the national ID card

- Has never voted to raise taxes

- Returns a portion of his congressional budget to the treasury every year

- He is a Republican who opposes the Iraq War on moral and economic grounds

There's a lot of FUD out there about Ron Paul, and there are a lot of fanatics on the internet who work against him sometimes, but if you look at his voting record over the last 20 years it speaks for itself.

This is a good guy who opposes the big government mentality that so many here on Slashdot rail against.

Re:Ron Paul

[Bob of Dole]

And how does he feel about "big government" going after people who abuse their monopoly position?

Re:Ron Paul

[Kohath]

I'm sure Ron Paul is a good choice for anyone who wants to escape responsibility for anything that happens in government. "Don't blame me. I voted for Ron Paul".

If not being blamed is your objective, Paul is you best bet. If you want to actually accomplish something, then one of the candidates who can accomplish something might be better.

Re:Ron Paul

[Improv]

For every problem, there's a solution that's simple, neat, and wrong. That's Ron Paul, who would dismantle vital institutions of our society.

Re:Ron Paul

[abburdlen]

I am eagerly awaiting hearing Ron Paul speak-out against the giving telecoms retroactive immunity in the FISA bill.

I realize it's in the Senate now rather than the House where he serves but adding his voice (and his supporters) to the debate would be helpful.

Re:Ron Paul

[DittoBox]

Like Telcos? Lest you forget, "Big-Government," put them there.

Re:Ron Paul

[d3ik]

You name institutions that you feel are vital that you think Ron Paul would like to dismantle, and I'll explain his position on each and every one.

Re:Ron Paul

[ciscoguy01]

Ron Paul is talking the normal libertarian mantra of leave everything unregulated by government and it will be alright.
Except it won't really be alright. Competition is not always able to control everything.

Libertarians always say "If only" it was like this or like that everything would be perfect. In a perfect world at least some of that is likely true.

But back to tech, AT&T built the phone infrastructure with ratepayer dollars. They don't really own it, WE DO. Remember those rate cases they did to get rate increases? They spent more money so they had to get more from us to pay for it. We had no option but to pay.

So AT&T didn't build the fiber backbone, they didn't build the copper plant, we hired them to build it. It's ours.

But Libertarians like Ron Paul would act like AT&T owns it, and AT&T would be ripping us off forever, like they are doing right now.

That said, I will likely vote for Ron Paul on Tuesday. Heh. Just to put some fear in the machine.

Re:Ron Paul

[mikethicke]

- Wants to wall off the country and deport millions.

- Wants to let states ban abortions.

Ron Paul has some admirable positions, but his supporters should recognize that when it comes down to it he is effectively a social conservative and his policies if implemented completely would, if they didn't destroy the economy right off the bat, probably turn the country completely over to corporate rule.

Re:Ron Paul

[scubanator87]

He did vote against net neutrality though. http://ontheissues.org/Ron_Paul.htm#Technology

Re:Ron Paul

[d3ik]

He doesn't have a stated position on monopoly enforcement that I'm aware of. His default position is a "hands off" libertarian policy of letting the market handle most things.

I'm divided on this, to tell you the truth. I think the market addresses most concerns, but this may be one of those exceptions where intervention is needed. On the other hand, most monopolies are government sponsored. Also, look at how the "big government" approach of the EU fining Microsoft daily. That doesn't seem to really solve anything. Microsoft gladly pays the fine. The only other option would be to break up the corporation like Ma Bell, but as we've seen over the last few years it just seems to T1000 its way back together.

Then again, look at what is happening to Microsoft now without government intervention. Competition in the marketplace from Google has forced them to use the last of their cash on hand to try and acquire another company. At the same time, the OEM lock in has been eroded by alternatives like Linux which Dell and a few other mainstream manufacturers sell pre-installed in some models.

Re:Ron Paul

[WaZiX]

- Only person running that voted against Sarbanes-Oxley
And that's a good thing? Want other Enron/Woldcoms?

Re:Ron Paul

[Bob of Dole]

This is slashdot, I'm not talking about telephones.

Who put Microsoft in a monopoly position? I don't remember Big Government being responsible for that.

Re:Ron Paul

[Doc Ruby]

Who did you vote for in 2000, and in 2004 (primaries and general)?

Re:Ron Paul

[WaZiX]

Competition in the marketplace from Google has forced them to use the last of their cash on hand to try and acquire another company. Nah Bill Gates is just trying to mimic the contrarian habits of his good friend Warren Buffet...

Re:Ron Paul

[badmanone]

It's one of the (few) things government should do:

- Enforce contracts
- Enforce property rights
- Provide national defense
- Break monopolies

See this part of his interview with John Stossel on the role of government.

Re:Ron Paul

[Anonymous Coward]

"libertarian mantra of leave everything unregulated by government and it will be alright", "Libertarians always say 'If only' it was like this or like that everything would be perfect."

You are unfairly putting words in the mouths of libertarians that most of them did not say. It would be more fair to say that libertarians believe that, in practice, on average, things would be better.

Re:Ron Paul

[tepples]

You name institutions that you feel are vital that you think Ron Paul would like to dismantle, and I'll explain his position on each and every one. Social Security retirement, Social Security disability, Medicare, and TANF, for starters. The 60 percent of the federal government that is entitlements (source: the Republican debate at the Reagan Library). It is the typical libertarian position that entitlements are a bad idea, but senior citizens and citizens below the poverty line tend to vote for more of them.

Re:Ron Paul

[Brandybuck]

Monopolies are nearly all caused by big government. Without the special privileges government gives them it would be extremely difficult to get into a monopoly position, and once there they would have to keep prices low and provide good service, lest new firms arose to compete for that pie.

Big government encourages big business with regulatory and tax structures that encourage bigness. When it takes an army of accountants and lawyers to do business, only those firms large enough to afford an army of accountants and lawyers will do business! Add to that governments at all levels handing out exclusive contracts, and a patent system that explicitly encourages monopoly, then no one should be surprised at these behemoths striding across the land. Stop and think where Microsoft would be today without their government granted copyrights. Even if you agree with the concept of copyrights, their very monopolistic nature demands that they be limited.

Government isn't the solution, it's the problem!

Re:Ron Paul

[Anonymous Coward]

"but if you look at his voting record over the last 20 years it speaks for itself."
Character - Even if you don't agree with him on every position he remains consistent with his positions. With Ron Paul you know what you are getting. I can't believe all of the sheep here promoting Obama or should I say Obaaaaaaama. Here is a guy who likes to cut on Hillary for voting for the war over and over, yet he keeps voting to continue fighting the war. What a hypocrite. You need to take a look at who is funding Obama before you vote for him. Numerous major financial institutions and multi-national corporations. If you think he is going to represent your interests over theirs you are naive.

Re:Ron Paul

[Anonymous Coward]

He feels that "big government" can "go after" "them", by not giving them insane tax breaks and subsidizing them in the first place.

And he is against NAFTA and other such agreements, and all about helping the small business owners along, by cutting taxes down to nothing or close to nothing.

Re:Ron Paul

[Roger Wilcox]

WTF are you talking about? Are you implying that a vote for Bush makes a voter responsible for all the stupid shit that Bush did once he won the office? Bush is a lying bastard, and most of these politicians are. You can't hold voters responsible for that. Bush said ABC in his campaign and did XYZ as soon as he was in power. Predictable, perhaps, but the fault lies with Bush and his cronies, not with voters. You want people to be more responsible? How about voting for someone who ISN'T A LYING BASTARD! Someone who, while you may not agree with his platform exactly, you believe will do his best to bring HONESTY to the process! Someone who WON'T SELL THE PEOPLE OF THIS NATION OUT to his business partners! Sounds a hell of a lot better than voting for someone who will only continue the cycle of lies and corruption.

Re:Ron Paul

[Anonymous Coward]

Dell offering Linux is a direct result of government intervention.

Re:Ron Paul

[rpillala]

I went to vote-smart.org to see how he did on their political courage test but apparently he refuses adamantly to take the test: http://www.vote-smart.org/npat.php?can_id=296

Here's the full voting record. If you click on a particular bill you will also get links to statements and speeches made around the time of the vote. There's no guarantee they'll be about the same issue though. http://www.vote-smart.org/voting_category.php?can_id=296

Re:Ron Paul

[Anonymous Coward]

"- Wants to let states ban abortions."

I think you should have been aborted. Late term abortion even better. Cut open your head and suck your brains out. You deserve it.

Re:Ron Paul

[cbart387]

I'd rather vote on the issues then based on the media polls of who is ahead. Your mileage may vary, but I feel better with myself for sticking to my ideals than picking it based on a popularity contest. Also, I believe that it's possible to wake up the Americans that they don't have only two choices. Likely? Probably not. But it allows me to sleep good at night.

Re:Ron Paul

[d3ik]

Social Security: http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/social-security/ (watch the embedded flash video)

Medicare: Ron Paul is a doctor who has experienced how broken the system is first hand, http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/health-care/

If you're concerned about senior citizens on fixed incomes you should be greatly concerned about rising inflation and the crashing dollar, which affects senior citizens and the middle class first: http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/inflation-tax/

Re:Ron Paul

[PaddyM]

I do like Ron Paul, but please understand that he would not enforce net neutrality one way or the other. He would let the markets decide, and the telcos would clearly start charging tiered rates. The only way to prevent that economic certainty is for a disruptive company to start up and offer "old school internet".

The good thing about Ron Paul is that he would strive to get rid of any barriers to an "old school internet" that may already exist. The bad thing is that private companies may try to use patent law / intellectual property law to reinforce those barriers. And Ron Paul seems to be strongly pro-property, so it seems like he would defend AT&T's ability to do whatever they want with their phone lines, provided that the public isn't owed any money for them.

Re:Ron Paul

[FlameSnyper]

Oh, but the US government did put Microsoft in the monopoly position... remember, they standardized on Windows AND Office 95.

Once the gov't standardized something, all of the contractors (private businesses) have to fall in line.

Yes, our gov't did create the Microsoft monopoly, as sure as they created the Ma Bell monopoly.

Re:Ron Paul

[Lemmy Caution]

Don't you think it's telling that the one sector of the economy on which you have the most knowledge and interest is, for you and many libertarians, the one place where you conceive of an "exception" to the presumption of the optimality of non-intervention?

Perhaps if you had as abiding an interest in agriculture, manufacturing, and transportation, for example, you would see more "exceptions" to the idea that regulation is bad.

Re:Ron Paul

[Brandybuck]

You want him to stop campaigning the week before Super Tuesday just so he can go back to DC and watch the *Senate* vote? Sheesh.

Here's a page with his privacy issues. If you still think he's in favor of warrantless searches you're nuts. <http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/privacy-and-personal-liberty/>. The retroactive immunity brouhaha is a distraction. People are trying to punish telcos, when it's congress that needs to be punished for giving these outrageous powers to the presidency.

The real issue is PATRIOT, which expanded the already bad FISA. No snooping without probable cause and warrant! Punish the telcos retroactively if you want, but punishing the abusers while keeping the power to abuse intact is stupid.

Re:Ron Paul

[bcrowell]

Yeah, I'm a libertarian, but Ron Paul makes me shudder. It was an interesting exercise to go through the US Libertarian Party platform and compare with all Ron Paul's positions that I think are way wrong. On every single one (abortion, free trade, anti-immigrant xenophobia), his positions are the opposite of the party's planks.

Re:Ron Paul

[Kohath]

Then why not write your own name in? Clearly you agree with your positions better than even Ron Paul. And you have approximately the same chance of winning as Ron Paul. The net effect is the same.

Re:Ron Paul

[Kohath]

I'm still not persuaded. For maximum persuasiveness in communications, can you please try using more all-caps text and putting in a lot swear words and additional information-free accusations? Everyone loves that stuff.

Re:Ron Paul

[cain]

That's all well and good, but the topic is the best candidate for technology. None of the things you mention have to do with the topic at hand: "Copyright infringement, net neutrality, wireless spectrum, content filtering, broadband deployment", etc.

Re:Ron Paul

[ljaszcza]

Yes! Some candidates have policy opinions. Ron Paul is the only one who backs it up with his voting record. He is the most honest candidate IMHO. He opposes the DMCA. Opposes the national ID card. And a lot of other other things that the US Constitution does not authorize the Federal Government to do. I personally think his Federal Government hands off policy would be the best for technology in the US. And for all the people that say he can't be elected? Of course not, if people like yourselves don't vote for him. I for one will. Even if I write his name in. I have voted for the lesser of two evils too many times. The Patriot Act and Military Commissions Act are my reward. I will be voting for the right man and only for him. Ok, enough ranting. On the Democratic front, I suppose Obama has some good points... The problem there is that he says a lot of stuff (like politicians are wont to do) whereas Paul has a voting record to back up his talk. Anyhow, my opinion, flame away...

Re:Ron Paul

[Murrquan]

Ron Paul may not be elected this year, but he's already broken records in online fundraising and practically become an Internet meme. The more momentum he builds, the easier it'll be to elect someone who supports Constitutional government, whether this election or the next. I also submit that there's something wrong with our system, insofar as people keep trying to vote for the lesser of two evils instead of voting their consciences.

Re:Ron Paul

[fedtmule]

Where would Microsoft be without IP rights?

And who decided that IP rights should exists? Who enforce those rights?

Re:Ron Paul

[Improv]

Perhaps he should be thinking more like a doctor - that there are problems in our system is undeniable, but that's no excuse to dismantle things. "You have a treatable but otherwise fatal disease, what type of coffin do you want?"

I understand Ron Paul's positions fairly well, because I've been arguing against people naïve enough to support him locally for quite some time. Explaining them again to me probably won't be particularly enlightening. His entire approach to problems seems to be either "shut it down" or "dodge the issue - avoid taking a possibly contentious stance by referring it back to states" - the first is incredibly harmful to society by denying it institutions it needs to be humane and civilised, the second is both a cop-out and politically regressive, by eliminating the way federal power prevents regressive states from creating societal rot. Consider, for example, gay marriage and education. On the first, Ron Paul suggests, reluctantly I understand, that states should handle marriage themselves. If this were to happen, not only would it close the door on gay marriage throughout most of the US (and create regimes where states don't recognise each other's marriages), it would also reopen the door for conservative states to ban interracial marriage, something that was illegal in times past in the US. This is a civil rights accomplishment that the nation strove for and achieved in the past that he would open the door for reveral. On DoE, conservatives have long been lobbying for various subjects, like history and biology, to be rewritten to do cultural shaping promoting conservative values, removing reference to american involvement in various historical atrocities, removing natural selection (or accompanying it with creationist bullshit - hey, teach it as sociology as in "this is what some people believe", fine, teaching it as science is ignorant and regressive), and otherwise doing cultural shaping - there are some topics, like treatment of Amerindians, Japanese in WW2, etc, that must be covered to prevent history from sounding like jingoist PR, and this is one of the roles of the DoE - local standards threaten that foundation, given the context of well-organised conservative forces intending to control education. (mind you, if liberal forces were doing the same, e.g. whitewashing Stalin's actions, I would be equally worried about that). This focus on two issues is not meant to imply that they're the only 2 issues I care about where I think RP would do great harm, of course - there are only a few policy areas where I like his stance (and those are fairly nuanced).

Politics is complex, but a lot of good has come out of federal power. No political system is perfect, and killing the system because of a few faults that everyone knew about anyway and that we've been struggling with for some time is shortsighted and destructive. I would sooner elect a theocratic Republican than Ron Paul.

Re:Ron Paul

[cbart387]

How are you voting? By the person who's polled as ahead?[1] There can only be one winner. The rest, no matter how large of a percentage of votes, are losers. There's a lot of people who are going to back the wrong horse. In my opinion it's better to support a person[2] who you agree with than the obvious winner(s).

[1] These are rhetorical questions to show you where I'm coming from. There's no reason to respond to this because I'm not continuing this discussion after this post. It's a matter of arguing on opinions which neither of us is going to change by a silly online website.

[2] Note I never said I am voting for Ron Paul.

Re:Ron Paul

[d3ik]

This is a reply to you and the grandparent.

On the abortion issue, half the country wants a constitutional amendment that bans abortion and half the country wants a constitutional amendment that allows abortions. I would say this is a perfect example of a divisive issue that should be left up to the states. The grandparent said "He would allow states to ban abortion"... I would also add "He would enable states to *allow* abortion", even though he is personally opposed to it after being an obstetrician (sp?) for many years and personally witnessing an abortion early in his career.

On free trade, he is probably the candidates most *for* free trade. What we have now isn't free trade, it's managed trade. Ever wonder why there are such high tariffs on steel imports?

He is not anti-immigration, he is anti-*illegal* immigration. There is a big difference there.

Re:Ron Paul

[Kjella]

I'm not an American so it's really none of my business but Ron Paul comes across to me as a person that does a lot of the right things for all the wrong reasons. Sometimes I find it hard to tell if he's against big government or simply government in general. To me he seems equally opposed to good laws like SOX, can-spam and network neutrality for the same reason he's against the bad ones. He's against big government, but his policy would only fill that power vacuum with big oorporations.

You speak as if being the only one to oppose two central bills is a plus, to me that makes him a freak outlier if noone else saw what he saw or thought as he did. The only reason I figure for geeks to like him is that the lobbyists try to regulate technology through law, and he's opposed to regulation in general. I've not read anything that makes me believe he "gets it" or is on our side. Plus he has some other policies like anti-abortion that would make him completely unacceptable to me. I just read through Obama's tech platform and it's actually very good, it has some political fluff but he sure seems to understand the issues better.

Re:Ron Paul

[Kohath]

I actually agree with you. But voting for yourself is voting your conscience.

If Ron Paul were a good candidate with a future, I might agree that he should be supported. The libertarian movement needs a good candidate who can lead and it needs to shun the support of all the weird Internet nutjobs and the reality-deprived.

The way it works now is that Ron Paul is the choice of everyone who wants to have a position on things that can't be called "Flamebait". It's a position you hold to enlarge your social circle, not a position you hold to solve problems. There are never any unintended consequences of the Ron Paul positions because he never gets anything enacted. So no need to weigh the pros and cons of anything -- just proclaim yourself right and smarter than everyone else.

Re:Ron Paul

[d3ik]

I was discussing monopoly enforcement, not just technology related monopoly enforcement.

On some of your other examples, let's take agriculture. When you add in government regulation, you get everything that comes with it. How about farm subsidies? How much of your paycheck pays farmers to not grow anything? How much of your paycheck goes to subsidize corn because of its possible use in ethanol?

Dr. Paul is against farm subsidies, even though he is from a district where a large percentage of voters are farmers. This would be considered political suicide by most politicians, yet he does it because he backs up his beliefs with his vote in congress.

Transportation, how much do we pay to bail out the airlines that can't balance a checkbook?

That is the problem with "big government", you don't just get regulation for free. If you the government regulates it controls, and guess who has control of government? It's the companies and special interest groups that pay millions of dollars to lobbyists to get legislation that they want passed. Sometimes (just to make sure the politicians get it right) they even write the legislation themselves. Are these the people you trust to regulate?

Re:Ron Paul

[Jane Q. Public]

Then your memory is poor indeed. Microsoft has been involved with Government since they started to become big... many years ago. Just to illustrate, they were caught recently trying to buy the votes of a number of international delegates who were scheduled to vote in their areas on Open Standards... Microsoft paid them to vote for OOXML over ODS.

Do you REALLY think they have not been doing the same thing with the U.S. government for many years? Just how naive are you, anyway?

Re:Ron Paul

[mother_reincarnated]

That really depends on if he mean big-L "Libertarians" or he was just capitalizing the L in "libertarians" because it started the sentence.

Libertarians = members of a political party
libertarians = ideologues

Re:Ron Paul

[Kohath]

I'm going to vote for Romney even though he's not my first choice.

If I cared about being "right" and voting for the best person, I'd write someone in. But a vote is an attempt to exercise power. Voting for someone with no chance at all is simply losing that power. If there's no one with a chance of winning that you can agree with at all, then you've already lost that power.

Voting for folks who have no chance is giving up an opportunity to improve your country in order to be "right".

Re:Ron Paul

[d3ik]

On the first, Ron Paul suggests, reluctantly I understand, that states should handle marriage themselves.

His position, as stated in the Candidates@Google interview, is that marriage is a religious issue and shouldn't be a concern of the state. He said something to the effect of "People can do what they want, and call it what they want, and the government should have no part of it".


On DoE (Department of Education), conservatives have long been lobbying for various subjects, like history and biology...
You're absolutely right. And what role did the DoE have in stopping the Arkansas (?) board of education from adding Intelligent Design to the curriculum? As I recall the people in favor of it were voted out of office at the local level, all without involving the federal government.

I get into similar discussions with people over civil liberties (or lack thereof) in the current administration. They say things like "It's okay, I have nothing to hide. I trust President Bush". I then say, "But what if Hillary Clinton was president, would you have the same confidence in government then?"... and their face usually turns a pale white.

So let's say the Department of Education suddenly decreed that state schools needed to enforce abstinence only education (with this administration that should not be a stretch of the imagination). Wouldn't you want the power (at the local level) to oppose that?

Re:Ron Paul

[Lemmy Caution]

With agriculture, I was thinking more of the FDA and other standards-producing bodies which mandate sanitary conditions. Of course, not every regulation is good, and many are either bad or corrupt. But that's different from the blanket presumption that things would be better without them.

I don't like corporate welfare, but the more you look at the airline bailout after 9/11, the more you'd understand how disastrous it would have been for the economy to have let that industry just collapse. Which proves my point: people move away from ideological libertarianism when they get more information about specific sectors and circumstances, which erodes the coherence of libertarianism as a principle.

And yes, when there is a regulatory mechanism, there is the possibility of the interested parties being involved. Sometimes, that's helpful, too: outdated regulations are often cleared because the industries involved make a case for removing them. The corporations have influence over the government, but so does everyone else: the government is part of the domain of public space, and is constantly and indefinitely being contested. This is a good thing.

The contrasting problem that libertarians have is that you can't just have "daddy" government (which does things like prosecuting theft and managing property rights) without some "mommy" government (providing services). The realization that government is a mechanism by which we as a society administer both rights and public services, rather than being some bizarre, alien force, is the beginning of the political maturity of a civilization.

Re:Ron Paul

[DevNull Ogre]

> I actually agree with you. But voting for yourself is voting your conscience.

Only if you actually want the job. And that assumes you believe you could do
as good a job as the candidate. I'm sure neither is true for me - I *don't*
want the job and I don't have the patience to be good at it. Maybe the parent
poster is in a similar position.

Position on issues is important, but there are other things to consider.

Re:Ron Paul

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all you are obviously misinformed because not all of the government standardized on Microsoft products; the decisions what IT products to use are made on a departmental basis.

Second, I think one could make the argument that the government uses a hellava lot more Microsoft alternatives than (say) the average Fortune 500 corporation.

Re:Ron Paul

[Kjella]

Monopolies are nearly all caused by big government. Without the special privileges government gives them it would be extremely difficult to get into a monopoly position, and once there they would have to keep prices low and provide good service, lest new firms arose to compete for that pie. Do you actually believe that load of bullshit? Starting up a business requires a lot of cash, staff, factories, systems, inventory, distribution and whatnot. The monopolists can quickly and easily repel intruders by slashing prices where they get competition funding it by profits from where they don't. I saw some excellent examples of this with passenger flights, where it was extremely obvious that this was happening. They got competition and prices went down, they lost competition and the prices went back up. Most of the time you don't actually have to do it either, you just need a credible threat to do it and anyone that understands game theory will stay out.

Another big issue is bundling, and it wouldn't be just Microsoft doing that. Imagine you were trying to make a niche for ecological milk, but the big dairy producer told the store "Either you only carry our milk, or your customers will have to do without normal milk, cream, yogurt, cheese and butter". Actually make that a chain-wide agreement as well. You'd have no chance in hell to start competing with them on every area, at all locations at once.

With a dominating position, you can also simply throw your weight around. Imagine Intel said "ditch AMD or we cut off your supply", do you think they'd cut 80% or 20% of their business (which they'd hope to partly recover by selling more Intel systems)? Plus, the anti-trust lawsuits against Microsoft would be only the tip of the iceberg of leveraging one market share to create new ones. You seem to think competition is the natural state, my impression is quite opposite. Without some basic ground rules in play, most companies that started dominating would find ways to fight really dirty to become and keep their monopolies.

Re:Ron Paul

[nido]

If you want to actually accomplish something, then one of the candidates who can accomplish something might be better. In Arizona, like many/most other states, only registered party members can vote in their party's presidential primary election.

I look at the present election as-if it's already November: who could possibly beat Hillary or Obama? Based on the numbers, 'dark horse' candidate Ron Paul is the only Republican candidate with a snowball's chance in Phoenix. In comparison to Clinton and Obama, McCain has no money and no support for his "100 years in Iraq" platform, and Romney is just spending his own money to try to buy the nomination.

So, if you're registered as a Republican, a vote for Romney or McCain is a vote for Obama or Clinton. A vote for Paul counts for something.

Ron Paul is the best candidate because he tried to prevent the housing bubble, by introducing bills to abolish the Federal Reserve system. He gets no coverage from the Media-Political Complex because his platform is to take their toys away.

As for the Democrats, Hillary Clinton has done nothing to distance herself from Bill Clinton's 'free trade' policies (NAFTA, GATT, WTO), which made the housing bubble much worse than it otherwise would have been. Clinton's recession arrived the first time in March, 2001, which was too late for him to get credit, and too early for it to be Bush's fault. Bush tried the standard Keynesian "stimulus" recession remedy, but all the stimulus flowed into Chinese factories and non-productive units of housing. Now the economy's goose is cooked, so we should be thinking about who best to lead the country's reindustrialization. Obama may lack experience, but he's not evil.

Re:Ron Paul

[Improv]

On marriage, I recall him saying in the past that he saw it as an issue for states rather than the federal government. If he now sees it as a religious matter, that's not as objectionable to me (provided that the civil effects of marriage are available to couples of various composition). I would prefer to consider it a "cultural" matter than a religious one - I have plenty of atheist friends who are married...

The DoE forced them to push for it being taught alongside rather than as a replacement for proper biology, as it is required to teach proper biology. The DoE may have eventually acted if people had not been voted out of office first. Likewise, the other historical matters I mentioned are required to be taught by the federal government - that standardised curriculum ensures there are a lot of eyes across the entire nation on abuses against science and history.

On Hillary versus BushJr, I dislike Hillary (largely because I believe her not to be liberal enough and because I think she isn't sufficiently devoted to reform of the political system), but I trust her more than BushJr on matters of civil liberty (perhaps I'd trust McCain yet more - I dislike McCain's politics but believe he has integrity)

For your hypothetical, if I thought it would be effective, I'd try to swing control in the direction of localism as a tactic while Washington is less progressive, but I wouldn't consider it to be by any means a principled "states rights" thing, just tactics. I generally prefer a very strong federal government, moderately strong city/town government, and weak states, although when it's needed to advance the ends I see as important, tactics may suggest a temporary deviation from that.

Re:Ron Paul

[s20451]

Aside from the fundamental disagreement on most issues of substance, I'm not supporting Ron Paul (or wouldn't, if I were an American) precisely because of the rabid fanboyism that has sprung up around him, best exemplified by your incoherent post. Frankly, if Ron Paul had any chance of getting elected, I would find him kind of frightening.

Re:Ron Paul

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Try and cover up being owned by attacking the poster. Nice move.

It's cool that the mods came to your rescue and rubbed some ointment on that sore butt of yours.

Re:Ron Paul

[tompaulco]

You hit the nail on the head as far as my conundrum with voting. As you point out, Bush says ABC and then does XYZ. This is typical of Republicans, and although I agree with many of the planks in their platform, they never seem to remain true to their platform once taking office.
Now, as you point out, I should vote for someone who isn't a lying bastard. Well, since we know the republicans are a bunch of liars, then it isn't going to be someone who says ABC. Instead it will be something like DEF, and they will truly do DEF. You say I should vote for them because they will do what they say they will do. Trouble is, I don't like DEF. So now what?

Re:Ron Paul

[abburdlen]

I don't expect or want him to go to Washington for the Senate vote, but it'd be great if he'd encourage his supporters to contact their Senators and put some heat them.

I agree with you and Ron Paul that the PATRIOT act is F'ed up but on Monday there's another vote on FISA in the Senate and freedom loving patriots of all persuasions ought to get involved.

Re:Ron Paul

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you like health care? New medicines and treatments? Guess what...the market doesn't invest in the knowledge needed to make these. Pharma companies are focused on research that can rapidly create drugs and cures, not the back end research needed to make these possible. That's why the US invests $29 billion in healthcare research every year through the National Institutes of Health. This money largely goes out to university researchers who make advances possible. Please go and look up the amount of money that industry puts into healthcare research compared to governments and foundations. You'll see that it's the massive minority.

Re:Ron Paul

[Murrquan]

Voting for yourself is only voting your conscience if you think that you'd make the best president. I personally don't think I'm qualified.

I'm not interested in whether or not Ron Paul "has a future," nor am I interested in enlarging my social circle by proclaiming myself right (I have not made any contacts at all this election). What I care about is whether or not Constitutional government has a future. I believe that our current government has overstepped its bounds, and must be reined in. And I think that he is the one to do it.

If not him, then whomever takes up the mantle next election. The more support he receives this year, the more likely it is to happen.

Re:Ron Paul

[kayditty]

Wants to wall off the country? Based on what evidence? He voted for the fence act [1], but not for reasons of the fence [2]. Deport millions? I'm not so sure about that. He doesn't have anything against illegal immigrants, from what I can see, but I wonder what you have FOR THEM? They broke our laws, and you're crying that they might be deported?

Personally, I don't have a problem with immigration. These people have come here illegally, though, breaking our laws, and we cannot afford to support them. We give them money; we subsidize them. He wants to get rid of the incentives for this [3]. He has said multiple times that he would welcome immigrants, legal or not, if our country were ever in a position of real economic health. It isn't.

Let states ban abortions? Yeah, or allow them. It isn't up to the federal government to decide that one way or the other.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Like another poster said, this is a rather divisive issue. Why should you be mandating for the entire country, when we're a federation of states? Not that I necessarily am in total agreement with him on this point, but I don't see why you think it's so horrible (if you do think that). It certainly isn't a point of contention enough for me to not vote for him. It's following the cosntitution, and it's allowing liberty in the way this country was designed. You can't be serious.

I know this is strictly about Ron Paul, but I can't believe how many people dismiss his candidacy out of and go embracing Obama or Clinton for NO APPARENT REASON. Ron Paul has a few things about him you don't like, so you're going to vote for someone else, who probably has a lot more things you wouldn't like about them if you took the time to research them with the same intensity?
What the hell have Obama or Clinton ever done? Nothing. They sure have said lots of the things -- maybe some that you like -- but when the hell have they ever voted that way? Both of them voted for funding the Iraq war. Clinton voted to go to war. Both of them say they don't support the war, yet they were still funding it up until late 2007. What? At the very least, you can bet that Ron Paul has voted for what he's said he would, and that he'll most likely continue to do that if he goes back to congress, or to uphold those principles as best he can as president.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_ron_paul#Borders_and_immigration
2: http://www.ontheissues.org/TX/Ron_Paul_Immigration.htm
3: http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/border-security-and-immigration-reform/

Re:Ron Paul

[Flavio]

Yeah, don't vote for the guy who authored more than 10 books on economics, foreign policy and civil rights and has by far the best voting record in the House of Representatives.

Americans say they want change, but it's all bullshit. When the time comes, they vote for variants of the same old corrupt politicians. Obama may be better than Hillary or McCain, but he's still in bed with big business and his concept of economic responsibility isn't nearly good enough.

When the dollar crashes and you're left with massive debt and no civil rights, Americans will act like this was a complete surprise, as if no one could see it coming. When in fact, the US has been borrowing $2-3 billion PER DAY from the Chinese, and your administration's idea of economic responsibility is giving $800-1200 dollars to every American without mentioning where the money's coming from.

So yeah, you can expect a huge "I told you so" from the Ron Paul people when the time comes. And it won't take 10 years.

Here are a few interesting graphs: http://financialranks.com/?p=33

(For the record, I'm not even American. I'm just pointing out what's absolutely obvious to everyone in the rest of the world.)

Re:Ron Paul

[theglassishalf]

Keynesian economics would indeed prescribe low interest rates. However, John Maynard Keynes would roll in his grave if he heard that someone thought the Bush tax cuts were Keynesian. He believed that money should be redistributed to those at the bottom though public works and taxes, because those at the bottom were most likely to spend it.

-Daniel

Re:Ron Paul

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing more vital than FEMA. Our nation would crumble if there weren't a federal agency ready to overstep the constitution and "do something" to show the benevolence of the state.

There's nothing more vital than IRS. Our nation would crumble if there weren't a vindictive institution thrusting their hands in your pocket and harassing people into general submission to the state.

There's nothing more vital than DHS. Our nation would crumble if there weren't going to be secret wiretaps, pervasive filtering and storage of internet communications, a national ID system, massive database analysis of all your personal information, or even just the TSA to keep guns off airplanes.

There's nothing more vital than DOE. Our nation would crumble if there weren't a forum for the ruling elite to ensure the continuing dominance of petroleum-based fuels to help alleviate the economic doldrums of our good friends in Saudi Arabia or the coal-based energy needed to protect the environment from sunlight depletion.

There's nothing more vital...

Re:Ron Paul

[gambolt]

see the link in my sig

Re:Ron Paul

[gambolt]

butbutbutbut $10 for a loaf of bread will be cheap once you factor in all the tax we won't have to pay!

Not that the poorest of the poor are paying taxes now. They still eat bread though.

Re:Ron Paul

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you implying that a vote for Bush makes a voter responsible for all the stupid shit that Bush did once he won the office?

Yes. We already read the lips of one lying, gulf-war-fighting Bush. Why would his son be any different? Anyone with a brain knew that George Walker Exxon Mobile Bush and his Hallibuddy would sweep out from the White House every last scrap of economic and environmental integrity. But, hey, he's going to give us all $300 of our own money! What a great guy! He doesn't kill babies, only teenagers! What compassion! He likes baseball! I like baseball!

By the same token, anyone who votes for Hillary and tries to later claim, "Oh, but I didn't know she would do that," is a fucking imbecile. If you don't know Hillary Clinton by now, you never will.

Who needs honesty when you have predictability?

Re:Ron Paul

[Kohath]

Really? I didn't read the guy's post. Is name-calling considered profound now?

Re:Ron Paul

[Kohath]

When the dollar crashes and you're left with massive debt and no civil rights...

I've been hearing this and other similar doomsday scenarios for 25 years now. With all these doomsday predictions failing to come true every day, I'm beginning to think things might just be OK and the doomsayers might be wrong.

Maybe this time it actually will be doomsday though.

Re:Ron Paul

[Kohath]

Ron Paul is the best candidate because he tried...

Note how you never hear Ron Paul "succeeded" in doing anything. That was my point. No one can hold Ron Paul responsible for any of his accomplishments, because that would require accomplishments.

But when you never actually accomplish anything, you can't be held responsible for when your plan goes wrong, can you? You can certainly watch everyone else who accomplished their goals and then criticize the imperfections in the outcome though. What a bunch of idiots everyone else was! See how much smarter we are than them?

If he can't lead and he won't follow, then how is he part of the solution to anything?

Re:Ron Paul

[Anonymous Coward]

dontfeedthetrolls

Re:Ron Paul

[Mattwolf7]

You know what they say: "Lead, follow or get out of the way." Ron Paul isn't a leader or a follower... I believe Ron Paul and for the same reason, Dennis Kucinich aren't ever fit to be President for what you said. They both have never accomplished anything. I was talking to a state level Democrat in Ohio earlier this week about Kucinich, and what she said was something to the extent: "Dennis is a great man, and has never compromised himself, yet he hasn't ever accomplished anything. To me it is more important to make some progress than none. I'd rather go 75% towards my goal and be only 25% away than have gotten nowhere." I think that applies directly to Ron Paul, he may have never voted to raise taxes, but he hasn't ever accomplished anything. Politics is accomplishing your goals and improving your country, but it is also requires a great art of compromising, not to the extent that it compromised your character, but far enough that it will accomplish most of your goals. The President of the United States needs to be someone who can reach a compromise.

Re:Ron Paul

[DigiShaman]

So, if you're registered as a Republican, a vote for Romney or McCain is a vote for Obama or Clinton. A vote for Paul counts for something.

I'm sorry, but you're wrong about that 180 degrees.

Romney is the most conservative among fellow Republicans. He would be leading ahead of McCain if it wasn't for the Huckabee votes hamstringing him. McCain is currently leading because of the remaining "blue blooded" Republican's and most (if not all) of the independent voters.

Being a Republican, I'm very much in touch with my political community. I can't tell you how many Republicans would rather vote for Hillary than McCain (realistically, they would just stay home like in 06). The idea is that they would rather see Hillary drag down the US and her party than McCain fracture the Republican Party because of the non-conservative independent voters.

As for Ron Paul, he's scoffed at by both sides. Republicans can stand for his anti-war stance and lack of Washington clout. Democrats think he's nutteier than a fruitcake for being anti-socialism. Being that the Democratic voters are in lock-step with each other on idea's compared to Republicans, a vote for Ron Paul would *guarantee* a Democratic win in 08!

Re:Ron Paul

[Flavio]

I've been hearing this and other similar doomsday scenarios for 25 years now. With all these doomsday predictions failing to come true every day, I'm beginning to think things might just be OK and the doomsayers might be wrong.

I know, and that's because for these 25 years Americans have been losing civil rights and have been printing money to cover their expenses. However, up of the mid-90's your GDP really did grow in pace with the expenses, so your debt was relatively under control. You've got to consider these are long term predictions. Such a huge economy can't fall overnight.

The last decade just awful from an economic and civil rights point of view. Note that I'm including Clinton's term, because the planning for this wave of sudden changes started in his administration and was executed during GWB's two terms.

Maybe this time it actually will be doomsday though.

At this rate, the US doesn't have another 10 years. Banks around the world no longer want to buy US Treasury notes, bills and bonds at the rate that's necessary finance the United States, simply because it's not worth the risk. Every major central bank is heavily diversifying their holdings out of the dollar, and for several years there have been more Euros than Dollars in the international markets.

Re:Ron Paul

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like paying your bills with credit cards. Instead of paying off the credit card, you just get another credit card. Eventually it's going to come crashing down on you like pile of bricks. If you think we can really continue spending money we don't have, you're the one who's nuts.

Re:Ron Paul

[dgagley]

People also seem to forget that he is an Isolationist. The days are over where you can close your borders and go it on your own. ALL OF THE CANDIDATES ARE CORPORATE SPONSORED. The change has to be more than just the president. We also need to get rid of the bible thumping our morals and Ideals must be yours or else people still in the government once Nixo..oops...Bush is gone. :)

Re:Ron Paul

[frank_adrian314159]

Only person...

... wanting to do away with the Federal Reserve and put the US on a gold/silver standard, a fine idea from the 1880's, that caused huge deflationary pressures and regular economic chaos, including such things as bank crashes (remember them?), boom/bust cycles that impoverished millions every few years, and regular economic depressions.

... wanting to do away with anti-trust laws.

... wanting to do away with the UN, WTO, and all other global NGOs.

... destroy Social Security and Medicare.

... remove evry vestige of a social safety net except private charity (since we all saw how well that worked before the New Deal).

... remove Civil Rights enforcement because "Government can't end bigotry" (maybe not, but it can sure as hell ensure that those who do pay a steep price for it).

... who thinks that the best answer to environmental issues is to "respect private property rights" because things like pollution can always be solved by the magic of the Free Market.

Yes, Ron Paul - the man who makes Mike Gravel look sane! Nutty as a Scientologist and just as practical! Waste your vote today!

Re:Ron Paul

[fast penguin]

On marriage, I recall him saying in the past that he saw it as an issue for states rather than the federal government.

I'm not American, but I do have a family member that married an American, and I was convinced that marriage licenses were granted by each state (aren't driving licenses too?). This was quite a few years ago though... Has this changed, or was I confused? Thanks in advance.

Re:Ron Paul

[Anonymous Coward]

That's Ron Paul, who would dismantle vital institutions of our society. It's quite easy to throw out a blanket statement like that. Can you give any examples?

Re:Ron Paul

[smartr]

Starting a business in many industries does not require "a lot of cash, staff, factories, systems, inventory, distribution and whatnot", particularly in software and IT. A devoted dot com could easily get off the ground in a few months and minimal cash, particularly if they don't buy Microsoft products. Subway (the restaurant) was started on a $1000 loan, as an idea to pay for college. I suppose you might argue that due to terrible inflation, that was more like a $50,000 loan and that Fred DeLuca is an evil corporate pawn who got away with atrocities like not installing proper grease and sewage treatment, going through 30 government inspections, and hiring a team of lawyers to make the necessary legal prerequisites to go into business for oneself.

Your examples don't make sense. If a company does not have a complete monopoly on a given product, say in your milk example, the grocer basically says, "screw you then", and looks for a new source of milk. Fact of the matter is, there's nothing stopping a milk producer from doing just this as things are now and will continue to be. For the milk producer to maintain this kind of control, they will have to have some kind of production capacity that makes their ability to produce milk cheaper than someone else making milk. The only thing ensuring the monopoly of your milk monger in the current day is regulation on pasteurization and special animal treatment (PETA feels no one should drink animal milk), as these directly bring up the bottom line of anyone wanting to compete in the milk market.

In your example of Intel, many distributors would say, screw you - AMD gives us a better deal. Hence, competition would continue, although distribution channels would be very divided in the actual products they sold. I'd imagine something like this is actually happening with AT&T and Apple - as Apple has an exclusive deal with using AT&T as the iPhone carrier. This is not unhealthy for society.

What is unhealthy is when AT&T goes and buys every other carrier in the nation, and then jacks the price up since no one can compete due to complete control of limited resources. Unless AT&T does have competitors, it is very dangerous for them to consider abandoning network neutrality. Certainly, there are questions of how viable the business was if the government came in the first place to fund the production of wires, but at some point it becomes profitable for other companies to come in and undercut the tel-co. I admit it gets far trickier when dealing with tel-co's than say farmers, but the only government regulation that really needs to be there is an insurance of competition, so that the phone companies do not form a monopoly or ologopoly.

Re:Ron Paul

[Brandybuck]

Passengers flights are a monopoly? Maybe in some countries (due to government monopolistic grants), but here in the US it's still tons of cutthroat competition.

Re:Ron Paul

[Improv]

There are many services that are administered by individual states that are nontheless subject to federal legislation (and/or threats to withdraw funding for various institutions if they don't go with what various federal bodies want). Some of these fall under interpretations of the interstate commerce clause, some use other legal justifications.

As I understand, while states do have a lot of regulatory discretion for how marriage is defined/conducted/etc, they are obligated to recognise existing marriages performed by other states, whether those would be underage, homosexual, or otherwise not permitted in their state.

Re:Ron Paul

[Anonymous Coward]

In Arizona, like many/most other states, only registered party members can vote in their party's presidential primary election.

But be sure to LOOK IT UP!

In my state (Washington), for example, you can only vote in the primary for one party, but you don't have to be "registered" -- you just have to sign an oath, when you vote, that you haven't (and won't) participate in the nominating process for any other political party this election.

Also, our state has both caucuses and primaries -- and the democratic primary counts for nothing. (Yes, that's right.) Be sure to find out the nominating process for your state (which may have changed since last time!).

Re:Ron Paul

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you implying that a vote for Bush makes a voter responsible for all the stupid shit that Bush did once he won the office?

If they voted for that son of a bitch again in 2004? Yes I am.

Re:Ron Paul

[Hugonz]

Nice jingle. Could I have some music along with it?

What "vital institutions" are you talking about? I suspect you have no clue.

Re:Ron Paul

[bahwi]

Actually the Chinese wouldn't let the dollar crash, besides borrowed money it would crash their economy from investments and the purchased we make. Crashing the dollar would cost China just about every penny they have and then some, and throw them into chaos. It's good to be a big market. Ditto for Europe(in both directions, we don't want them to crash they don't want us to crash). Everyone keeps it in a good balance it flows up and down with nothing too terrible in any direction.

Re:Ron Paul

[Improv]

Oh I suddenly have seen the light thanks to your stylishly rude message, and realise that I indeed have no clue what I'm talking about. Thanks for insulting me. Otherwise, we might've had a conversation and I wouldn't have seen how awfully wrong I was. Perhaps Ron Paul should hire you to write his television adverts - it could just say something like "Hey jerk! You suck. This message brought to you by Ron Paul for President". I'm sure it'll be as effective as your note here, by that I mean absolutely amazing!

Re:Ron Paul

[TheoMurpse]

But a vote is an attempt to exercise power. Voting for someone with no chance at all is simply losing that power.

And in the past couple elections, when the popular vote has been pretty close to 50-50, you don't think the two major parties would look at a candidate who got 3% of the vote and say, "Hmm, what policies did that guy have that we can appropriate to get that 3% in the next election?"

If Nader got 5% of the popular vote, despite his lack of chance of winning, both Ds and Rs would move a little more consumer-friendly and Earth-friendly for the next election cycle to try and get that 5%, for fear of the other party getting it and throwing the balance to a 47.5%-52.5% advantage for one party over the other.

A vote for a loser can still make an impact on future policies. That's why third-party candidates run in the first place (I remember Harry Browne saying something to this effect in a third-party candidate presidential debate in 2000, which was what got me looking at libertarian thought in the first place).

Re:Ron Paul

[Scudsucker]

These people have come here illegally, though, breaking our laws, and we cannot afford to support them.

We aren't supporting them, they are supporting us. Illegals subsidize Social Security to the tune of $7 billion per year - benefits they can't collect on.

They broke our laws, and you're crying that they might be deported?

Here's my view on the subject: conservatives can bitch about illegal immigration once they've returned the Southwest to Mexico, and start abiding by all the treaties made and broken with Indian tribes. Until then, they can STFU.

Re:Ron Paul

[Scudsucker]

You want him to stop campaigning the week before Super Tuesday just so he can go back to DC and watch the *Senate* vote? Sheesh.

Straw man. 1) the parent never said anything about him going to the Senate, and 2) does he really need to go back to DC to speak out against telecom immunity?

Here's a page with his privacy issues. If you still think he's in favor of warrantless searches you're nuts.

Yawn. Sure, Libertarians oppose warrantless wiretapping - with the same fervor that they oppose federal health insurance for children. Along with some common sense, Libertarians seriously need to learn about the concept of having priorities.

People are trying to punish telcos

Break the law, you suffer the consequences. What a novel concept.

when it's congress that needs to be punished for giving these outrageous powers to the presidency.

Congress didn't give powers to the president, the Administration just went ahead and did it. But aside from that, any Senator or Congressman that votes for immunity flagrantly violates their oath of office (protect the Constitution) and should resign.

Re:Ron Paul

[Scudsucker]

Monopolies are nearly all caused by big government.

Explain how we had monopolies before we had government regulation, then.

When it takes an army of accountants and lawyers to do business, only those firms large enough to afford an army of accountants and lawyers will do business!

That's going to be big news to every mom & pop business in the country. And the government doesn't enforce accounting standards to make businesses jump through hoops, the standards are to enforce honesty to shareholders, partners and tax collectors.

Stop and think where Microsoft would be today without their government granted copyrights.

Copyrights are what encourages commercial development of works in the first place. The problem isn't copyright, it's the ludicrous lengths to which copyright has been extended.

Government isn't the solution, it's the problem!

A trite, tired marketing slogan.

Re:Ron Paul

[Scudsucker]

The only other option would be to break up the corporation like Ma Bell, but as we've seen over the last few years it just seems to T1000 its way back together.

Because corporate friendly Bush administration will overlook just about anything. One of the reasons I'm wary of Hillary becoming president is we'll see more deregulation and consolidation.

Then again, look at what is happening to Microsoft now without government intervention. Competition in the marketplace from Google has forced them to use the last of their cash on hand to try and acquire another company.

Comparing Microsoft to Google is not a case of competition eroding a monopoly, because Microsoft never had a monopoly in Internet searching or services. Their monopolies are in operating systems and office suites - two areas Google hasn't been able to scratch.

Transportation, how much do we pay to bail out the airlines that can't balance a checkbook?

The problem isn't bailouts, the problem is that the airlines should never have been deregulated in the first place. Air fares were falling faster before deregulation. After deregulation, the airlines lost billions of dollars, and that was before 911.

Re:Ron Paul

[Scudsucker]

Microsoft has been involved with Government since they started to become big... many years ago.

Red herring. The government is just another (large) customer. The government didn't create the Microsoft monopoly, nor does it sustain it through legal means.

Just how naive are you, anyway?

Far less than you, apparently.

Re:Ron Paul

[Flavio]

Actually the Chinese wouldn't let the dollar crash

That's what Americans have been saying for the last 10 years, but it's not a fact. Rather, it's what they hope for and is not backed by recent history.

Asia can no longer buy US treasury issues at a rate necessary to keep the dollar up. The US wants China and Japan to lend them more and more money, and there's a limit to how much they are willing to spend. Confidence in the dollar has fallen continuously over the last years, and it doesn't make sense to keep the music going.

I suggest you research this matter, and you'll see that the Americans are spending so much that the Chinese don't have a chance.

Re:Ron Paul

[Anonymous Coward]

"We aren't supporting them, they are supporting us."
I disagree. Illegals actually consume more services then their cheap labor produces. I would like to see them have the ability to come across the border with temporary passes, say for three years and work legally. I am for closing the border with "Ellis Island" style centers to allow legal passage along the border.

"Illegals subsidize Social Security to the tune of $7 billion per year"
If they are getting paid in cash I don't see how this is possible.

Re:Ron Paul

[Jane Q. Public]

Red herring?? Give me a break.

There is a difference between doing legitimate business with government, and lobbying or buying votes. They are NOT the same things. One is fine, the other two are unethical, with the third being downright illegal. (Yes, I stated that lobbying is unethical, and it is, from a societal point of view.) And if you really believe that the government did not assist Microsoft in becoming a near-monopoly, or keeping it there, then you ARE naive. That has been the case with the vast majority of monopolies and oligopolies, and some economists actually believe that it is impossible to become a monopoly without some degree of government collusion.

Apparently you don't remember the history, or the court cases. You don't remember the major antitrust lawsuit the Federal government had against Microsoft, which Microsoft was losing pitifully... and which mysteriously disappeared on darned near the very day that George Bush took office. (It did not disappear in the EU, however, and -- guess what? -- Microsoft lost pitifully. Sad to think that the Europeans are less corrupt than the U.S. these days.)

If the disappearance of that suit, and many other examples like it, are not "sustaining a monopoly through legal means", then you must have a definition of corruption that is much different from the one in the dictionary.

Re:Ron Paul

[Doug Neal]

Ron Paul's integrity and consistency are commendable, as are his policies on the things you mentioned. But that alone doesn't win him my support. The whole laissez-faire minimal government philosophy is just not workable in practice IMHO and does nothing to address issues like social inequality and the gap between the rich and the poor, which would surely get even bigger under such a system. The idea that the free market will solve everything one way or another is demonstrably flawed.

Re:Ron Paul

[AstrumPreliator]

You know, given the choice between "accomplishments" like The Patriot Act and nothing, I'll choose nothing.

Re:Ron Paul

[Scudsucker]

Illegals actually consume more services then their cheap labor produces...If they are getting paid in cash I don't see how this is possible.

Payroll taxes, my good friend. They also pay sales and property taxes - the only tax they're really dodging is the income tax, but they generally don't make that much money anyway.

Re:Ron Paul

[Scudsucker]

Red herring?? Give me a break.

No, it was a red herring, and I wont give you a break as you've come out with some new ones.

And if you really believe that the government did not assist Microsoft in becoming a near-monopoly, or keeping it there, then you ARE naive.

And what did the government do, exactly, other than be a large customer? Put up or shut up.

Apparently you don't remember the history, or the court cases. You don't remember the major antitrust lawsuit the Federal government had against Microsoft, which Microsoft was losing pitifully... and which mysteriously disappeared on darned near the very day that George Bush took office.

Red herring. Failing to stop the Microsoft monopoly is a completely separate issue from said monopoly's creation.

Obama is for transparency

[Anonymous Coward]

at this point, we need as much transparency as we can get for most of the tech issues: Intellectual Property, RIAA, MPEG, copyright, frequency, Cable regulation, bandwidth prioritizing. Obama has flatly stated that he supports maximum transparency at all levels of government. That makes him more libertarian than the other candidates by a long shot. so, based on that, i would say obama.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[tomhudson]

Obama has flatly stated that he supports maximum transparency at all levels of government

Which means absolutely nothing as far as any of the issues mentioned in the summary: "Copyright infringement, net neutrality, wireless spectrum, content filtering, broadband deployment".

No wonder you posted as an AC - your answer is the same any politician would give when asked a question - use a lot of BBBs (bullshit bingo buzzwords) to avoid actually giving an answer.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[fictionpuss]

"No wonder you posted as an AC - your answer is the same any politician would give when asked a question - use a lot of BBBs (bullshit bingo buzzwords) to avoid actually giving an answer."

I don't think that that is entirely fair, not least because you go on the attack before actually stating your case as to why transparency of stakeholder interests has absolutely no affect on the mentioned issues.

Science and Technology aren't (or at least shouldn't) be about which agendas are popular at the moment, but ensuring that as much data as possible is made freely available to as many people as possible, so that the best determination can be made. This is the foundation which allows surfer dudes to challenge our notion of the universe.

In that sense, maximum transparency is the single most important agenda for tech issues. Example - if the greater truth was that net neutrality isn't the best policy decision to uphold, then I'd need a lot of convincing, but first on that list would be ensuring me that my cable company isn't just trying to screw me out of more $$$.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[wellingj]

I think you missed the point of being a Libertarian.
If you think the government can do any thing it wants but it just has to tell you, that's not Libertarian.
Libertarian politics is all about the government having its hands off the economy and its citizen's endeavors.
I doubt Obama would be libertarian enough to abolish the IRS or the Social Security System.

But I do agree that transparency is welcome.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[tomhudson]

Its entirely fair - the magic phrase "transparency in government" isn't going to fix the housing bubble, the deficit, the lack of universal medical care - heck, it avoids every single concrete issue the article blurb mentions.

Take the issue of net neutrality ... those who care can find out everything they need to know. We don't need "transparency" in government - we need some common sense.

A good example is software patents. Making the process completely transparent won't fix that - only a change of law will.

Ditto for health care. Only a change of law will fix that - not transparency.

The housing bubble bust? Only house prices deflating to their historic norms (2.5 to 3x local income) will fix that. "Transparency" won't. And if it means that a couple of big banks fail because they got too greedy, that's their shareholders' problem, not the government, nor the taxpayer. Throwing a trillion bux at it won't fix the underlying problem - overly inflated housing values. "Transparency" sure won't fix it.

I'm sick and tired of politicians who don't tell it like it is and think we're stupid, which I guess means pretty much all main-stream politicians.

Transparency is a good thing, but it will not solve any of the problems currently facng the US and the rest of the world. Only concrete actions. For example, odon't just say you're in favour of net neutrality - tell us how you're going to achieve it. Specifically, what laws you intend to pass. Ditto for health care, the deficit, etc. Not "policy" - which can change, but LAW. That would be real transparency.

For example, if its the intention of the government to inflate its way out of the current bubble bust and deficit, tell us. (7 years of 10% inflation per annum should about do it - but you'll end up with a US dollar worth < $0.20 on world markets).

Re:Obama is for transparency

[fictionpuss]

If you've never worked for a Government, ask someone you know who has. They'll have plenty of examples of bad decisions, blatant abuses, borderline (and beyond) criminal actions which pass due to an order or ethos coming down from above, which cannot be questioned or publicised.

Software patents are a good example: Of course only a change of law will fix that situation, but without the transparency to see who is lobbying who on the issue, where the money flows, it won't even be debated.

"For example, odon't just say you're in favour of net neutrality - tell us how you're going to achieve it."

Please respond to the point I made earlier about S&T not being about who knows the right answers (or who can spout the most convincing ones at the time), but who can create the environment where the right answer can be determined.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[flyingsquid]

Libertarianism is the new Communism: it sounds good in theory, but in practice just doesn't work.

Libertarian philosophy is in large part responsible for the failure in Iraq. After all, if the solution to bad government is no government, all we have to do is get rid of Saddam and the economy will take off and society will flourish, right? And we can have Halliburton coordinate the rebuilding instead of the State Department and have Blackwater mercenaries do jobs in place of the U.S. Army. But it didn't work out that way. Halliburton overcharged and underperformed. And the Blackwater guys stumbled into an ambush in Fallujah and got strung up from a bridge, which led to two major battles in the city. And as awful as Saddam's Stalinist regime was, the power vacuum that followed was filled by militias, organized crime, religious zealots, and terrorists, so that life is, unbelievably, worse than it was under Saddam. Bush and his Neocon buddies thought that Iraq would be the perfect little place to test out their neat Libertarian ideas and show how well they worked; instead they got thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed and have left the place a wreck.

What Iraq shows is that a functioning free market needs good government. You need security so you and your customers don't get killed, infrastructure so you can run your store, courts so that you can resolve disputes. Without an effective police force, reliable power and water, and a functioning justice system, it's hard to run your shop at a profit.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[Azghoul]

Libertarian prescriptions for policy have their faults, but to suggest the situation in Iraq is anything near resembling a libertarian state is foolish at best.

"Bush and his Neocon buddies" have absolutely nothing to do with libertarian ideals. They are, in fact, quite the opposite.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[Shining Celebi]

Which means absolutely nothing as far as any of the issues mentioned in the summary: "Copyright infringement, net neutrality, wireless spectrum, content filtering, broadband deployment". No wonder you posted as an AC - your answer is the same any politician would give when asked a question - use a lot of BBBs (bullshit bingo buzzwords) to avoid actually giving an answer.

Obama is for net neutrality, for increased broadband deplayment (including the use of the wireless spectrum), and wants to pass laws strengthening the privacy of individuals on the Internet to apply to both corporations and the government. He also advocates reforming the patent system. This are all clearly stated on his web site.

I noticed the story was tagged with every variant of Ron Paul, which puzzles me, because Ron Paul is against net neutrality (says it counts as regulation by telling the ISPs they can't regulate), could care less if ISPs implement content filtering (regulation!), doesn't give a crap about broadband deployment (government should have nothing to do with it! Free market will fix it!), and doesn't care a whit what corporations do with our information (regulation), although I believe he would demand very stringent privacy laws on the government side, which is a very good thing, but overall, he doesn't come close to offering what other candidates do. There are even other Republican candidates with better positions.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[tomhudson]

Please respond to the point I made earlier about S&T not being about who knows the right answers (or who can spout the most convincing ones at the time), but who can create the environment where the right answer can be determined.

We already know what the right answers are - without concrete action on the deficit, "Science and Technology" are useless ... what good is S&T if you've got no money, and foreign investors refuse to lend, because they believe you'll inflate your currency to the point where its worth less than any return they can realize?

Will "Science and Technology" or "Greater Transparency"

1. raise federal taxes?
2. lower federal expenditures?
3. refuse bail-outs for homeowners, banks, etc. (Greed carries its own punishment.)

These are policy issues, not "transparency" issues.

This is not "rocket science" - this is about someone coming forward and saying "we can't afford to continue like this, we couldn't afford it at the time, the party's over, we're in for a huge hangover for the next 20 years, we're in hock past our eyeballs, and now we have to pay for it - and if you think this is painful, it'll be even more painful if we don't ..."

Of course, anyone who actually says that is never going to be elected ... so what is needed is someone who is willing to do that, but also willing to lie about it until they're elected. What is REALLY needed is less transparency, at least until they're in the White House. Promise them anything, but give them tax increases, lower expenditures, and a balanced budget.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[Flavio]

Bush and his neocon buddies are completely opposed to Libertarianism. They've hijacked the Republican party, and they'd rather have Hillary Clinton than a libertarian like Ron Paul.

Iraq is a contractor's wet dream. Big government contracts are awarded to US companies, while soldiers die to protect American assets. This is exactly what libertarians oppose, and it pisses me off that you've tied the one group of people who've consistently opposed this war with the mess that is Iraq.

Iraq doesn't show that a free market needs government(*). It only shows that under a civil war and illegal occupation nothing works.

(*) Besides, libertarians aren't anarchists. Libertarians favor SMALL government.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're confusing libertarianism with anarchy.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[KKlaus]

Halliburton received no-bid contracts - hardly a libertarian ideal. Blackwater does not have a worse track record than the U.S. Military. Sure sending those 4 guys into Fallujah blind and under protected was a big fuck-up, but the Military does stuff that like that too. Look at nearly 4 years of a strategy of essentially sending patrols out to get hit by IEDs and shot at. Blackwater did plenty of things well, and that isn't to be ignored simply because the only time they made the news was when they made mistakes. And Libertarianism isn't Anarchy - it stipulates enforced contracts and individual protections and property rights and other niceties sorely missing in Iraq. All in all, the Iraq experiment was highly un-Libertarian.

Libertarianism's mistake is that it overestimates the quality of the Average Citizen. Like with Communism, you get a bunch of liberal (in the classical sense of the word) educated guys together who assume that everyone is like the people they hang around with (liberal educated people) and form impractical beliefs based on that false assumption. Your average consumer is fundamentally pretty unreasonable, and Libertarianism can't function without a considered, far sighted citizenry.

But in any case, Iraq was not a test of Libertarian theory, and has little to say about any of that.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[tomhudson]

Like I said, platitudes ... being "for" something is easy - saying "this is the text of the law I'm pushing to pass, and these are the special interests whose oxes are going to be served on the bar-b-que if you vote for me" is a different kettle of fish. Also, much more transparent.

However, like all politicians, can't afford to offend any special-interest group. After all, they might give money to your opponent. Or sponsor dirty tactics. Or some people whose special interests you're gonna gut might vote against you.

Its like one person saying "I'm against the war" and another saying "I will push for a resolution to withdraw n troops by day x, and the rest by day x+y." One is just a politician talking, the other is specifics that people want to know. And much more transparent.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[Anonymous Coward]

As a low-level government employee, I vouch for your description of how government works. My unit audits all expenses for the department I work for, and I am regularly told to approve shady payments by my superiors against my better judgment. This tends to be relatively minor, like paying for cushy hotel stays for upper management, but happens constantly.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[fictionpuss]

"Of course, anyone who actually says that is never going to be elected ... so what is needed is someone who is willing to do that, but also willing to lie about it until they're elected. What is REALLY needed is less transparency, at least until they're in the White House."

You're arguing in a tautology: "Cynicism is needed because my cynical reasoning reaches that conclusion."

Similarly when you again ignore the point about Transparency benefiting S&T and instead talk about issues of taxes/federal expenditures/homeowner bailouts. Yes everything is connected at some level, but that's Economics 101 and although they are important issues they do not relate to the topic of Transparency and Technology. By extension to your circular line of argument, you would have to conclude that you should pick the candidate who has the best relationship with your deity, as such that the universe doesn't wink out of existence.. which would, as a consequence, have a negative impact on Technology.

"...what good is S&T if you've got no money, and foreign investors refuse to lend..."

This thread is about the relationship between Transparency and Technology, the story is about who will give the best support to S&T. I feel that you are either unintentionally drifting off-topic slightly, or just using this thread as a personal soapbox.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[dynamo]

No, what Iraq shows is that you can't outsource political revolution and expect it to work.

A true libertarian would NEVER attack / mess with another country that had not attacked / messed with us first. The basic libertarian policy of live and let live is fractal at least up to the country level.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[alexborges]

Are you NUTS?

What of libertarianism can you observe in each and every single one of Bush's presidency? Sure, he did the tax cuts... for the richest! Thats not libertarianism, thats open handed cynical corruption and plain stupidity. I like to call this dogmatic-neoliberalism. Bush is practically a corporate activist theocrat, not a libertarian!

Do not confuse libertarianism with economic-liberalism (which yeah, some republican still are). A true libertarian would be a drug leglizer, a medicare killer, a president that eliminated all subsidization of agriculture, a public education terminator, an advocate against the very existance of the university. Libertarians are liberal anarchists: in favor of ALL flavors of freedom, not just the ones that are morally acceptable.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[Wellspring]

I guess I should start by reminding you that conservatives and libertarians are not the same thing. They're mostly allied these days because the liberals (progressives, whatever they're calling themselves these days) have won most of the political battles of the 20th century and both philosophies want to prune back their excesses.

Libertarianism isn't no government, it's government that does what it is supposed to do -- preserve civil liberties -- and nothing more. Libertarians in the US want drastically reduced government because when government tries to do lots of other stuff (as it does in the United States), it not only screws that stuff up, but it compromises its ability to do its core job of preserving liberty.

As you point out, one major component of a government is rule of law. Honest and effective police and courts are both libertarian principles. The reason libertarians want less government in the US is because of the staggering number of things that the government is involved in that have nothing to do with preserving liberty. At best, it's a distraction. At worst, you end up stomping on liberty in the name of trying to be Santa Claus or Dr. Phil.

One of Bush's flaws is precisely that he is not a libertarian. His "Compassionate Conservatism" pisses libertarians off because where it differs from what Newt Gingrich and Ronald Reagan call conservatism, it does so by jettisoning the libertarian ideals they held, while keeping the strong national defense and religious stuff that conservatives believe in but libertarians dislike. Newt used things like block grants to move many decisions to the state level where they could be personalized to local conditions. Reagan said "government is the problem" and deregulated. Bush said, "Government is the solution" and raised spending drastically. Not just on defense. The No Child Left Behind Act basically began federalizing education. The Prescription Drug plan expanded the government's role in paying for pharmaceuticals. These proposals aren't libertarian at all, and neither is Bush. Conservatives gave Bush a pass because they felt the war on terror issues were more important. Libertarians didn't give Bush a pass on that stuff at all, and remain critical of him to this day.

Incidentally, your summary of what happened in Fallujah indicates that like many people you have little or no understanding of what happened over there beyond what Jon Stewart told you. Or who the neo-conservatives are and what they believe (they aren't libertarians by any stretch of the imagination, either). Things certainly went wrong for a while, but you're totally missing the point about the lessons of Iraq, which are orthogonal to the "libertarians vs liberals" point you're trying to make.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[The_Wilschon]

Will "Science and Technology" or "Greater Transparency" lower federal expenditures? Probably... If you have real good transparency in, eg, the federal budget, then passing loads of pork as riders on decent bills becomes a little more difficult. If we could cut out all the pork, we'd put a pretty big hole in the deficit.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[tomhudson]

the story is about who will give the best support to S&T

And I pointed out that the best support for S&T is to fix the problems with the economy. And you don't do that by playing BS bingo, with buzz-words like "transparency". You do that with specifics, like saying "I am going to get rid of software patents because they stifle innovation." You let people know whose ox you're going to gore, so they can make a decision based on facts, not bafflegab.

You want transparency? This is transparent. It gives specific actions. Not "I will improve government by increasing transparency" or "I will help homeowners by waving my hands all over the place".

It addresses the deficit, with specific actions; also the housing bubble, the environment, dependence on foreign oil, science and technology, software patents, Iraq, the middle east peace process, hand guns, abortion, gay marriage, the federal minimum wage, health care, ending the war on drugs and reducing the prison population, electoral finance and other political reforms, illegal immigrants drivers licenses and taxes, lunar exploration, education, etc.

Fixing the finance crisis, even though it means some painful adjustments, is needed. So is patent reform, especially software patent reform, or you can kiss a large section of S&T development goodbye, as it moves off-shore to escape restrictions. All anyone is doing is promising to throw money willy-nilly at problems, without addressing the over $80 trillion dollar issues ($9 trillion in federal debt, plus another $$75 trillion in off-the-books future liabilities via social security and other entitlement programs).

It would be fun to hook every politician to a polygraph and ask them the specific details that they so often try to get us to ignore. And give them a shock every time they lie.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[Mickey1]

Following the Constitution will get the country on the right track; freedom from Big Government. Without the federal government in the way the nerds could make the internet shiney. http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/ Be a patriot give 'till it hurts http://www.ronpaulmoneybomb.com/

Re:Obama is for transparency

[infonography]

Following the Constitution will get the country on the right track; freedom from Big Government. Without the federal government in the way the nerds could make the internet shiney. SNIP

I am not so sure I want any of his supporters in government. I voted for him once against GHWB, but the company he is keeping these days isn't to my liking. http://johnshirley.net/DesktopDefault.aspx

Re:Obama is for transparency

[zerocool^]

This is exactly what libertarians oppose

Show me five people who are libertarians, who can all agree what a libertarian is, and I'll mail you a waffle.

~Wx

Re:Obama is for transparency

[OrangeTide]

You owe him a waffle! But without syrup it will be useless.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[Anonymous Coward]

So why don't you get off your ass like Ralph Nader did and start digging. He made a huge difference by taking on corporate interests and questionable legislation. Obama empowers people to do more than Ralph did. People just need to step up and stop hoping for a benevolent dictator.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[tomhudson]

So why don't you get off your ass like Ralph Nader did and start digging. He made a huge difference by taking on corporate interests and questionable legislation. Obama empowers people to do more than Ralph did. People just need to step up and stop hoping for a benevolent dictator.

I already did my share - ran 3 times, lost 3 times - and all funded 100% from my own pocket. Now if you want to appoint me as a benevolent dictator ...

Re:Obama is for transparency

[ZombieRoboNinja]

>>Ditto for health care. Only a change of law will fix that - not transparency.

At least on this one, Obama had a pretty clear and well-stated argument that transparency IS necessary.

Here's the Youtube link (it's either this one or the second half): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nnj7r1wCD4

Basically, Obama says that Hillary Clinton's push for universal health care early in Bill Clinton's administration failed largely because the Clintons grabbed a group of smart policy people and had them draw up a plan behind closed doors. This allowed the pharmaceutical and insurance companies to start spending millions with scare-tactic advertisements saying the government wanted to take away their medicine and kill their puppies. Because nobody outside the administration saw the policy being made, people fell for it. Obama says he'd instead bring everyone together (insurance companies, doctors, unions, etc.) for a very public discussion of the issues.

So in this case, he's arguing that you need transparency in order to successfully MAKE the law, and to get the American people on board. You can debate whether he's being too optimistic here, but he's definitely not just handwaving and muttering "transparency" like a buzzword.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[tomhudson]

Do you really believe isurance companies are going to do anything but try to throw a monkey wrench into any palns to excise them from their most profitable operations?

Public health care is just too important to involve insurance companies, who have a vested interest in seeing it fail, in the formulation of policy.

To that extent, Obama is not just an optimist - he's a fool.

Other countries didn't try to please everyone when they brought in public health schemes - they aimed to please only one group - the general population, the voters who put them into power and entrusted them with the mandate to fix it.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[Anonymous Coward]

at this point, we need as much transparency as we can get for most of the tech issues: Intellectual Property, RIAA, MPEG, copyright, frequency, Cable regulation, bandwidth prioritizing. Obama has flatly stated that he supports maximum transparency at all levels of government. That makes him more libertarian than the other candidates by a long shot. so, based on that, i would say obama. He's also the anti-Christ. Vote for Obama and get a free RFID implant and a one way ticket to an eternity in Hell!

Re:Obama is for transparency

[rk]

Can you clue me in a little more specific than that link? The damn thing is reads like a three column timecube site.

If you're referring to the whole Ron Paul white supremacist thing, Justin Raimondo debunked it pretty thoroughly.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[lordSaurontheGreat]

I'm sick and tired of politicians who don't tell it like it is and think we're stupid...

You must be new here.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[flyingsquid]

You guys are such a bunch of pussies. You spend years arguing that private industry can do everything better than the government. Then Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld put exactly this into practice in Iraq, by letting private industry do the rebuilding, and things go to hell, and then you guys deny all responsibility. Libertarian ideology -your idiotic, simplistic and mentally retarded "government bad! industry good!" philosophy helped this happen- but you won't own up.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[Anonymous Coward]

He's also the anti-Christ. Vote for Obama and get a free RFID implant and a one way ticket to an eternity in Hell! The sad thing is, people actually believe that.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[infonography]

Justin Raimondo debunked it pretty thoroughly.???

not quite and it's not him being a racist that is the issue, i know he isn't. It's his followers that I don't like he's got a bunch of the of the worst rightwing nutjobs trailing him about. He should either kick them to the curb publicly or they will drag him down. Guilt by association is a factor in politics. Even if it's bullshit.

Still after its all said I agree with about half what he says, but only half and that not enough for a vote.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[Anonymous Coward]

haha, a libertarian think tank seriously argued that Somalia was a great model of society. Why not iraq?

Re:Obama is for transparency

[Anonymous Coward]

> you'll end up with a US dollar worth $0.20 on world markets

What? A US dollar is, by identity, worth $1 on world markets. It may be worth 1/10th of a british pound, but one dollar can only equal one dollar.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[EastCoastSurfer]

I'm sick and tired of politicians who don't tell it like it is and think we're stupid, which I guess means pretty much all main-stream politicians.

I agree, but the problem is that people don't want to hear it. I think it was Michigan where McCain told a group of autoworkers that their $30/hour to weld a part together jobs were probably not coming back (which is probably the closest thing to the truth). His numbers fell immediately. Then look at (I think it was Huckabee) who told a similar group he was going to bring all the jobs back (of course with not mention on how) and his number jumped.

Don't blame the politicians, blame the lemmings on both sides who won't think for themselves.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[tomhudson]

Good point - I should have said "in constant dollars" so I'll rephrase it. You'll end up with a US dollar worth 1/10 of a Euro.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[tomhudson]

I agree, but the problem is that people don't want to hear it. I think it was Michigan where McCain told a group of autoworkers that their $30/hour to weld a part together jobs were probably not coming back (which is probably the closest thing to the truth). His numbers fell immediately. Then look at (I think it was Huckabee) who told a similar group he was going to bring all the jobs back (of course with not mention on how) and his number jumped.

So why didn't McCain do the smart thing, and call Huckabee a two-faced liar? That would have been "offensive" enough to demand a retort, a "put up or shut up" moment, and it would have cut through all the political BS.

He could have gone further - "If you have a viable plan, why are you keeping it to yourself? Why aren't you talking to the heads of GM, Ford, etc.? Its because you're full of shit, and they'd call you on it in a second."

Now THAT would have been a breath of fresh air. That would have been THE sound bite for the week. And it also puts Huckabee into the position where he either doesn't have an answer, or if he did, he's saying "elect me or you'll lose your jobs because only I have the secret sauce."

I blame the politicians. Any politician with half an instinct for leadership, and a bit of guts, would have seen that this was a golden opportunity to slam-dunk the opposition.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[EastCoastSurfer]

I'm with you! I would respect that response from McCain, but at the end of the day I think you and I are not the average voter. I blame the 'everyone wins a trophy' crowd for making people who take decisive positions on issues unpopular. :)

Re:Obama is for transparency

[Fallout2man]

You seem to be failing to understand that all the good legislation in the world won't work if no one but politicians, who tend to be easily influenced, swayed and corrupted, can challenge it. If, for instance, the slashdot community could have participated in hearings on the Sonny Bono Copyright Act or the DMCA do you honestly think that we'd he even half as clusterfucked as we are right now in relation to copyright law? Do you think software patents would have ever even stood a chance? We need transparency so that we, the public, can do the things the politicians just can't do. We don't need special interest money, we don't get fancy gifts or all expense paid junkets. We are the people the law effects the most and if corporations get to have their say we had damn better well get ours too. None of the laws we really need will be possible without large public grass roots support. That is only possible by letting the public in on day one, informing them, and most importantly letting them speak up in these proceedings to challenge obviously erroneous or harmful legislation or policy and you're a fool if you think we can somehow accomplish this otherwise.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[MikeFM]

Libertarians tend to favor big business though - a worse bunch than big government. I like to keep my personal freedoms and not hand them over to anyone.

They tend to bury their head in the sand and ignore issues until they come and bite them in the butt too. The whole thing that we should ignore terrorism and the growing power of certain foreign countries that pose a risk to world stability because they might not become an unignorable problem for a few more decades.

At least they aren't usually as retarded as certain others I know, mostly liberals, that think that if we're just nice to the bad guys that they'll clean up and go to Sunday school and be our friends. Some sort of hippy love trip. I'd love to see them getting mugged - some guy steals their wallet and punches them so they give the bad guy a hug and offer their watch. Yeah, that'll fix things.

Of course the alternative to those two groups of wusses is a bunch of wackos, the conservatives, that tend to think that personal rights aren't that important and that make things like the Patriot Act happen.

Am I the only person who feels we're fucked? Oh well - I'll probably vote for Romney or Obama and hope for the best. I'd rather vote for Satan than Hillary and don't think much of McCain either. Both of those smell of being politicians. Romney and Obama I may not agree with but I feel they are thinkers and have the best interest of the country at heart. I'd love to see Romney as President with Obama as VP, or vice versa.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[tomhudson]

All very nice and goode, but until he actually says "these are the laws on my agenda", that's not being transparent.

Your own post says it - we need to be informed. Informed of what? His "feel-good I'm for transparency"? Like someone else is going to run on a platform of "vote for me, and I promise to make things less transparent"? Come on, gt real. Its just poli-speak.

Inform means to impart knowledge. Like specific laws that need to be changed. Specific bills that he'll introduce. Not "I'm running for more transparency" - because anyone should be able to (pardon the pun) see through that for the whitewash it is.

What next - "I'm for apple pie?" "I'm for a strong economy?"

I'm not saying whether he's better or worse than any of the others - I'm just saying that the whole "transparency" thing is just politics as usual.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[Fallout2man]

I might agree if he hadn't passed some of the toughest ethics reform bills since watergate in the Senate. Obama may not have a huge backlog but he has shown in his time in both the IL state senate and the U.S. senate that he does care very much about ethics. For instance, requiring police videotape all interrogations is a good example of transparency legislation he passed (while in IL.)

He obviously won't be able to give us policy specifics right now on everything, it's the primaries for christ's sake. He's outlined some of his plans and some remain more vague because it becomes a lot different once you're in office. However one of the more specific plans he's mentioned for transparency is creating a google for government so we can track every federal dollar spent as well as track legislation and earmarks to bills so we can easily watch what the government is doing. He's also talked about broadcasting hearings and senate sessions over the internet and even allowing public commentary. Remember as well, the President doesn't make the laws himself. Obama's more concerned right now with building a movement and consensus within the people because none of these laws will do any good if the public doesn't realize or believe they can actually take advantage of it or make a difference.

If he gets a clear consensus of support now that makes it that much easier to get what he wants done later if/when he takes office and you don't build a movement by just being a policy wonk. I'd also add he's been just as clear if not more so in a few areas then Hillary has. In the meantime check his website for more specifics and look into some of the articles online that have gone into more detail on his policies. There's a lot of information out there if you know where to look.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[DirkGently]

You're 100% right. We need policy change. The US Govt bleeds money out its arsehole. We all know the story of the fabled "$500 toilet seat". And government-sponsored "oversight committees" are a joke, both in results and timeliness. What we need are a hundred thousand public eyes able to scrutinize what our government does for us. Instituting THAT would be a HUGE policy change.

Re:Obama is for transparency

[Wellspring]

Have you ever actually read anything about Iraq? I mean, like anything at all? If not a book, then maybe a magazine article? Or a pamphlet? I'm having trouble believing that anyone can be so completely ignorant about a country that's been so important for so long to our foreign policy; I suppose you're just taking advantage of readers' ignorance.

If you actually believe your comment above, please please please get a book on Iraq. I'm not trying to condescend here; I just don't have the time to outline what's been happening there for the past five years in a format which you might understand. Enough to say that your comment reveals you know little about Libertarians (neither Bush, Cheney, nor Rumsfeld would identify themselves as Libertarians any more than I would), nothing about reconstruction policy, nothing about the fighting there or who we're fighting or where they're from or why we're fighting them, nothing about the confluence of sectarian strife and other foreign powers involved, etc etc.

There are intelligent and devastating critiques to be made of the Bush administration's handling of Iraq. There are strong anti-war arguments to be made in the face of what we know now about our intelligence findings. It's just that your crap has no bearing on reality there. It's like saying "Bush is pro-life and that's why Iraq was out of control last year". It's scary how someone can be so colossally ignorant about something so important.

Politics

[localman]

I'm going to plug my little non-partisan politics page that features substantial interviews with each of the candidates. There is an interesting crop of people to choose from this time, moreso than in the past couple elections, it seems. Or maybe it's just because the stakes seem so much higher now?

I'll refrain from my opinion.

Cheers.

Re:Politics

[Anonymous Coward]

There is an interesting crop of people to choose from this time, moreso than in the past couple elections, it seems.

People say this every election year. The front runners in the Democratic and Republican parties aren't much different than they've been in previous years, and neither will make any really significant changes. Both parties are basically owned by large corporations.

It really is astonishing how many people buy into the same political propaganda, from the same two parties, every election cycle. Keep believing though... this time it will be different!

"There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again." - President George W. Bush

Re:Politics

[localman]

I never said anything about the frontrunners. I maintain there _are_ interesting candidates. Just because they don't win, (at least in part because of cynical people like yourself) doesn't mean they're not there.

Cheers.

Ron Paul

[Roger Wilcox]

Paul understands economics better than any of the other candidates, in my estimation. While I'm sure Romney knows all about microeconomics and running a business, the debates have not shown that he knows anything of economics on a national or global scale.

Paul does not look at business in the way you describe either. He detests taxes that redistribute wealth to anybody - be it the lobbyists that are in bed with congress or through nanny programs that sustain a welfare state. He believes that free markets are the best thing for technology. While it's nice to think that the government spends money on research, you have to remember a few things: a) they have to get that money from somewhere (taxes) and b) by subsidizing technological research, unsubsidized programs suffer. As you mention, the government is likely to favor subsidies for politically-connected unproductive folks, so Paul would say: don't subsidize it at all.

Come on

[antifoidulus]

the obvious choice is the Cowboy Neal option!

economics and technology

[groffg]

The best candidate from the perspective of technology (or any private sector-driven sector) is the one who intrudes the least in the market, economically speaking. Of the candidates who are electable, I don't see a clear winner based on that single (but important) criterion.

Re:economics and technology

[teg]

Not entirely true. Some free markets can turn into monopolies if not watched right, and if they do, actions need to be taken to promote competition - and avoiding stagnation and overcharging.

Re:economics and technology

[groffg]

Absolutely true. I'm not proposing an "extreme" hands-off policy of government non-involvement. My view on this is that we already have institutions to handle monopolistic behavior (DOJ, for eg), as well as regulating the money supply (US Federal Reserve). Politicians, by contrast, tend to engage in short term-ism when negative market events occur (like the sub-prime lending fiasco) and also tend to use economic incentives in exchange for votes (promising "free" services, for example). Politicians should, ideally, not engage in such behavior, esp when we already have robust and non-partisan agencies for that purpose.

Back to the more specific subject of which candidate is best for technology (a narrow view, to be sure), I assert that the market is best for technological development and competitiveness. It is consumers who vote with their wallets when they purchase goods/services from a company. It is consumers who, therefore, choose the market's winners and losers. That is how it should be. Politicians should not make that determination. Historically, political involvement in any sector of the economy tends to make that sector less efficient and, regardless, benefit the few (the chosen winners) at the expense of the many (the companies that don't get special treatment and, notably, tax payers who subsidize the chosen winners).

Internet poker

[nsayer]

Well, I admit it's tangental, but the fight to fully legitimize Internet poker is a tech issue, of a sort.

To that end, the Poker Players Alliance has put together a guide to the presidential candidates' stances on the issue.

Ron Paul

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the most dangerous restrictions are when the government forces people to be subject to certain technical controls (for example, internet censorship, criminalizing anonymity and "Real ID") or shifts the balance the other way by criminalizing technology to disempower people (for example, criminalizing video taping of police activity, banning cameras from almost all federally owned properly, and redefining nearly all financial privacy against governments as "money laundering"). For these reasons, I urge all Republicans to vote for Ron Paul.

If you believe it is impossible for Dr. Paul to win any state primary with only four bound delegates and only two second place finishes in the early primaries, there are at least two reasons why voting for Ron Paul is still probably the most effective use of your vote in advancing technology-related freedoms:

1) Most practically, the additional delegates that Ron Paul picks up in the states that are not "winner take all" may translate to a little more bargaining power in the winner's platform and campaign commitments eminating from the convention, especially if the no candidate gets an outright majority from the primaries.

2) The Ron Paul campaign has become the measure of the support available for libertarian-oriented political positions, and will undoubtedly influence the calculations that politicians in the future make based on the limited information that they have available.

Shortsighted...

[Improv]

It seems terribly shortsighted, in a time where foreign policy is so critical and calls for changes in domestic arrangements (particularly health care) are powerful, to be voting on such narrow issues as technology positions. I won't say these things are unimportant (and would love as much as anyone else here to see someone who would have us withdraw from WIPO and end most IP protection), but by comparison there are far more important things to focus on.

Early evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

Last summer (iirc) somebody did a review of the different candidates' web sites. Obama won by an easy margin. It seems that he truly does understand technology.

http://webcandidate.blogspot.com/2007/03/experts-rate-web-sites-of-presidential.html

Barack Obama, Candidates@Google

[at.splat]

I was on the fence last summer and fall as to whether Obama was "the real deal." That is, I was until I saw the Q&A portion of his November 2007 talk at the Google campus. This was my true turning point.

It is a typical question and answer session with some pretty advanced questions lobbed by the Googlers and moderated by Eric Schmidt. It is, beyond any combative debate or stump speech, a truly (+5) insightful conversation about his views on technology.

(As others have mentioned, Senator Obama's Technology page is also a helpful peek at what he stands for in case you don't have the patience for the ~20 min. video)

Re:Barack Obama, Candidates@Google

[the_one(2)]

wow! I'm really excited about Obama becoming president now. I really believe that he can make a difference although 8 years is too short time to undo all the damage that has been done by Bush. To bad i can't vote for him though (I live in Sweden).

Re:Barack Obama, Candidates@Google

[entropiccanuck]

That was awesome:

Interviewer: We ask our (job) candidates questions, and this one is from Larry Schwimmer. ... What is the most efficient way to sort a million 32 bit integers?
Obama: I think the bubble-sort would be the wrong way to go.

Re:Barack Obama, Candidates@Google

[mbius]

I've kept up with Obama and I'm still on the fence about him (disclosure: bleeding liberal for Ron Paul). Part 1 of the Google Q&A hasn't helped -- I don't find anything advanced or insightful here. Granted he's more together than I'm used to. Watching part 2 now.

One point irks me after teaching Research I university math for six years: we don't need more college students. Student quality is in the toilet. "Show me you understand" is a question undergrads don't even know what to do with. This drags curriculum quality down, and Obama said something telling: he equates lifelong education with retraining.

A degree program should be a process whereby a college graduate can retrain himself. You learn how to learn. Instead it's a prerequisite for corporate hiring. A consequence is that 50% of students don't care 50% of the time. They emerge and join the workforce with problem-solving "skills" limited to social engineering. Handy, I guess, but not our role.

And with the war my #1 issue this go-round, Obama's record isn't as staunch as we're asked to believe.

Rember the Web server survey?

[scubanator87]

A while back i remeber seeing a survy of what webservers each canidate was running. You can find it here

but to summerise:

Democrats
Hillary Clinton - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Paul Holcomb
Barack Obama - FreeBSD, Apache by pair Networks

Republicans
Mike Huckabee - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by LNH Inc.
John McCain - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Smartech Corporation
Ron Paul - Linux, Apache by Rackspace
Mitt Romney - Linux, Apache by Rackspace

Worth Mentioning:
Al Gore (Democrat) - Linux, Apache by Rackspace
Dennis Kucinich (Democrat) - Linux, Apache by New Age Consulting
Rudy Giuliani (Republican) - Linux, Apache by RackSpace
John Edwards (Democrat) - Linux, Apache by Plus Three

To summerise, the probably winners of the nominations are both running winblows. Damn no penguins or devils in the white house, just evil butterfiles!

Re:Rember the Web server survey?

[Neo Quietus]

Looking at www.whitehouse.gov (via http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.whitehouse.gov) it appears that George Bush's Whitehouse has penguins in it already.

New Obama video : "Yes We Can".

[Anonymous Coward]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=eibqI6p1MBw

Ron Paul for the Intertubes!

[Brandybuck]

Ron Paul will be best for technology, simply because he does not believe that it is any of government's business trying to manage it. The internet has shown the power of unfettered human creativity that happens when humans aren't micromanaged by government. It is a real life experiment demonstrating Hayek's spontaneous order.

The role of government is to protect and defend the lives, liberties and properties of the citizens. Powers beyond this only lead to authoritarianism of one brand or another. Candidate A may claim he's benevolent enough to manage all of our technology decisions, but even if he means well, what happens four or eight years down the road when Candidate B gets into office who isn't quite so benevolent? We need to keep government limited because government is inherently dangerous.

We geeks and engineers tend to think in terms of central administration and control. But the world does not work that way. It is extremely dynamic and subjective. You cannot bug fix it like you can software. Don't treat human beings like malleable code, they are not. Don't give government the role of national sysadmin! That would only lead to authoritarian BOFHism.

We need a candidate who would keep government out of technology and the internet, a candidate who won't try to micromanage our lives. That candidate is Ron Paul.

Re:Ron Paul for the Intertubes!

[Anonymous Coward]

He's so free market that he's voting 'no' on net neutrality. He's against it. Game over.

everybody knows

[superwiz]

It's Ron Paul. But his supporters are so commonly demonized that people are afraid to say publicly now that they support him. Well, he is. Like it or not. He is the only one with hands off approach to government. And the best technologies emerge and evolve just so.

Re:everybody knows

[gEvil (beta)]

He is the only one with hands off approach to government. And the best technologies emerge and evolve just so.

Y'mean technologies like the internet?

Re:everybody knows

[superwiz]

Internet (DARPA financed, yes, but not government regulated), cars (the government actually fought against them because they "dostroyed jobs" in the horse breeding industry), etc. More specifically, look at the evolution of technologies used on the internet itself. It started out with plain html, but the market forces produced CGI fairly quickly, and then the client side vs server side processing got hashed and rehashed by the utility vs availability again in the market place. If the government was on the case, we'd have standards bodies regulating what percentage of a sight must be in jsp and what percentage must be in ajax. Same is true for non-prescription drugs (yes, drugs are a technology). The most effective cold medicines and allergy medicines are used because they work -- not because they've been tested and approved to work by the FDA. Now look at the DRM vs copyright vs freely available mp3s. The only ones benefitting from a government beaurcracy overseeing the rules by which the music can be copied are the other beuracrats. Artists only make money on concerts (studios make most of the money on CDs). And the best way to promote your concerts? Let your fans share your mp3s. Speaking of technology, NYC subway system was first developed privately and in secret because the government was against it. Of course, it went bancrupt when all trains did -- when the government subsidized the car industry by creating the free interstate system. Segways (probably the single most effective way to improve quality of life in NYC) are still illegal in NYC. Why? I would say cronyism, but who am I to make a statement that doesn't shill against big business and sing "kumbaya" while trying to help the poor. Go ahead, hit troll -- I know you hate me. Just remember that it is your hate that forces your decision -- not your reason.

Re:everybody knows

[Anonymous Coward]

How did you manage that post without swearing?!

I would have replied, "Y'mean technologies like the Internet, you dumb sack of shit?"

Small, ineffectual government is not the solution, e.g., Iraq. Paul defenders would say well that's not really the "strangled in the bath tub" small-government we're talking about, that's anarchy in Iraq.

Is it? I thought anarchy was Sudan. Iraq is just a U.S. puppet state, and should therefore represent Paul's 'claimed' Republican ideals. That's right, Paul has never left the Republican party. (Is abortion illegal in Iraq like Paul wants? Who knows, there's no power or water and you're likely to get blown up on the highway!)

Sorry for the AC rant.

Romney being a mormon is a plus

[rcb1974]

The mormons I know are very friendly, caring, family oriented, smart, and law abiding. I'm paying close attention to Romney this election because I think it will be good for America to have someone with those qualities in office. Running a country isn't that much different from running a business. It all boils down to doing cost/benefit analysis on a bunch of huge multivariable problems. I think Romney has the best brain for that compared to the other candidates. He has already proven he can do successfully with his own business (Bain & Company).

Re:Romney being a mormon is a plus

[Fear the Clam]

Unfortunately, Bain & Company made lots of money by advising folks to send jobs overseas.

Also I lived in Boston while he was governor and saw what an absolute overreaching fucktard he was during the whole gay marriage thing. Instead of just letting the issue make its way through the Massachusetts courts and legislature he tried time and again to interrupt the process and make it go his way. Having seen what he'd do on an issue as harmless as gay marriage, I can only imagine what he'd do with the War on Terror as his soapbox.

Re:Romney being a mormon is a plus

[Anonymous Coward]

Romney's experience speaks for itself: he'll say anything to get elected, even if it means making fun of the state he's "running".

It's good to be friendly and caring; it's much better to be honest.

Re:Romney being a mormon is a plus

[squarefish]

Oh, I don't have any problems with Mormons- I was baptized and grew up Mormon for a bit and I still have brothers and sisters that are active in the religion, but a lot of Republicans think of LDS as a cult. It took forever for us to get a Catholic president, it will take much longer to get a Mormon one. He's also been pro-choice and had illegals working for him, two major no-no's for his party.

Re:Romney being a mormon is a plus

[JThundley]

"Family Oriented" is usually code for "Hates the gays".

President Paul would not dismantle anything

[Anonymous Coward]

Ron Paul may have a pre-new deal mentality that may be scary to many when it comes to the legislative branch. But he has a similarly doctrinare view of the executive branch. And libertarians follow what they percieve as the rules even when it constrains them in getting what they want.

President Paul will not be using signing statements and executive orders to make himself a king, unrestrained by the law. He would order troops home and require CONGRESS to declare war. He will not have secret prisons and habeus corpus will return. He would not write legislation. And if congress gets a veto-proof majority, he can't stop universal healthcare or anything the dems want.

The biggest danger of a President Paul is the pardon of a bunch of non-violent drug users.

Re:President Paul would not dismantle anything

[Improv]

Ron Paul will never be president - amusing to see you embellishing his name as such. As for the bit about rules, when someone decides on the rules, it's not particularly interesting to me to see them following them. "The rules" have to be worthwhile, and I believe the libertarian concept of government is harmful and broken - a focus on "the rules" is more of a way for people who believe those rules to be good to give each other high-fives than a way to convince others of virtue.

Note that many of these particular issues are concerns that wide parts of the American political spectrum has - you can't claim them as being unique to
Ron Paul's camp. BushJr's handling of the balance of powers has been an issue for everyone, as has wiretapping, abuse of habeus corpous, the secret prisons, etc. Very few of our presidents have so openly grabbed power. I believe most people running, from McCain to Obama, would reverse many of the particularly contentious changes in the last 8 years.

Personally, I'm not worried about pardoning non-violent drug users, especially those using marijuana (which seems more benign than alcohol, used in moderation). I'm not uncomfortable banning recreational drugs that are much harder, but such bans should be based on health and larger societal matters, not prudishness.

Absolute Nonsense

[Jane Q. Public]

You do not understand Libertarianism. You are confusing it with anarchy. They are very different things.

Others here have confused Fascism with anarchy ("corporate anarchy"). They are very different things.

Libertarians support the FREE MARKET. Free markets do not operate where monopoly or oligopoly exist. Libertarians do not support a corporate-run, completely unregulated economy! That is simply not a free market.

Also, a truly free market accounts for real costs as part of its operation. Therefore, in a real free market, producers bear the cost of the societal problems they cause (pollution, etc.), rather than that burden being borne by the taxpayers. Is there anything wrong with that? And the reason things are not done that way NOW, is because of corporate interests being too involved in government and thereby subverting the free market process. Contrary to what many people are saying, Libertarianism addresses and strives to solve that issue. It is the current corporate-state that preserves and worsens it.

I could go on for quite a while... but I strongly urge you to do some real research about a topic -- especially if it is a major political party -- before you go around spouting such nonsense as the above. I am not trying to say you are an idiot, but it sure makes you look like one.

Re:Absolute Nonsense

[Doc Ruby]

Where's Ron Paul's Net Neutrality policy statement? His votes to intervene against market manipulation and monopoly during his long House career?

I am not trying to say you are a liar, but blanket assertions about the Ron Paul your personal version of "libertarianism" imagine him to be sure make you look like one.

BTW, if Paul were a "Libertarian", he wouldn't be a member of the Republican Party. Even when he ran as the LP nominee, he didn't leave the RP or join the LP, and that was 20 years ago. He's at best a "libertarian", whatever that means exactly. These distinctions between members of the Party and adherents to the philosophy are important, because they've each got their "center of gravity", neither of which is entirely consistent with what any one person usually thinks, or wishes, they were.

When you "libertarians" start talking your favorite absolutes, it always comes out nonsense.

Re:Absolute Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

From Marxism of the Right:

There are many varieties of libertarianism, from natural-law libertarianism (the least crazy) to anarcho-capitalism (the most), and some varieties avoid some of the criticisms below. But many are still subject to most of them, and some of the more successful varieties--I recently heard a respected pundit insist that classical liberalism is libertarianism--enter a gray area where it is not really clear that they are libertarians at all. But because 95 percent of the libertarianism one encounters at cocktail parties, on editorial pages, and on Capitol Hill is a kind of commonplace "street" libertarianism, I decline to allow libertarians the sophistical trick of using a vulgar libertarianism to agitate for what they want by defending a refined version of their doctrine when challenged philosophically. We've seen Marxists pull that before.

I agree with what Locke said above. The Libertarianism we are all used to seeing everywhere is a formula: 1) gubmit == evil, 2) market == good, 3) supporting the market absolutely will ultimately lead to a meritocracy that doesn't need any gubmit at all except to enforce contract law, police, and national defense. Which is indeed a batshit crazy formula. No amount of quotes from Hayek, Mises, Rand, or the Cato Institute will turn the street libertarianism that is spouted all over the Internet into tested and successful public policy. Nor can you re-define "free market" at will. "Free market" strictly means in America unregulated capital. Forcing corporates to pay for externalities is precisely the purpose of regulation, and if you think regulation is OK then you aren't really a free marketer. I would suggest YOU look into modern socialist democracies as these come much closer to your idea of what a free market means.

Re:Absolute Nonsense

[Jane Q. Public]

He is a member of the Republican Party for two reasons:

(1) The Libertarian Party is the one that is pushing the principles that the Republican Party always said it stood for but never really did. Reference Paul's frequent mentions of "Republican Values". He is referring to the values that Republicans always SAID they stood for, and that Libertarians actually do.

(2) The perception is that in the current atmosphere, an Independent or Libertarian candidate stands no chance. (Look for yourself around this and similar threads, at all the comments about how if you are not a member of the Big Two, you can't win.) If he can't win running as a Libertarian, he can (and has) won by running as a Republican, espousing "old Republican values". This should be a surprise to nobody who knows much about the two parties.

You didn't prove a thing, mate, except that you don't know the subject you are discussing very well.

Re:Absolute Nonsense

[Doc Ruby]

I asked you for Paul's Net Neutrality statement, and pointed out that he's not a Libertarian.

YOu ignored the actually relevant policy question. Instead you gave me two reasons why Paul is not a Libertarian, which is what I said.

You just proved my point perfectly: You Ron Paul supporters are the ultimate hairsplitting cherrypickers. You're so compartmentalized that you'd rather talk about the Republican Party's failure to back up its "Conservative" rhetoric with actions (for 2 or 3 generations now). Of course, that just raises the question of why we'd believe "Libertarians" would be any different when they actually got power with their ideological rhetoric the way Republicans didn't.

I know the subjects here all too well. You're the one who doesn't know what you're talking about. Or even remember the subject we were talking about a second ago, because it makes you look bad.

Re:Absolute Nonsense

[rohan972]

Where's Ron Paul's Net Neutrality policy statement? His votes to intervene against market manipulation and monopoly during his long House career?

As I understand it, he has voted against any federal legislation not specifically authorised by the constitution. That is his deciding factor, rather than his personal stance on any issue. Eg: He is anti-abortion, but will not ban it at the federal level but rather leave the matter to the states.

Re:Absolute Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

I like most of Ron Paul's viewpoints; he seems to be a thoughtful person, and I'm definitely on the side of less government intervention. However, in your viewpoint how do the producers bear the costs? Because they feel ethically obligated to do so? Assuming they won't is fairly natural; this implies the need for some oversight or regulatory institutions (e.g., governmental agency) to provide monitoring and sanctioning. And how can you create an institution immune to the corrupting nature of corporate money? It seems to be an intractable problem.

Re:Absolute Nonsense

[ZombieRoboNinja]

>>Therefore, in a real free market, producers bear the cost of the societal problems they cause (pollution, etc.), rather than that burden being borne by the taxpayers. Is there anything wrong with that?

Well, yeah - it doesn't work.

Ron Paul's page on the issue makes it sound like he thinks every environmental danger is like an oil spill - you "pollute" someone else's property, and you should have to pay for it. What about CO2 production from factories and cars? If I buy a Hummer do I owe everyone in the world .03 cents for the pollution I've added to the air they breathe? If I buy a big tract of forest and chop it down, do I owe the entire nation money because I've deprived them of oxygen? If I waste our limited natural gas reserves, do I owe money to people 200 years in the future from when we run out of natural gas? If companies contribute now to global warming, and in 50 years all the coastal cities in the world suffer massive destruction by flooding... what then? Those companies get sued and go bankrupt, and that makes it okay?

And if the answer is "yes" to ALL of these, how is the government that assures these payments any less restrictive than a government whose environmental policies aren't theoretically based on these economic principles?

Environmental issues are global and long-term. "Market-based solutions" to them require an omniscient and omnipotent government keeping track of myriad factors.

Re:Absolute Nonsense

[Doc Ruby]

So whatever Paul's ideological reason, there's no reason to believe he'll protect America's people against the telcos. It doesn't say anything about murder in the Constitution, either...

FWIW, Paul's interpretation of the Constitution includes, for example, no separation of church & state except perhaps no authorization of a state church itself. If Arkansas wanted a state church, though, that would be OK, since the Constitution doesn't "specifically" prohibit it.

Re:Absolute Nonsense

[Manchot]

Libertarians support the FREE MARKET. Free markets do not operate where monopoly or oligopoly exist. Libertarians do not support a corporate-run, completely unregulated economy!

If that's truly the case, then why is Paul against antitrust law? The only conceivable reason would be on grounds of Constitutionality, but I sincerely doubt that anyone would seriously argue that the existence of multinational corporations completely dominating an industry doesn't fall under the purview of the Commerce Clause.

Re:Absolute Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

how is it that libertarianism brings about FREE MARKET
where there is
no monopoly / oligarchy
producers bearing the cost of negative externalities

I beleive our government presently includes some mechanisms to adress these issues. It is perhaps beleived that corperate interests being too involved in government are responsible largely for any failures present in these mechanisms.

How though is it possible to remove corperate interests from government?

when politicians are deciding how to direct the activity of the government how will they be able to determinethe correct course of action?

thank you for your clarificatiom

Re:Absolute Nonsense

[HansieC]

Libertarians do not support a corporate-run, completely unregulated economy! As far as I was aware, Libertarians do support the free-market, which is effectively an unregulated economy. How can you ensure an economy is not corporate-run, or at least in-part corporate-run by making it unregulated?

Therefore, in a real free market, producers bear the cost of the societal problems they cause (pollution, etc.), rather than that burden being borne by the taxpayers. Sorry, but this happens how? How are the producers forced/encouraged to keep pollution minimal, or to clean it up?

Re:Absolute Nonsense

[rohan972]

So whatever Paul's ideological reason, there's no reason to believe he'll protect America's people against the telcos.

You can be sure he won't, he would leave that to the states, meaning the telcos would have 50 governments to try to bribe, rather than one.

It doesn't say anything about murder in the Constitution, either...

Hence his position on abortion. Why do you need federal laws on murder, when you have states that can form extradition agreements? (I am not a US citizen and have never visited, I don't know anything about what extradition agreements may already be in place)

FWIW, Paul's interpretation of the Constitution includes, for example, no separation of church & state except perhaps no authorization of a state church itself. If Arkansas wanted a state church, though, that would be OK, since the Constitution doesn't "specifically" prohibit it.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. "

Indeed you are correct. A matter already attended to when the people of Arkansas decided on their constitution.

24. Religious liberty.

All men have a natural and indefensible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences; no man can, of right, be compelled to attend, erect, or support any place of worship; or to maintain any ministry against his consent. No human authority can, in any case or manner whatsoever, control or interfere with the right of conscience; and no preference shall ever be given, by law, to any religious establishment, denomination or mode of worship, above any other.

If we try hard enough, I'm sure we can come up with something that you and I both agree should be done by the federal government (in our respective countries) however it is my personal conviction that this ought to be accomplished by amending the constitution rather than ignoring or reinterpreting it.

Re:Absolute Nonsense

[Jane Q. Public]

I did ignore the net neutrality question. If you want to know his specific policies, why don't you LOOK THEM THE FUCK UP??? They ARE out there. Why should I do your homework for you?

As for the rest, I did nothing of the sort. I did not explain why he is "not" a Libertarian at all. I explained why he is a Libertarian, running as a Republican. He is hardly the first candidate to do such a thing.

And as for your "question": Ron Paul is the only candidate -- the ONLY one out of the bunch -- who has consistently voted exactly the way he said he would when he was campaigning. You seem to forget that he has been around a while, and won a number of elections. But as far as that subject goes, his voting record is absolutely pristine. Alone among ALL of the candidates.

So... why do you object so to someone who has already proven himself to be honest, and exactly what he says he is. The ONLY one to do so. Why do you have such a problem with that, that you have to make false denials? Or is it -- yet again -- just ignorance on your part?

It is pretty obvious that you really don't know the subject, and just want to argue your uneducated opinion. You are awarded no points, and I am done replying to you.

Re:Absolute Nonsense

[Doc Ruby]

Let's see, you're neither a US citizen nor have ever visited, and you want us to get rid practically all of the Federal government.

You are an extreme example of Ron Paul defenders, who live in a purely theoretical world of political ideology. Goodbye, and good luck in your own country, wherever that is. I suspect it's the Vatican City, or maybe Mecca.

Re:Absolute Nonsense

[Doc Ruby]

Fuck you. You're such an insane Paulbot that you'll even lie to me about what you just posted to me. Paul's pretty honest, about destroying the government for corporate anarchy wherever theocracy doesn't hold sway.

I remember everything. I've cited Paul's past elections even in this thread, to which you replied inanely, and which you now pretend I didn't say. I've also quoted some of the various kinds of insane laws Paul has proposed to destroy our government, and even pave the way for "god's law". But since you're offering nothing but uncited, logicless assertions, I guess you're interested in that kind of faithy bullshit.

You're just the kind of Paulbot who thinks just insisting that you're right, despite the facts forced in front of you, makes you right. But really it just makes you run away.

I'm glad you're gone. See you in the Oval Office!

(Now please return to flame me for using bad words on you, after you started it up. Fucking Paulbot's got serious bugs.)

Re:Absolute Nonsense

[Jane Q. Public]

I may disagree with you (which is easy to do because you do not have your facts straight), but one thing I am NOT is a liar... with the single exception being that I wrote earlier that I would not respond to you again. But even that was more of a prediction, not an intentional lie.

I don't care about the swearing. But if I were you, I would watch out. Going around making baseless, public accusations (as you have at least twice now) could get you in very serious trouble some day.

Do not misunderstand me: there is no threat intended here! I just wanted to give you a little friendly advice because a lot of people out there are not as tolerant as I am. Some people consider accusations of lying (especially when they are not) to be "fightin' words".

If you act in person the way you act online, then I feel sorry for you. You are in for a hell of a ride, and probably will not be a pleasant one.

Re:Absolute Nonsense

[rohan972]

Let's see, you're neither a US citizen nor have ever visited, and you want us to get rid practically all of the Federal government.

No, I would like your government to operate legally. And mine. And by the way, since your country has military installations in mine, and exports it's stupid DMCA to my country (Yes, it is our governments fault for accepting it as well) I do have a personal interest in the way your government operates. I haven't really advocated what the US laws should be, but that you should follow them. I don't see why the idea of the government obeying the constitution would be offensive to you, since there is a mechanism to change the constitution if you wish for the government to have more power.

You seem to be of the mistaken opinion that the federal government not doing something would mean it didn't happen, for example public education. Hasn't public education been handled by the states for most of its history? It has here anyway.

I'm in favor of the government being subject to the rule of law, ie: the constitution. We don't have a bill of rights in my country, we are in many ways effectively owned by the government. American history has the overthrow of tyranical rule as central to your heritage. Australians historically took the path of disobedience and disregard for authority, but that path has not provided us with legal protection from our government in anything like the strength you have. Don't underestimate what you are giving up if you allow your constitution to become irrelevant.

Your federal government operates in my country, dictates laws in my country, so I will have my say, even if I don't get to vote. If you want to do something useful, keep your DMCA and export the bill of rights.

You also seem to have misunderstood his stance on marriage, which is that the state should not determine who is married and who is not, that homosexuals can do what they want and call it what they want as he states about 2 minutes into this interview with John Stossel interview which hardly seems to be setting up a theocracy.

Re:Absolute Nonsense

[Doc Ruby]

"Friendly advice"? You objectively lied several times in this message, even excluding your promise that you weren't replying anymore, like the very lies I pointed out, which are at the core of your "argument" (mass of assertions, really). You're a liar. "More of a prediction" about your own behavior a few minutes in the future, totally at your discretion, and you shredded that for nothing. You're obviously the worst kind of liar: you're crudely lying to me as a standin to lie to yourself. And I'll call any liar with your kind of "friendly advice" a liar whenever I see you. I'm no coward - I stand behind what I say. But I guess liars have to go around in fear.

My life is great. I've been doing it this way a long time. But I'm not for everyone. Liars and those insisting on blurting their delusions in public, don't care for me. But who cares about that riffraff? You're fun to pop. Especially when you try turning into "concern trolls" when you've got no excuse left to talk, but still have to act like you're worth listening to.

Re:Absolute Nonsense

[Doc Ruby]

People who don't even live here don't impress me much when you ignore that Paul's idea of government that doesn't even have a marriage registry, but wouldn't stop states from imposing biblical law on people if a majority were "Christians". You can have your say. But I will continue to ignore you. Goodbye.

Re:Absolute Nonsense

[rohan972]

I wasn't out to impress you, I was attempting to correct what seemed to be misunderstandings of Ron Paul's policies and their effects. I don't ignore that he doesn't think government should have a marriage registry, but you haven't justified the position that the federal government should regulate marriage. As to the states imposing biblical law, I dealt with the issue by pointing out that states can and have dealt with that in their own constitutions, but even so if you want the states to be subject to that part of the US constitution I don't have a problem with that, I just think that it ought to be authorized by constitutional amendment rather than having the federal government operating outside the law. For me, the issue isn't so much any particular policy, but the rule of law.

You say you're ignoring me, but you keep replying. If you do so again, perhaps you will consider answering this question:
If you want your Federal government to do something the constitution doesn't authorize, why do you think it is better to ignore the constitution and have the feds operating illegally than to amend the constitution and have them operating legally?

I see plenty of complaints about the loss of Habeas Corpus, loss of privacy, warrantless wiretaps etc, but what I don't understand is why so many Americans seem to think that they can allow the Government to ignore the 10th amendment limiting their power and somehow still retain the protections in the rest of the bill of rights and constitution.

I don't necessarily agree with all Paul's policies, but I haven't seen any sensible arguement in favor of letting the government break the constitutional limits on its power. Sensible arguement can be made for constitutional change, even major constitutional change, but not for allowing rogue government.

From what I have seen and read, the US has the strongest tradition of liberty and the best constitution in the world, but it is possible to lose that and it would be a tragedy if you did.

Re:Absolute Nonsense

[Jane Q. Public]

That is a good question, and one I would ask as well. Antitrust law is an essential part of the free market, since monopoly and oligopoly do NOT constitute a free market. Antitrust laws keep people playing within the "free market" rules.

If he is truly against antitrust laws, then I am surprised and saddened. There has to be a way to keep companies playing fair. It has been the lack of such rules that has led to the current corporate-run situation we see now. But it is highly unlikely that the Democrats or Republicans are going to solve it, either, since they have both been milking the situation for all it is worth.

Re:Absolute Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

...but uncited, logicless assertions...

-1 Unciteful

Re:Absolute Nonsense

[rohan972]

There has to be a way to keep companies playing fair.

No limited liability corporations and no "personhood" for corporations, which are both forms of government regulation of trade? No private property held by imaginary entities, so that responsibility can always be traced to a person or group of people, whose responsibility is not diminished by acting in a group (just as with any other type of crime, eg: gang rape doesn't have a lesser penalty than rape).

I know it's not a comprehensive answer to the problems raised, just throwing a few ideas out there.

Re:Absolute Nonsense

[Doc Ruby]

Try challenging some of my ample logic, and we'll see you you fail.

And try challenging any of my facts, which are easily cited.

I challenged both of theirs, and all I got was flames - neither logic nor citations.

But what else would I expect from you Paulbots, especially the anonymous ones?

Re:Absolute Nonsense

[Jane Q. Public]

One way would be to limit all gifts / favors / campaign contributions to ONLY individual U.S. citizens. No companies or corporations. And keep a low cap on that, so that a CEO could not still contribute a million out of his own pocket.

I do not believe this should be that hard to accomplish. Not just the honest politicians but also the underdog candidates should welcome the idea. The others are precisely the ones we should be concerned about.

Lobbying and campaign contributions and "favors" are largely what got us where we are, which is not a good place. If we eliminate the sources of the problem (i.e., too much money coming from the wrong places and going to the wrong places for the wrong reasons), the symptoms should clear up soon enough.

Slashdot has become a political popularity contest

[zibix]

It's become so pathetic that every score on this page can be predicted based upon how far left the post is. A post about Romney being a business man and tech-savvy gets a Troll score and a stupid post about Al Gore inventing the internet gets a 5?

At some point slashdot is going to become just another crap-fest of left-wing circle jerks where people with other opinions are unwelcome regardless. So much for the party of tolerance.

Absolute Nonsense Clarification

[Jane Q. Public]

To clarify what I wrote above: Ron Paul is running as a Republican candidate. But if you know anything at all about him, you know that the vast majority of his principles (the exception being the abortion thing) are very strongly Libertarian. Just so there is no confusion as to what I was stating...

wrong question

[bcrowell]

It's disturbing to me that anyone would even think of basing their vote in this presidential election on tech issues. My god, we're involved in a ruinous war, and when it comes to civil liberties we're sliding down the slippery slope into fascism.

Re:wrong question

[pamdirac]

This is certainly the wrong question, and civil liberties weigh prominently in my mind. But let's extend this a bit to include economic liberties. I don't like the underlying assumption of the question at all. To ask which presidential candidate is best for technology presumes that they should be involved. We assume that the government is correct to use violence (the threat of violence is violence) to seize capital. The government is then charged with distributing the capital "correctly" to the benefit of society. All that is left then is for us to determine the candidate who will distribute the seized assets in the best way.

So Barack Obama understands the technical differences between fiber and copper? FTTH, WiMax, xDSL? Or perhaps Mitt Romney the businessman. Yes, I understand he's done quite a bit of work on network protocols. Oh, darn. Hillary's the expert on UI design for mobile devices especially for the visually impaired. Oh, no! The true expert on copyright law is Mike Huckabee. It's getting worse! The only one that understands property rights as applied to wireless spectrum is McCain. Gosh, how can I choose the one expert that knows how to distribute the fruits of my labor better than me in all societal endeavors? To whom should I abdicate my responsibility as a citizen?

Come on. The president has no authority or standing to be a "good" or "bad" technology president. Any president that says otherwise is by definition bad for technology and probably a host of other things.

Re:wrong question

[Anonymous Coward]

Economic liberty and civil liberty are not linked. Indeed, under capitalist society the former tends to, through creation of economic heirarchy, limit the latter.

Re:wrong question

[Nasarius]

Amen. It's downright creepy how often this comes up on Slashdot. There are *at least* several dozen major issues that are far more important right now, including: health care, the economy, environment, and of course the most egregious abuses of the Bush administration involving civil liberties, the Constitution, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not to mention becoming a credible world leader again.

Personally, I have no idea how I'm going to vote on 2/5. Obama's health care policy is an abject disaster, and I've seen nothing to indicate he'll actually push for meaningful "change". I don't need to enumerate Clinton's downsides, but she's strong on policy where it matters (health care, economy), and she knows how to play the game. For any Obama supporters who aren't sure what I'm talking about, read pretty much anything Paul Krugman has written in the past few months.

Re:wrong question

[Breakfast Pants]

Without DARPA, we wouldn't have the internet. The only areas of the United States economy that have done well internationally have all been heavily government subsidized, and centrally managed/state planned. The one exception I know of is the entertainment industry. Pure US-style-libertarian (as opposed to left-libertarian) capitalism has never been successfully employed by any nation, and always leads to disaster. The concentrations of wealth that occur and pass down through inheritance makes such systems take become indistinguishable from feudalism.

Re:wrong question

[Flavio]

Thank you. That was by far the most intelligent comment on this whole story.

Re:wrong question

[The One and Only]

Pure US-style-libertarian (as opposed to left-libertarian) capitalism has never been successfully employed by any nation, and always leads to disaster.

You're correct--of the zero times libertarian capitalism has been implemented, all zero of those implementations led to disaster. Let me guess, you failed logic?

Re:wrong question

[Breakfast Pants]

I said it had never been successfully implemented when I meant it had never had success when implemented.

Re:wrong question

[The One and Only]

When has it been implemented?

Ron Paul

[espergreen]

Before he was running for president, Ron Paul impressed me with his arguments against banning online gambling: http://youtube.com/watch?v=6b7_h_OyTI0

no

[mnemonic_]

In the context of the interview, he was really referring to the internet as more of a government project. Replace "the Internet" with something like "new police stations" and you get the idea. That doesn't mean he was laying bricks or training officers, but that he supported it as a government initiative.

Re:no

[Anonymous Coward]

In the context of the interview, he was really referring to the internet as more of a government project. Replace "the Internet" with something like "new police stations" and you get the idea. That doesn't mean he was laying bricks or training officers, but that he supported it as a government initiative.

And even in that, he overreached. If he supported some legislation providing funds for new police stations, but claimed to have created the police force, that might be analagous.

Lessig 4Barack

[eefsee]

Larry Lessig, founder of the Creative Commons, made a very cogent endorsement of Obama last fall. It makes for a good read. "Clearly on the big issues -- the war and corruption. Obama has made his career fighting both. But also on the issues closest to me. As the technology document released today reveals, to anyone who reads it closely, Obama has committed himself to important and importantly balanced positions."

The deaf vote

[tepples]

Social Security: http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/social-security/ (watch the embedded flash video) How do I turn on subtitles?

Re:A Totally Free Market is Best, but ...

[wellingj]

Therefore, Hillary Clinton is the best candidate to lead our nation.

But not the best candidate to get rid of the nanny state. I don't want to be led by my president.
I want to lead my own life and my own endeavors. I don't want to be spied on by the Government,
and I don't want to give it a 3rd of my income so it can redistribute it however someone in
Washington sees fit. Redistributing my wealth is my own damn business. Not the Governments.

If you're being realistic

[zullnero]

As in, among the only politicians with a realistic chance for success (Ron Paul would actually be better served running as a Libertarian...there's no way the Republican party would ever make him their nominee, even if it meant losing the election. To them it is about a core set of ideals, and Paul challenges those ideals).

Obama is pro-Net Neutrality, has stated that he plans to roll out legislation to build up the US's network infrastructure (especially in regards to rural areas and isolated towns), and has sponsored legislation to create a federal website that allows taxpayers to actually see where their tax dollars are going. Ignore all the sloganeering and emotional stuff, clear all the marketing jargon away, and look at Obama's Illinois legislative record and his platform, and you'll see a lot of sponsored bills and goals that a lot of us geeks can agree with. (I'm partial to the 233 health care related bills...as a software development contractor, we just don't make as much as we used to. But when you take 3-4 month projects, getting your boss to pony up for health care is a rare thing).

Ron Paul

[weltschmerz]

Forget what a candidate says he supports on his web site. Look at his voting record. Ron Paul is so far and away superior to Barack Obama, it's hardly a real comparison. During his 10 terms in Congress, he has consistently voted according to a strict pro-freedom Constitutional framework. He voted against the Patriot Act, and against the war (and it's continued funding), and he has taken stronger more firm views against excessive government regulation over technology. No wonder he drew a larger crowd when he spoke at Google. He also came in first in fund raising last quarter, beating out every other candidate in both parties. But the media ignores him, and creates this air of unelectability, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy -- because no one wants to waste his vote. We should have Range Voting or Approval Voting so that wouldn't be a problem. But until we do, we've got to vote our conscience. The odds your vote will break a tie are so tiny anyway, that you might as well cast a vote for your favorite candidate.

Incorrect on Ron Paul

[SonicSpike]

Ron would've most likely allowed the Internet to develop if he were president at the time. Think back to your history - it was a distributed network so that in case of nuclear war there would be a way to communicate. In other words it was a necessary defensive measure.

The one thing Ron won't let happen however is to let the government start regulating the Internet. That would be bad.

Re:Incorrect on Ron Paul

[Doc Ruby]

You really are great example of the kind of wishful thinking and myth believers who power Ron Paul's campaign.

The Internet was not distributed so it would survive a nuke war. That is a myth. The Internet has had several serious outages since it was started in the late 1960s, even after becoming much more redundant, which show a nuke war would take it out with the first EMP.

The Internet was started as a way to get punch card data between military installations faster and easier than shipping the classified decks of cards around the western US. It was useful enough that people wanted to join it, and its engineers made it open enough that it could be linked up in a distributed architecture, not centralized like the telephone network. But it was never designed to survive a nuke war, and never would. That's just a myth.

Besides, that's not the Internet we're talking about. We're talking about the 1980s Internet (that was called the ARPANet) that Al Gore had to fight people like Ron Paul to fund. Without which visionary government leadership, only some banks and the Pentagon would have had it.

Without regulation, there would be no Internet, which was created by regulation, and which was protected by more regulation. Hell, even the Web wouldn't exist as we know it, since the first graphical/multimedia browser was produced by the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA) at U Illinois Urbana/Champaigne. Which government funded project Paul would have left to "private sector", which would never have done anything. At most we'd have AOL, if that, because AOL of course copied all the Internet tech the people invested in.

Ron Paul fanboys: born yesterday, think the Internet is a natural element or something, and that the government is too. Ron Paul: no government except what's necessary to pay the defense contractors.

Trust Lessig - Vote Obama

[mrfibbi]

Not only does Lawrence Lessig endorse Obama, he's actually advising him on copyright policy. This could bring about the single biggest policy shift in Washington on copyright, IP, and free culture that we've seen in years.

Re:Trust Lessig - Vote Obama

[weltschmerz]

Electing Ron Paul would do even more.

No regulation of the Net

[SonicSpike]

Yes, Ron Paul does not want the government to control or regulate the Internet.

Re:No regulation of the Net

[Scudsucker]

Then telecos can start paying rent on all the land that their lines run across. And pay back all the subsidies given to them to improve networks. With interest. Until then, they can take their regulation and like it. The good Dr. Paul is putting the cart before the horse here.

Re:No regulation of the Net

[visible.frylock]

Thank you, thank you for bringing up this point. If you "own" a line that runs on my land, yet I can't charge you rent, then that line is public. I don't see what people can't understand about this.

Although I'll probably be voting for Paul in my state's primary, I agree with you that he has a somewhat limited/naive view on companies which were handed private ownership of public goods on a silver platter.

Re:No regulation of the Net

[Scudsucker]

Must be tough being a Republican this year, when the only candidate that isn't a joke or an asshole is a Libertarian loon. My apologies if you are a small l Libertarian, but Internet regulation isn't the only thing Dr. Paul is naive about - just how does he expect a $7 trillion economy to go back to the gold standard when there's less than three trillion dollars in gold on the planet, or if he seriously expects there to be a market based solution to global climate change that doesn't involve regulation of some kind.

That said, I'm almost tempted to vote for the guy when my states primary comes up, just to spite McCain and Romney. :) Have fun voting in your primary, whenever it is.

Re:Check the candidate web sites -- and web hosts

[rjamestaylor]

Let's check the candidates registrar, web hosting provider and server platform. This should be interesting. Maybe not meaningful, however. (Speaking of not meaningful...the lameness filter doesn't want lists of facts for comparison so I have to add length to the lines.)

First, let's look at Obama (he's the magical negro, the man not from Hope but offering hope to America, the ethical campaigner compared to ruthless Clinton):

Domain Name: BARAKOBAMA.COM
Registrar: FABULOUS.COM PTY LTD.

(Obviously going for the "Fabulous" vote there...)

Web host: Saavis
Server: Apache

Saavis -- expensive. No game playing here. Says Apache, but doesn't say what the OS is. Smart move.

Now, McCain (the Hero, the maverick republican who shares a platform more like Clinton than other Republicans, he's the anti-establishment establishmentarian):

Domain Name: JOHNMCCAIN.COM
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.

(Going for the "home vote" and GoDaddy.com, while it sucks ass, is indigenous to AZ)

Web host SMARTECH CORPORATION.
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0

Never heard of them... Bold move, Mr. McCain -- using a web host no one's heard of.

Now, Romney, the Northeastern governor (the Mormon who was, until recently, pro-choice; son of a one time popular Republican; good-looking but flip-flopping candidate):

Domain Name: MITTROMNEY.COM
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.

(He's Mormon so perhaps UT has not registrars so he's pandering to the regional vote by using AZ-based GoDaddy?)

Web host Rackspace.com, Ltd.
Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat)

Rackspace! Heavy advertiser on Slashdot, employer of more RHCEs than Red Hat, ... tech savvy move! And running on LAMP. Nice.

Now, Clinton (the Senator who offers 8 more years of old-time change-- huh? A return to the future that was 1992-2000. Another opportunity for Bill to get some intern love in the Oval Office; a chance to catch Osama Bin Laden and correct a mistake from the last Clinton presidency):

Domain Name: HILLARYCLINTON.COM
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.

The establishment candidate using the establishment registrar, I see. (Change is ... hard to find with HRC).

Web host Rackspace.com, Ltd. - sub-assignment of IPs to Paul Holcomb
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0

So, also Rackspace, but made to look like Paul Holcomb...kind like a lot of the positions HRC takes -- looks like this but really is that. no surprise. Oh, even though at Rackspace using a Microsoft solution. Always playing both sides doesn't she?

And, of course, what about Ron Paul (he's the Libertarian that is really, really a Republican this time, Ok?; the pro-legalizing drugs, anti-war on terror candidate; the one who says things worth cheering and jeering in the same debate)?

Domain Name: RONPAUL2008.COM
Registrar: SCHLUND+PARTNER AG

Awesome. Using a Germany/EU registrar. How...Godwin of him...

Web host Rackspace.com, Ltd., with IPs sub-assigned to Terra Eclipse Media Design
Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat)

Also at Rackspace! And, obfuscating the netblock owner like Hillary. Interesting...but boldly announcing Apache and Red Hat as the platform.

Let's not forget Huckabee...(oh that we could, though, forget this Kevin Spacey look-a-like)

Domain Name: MIKEHUCKABEE.COM
Registrar: DOMAINPEOPLE, INC.

Sounds populist. I wonder if DOMAINPEOPLE are evangelicals?

Web host HostMySite
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0

Sounds...like a $5/mo web host. Huh. And running on IIS. Wonder if its a s

Strange Priorities

[bitspotter]

Asking about technology policy with all this other stuff going on is like asking:

"But other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

Re:A Totally Free Market is Best, but ...

[Anonymous Coward]

White (and hispanics) vote for someone they don't prefer? Here's a better statistic: Hillary barely wins an unopposed popularity contest among democrats in Florida and Michigan. The only demographics that supports her over Obama are 1) old people and 2) white women. Every other category (white men, under 65, black men, black women, etc) support Obama.

Stepping backwards 20 years is not an advancement. Voting for nostalgia is why there was a George W Bush presidency.

RON PAUL is obviously the best choice

[Anonymous Coward]

True freedom on the Internet comes from President Ron Paul.

Ron Paul believes in your privacy. Telcos will have no immunity. Ron Paul will impose no legal requirement for websites to monitor your use. No more of this thinkofthechildren shit, Ron Paul has stated that parents are responsible for their children, not the government.

Obama is for censorship on the Internet. Obama has stated that he does not support hate speech on the Internet.

Hillary promotes video game censorship. While this fact isn't related to the Internet, it renders all her opinions on technology moot.

In before modded down/faggots masturbate each other by thinking they're superior for voting for another candidate. You know that Ron Paul would allow true freedom on the Internet and your candidate is a failure.

Where is Mike Gravel?????

[Anonymous Coward]

Mike Gravel is still in the race (unlike Kucinich) but the media has consistantly pushed him out of the spotlight and out of the debates.

Gravel is the *only* progressive candidate running right now. And he embraces technology, it's the only way he has been able to get his message out now that the media is collectively ignoring him.

Check him out... http://www.gravel2008.us/

s/agree/disagree/

[cduffy]

gah; typo; see subject.

Re:Check the candidate web sites -- and web hosts

[Breakfast Pants]

You know damn well Paul only chose that registrar because AG is the symbol for silver.

Save the 'wasted vote'

[Belial6]

The "wasted vote" is a problem, but there is a demographic that needs to be targeted for this attitude. Those that don't vote at all because they don't think their vote counts. If you know someone who isn't going to vote, or is randomly picking a candidate because the know that they don't know who the candidates are, push them to vote for anyone but the front runners. These people are already PLANNING to 'waste their votes'. Explain to them that the candidate they are voting for doesn't have a chance, but that by them voting for a third party, they can help scare whoever does win into behaving more responsibly. Since their vote wasn't going to be used anyways, they are not losing anything by voting for a candidate that won't win.

Really, if a third pary candidate could get even 10% of the votes, it would push the front runners to look at his platform and consider it in an attempt to woo his constituency.

Re:Check the candidate web sites -- and web hosts

[Randle_Revar]

re: Mitt Romney

Rackspace! Heavy advertiser on Slashdot, employer of more RHCEs than Red Hat, ... tech savvy move! And running on LAMP. Nice.

They may be running Linux and Apache, but it is not LAMP. I don't know what DB they are using, but they are not using PHP. They are using Java (and it was written by a slashdotter).

CORRECTION [was Re: Obama good, Huckabee bad]

[cduffy]

Obama does not appear to support an outright ban on semiautomatic weapons, but rather a ban based on clip size. In this interview, when asked how the Virginia Tech shootings could change the discussion on gun control:

Obama: "It's early to make a full assessment on how this changes our politics and the public mood. I think all of us are still just overwhelmed with grief for the families and for Virginia Tech and obviously people here remember what happened at the university and how painful it can be (a reference to the shootings at the University of Iowa). I do think that the evidence so far at least indicates that you've got a young man who was mentally deranged, was identified as such, was temporarily committed and was still able to obtain handguns and so one critical question is, 'What happened to our background check system? Why did it fail?' and it seems like we should be able to come to some bipartisan agreement on making that background system, background check system work. The second area which may be fought by the NRA, but I think has to be looked at is the availability of 19-round clips. I'm a strong believer in the rights of hunters and sportsmen to have firearms. I'm a believe in homeowners having a firearms to protect their home and their family. It's hard for me to find a rationale for a 19-clip semi-automatic. I said at a forum earlier this week, 'If you need 19 rounds to shoot a deer, you probably shouldn't be hunting' and so that I think is something that we should be able to have a reasonable conversation about."

Re:CORRECTION [was Re: Obama good, Huckabee bad]

[Reverend528]

It's hard for me to find a rationale for a 19-clip semi-automatic.

It's for protection from a tyrannical government.

Re:Check the candidate web sites -- and web hosts

[jez9999]

I'm just trying to imagine someone raising this in a debate with the candidate.

"Hillary, how can you continue to support the death penalty? Also, are you aware that... [intake of breath] your website's host is running Microsoft IIS as a web server?"

Clarifying candidates

[Anonymous Coward]

The summary points are:

                * Ensure an open Internet using vague terminology lacking meaning but sounding positive.
                * Create a transparent and connected democracy where everyone can be spied on, tracked, tagged, filtered, and monitored, except for exempted ruling elites.
                * Encourage a modern communications infrastructure by increasing revenue expenditures with innovative companies like Microsoft, Oracle, and AT&T.
                * Employ technology to solve our nation's most pressing problems, such as wiretaps and email monitoring to capture The Terrorists.
                * Improve America's competitiveness through tax increases to publicly fund the infrastructure of private companies like WorldCom. Fixed that for you.

Same for me.

[Xenographic]

I see myself voting for Obama because I *like* him over any other likely candidate. I can only see myself voting for the 'lesser of two evils' with anyone else getting the nomination. Maybe it's a very-outdated 'R' on my voter registration card talking, but it'll be hard to see her as the lesser evil, even with some of the prospective matches out there. Possible, perhaps, but hard.

I feel like Obama understands (or tries to understand) the issues. Like you, I feel like Hillary just wants to win at any cost, all other considerations be damned. I mean look at Michigan, which she "won", probably because she thought that it would give "momentum" and get people to report her as the victor of a one-woman race which everyone with more principle dropped out of. Then Nevada where you have the rules set months in advance, but the second it looks like she'll be at any kind of disadvantage, up pops an "unaffiliated" group with a lawsuit.

The sad thing is that I fear she might win thanks to those things, but it's too close to call. I feel like this will only lead to the kind of 'us vs. them' nonsense we had after Bush got elected that keeps us from moving forward on anything important because people are too busy fighting. I know that Hillary is good at fighting. But that's why I don't think I can vote for her. Heck, I may just put him in as a write-in even if he doesn't win the nomination. There's no one else out there that I can muster any enthusiasm for, not even a little. And that includes Ron Paul, where I love half of his positions and hate the other half.

Libertarianism is not anarchy

[volkris]

You seem to be confusing libertarianism with anarchy.

Your comment talked about how the lack of government ended up being a bad thing... well of course it was! The markets that libertarians embrace rely on a functional legal system and other services of government to provide the foundation on which they operate. Then, libertarians spend all this time talking about the enforcement of rights, enforcement that would be provided by governments.

The solution to bad government is not no government, but a fixed government, one that keeps people from screwing with each other but largely stands out of their way, allowing people the freedom to make of themselves what they want.

Libertarians recognize this. The lack of a government is often as bad a failure as a bad one.

Re:Libertarianism is not anarchy

[HiThere]

Those same markets also rely on the absence of monopolies. I don't see any way to ensure that without governments regulating commerce.

N.B.: I'm not talking about *abusive* monopolies, merely monopolies are sufficient to cause the markets to cease working as price regulators. Ideally the government would break up any company that achieved more than, say, 33.33% of the marketplace in a non-punitive way. In a way such that the owners of the companies would consider that a goal to be reached. Like an amoeba grows until it can divide...then both halves start growing again. Of course, in order for this to work It would be necessary to allow small companies to cooperate on large projects. But cooperation is a reasonable think to encourage.

Note, however, that the above proposal would open the gates to "monopoly by collusion" where two or more companies at below 33% of the market together constitute an effective monopoly by agreements to work together to manipulate prices. So you still need government oversight of the market.

P.S.: I think of myself as a libertarian, and I'm registered Libertarian. But I sure don't vote that way. I've never seen a lousier group of candidates.

Obama may well be the best of the surviving Democrats. He appears to be better than Hillary Clinton. This doesn't mean that I think very highly of him. It actually seems that the past several elections have been tests to see how long people will continue to vote for the perceived lesser of two evils. The last candidate I was even moderately in favor of was Johnson...and he got us into Viet Nam...

Re:Libertarianism is not anarchy

[ameoba]

I've never actually met a self-professed Libertarian that wasn't primarily motivated by greed - it only takes a little questioning to get past their parroting of the party line and realize that their core belief isn't "government shouldn't be involved with..." but "I don't want to pay for that".

Re:Libertarianism is not anarchy

[drsmithy]

The solution to bad government is not no government, but a fixed government, one that keeps people from screwing with each other but largely stands out of their way, allowing people the freedom to make of themselves what they want.

Keeps people from screwing with each other ? You mean like, say, being able to own guns ?

Re:Libertarianism is not anarchy

[volkris]

The cute thing is how you made a bunch of incorrect assumptions about my point of view.

Yours is one of those comments that says far more about the commenter than about the subject.

Re:Libertarianism is not anarchy

[volkris]

More precisely, government can't have such absolute effects on people. It can't absolutely prevent people from screwing with each other, just as it can't absolutely prevent people from owning guns or absolutely prevent a minor from drinking. It can only provide influences with various degrees of "encouragement."

Libertarians want people to be free to pursue their own happiness, believing that people can decide what they personally want from life better than the government can mandate it, and they can pursue their chosen direction well so long as nobody stands in the way. Thus, libertarians call for a government to influence people, dissuading them from getting in each others' way.

A ban on gun ownership doesn't work with this motivation as gun ownership doesn't represent someone standing in anyone else's way. Quite the oppose: such a ban is the government standing in the potential owner's way without sufficient justification.

So no, not like being able to own guns.

Re:Libertarianism is not anarchy

[volkris]

Well yeah.

Most libertarians I know would have no problem admitting that. Why prod for that answer when you could just ask?

But then you should look deeper and see what's under the greed. It doesn't simply end at "I don't want to pay for that." If that was the case you'd see libertarians stealing cars left and right and ripping off convenience stores without moral qualm. Instead you see libertarians proclaiming strong support for property rights and the value of contractual agreements, both matters where such support means the person will often end up having to pay for stuff.

Greed isn't a bad thing. Have you managed to amass any property or money at all? That's a shiny computer you're claiming to own. You greedy bastard; why didn't you given it away as soon as you acquired it?

No, the problem isn't greed but rather how one reacts to it. Further, the boogeyman of greed is one of the most used strawmen in lousy arguments. It's quite easy and politically expedient to speak of attacking greedy people instead of talking about the more meaty issues of where the money's to go.

That's not even getting into that libertarians don't want their money taken from them for reasons beyond simple wanting it for themselves.

Re:Libertarianism is not anarchy

[dynamo]

> What does libertarianism say about what to do when people are systematically making poor decisions?

It says those people will not do as well as other people who are making better decisions. In my view, as a self-identified libertarian, the policy is pretty much to accept natural selection / evolution and let it do it's thing. This is not genetic natural selection, that takes much longer. I'm talking about social selection and idea competition through proponents and how they do in the world.

> Or when the really powerful abuse the weak?
The main idea behind the libertarianism I believe in is to minimize the chance of this happening by not giving special privileges. Political philosophies that supposedly prevent the powerful from abusing the weak actually just change who is powerful - typically the people who support the philosophy or who have gained power through it.

The rest of your post is beneath comment.

But I should mention that I am not a fan of Ron Paul, I believe his anti-abortion stance is incompatible with the individual freedom mandate at the core of libertarianism.

Re:Libertarianism is not anarchy

[dynamo]

The reason it has to be "I don't want to pay for that" has nothing to do with greed and everything to do with social responsibility. You are responsible for anything you help pay for. If you don't already know this, think about it.

I'd rather throw the same amount of money I am taxed for the Iraq war into a bonfire than to have it go to pay for something I am strongly against, that's the motivation behind the wording. If it weren't for the jail threat, we would have had a citizen-based funding cut for the war by now.

Re:Libertarianism is not anarchy

[volkris]

You've hit the nail on the head by separating monopolies into abusive and non-abusive. That's a very important thing that plenty of people overlook: not only are monopolies not absolutely bad, but they're far more widespread than most people realize. Keep in mind that, for example, Lenovo has a monopoly on ThinkPads and Campbell's has a monopoly on Campbell's Soup.

But if you have a non-abusive monopoly, what's the harm? Why does it *need* to be broken up? In addition to the futility you identified, so long as a monopoly is not abusing its position, why is it a problem?

Monopolies are certainly still subject to market pricing. That a company has a monopoly on a product doesn't mean it can charge whatever it wants: at some price consumers will not pay. That side of the equation still holds.

Obviously you're talking about the other side of the equation, the price pressures brought about by competition. Well, the THREAT of competition is still there. If the company prices itself too high it will no longer be a monopoly, as other companies will see the opportunity to undercut the incumbent, breaking the monopoly. This limits the amount by which a monopolist can become abusive in a free market: only market inefficiencies can maintain the monopoly, and these days those inefficiencies are often pretty low, depending on the specific market.

So the key to it all is lowering these inefficiencies. Once they're low the market can largely police itself, letting "good" monopolies survive and punishing abusive monopolies with competition. ...which is where government comes in. These days artificial barriers to entry created by government, often with support of the existing companies, add tremendously to market inefficiencies. The best way we could approach dealing with monopolies is to get government out of business, promoting competition instead of standing in its way while legislating it forward at the same time.

But that wouldn't feed lawyers... the biggest inefficiency of them all.

Re:Libertarianism is not anarchy

[Anarke_Incarnate]

What you call "Greed" is a misunderstanding of the intent. The government should have no say in how I spend my money after I have spent my hard work earning it. I believe that in competitive markets, even localities competing for population and by extent, money, a healthy coexistence can be met. If I don't want my trash company decided for me, I should be able to choose. If I don't want my daughter to get a painful and ineffective shot to "Prevent Cervical Cancer" even though all it does is prevent SOME types of HPV variants, I should have that choice.
After I earn that money, I can choose to give it to homeless shelters, aids research or the Moonies and Scientologists. It is my choice. I don't want to HAVE to pay for those who rely on their laziness and my work ethic. If they cannot do for themselves, Then I believe people should help. However, nobody should be forced, by penalty of prison or forfeiture of assets to do so.

Re:Libertarianism is not anarchy

[Jesselnz]

But I should mention that I am not a fan of Ron Paul, I believe his anti-abortion stance is incompatible with the individual freedom mandate at the core of libertarianism.

He wants to withdraw from Iraq, abolish the IRS and federal reserve, phase out social security, radically cut spending... and you're basing your opinion on a silly issue like abortion?

Re:Libertarianism is not anarchy

[Anonymous Coward]

For many people the freedom to make decisions about ones own body and future is a far more immediate and relevant concern than broad gestures concerning the IRS and federal reserve, phasing out social security, and radically cuting spending. Rightly so I think.

Re:Libertarianism is not anarchy

[hairyfeet]

Well I've got an honest question for you---What does it say about the corporations who only care about the quarter and who don't do ANYTHING that doesn't generate maximum profits? If we would have went with the free market approach when the freeway system was built the only non-dirt roads we'd have now would be to corporate factories and would cost a "non business user" a toll to use it.

Look at our broadband rollout,which has been "left to the corps" for,hell,a good 20 years.I had to move to get broadband because both cable and DSL haven't moved an inch from where they were 20 freaking years ago! Why? because they have already hit the places that have the maximum return on investment and aren't going to bother with the small change.

And Wifi won't help. They still have to rent the backbone pipes, which are owned by one of a few mega corps. Do you honestly believe they are going to give them a good rate so they can compete with them? Hell no! The simple fact is if they do come up with something like Wifi,because of the insane amount of money that it would cost to build your own backbone you'll still be screwed.My local wifi has a FAP worse than dway simply because the telecos don't want to share and are royally screwing them on bandwidth.
While the free market might work for some things,for the kind of long term infrastructure that our nation requires to stay in the game it simply fails.Not enough profit for them to care about nationwide broadband,too much expense without enough payout.And they just don't play nice.

Example-a friend of mine actually talked his boss into letting him buy a T1 line and then rented it out to the neighbors and local businesses.It cost them a crapload up front(something like 15 miles the line had to be run) and it looked like even after splitting the line with about 50-60 folks they would be doing good and running better than the dial-up,which was all the telecos had there. Well someone got wind of it and suddenly they come with a new rule about "business sharing" or some crap and quadrupled the price.He tried to find another supplier and low and behold they all had the same rule! To this day those folks are still on dial-up while the T1 lies useless(couldn't afford the rate by themselves).Because in a truly free market(TFM) you are free to make deals with anyone you want,including forming a little thing called a cartel.

Sorry for the length,but I just wanted to show how easily the free market breaks down.You would think someone would want their business enough to offer them a fair rate,but the reality is the folks that make the decisions in those kinds of places don't like others playing in their sandbox and would rather not play at all than share.After all,if they let that T1 continue,who would buy their overpriced crappy dial-up? Those peasants should be happy with what we give them!

Re:Libertarianism is not anarchy

[Werefrog]

Believe it or not, for slightly more than 50% of the population, abortion is not just a silly issue.

Re:Libertarianism is not anarchy

[Anonymous Coward]

undoing moderation

Re:Libertarianism is not anarchy

[Anonymous Coward]

"You seem to be mistaking Libertarianism with a political theory. What does libertarianism say about what to do when people are systematically making poor decisions? Or when the really powerful abuse the weak? Nothing. Why? b/c it's not a real political platform. It's a BS platform for complaining about the government. More accurately, it's a BS platform for jackoffs to say they're smarter than the government, without having to get their hands dirty with actual details. When you challenge them on this, most of them shut up or give half-assed trailing arguments designed to shut the conversation down. The rest fall back into one of the two major parties. Fuck libertarianism. For every 100 hrs libertarians complain, how many seconds do they spend trying to fix anything? Zero. They pretend like they're waiting for a revolution that's never coming. Instead of trying to change anything, ANYTHING, they sit around on their fat lame asses doing shit. Don't like campaign financing? Do something about it. Don't like a specific regulation? Do something about it. In the mean time, STFU. Sideliners are worthless to me. Don't bother quoting Cato to me. I've read it, it's worthless dribble. Abstract talk that falls apart *immediately* when applied to real life. Oh, and FUCK RON PAUL. White supremacists against net neutrality! Hurray!! Don't bother replying. I'm not in the mood for freshman poly-sci or (even worse) philosophy. I'm glad you read a textbook once. Really I am. Leave me out of it."

At last we see your true colors and your real academic standing...

Really, your rant is worthy of a 7 year old on YouTube, and I'm glad of the opportunity to preserve this snapshot of the real Lally Singh for posterity. I wonder whether your vulgar outburst is a symptom of some deeper underlying 'frustration' on your "part"..

Re:Libertarianism is not anarchy

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just the greed, it's the blind hypocrisy. Have you ever met a libertarian who isn't afraid that the "guv'mint is gon take away his SUV" while driving on taxpayer funded roads, filling his car with taxpayer subsidized gasoline, to his job coding web applications on the government created internet?

Re:Libertarianism is not anarchy

[Jesselnz]

Are you implying that all women intend to get abortions? The vast majority wouldn't even consider it except for rape/medical problems. Even in the unlikely scenario that Paul does appoint supreme court Justices who are able to overturn Roe v. Wade, individual states would still be free to legalize or ban abortion. The only federal abortion legislation that Paul supports is a ban on partial-birth abortions, which is very sensible. I don't see the logic in supporting a neocon statist like McCain or Hillary over a libertarian because of one flaw.

Re:Libertarianism is not anarchy

[Werefrog]

No, but I am implying that it is chauvinistic to dismiss abortion as a "silly issue." Also, that's not the reason (I'm a guy, so as long as I don't find my way on the Maury Povich show I should be fine...) I don't support Ron Paul because I enjoy my social programs. I don't see the logic in supporting a libertarian because of one thing he has right (getting out of Iraq).

Re:Libertarianism is not anarchy

[Enginolitics]

Lets introduce a new term: anarcho-capitalist (anarchos). These are the people that have become wrongly associated with libertarians. These are the people that believe that markets can replace government. That just doesn't work, Volkris you're right on.

Anarchos are the ones that you have to watch out for, they think that because the market works efficiently, those principles would work just as well for society. However, the market and ALL its players are driven by one thing, capital/money. Societies are not driven by one thing and to assume that a market structure would be as stable as law-based society is false; an improper extension of thinking, at least that's how I see it. I could be wrong.

The single mindedness of the market puts everyone on the same measurement system, capital/money. If you are getting more money you are doing well, if you are not then you are doing poorly. If you are gaining money unfairly you risk competitors undercutting you and consumers avoiding you because of your business practices. In a society, because each person has a different measure of their value to/in society you don't have a standard, which means you can't convert between multiple values, which means you don't know who is doing better or worse, you don't know who is cheating, who is playing the rules (if there are any to begin with). This sets up a natural society, Charles Darwin and natural selection at its finest....survival of the most well adapted, that could be the strongest (the most guns, the most "money", etc.) or that could be the most cunning (who lies the best, parasite behavior). That's not the market we know, that's multiple markets that interconnect and interfere with each other and that produces tension, which means war and conflict for humans.

Re:Libertarianism is not anarchy

[Jesselnz]

I don't support Ron Paul because I enjoy my social programs. I don't see the logic in supporting a libertarian because of one thing he has right (getting out of Iraq).

Sorry, I was confusing you with the grandparent poster (who stated that he is a libertarian opposed to Paul due to abortion).

No, but I am implying that it is chauvinistic to dismiss abortion as a "silly issue."

I strongly disagree. Chauvinism is the reason why people look at issues like abortion from a men vs. women perspective. And considering that we have a $9000000000000+ national debt, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (Iran as well if McCain gets his way), a falling economy, a collapsing social security system, and out-of-control inflation, I'd say abortion is a pretty silly issue to base your vote on.

Re:Libertarianism is not anarchy

[HiThere]

Everything you say is correct...within limits. I don't see any way to improve the efficiency of the markets (even WITH government regulation). Requiring that information be provided helps, but the government regulators are often "persuaded" to alter definitions into forms that are pleasing to the entrenched power structure. (Note how the term "Organic" has been altered in the last few years.)

That said, monopoly of a market is an intrinsic evil. It may be more efficient at a particular price range to have a monopoly, but it is, in an of itself, a barrier to entry. (Not a high one, admittedly.) It's also the threat that with a change of management (or an economic downturn) it will BECOME an abusive monopoly. An oligopoly is also a threat, but less of one, and one that's potentially disruptable.

It's also true that you can define markets narrowly enough that monopolies are essentially harmless. Your example of trademarked laptops (Thinkpad Laptops) is an example. Trademarks are a legitimate monopoly. I doubt that patents are. I think patents should have licensing compelled, but how one could set the license fees is dubious. There probably *is* no legitimate way. Copyright is probably intrinsically legitimate, but not the ridiculously extended form that we have now, and certainly not when the manufacturer takes technical measures to prevent copying. Copyright should be either/or. If you take technical measures to prevent copying, then you don't qualify for copyright protection. (The argument for copyright is that after a certain number of years [which used to be a reasonable number] the item would become public domain. If that is prevented, then copyright protections shouldn't apply.)

I don't know of ANY legitimate monopolies outside of trademarks. I see reasons for patents, but the current implementation, and all similar implementations, are so inherently flawed that I cannot support them. And Copyright is in the first place grotesquely extended and in the second place shouldn't apply to works that have been copyprotected. (By legitimate here I mean yielding net social good.)

Re:Obama is for transparency - moronic post

[Anonymous Coward]

Moron. Bush and friends are not libertarian. If you are that bad at recognizing a statist / authoritarian when you see one, you need to go back and get education before commenting, and evidently cannot be believed in anything you say.

You're confusing anarchism for libertarianism.

[shyberfoptik]

After all, if the solution to bad government is no government

The solution to bad government is less government. Fixed that for ya.

Re:You're confusing anarchism for libertarianism.

[Lemmy Caution]

Doesn't logically follow. If I need medical care and I'm getting bad medical care, the solution is not necessarily less medical care. It's the right medical care.

A lot of screwed-up "public/private partnerships" are cases of trying to fix a problem with too little government, as was the response to Katrina.

link to the full 64 minute talk

[Deanalator]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4yVlPqeZwo&NR

Re:A Totally Free Market is Best, but ...

[MBraynard]

Elderly liberals and white women are the majority of the D primary voters. So, it would appear, game set match.

Re:answer

[MBraynard]

Why are you crackers so easily suckered? Obama is playing you like a fiddle.

Here's a hint. He's been an elected official a long time. LOOK AT WHAT HE DOES, NOT WHAT HE TELLS YOU STUPID CRACKERS.

Re:Check the candidate web sites -- and web hosts

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps if you'd spelled "Barack" properly you'd have gotten a less fabulous (and more factually correct) answer: GoDaddy, Panther Express, PWS on Linux. Not being familiar with this "PWS" in a serious server environment, I would assume it's some home-grown Panther response.

Technology benefitting transparency

[fictionpuss]

Hey, even minor abuses should not be tolerated. If you ever get it in writing, or in an email you can print out discretely, I would direct you here.

Spoilers exist in IRV too

[zestyping]

No, IRV does not eliminate spoilers. The spoiler effect exists in IRV. With IRV there are still wasted votes, except it's much harder to tell which votes will be wasted and what effect your ballot will have; the behaviour of IRV is much more complicated, often pathological, and thus arguably even worse than the current system.

Range or approval voting would be a better option. They truly eliminate the spoiler effect, they are easy to implement using unaltered existing equipment, and have simple, easily understandable behaviour.

Ron Paul 'gets' the Big Economic Picture

[nido]

Ron Paul is right about one thing: the Federal Reserve system is Evil and Must Die. What replaces it is a matter for debate, but the legal monopoly for the issuance of currency must come to an end.

See I Want the Earth plus 5% for a fictionalized history of central banking.

Note how you never hear Ron Paul "succeeded" in doing anything. That was my point. No one can hold Ron Paul responsible for any of his accomplishments, because that would require accomplishments. Who else holds Bill Clinton responsible for sticking the final dagger through the American Prosperity Machine? Is that an accomplishment? A super-recession is now inevitable - if only we'd had a congress full of Kucinich- and Paul-types to actively debate what's best for the whole of the country's population...

Ignaz Semmelweiss campaigned for years to get maternity doctors to wash their hands before entering the maternity suite. He eventually ended up in an asylum, iirc. Years later, after the germ theory of disease became accepted, hand-washing became routine. But Semmelweiss was ignored, and many women and children died needlessly.

The developing recession was preventable, just like all those deaths. If only we had a few more good people in Congress...

My best imitation...

[frank_adrian314159]

... of a Slashdot Ron Paul supporter:

Ron Paul! Ron Paul! Ron Paul!

ThankyouI'llbehereallweek! Trytheveal!

Re:A Totally Free Market is Best, but ...

[Anarke_Incarnate]

Why is this moderated as Flame Bait? This is the truth. We are supposed to be the enterprising free. We can't be that if the government tells us how much milk to drink, how to live and who we can marry. On top of that, we get to pay them 30% or more of our paycheck for them to say things like "Hmm, where DID we put that 9 billion dollars?" Say what you want about the current crop of Republicans. All but one of them are pandering old school politicians. Hillary and Obama (yes, him too) are both part of the political machine. Check out his record. He is about changing the guard, but not the message. Wow, the stormtroopers get new uniforms, but they are still building the death star, folks.

Therefore, Hillary Clinton is the best candidate

[smittyoneeach]

Concur wholeheartedly.
She is certainly lowering her contribution footprint among tech companies, which will help the economy:
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com/2008/02/hellary-comes-courtin.html

Re:Check the candidate web sites -- and web hosts

[rjamestaylor]

As the AC pointed out, it's BARACK (not BARAK) OBAMA.

Registered at GoDaddy, hosted by Pair, running Server: Apache/1.3.37 to redirect http://barackobama.com/ to http://www.barakobamaa.com/ which is running Server: PWS/1.2.18.

PWS is supposedly Win98's Personal Web Server... which probably means Barack's web admins have a rich sense of humor.

"magic negro" is a quote

[rjamestaylor]

BTW, the "Magic Negro" reference to Obama in my post above is a reference to the original LA Times article on Obama's early campaign.

Re:Slashdot has become a political popularity cont

[toddestan]

At some point slashdot is going to become just another crap-fest of left-wing circle jerks where people with other opinions are unwelcome regardless. So much for the party of tolerance.

So, you base this grand observation of yours on a poorly worded post about Romney that sounds more like a talking point than anything else (the post does nothing to back up the assertions it makes), and a +5 funny post referencing the tired old joke that stemmed from taking a statement from Al Gore out of context?

Re:A Totally Free Market is Best, but ...

[Planesdragon]

Barack Obama is a racially divisive person. In the caucus in Nevada, African-American voters selected him on the sole basis of his skin color. By that standard, a black man can never be president.

Obama didn't carry Nevada in more than common-delegates not because of his race, but because Clinton was more recognized and Obama didn't have the time to meet and inspire every single Nevada voter. He didn't lose because he was a "divisive person." He lost--that is, lost the popular vote--because he didn't convince enough Nevadians that he was better than Clinton. Note that the state was a virtual tie, and both Obama and Clinton have a fair share of delegates from NV.

More pressing, though, is that you're simply holding up "past performance at the polls" with "best for the nation." Both Obama and Clinton are excellent candidates, and if the other wasn't in the race either one would have cinched up the party by now.

Ron Paul has a longer sense of time than most

[nido]

Ron Paul is leading, but most people think they like another show better. The piper plays his flute and they happily follow, not realizing that they're being led over a cliff. Only now that people are starting to fall off (home foreclosures, layoffs, recession) do they realize that they were led into a dead-end.

"Dennis is a great man, and has never compromised himself, yet he hasn't ever accomplished anything." From the Wikipedia: "In 1998 the council honored him for having the "courage and foresight" to stand up to the banks and saving the city an estimated $195 million between 1985 and 1995.[16]" This was some 19 years after his term as Mayor ended. I think that counts as something. Kucinich and Paul think in terms of a long-term vision, whereas most Americans are conditioned to 'live in the moment'. I seem to recall making a post here about how the Chinese people's thousand-year sense of history will help them win the present economic war... Ah yes, it was about the inevitable decline of the corporate system.

And as the system burns to the ground, or as the lemmings are falling en masse off the cliff, leaders like Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich will be around to salvage what we can, and to help us build something better for the future.

Professor Farnsworth

[OrangeTide]

Is it me or is Ron Paul a lot like the Professor from Futurama?

"Where am I now?"

The professor would be for technology, especially anything involving radioactive supermen or doomsday devices.

Test What You Know

[weston]

I don't think it's so far out. Tech issues underly quite a few other issues of economics and liberty, and those are certainly as important as foreign policy.

But I think there's an even bigger reason why tech workers *definitely* should be looking at how candidates understand and address issues they understand. Because this is the arena where *you* may actually know enough, as a professional, to really gauge a candidates policy acumen. I doubt most slashdotters are experts in military tactics or nation building. Most of us have a shallow grasp of economics -- yes, even most of you Austrian school autodidacts. Same goes for health care, education, criminology, etc -- Slashdot readers may be smart laymen, but that's all most of us are in those fields.

But lots of us are IT pros. And if a candidate seems to really get it in the area where you can tell buzzspeak and platitudes from real knowledge, that tells you quite a bit about their ability to reach into an issue, understand it, and formulate a plan to do something about it.

So, yeah. I think slashdotters should be concerned about tech issues.

Re:A Totally Free Market is Best, but ...

[Lord Ender]

I want to lead my own life, too. I would like to start a business. Unfortunately, I can't do that because America's health care system doesn't make it possible for someone with a pre-existing condition to independently purchase health insurance.

Clinton and Obama both support health care reform. None of the Republicans do. This vote is easy.

Bullocks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ron Paul would kick the AT&T lobbyists the hell out of washington, and give states the full right to setup as many providers as they damn well pleased in their borders.

He does not preach "no government intervention," he preaches no FEDERAL government intervention.

Do you, for one second, think that the networking needs and issues of Alaska have anything in common with the network in New Jersey? No, of course they don't. So why should a senator from New Jersey be able to empower AT&T or whomever to setup shop in Alaska, while at the same time influencing it to disallow smaller start-ups?

Re:Bullocks!

[Doc Ruby]

"Bullocks"? Baby bulls? Is that anything like the Baby Bells, whose lobbyists could have written your post?

Without the Feds stopping the telcos like AT&T and Verizon, those monopolies will run unchecked over any privacy we've got. The state governments are even more susceptible to lobbyists, with cheaper bribes and cozier crony networks, and less media attention (media which favor their crony telcos, and often own their own networks they'd love to abuse).

Sure Paul hasn't said much about crushing the government in each state, because he's just a Federal official. If he were president, those states would find their own "libertarian" corporate anarchists with the major battle won, and move on to getting state government out of the way on the same basis.

Paul preaches "NO GOVERNMENT" (except what's necessary to protect defense contractors, especially Texan ones). That's what ideology does: it applies universally. A universal power vacuum where government used to stand, and corporate (and church) policy moved into its place.

A little bull, indeed. A little papal bull.

Which is exactly why...

[Jane Q. Public]

We should change to Instant Runoff voting, or one of the other proven more-superior voting schemes, which address that very point. They are arguably more "fair" in that the winner is unarguably the "favorite" of more people.

Re:A Totally Free Market is Best, but ...

[wellingj]

... Can you connect the dots between starting your own business and having health care for me?

Libertarians: Government is a neccessary evil.

[FractalZone]

The solution to bad government is not no government, but a fixed government, one that keeps people from screwing with each other but largely stands out of their way, allowing people the freedom to make of themselves what they want.

Libertarians recognize this. The lack of a government is often as bad a failure as a bad one.

When trying to explain the difference between libertarians and anarchists, it is helpful to point out that many libertarians consider government to be a necessary evil. Just as healthy people must eat but don't overeat, a healthy society must have some government but not too much. Governments almost always end up serving themselves first and merely maintain a pretense of serving the People. The explanation is cliche: power corrupts -- absolute power corrupts absolutely. Most of us want to feel financially secure and for goverment workers, especially those in policy-making positions, security can often be had most easily by entrenching themselves and their little section of government even when doing so works against the best interests of the citizenry.

In the U.S., governments at all levels tend to play the divide and conquer game very well. Whether it is pitting senior citizens against people still in the workforce when it comes to keeping the Ponzi scheme known as Medicare going for a few more years (raise income taxes or cut benefits or just phase out the entire scam?), the wealthy against the poor, people opposed to racial discrimination versus those against sexual discrimination (see the feud amongst many of those those who support one of the two leading contenders for the Democrat presidential candidate nomination), or those who want their children to enjoy quality education in private (often non-secular) schools versus those who think that the First Amendment precludes government funding of any school with religious affiliations and who think that kids have some sort of right to an education at the taxpayers' expense.

Anyone who doesn't believe the above should consider how much interaction the average family had with federal government in 1858, just 150 years ago. Can you say "little or none"? Nowadays, things which were once considered strictly local matters are being dragged up to the state and federal level. Individuals, cities, and entire states are becoming increasingly dependent on Big Government at the federal level because they've become addicted to handouts from federal government agencies -- which the federal government funds via income and Social (in)Security taxes.

Then lets look at things like the War on Some Drugs, the War Against Terror, etc. Whenever the government wants more money or power, it simply fabricates a major crisis to justify its increased intrusion into our daily lives and higher taxes to pay for some Big Government solution which never seems to work but always requires more sacrifice from the citizens via higher taxes and decreased freedom.

Re:A Totally Free Market is Best, but ...

[TheoMurpse]

You're kidding, right? I would have thought the connection is obvious:

1. Have health insurance under current employer
2. Cannot afford own health insurance
3. Therefore if starting own business, lose health insurance

Re:A Totally Free Market is Best, but ...

[TheoMurpse]

How are we video game players even considering supporting Hillary Clinton. Has anyone forgot her suggestion that Congress start censoring video games that are too sexual or violent? The government isn't even responsible for movie ratings, but there's Clinton, suggesting that the legislature keep inappropriate content out of children's hands.

Ummm, don't laws for the age for purchasing pornography already accomplish what we need? Anything beyond that makes the laws more restrictive for video games than for movies!

Can you imagine if the government stepped in and said that 15-year-olds couldn't watch Terminator 2 because it's rated R? Because that's what Hillary is suggesting, except for video games.

I'll ask again: why the FUCK are we even considering her?

Re:A Totally Free Market is Best, but ...

[TheoMurpse]

Sorry, but I linked the wrong thing. This is the correct link.

Approval voting is better than instant run-off

[Anonymous Coward]

Better yet, support approval voting, where you can vote for as many candidates as you want (but not more than once for any one candidate). Approval voting elects the most widely acceptable candidate, even though the winner might not be anybody's first choice, unlike instant run-off.

To illustrate the benefits with an extreme example, suppose you have an Sunni militant, a Shiite militant and a moderate running for office in a district in Iraq that is 60/40 Sunni/Shiite district. Imagine that this district is essentially our current popular conception of Iraq: all 60% of the Sunni's prefer the Sunni supremacist but would settle for the moderate; all 40% of the Shiite's prefer the Shiite militant but would accept the moderate. IRV would elect the Sunni militant. Approval voting would elect the secular moderate. It's easy to see how approval voting couuld arrest the devolution of governments toward civil war.

Getting back to our more fortunate country, consider the case of a district 55% Democrat and 45% Republican, with a third party "spoiler" candidate who is be the first choice of just under half of the Democrats. With plurality voting, the third party candidate is a spoiler and the Republican wins. With Instant Runoff, the democrat wins. With Approval Voting, it depends on the nature of this third party candidate. If the third party candidate is someone who appeals only to Democrats, then the mainstream Democrat would win, just like with IRV. But if the third party candidate is also acceptable to enough Republicans (even if not first choice to them), he may garner more approvals than either of the other two candidates.

Also, approval voting means that having a majority committed to vote for you does not guarantee victory. It is possible for someone to be beaten with 55% approval by someone with 75% approval. So the only way a politician could have a "safe" district would be to have a majority that is committed to voting for him or her _exclusively_, which would greatly reduce the number of safe districts.

I'm not saying that Approval Voting would create a Utopia. It's only one of many political adjustments that I'd like to see experimented with at municipal, then state, and then federal levels, but I'd encourage those interested to get involved here and, if you're a US citizen, here.

Re:A Totally Free Market is Best, but ...

[cliffski]

maybe some people (like me) are avoid gamers but aren't too upset by this. When people start talking about console games aimed at kids where you use the motion sensor controller to imitate stabbing people to death, then frankly, yes I would like to see less games like that.
Any media where you are the protagonist and is interactive will have a far stronger effect on your actions than a passive media such as a book or movie.
I'm sick of violent games where the hero is a flipping gang member or a drug addict.
It seems that most gamers cannot get their head around the fact that you can be pro-gaming but anti-stupidly violent games or games with blatant sexual stereotyping everywhere you look.

Why Proportional Represntation collapses

[Anonymous Coward]

Proportional representation led to Hitler and Mussolini and much of the paralysis of modern Italy and Israel. Each voter only gets one vote, so he tends to vote for his strongest passion typically voting for the superstar of that party. The other members of the party generally receive few votes so basically have no idea if they would be elected without the party's superstar. Everybody's passion is represented by a party, but since the electoral process has not really captured much information about what kinds of compromises voters would prefer to make with each other when a compromise must be found the result is a coalition of unrelated extremes (more than even in the major parties of the US system) or paralysis.

Re:A Totally Free Market is Best, but ...

[TheoMurpse]

I'm sick of violent games where the hero is a flipping gang member or a drug addict.

Yeah, and I'm sick of shitty RIAA music, but you don't see me suggesting that Congress should regulate the industry! How's it go, I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it?

got your link right here

[Scudsucker]

Here ya go. Scroll down to the third group of bills - take H.R.300 for example:

We the People Act - Prohibits the Supreme Court and each federal court from adjudicating any claim or relying on judicial decisions involving: (1) state or local laws, regulations, or policies concerning the free exercise or establishment of religion; (2) the right of privacy, including issues of sexual practices, orientation, or reproduction; or (3) the right to marry without regard to sex or sexual orientation where based upon equal protection of the laws.

Say your state government mandates prayer in public schools? You're outta luck. If you have no right or means to enforce the Constitution then the Constitution is meaningless.

So I trust you're now an ex-Ron Paul supporter?

Am for Obama but now leaning towards Ron Paul

[gabrieltss]

Currently I am supportive of Barack Obama, because whether or not you like him you hve to admit his speeches are nothing short of inspiring. However the more I read into Obama's positions and his voting records the more I see how Anti-Constitution he is, and how inconsitant he really is.
Example:
1) He spoke out against the Iraq war and voted against it. (Good for him!)
2) He originally voted against the Patriot Act, then later voted for re-authorizing it. His statement was "Let me be clear: this compromise is not as good as the Senate version of the bill, nor is it as good as the SAFE Act that I have cosponsored. I suspect the vast majority of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle feel the same way. But, it's still better than what the House originally proposed. This compromise does modestly improve the PATRIOT Act by strengthening civil liberties protections without sacrificing the tools that law enforcement needs to keep us safe." --February 16, 2006 Source.
Note: He was admit against the Iraq war bill and voted against it depsite it getting passed. But when it came to the Patriot Act he changed his mind and supported it. This is anti 4th amendment (The Patriot Act took away our 4th amendment rights and expands taking away our civil liberties).

3) He is Pro-Gun Control (anti 2nd Amendment)

So right now 2 out of 3 is bad news!

Obama's social policies are pretty good I must admit - although I'm still not sure 100% on all of them.

Ron Paul on the otehr hand:
1) Voted against the Iraq War (Good for him!)
2) Voted against and is against the Patriot Act. (Good for him!)
3) Is anti-gun control (Good for him!)

Hey 3 out of 3!

Paul's social policies - yes leave a little to be desired.

In all I think I would rather have a candidate that is more pro-constituion than pro-social issues. This country needs to get back to to a solid foundation, one that this country was built on. The current administration and the last 2 congresses have put huge holes in our countries foundation and it's crumbeling out from under us. It's the fault of BOTH Republicans AND Democrats - they both have gone out of their way to destroy this country for their own benefit! If Obama truly taught constitutional law he should darn well know some of his policy's and voting record VIOLATE what he taught. I don't know if I can support someone like that.

Re:United Health Group endorses Obama?

[gabrieltss]

I found something VERY interesting. It looks like UHG's Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer came out in support of Obama for President. Now by UHG's own ethics and integrity rules he had to make the disclaimer that his views were his and not of the company (which he did not do) - unless the company had requested and approved it. So if UHG requested and approved of his endorsement, that must mean UHG endorses Obama. Now UHG is a FOR profit health care company and Obama is for semi-Universal Health Care. So why would a for profit company "endorse" a political candidate that is pro semi-universal health care? More than likely they are not endorsing him - unless they plan on Obama driving business towards them. So then this must mean that Strickland -didn't- have the approval of the company - which means he violated the company's ethics and integrity rules. He may also be violating the company's policy on "Former government employees". (See my references below)

Endorsement:
http://www.denverpost.com/politics/ci_8003428

http://www.politicswest.com/17596/strickland_amon_3_endorse_obama

Bill Richardson's Colorado supporters are moving in different directions, as former Senate candidate and U.S. Attorney Tom Strickland announced his support for Barack Obama's presidential bid this afternoon. Here are the details:
"I am very excited to be supporting Senator Barack Obama for President," said Strickland in a release. "Barack Obama's record of change is something that Americans can believe in."

UHG References:
Tom Strickland is an Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer of UnitedHealth Group

http://www.unitedhealthgroup.com/about/exe.htm#strickland
http://unitedhealthgroup.mondosearch.com/cgi-bin/MsmGo.exe?grab_id=0&EXTRA_ARG=SUBMIT%3DSearch&CFGNAME=MssFind.cfg&host_id=42&page_id=557&query=strickland&hiword=strickland%20
http://unitedhealthgroup.mondosearch.com/cgi-bin/MsmGo.exe?grab_id=0&EXTRA_ARG=SUBMIT%3DSearch&CFGNAME=MssFind.cfg&host_id=42&page_id=165&query=strickland&hiword=strickland%20

Ethics and Integity Brochure:
https://kbpweb2.mercerhrs.com/kblink/UHG/ER/Principles_Ethics_Integrity_brochure.pdf

Page 24
POLITICAL ACTIVITIES
If you take part in political activities or committees, you must make it clear that your views and actions are your own and not those of the company, unless the company has requested and approved your participation.

Page 21
FORMER GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES
Former U.S. government employees generally are not allowed to represent the company in matters where the government has substantial interest and where the employee had prior
responsibility.

Requirement to Report:
https://kbp4web2.mercerhrs.com/profile_uhg/cgi-bin/athcgi.exe
As a UnitedHealth Group employee, you are required to comply with all laws, contractual obligations and company policies, including the Principles of Ethics and Integrity. Employees are also required to report any suspected misconduct by another employee or one of the company's contractors to their manager, someone else in management or by contacting the Ethics & Compliance HelpCenter. Ethics & Compliance H

Re:A Totally Free Market is Best, but ...

[mi]

Clinton and Obama both support health care reform.

Their plans would turn it from bad to worse — from the business-chosen insurance plans to the government chosen. It has to be individual-chosen instead. You'd be able to keep your insurer (who will remain stuck with your "pre-existing condition") regardless of your place of employment (or lack thereof).

None of the Republicans do. This vote is easy.

That's a lie. Matt Romney — a Republican — created a workable health-insurance system in Massachusetts and is not averse to implementing the same nation-wide. He would not be my top-choice among Republicans, but your claims are false nonetheless.

Re:A Totally Free Market is Best, but ...

[SnapShot]

That's a lie. Matt Romney -- a Republican -- created a workable health-insurance system in Massachusetts and is not averse to implementing the same nation-wide. He would not be my top-choice among Republicans, but your claims are false nonetheless.

Actually, you've lied -- twice (actually, call you a liar seems awfully harsh, perhaps you're just misinformed). Clinton's plan is actually very similar to Flopping Mitt's Massachusetts plan. And, Flopping Mitt has disavowed many aspects of his statewide plan for fear of alienating his "fuck the poor" conservative base.

Despite all that, experts say Clinton's plan borrows heavily from one Romney signed into law when he was governor of Massachusetts, which made the liberal state the first in the United States with near-universal health insurance.

That similarity could be fodder for Romney's rivals vying to be the 2008 Republican presidential nominee.

"Hillary's plan is just like the Massachusetts plan. There's not a whole lot of difference," said Jonathan Gruber, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economics professor who was an adviser to Romney on the state's health care reform law.

Of course here's Flopping Mitt's current stance:

Though it was his crowning achievement as governor, Romney has distanced himself from aspects of the law that offend his party's conservative base, including the extent of the government's role. He has proposed a plan that includes federal tax breaks and incentives to states to help the 47 million uninsured Americans afford coverage.

"What works in Massachusetts may not work in Texas," Romney said at a campaign stop in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Source: Reuters

Re:A Totally Free Market is Best, but ...

[EastCoastSurfer]

So, I'm supposed to pay for your health care so you can start a business? The healthcare system is currently a mess, but getting the gov. even more involved is not the solution.

Re:A Totally Free Market is Best, but ...

[smartr]

Romney and Hillary are in the same boat on this one. Unless Obama, McCain, or Paul wins prepare to rely on the Supreme Court to be the only possible hope in maintaining games as a protected form of speech.

Re:A Totally Free Market is Best, but ...

[wellingj]

I just didn't want to make any assumptions about your problem or the way you thought about it.
And so this preexisting health condition is so large a problem that if you didn't have health insurance you would die, or be severely limited?
So you have this job at a company that takes care of your health insurance, and you complain that you can't start your own business?
Not really counting your blessings there in my opinion.

Re:A Totally Free Market is Best, but ...

[EastCoastSurfer]

1. Have health insurance under current employer
2. Cannot afford own health insurance
3. Therefore if starting own business ,I need to save more money first so I don't lose health insurance

Fixed that for you.

Est. ROI more important than available capital

[weston]

Simple moving money doesn't necessarily lead to economic growth, especially considering international trade where plenty of the money can end up moving overseas.

I was going to say the same thing about investment. Capital crosses borders as easily as goods.

Lending markets provide a great deal of the capital required for economic expansion, and if as you say lower/middle class spending doesn't drop as much then it makes even more sense to move to prop up the lending markets.
Focus on keeping money moving and you'll be doing it at the expense of encouraging further growth. At best the moving money approach largely maintains the current state while in reality it lends itself to "leaks". Instead let's look to the future, restoring growth by encouraging investment.

This *is* about encouraging investment. This idea seems funny if you think of investment as essentially a function of the amount of spare cash around, but while that's certainly a variable, it's just not the whole story. Estimated return on investment is more important than available capital.

And so here's the thing. If customers don't buy in, there is no real business growth. And in a recession, lower/middle class spending drops in large part because they just don't have the cash to buy in. Investor confidence is hammered by sales drops and other indications that a potential market just doesn't have the cash to spend, and investors become more cautious, even if they have more to invest.

Conversely, even if you were to cut the available pool of capital by 10% via gains taxes, if you have an economy where customers are buying, investment where they're buying will be attractive. And by letting sales lead capital, you also gain something of a benefit of stronger market forces driving the allocation of funds. Capital markets have their own market forces, but they're simply more speculative and therefore less efficient by nature.

Obviously, this breaks if you cut the pool of capital too drastically, and a better situation is one where the pool of capital is larger AND investment is attractive because of spending. But there's no action that can be taken to do both that doesn't have its own set of drawbacks inside a larger set of considerations.

And all that's not even considering that the current problem is centered in the lending markets... let's fix it at the source.

The lending market obviously really needs help, but its problems has have far less to do with capital gains taxes than they have to do with some seriously screwed up valuation and risk assessments driven by greed and formula over the last 10 years. No tax adjustment is going to change the fact that when the music stopped, not only did some of the players not have chairs (as they knew was part of the game), the players had lied to each other and themselves about the number of chairs. Nobody's gonna enthusiastically play the next round until they figure out how many chairs there really are -- even if people are willing to lend one or two more.

Real pro-tech

[whitroth]

Ron Paul fools aside (Kucinich had more of a chance), and so-called 2nd Amendment bs'ers aside(1), the questions that I don't have the answers to are:
      a) who will INCREASE federal funding for basic research, including the funding for
                    NASA(2), Fermilab, and Aricibo?
      b) who will INCREASE federal funding for CIVILIAN R&D?
      c) who will INCREASE tech infrastructure spending(3)?

It certainly WON'T be any Republican, they cut that ever time they have the chance, and only do military research. (4)

            mark

1)If any of the so-called 2nd Amendment hotties actually meant what they said, they'd
      have shot Bush & Cheney, instead of continuing to blame the current state of the
      Union, including the national ID, the utterly unnecessary war, and, oh, yes,
      giving the Chinese our spy plane - all the things they're supposedly for the 2nd Amendment to protect us from, on Clinton.
2) After flattening the management structure, preferably with a 9lb hammer.
3) Y'know, like the way Al Gore helped provide *FUNDING* for the Internet as we
        know it now?
4) Don't tell me about corporate funding for research, esp. basic research. That's
      dropped massively - "not a profit center", and "doesn't add to this quarter's
      revenues.

Re:Check the candidate web sites -- and web hosts

[ducomputergeek]

Schuland Partner AG is more popularly known as 1and1.com

Average voter ...

[tomhudson]

If politicians stopped worrying about the average voter, they'd quickly discover that the average voter doesn't exist - especially on issues that polarize people. And non-issues that don't polarize people also don't get out the vote for any one particular candidate, so who cares about them?

They're too much like the "leader" who looks to see which way people are going, then quickly runs to the head of the pack. What am I saying? That's exactly what they do!

I've got a better solution - make me your benevolent ruler. I even promise to steal less than the others, since I won't be beholden to any special interests.

Re:Average voter ...

[EastCoastSurfer]

I look at people and think most are 'average' though. Very few people are all democrat or all republican. They are a mix of both and end up comprising on some issues to pick the person that supports ones they feel are a higher priority to them. I think a great example is abortion. The media makes you think you're either for or against, black or white with no grey. But in reality you can be against using abortion as simply birth control, but for it when someone has been raped or when the mothers life is in danger. Interesting discussion, regardless.

I've got a better solution - make me your benevolent ruler. I even promise to steal less than the others, since I won't be beholden to any special interests.

Haha, I say we pick our President at random...like a jury. Basically, in my mind anyone who wants to be President shouldn't be allowed to be President. Pick 12 random people, have them campaign for 3 months, then have an election. Can't be any worse than we get now :)

Re:Average voter ...

[tomhudson]

Haha, I say we pick our President at random...like a jury. Basically, in my mind anyone who wants to be President shouldn't be allowed to be President. Pick 12 random people, have them campaign for 3 months, then have an election. Can't be any worse than we get now :)

That's the "None of the above candidates" option in my benevolent dictatorshi^Wleadership platform :-)

"None of the above" option

Every ballot will have a "none of the above" option. If either

1. more than 20% of the voters think all the candidates stink, or
2. the number 1 choice is that they all suck

the election will be decided by drawing a name at random from all voters.

Re:Check the candidate web sites -- and web hosts

[rjamestaylor]

1and1.com -- even worse!

One web host and ... one füherer!

(Godwin'ed myself!)

Good vs. Bad

[Emanuel Goldstein]

There can be such a thing as bad technology. I think that the best candidate would be one that embraces a technology that is used for good purposes. The last thing we want is a Technotalitarian dictatorship. "Beware the floating head, it only speaks the truth."

Re:A Totally Free Market is Best, but ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am SO not voting for the candidate who wants to build the death star. We've all seen how THAT one ended the last time. (All that time and money dumped into it, just to be destroyed by some hick.)

Re:A Totally Free Market is Best, but ...

[mbrod]

The government being involved use to mean one had more freedom. If you haven't noticed the corporations are more powerful than the government now. The government involvement isn't to restrict your freedom, it is to save you from having the corporations define what your freedom is. Since the corporations are not elected and not accountable to you in anyway you might want to think a little bit about that stance. At least the government (in theory) is suppose to be accountable to you. The corporations are accountable to their shareholders interests.

If having the government involved was such a bad thing to do these countries would probably not have gone that route:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c5/WORLDHEALTH2.png

You will notice on that map Iraq and Afghanistan have Universal Government run coverage provided by the tax payers of the United States.

"I Don't Want to Pay for That" != Greed

[MarkAyen]

Hold on a second. Why should taxpayers have to pay for activities that they feel are not in the best interest of the country and that don't fall within the Constitutionally-defined powers of the Federal government? That's not greed, that's responsibility. As others have pointed out, you are morally responsible for what you pay for and I (and many other taxpayers) do not believe that our government is acting in a way that reflects well on us as a nation.

Re:A Totally Free Market is Best, but ...

[mi]

Clinton's plan is actually very similar to Flopping Mitt's Massachusetts plan. And, Flopping Mitt has disavowed many aspects of his statewide plan for fear of alienating his "fuck the poor" conservative base.

Of course, Clinton's plan is similar — because Mitt's was good. Hillary's own (a.k.a. "Hillarycare") was a disaster. Mitt does not like his own not because he is "flopping", but because it is a (good) plan to a wrong end — in his, mine, and the conservative base's opinion.

You can call me (and them) "fuck the poor", but that's all meaningless namecalling, until you can explain to me, how a born-and-raised citizen of this country manages to stay poor, despite the immense head-start he has compared to the immigrants, who need to learn the language and the culture before becoming successful. Oh, and many of them need to shed the "illegal alien" status too.

In some small countries remittances from America are a big part of GDP — these people manage to not only support themselves, but also their extended families abroad. I'd rather send $100 to Darfur, than give $1 to an American beggar. And so should you...

How many "self-professed Libertarians"...

[GradiusCVK]

...have you ever actually met? My guess is that you're either lying, or you don't know any. I am a Libertarian, and I have been heavily involved in non-profit and charity work for over 8 years (I'm 22 and lower-middle class), not for personal gain or status, but because I feel a strong sense of responsibility for the well-being of the less-fortunate.
Of all the Libertarians that I know well enough to make an accurate assessment, I personally don't know ANY who are primarily motivated by selfishness, stinginess, or greed (though I'm sure there are some). There are uncharitable and selfish people who subscribe to all categories of political thought, but if you honestly think Libertarians are any more selfish than any other group, I think you might be mistaking somebody saying "I don't believe we should be taxed to do this because the government is inefficient and corrupt" as saying "I don't want to pay for this."
So, either you're a douche for lying, or you're a douche for not understanding the most basic tenets of the political belief system you are attacking. In either case, there's no need to apologize, I know you don't know any better, and I forgive you anyway.

Your about 3 years late

[MoronBob]

This site has already become a circle jerk site for left wing haters from the party of tolerance. I come and read for a laugh at the stupidity but no longer use the site to gather opinions on technological issues.

Re:Check the candidate web sites -- and web hosts

[gQuigs]

Perhaps:
Pluggable WebServer
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/fac/mark.guzdial/squeak/pws/
Still quite obscure..

Thanks...

[anti-human 1]

IMO - "semi-automatic" is most of the non-military firearms produced today. Full-automatic is self explanitory, and what I consider Assault Weapons. Lever, bolt, or pump action are all manual. Some people have nonstandard definitions for types of firearms, so I was really interested in exactly what Obama meant.

Re:Thanks...

[cduffy]

FYI -- I think I mentioned this elsewhere in the thread -- but on doing more research, it turned out that the Obama-is-against-all-semiautomatic-weapons meme came from a checkbox Obama punched in a 1998 survey of the state legislature, so it's not something where he had a chance to elaborate his position; I think that elaboration has pretty much happened more recently when folks have asked him questions during his red-state campaigning, hence the answers I gave above.