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McCain vs. Obama on Tech Issues
eldavojohn writes "Ars is running a brief article that looks at stances from Chuck Fish of McCain's campaign and Daniel Weitzner from Obama's in regards to technical issues that may cause us geeks to vote one way or the other. From openness vs. bandwidth in the net neutrality issue to those pesky National Security Letters, there's some key differences that just might play at least a small part in your vote. You may also remember our discussions on who is best for geeks."
Jack Johnson: It's time someone had the courage to stand up and say: "I'm against those things that everybody hates".
John Jackson: Now I respect my opponent. I think he's a good man but, quite frankly, I agree with everything he just said!
Fry: These are the candidates? They sound like clones. [He looks a little harder.] Wait a minute. They are clones!
Leela: Don't let their identical DNA fool you. They differ on some key issues.
Jack Johnson: I say your three cent titanium tax goes too far.
John Jackson: And I say your three cent titanium tax doesn't go too far enough!
Fry: If I were registered to vote, I'd send these clowns a message by staying home on election day and dressing up like a clown.
My work here is dung.
I thought the Dems haven't selected a candidate yet.
I doubt either one of these guys has the background or passion for tech to really have well thought out, firm ideas on any tech issues. They likely had aides poll and give them pat answers on tech. In other words, don't expect them to stick to any positions they might articulate now. Then again, that probably applies to all issues, not just tech.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
One candidate has a lawyer/media executive as technical adviser, the other has a MIT computer scientist. Guess which is which
"Chuck Fish, an attorney for the McCain campaign and former Time Warner executive"
"Daniel Weitzner, an MIT computer scientist"
Who are you going to place more faith in there?
As usual republicans == corporate interests over technical or popular interests.
(BTW, before you accuse me of being a shill or a partisan or an idiot democrat, I'm not even USian and don't get to vote on this. I'm just calling it like I see it)
vociferous critics, and one of the Iraq wars biggest cheerleaders...nuff said.
Monstar L
If you have time there are some interesting points here:
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/
Barak Obama consistently evaluates situations and sets goals in a dynamic and networked way. This is how his campaign has generated such a huge response from mostly small donors. John McCain has been labeled a maverick, but has closely associated himself with conservative players and the mindset that an authoritative leader can best set goals for others.
Virginia Postrel explores the differences between these approaches in detail in The Future and Its Enemies. Al Gore, for example, appears to be future oriented because of the many apparently progressive stands he takes on issues, but Al Gore uses a top-down evaluation strategy that locks in a particular view with little input before or after. As such the future is at odds with Al Gore, and will tend always to surprise him and chafe at the positions he takes which are based on a mostly static model of the world and the options for progress it presents us.
I want to know what the Green and Libertarian candidates stances are on tech issues. Why these two parties are not mentioned in the corporate-owned media is obvious; the question is why they are being ignored by slashdot?
Probably because they have no realistic chance of winning.
(Yes, I know that's a self-fulfilling prophecy.)
In all seriousness, I feel like a third party candidate would now need to be part of the "national conversation" on the election a lot earlier than now to win in November -- assuming that's even still really possible.
And what you've said, that they aren't tech fanboys, is a good thing. Or do you imagine that, amazingly enough, they'd be fans of exactly the same tech you are, and see all the Correct Solutions exactly the way you do? Ha ha, huh? Do you really want a President who not only has the power of the Chief Executive but also the arrogance to think he knows what's best for your industry?
What you want from these guys is the wisdom to see that letting folks alone to work out stuff for themselves is the best default option, and government should step in only as the utter last resort. You want them to know their own limits, to realize they're not only not experts in tech stuff, but also not experts in farming, or energy exploration and transportation, or medicine, or housing, or education, or any of the other million and a half things people do to keep the wheels humming. They're just lawyers, and if they confine themselves to drafting (or if President promoting the drafting of) well-written, focussed, modest laws that address the relatively few issues that actually can be helped with a good law...well, they'll do a lot more good than any number of demagogues and wannabe Caesars.
Technical skill is not even close to being on my radar of what I want in a president, nor necessarily even in his/her closest advisers. In fact, I worry when the ones at the top, be it a corporation or a government, think they know more than the underlings and specialists as regards any subject, including technology. In my mind, vision, scruples and the ability to see through BS are the leadership skills I look for in candidates. And as it happens, these are actually pretty easy to discern by simply examining their track records. The hardest way to determine these things is to listen to what they say.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Politics can get pretty shallow, but there's more to it than being a bitch for the polls. I think this little Q&A is a case in point. Not the answers themselves, but the people chosen to deliver them. McCain chose a lawyer with strong connections to a major media conglomerate that many of us have reason to loathe. Obama chose a computer scientist with connections to a university that played a big role in creating the Internet. That, by itself, should tell you where there respective priorities are.
The ACLU Scorecard might be helpful. It doesn't contain some technical issues, and has a bit of fluff, but it's worthwhile anyway even for a general overview of a candidate's voting style.
Both of these candidates, however, are abstaining quite a bit in the recent votes to avoid alienating any swing groups.
What that means in practice is that tech jobs in the US will be largely filled by foreigners because is is cheaper for companies to pay employees with green cards than with cash.
With regards to Senator Obama, do you have a citation for that? Everything that I've seen suggests that he is open to the idea of decriminalization. Every quote that I've heard suggests that he realizes the folly of putting people behind bars for non-violent drug offenses.
Obviously that's not as good as Gravel or Paul's positions on the issue, but I'm not going to base my vote on the single issue of pot smoking. Not when we have an ongoing war, climate change, a failing economy, nuclear proliferation and the rise of China, India and Russia to deal with. And yes, I am a regular pot smoker.
Besides which, even if you got Gravel or Paul in office what about the state laws against marijuana? Those are the ones that actually impact pot-smokers on a day to day basis. Other than the bullshit Federal raids against medical marijuana dispensaries I'm hard pressed to think of any meaningful impact that the Feds make against pot-smokers.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Obama and McCain want to put potsmokers in prison.
Obama has indicated a willingness to halt the DEA raids on dispensaries in California. He and Bob Barr (Libertarian) favor letting states handle the issue. Obama still wants the FDA involved somewhere; I'm not sure about Barr. McCain has waffled but apparently endorses the current Bush Administration policy. link
Net Neutrality is very important and critical to preserving a free and open internet and we do badly need to make this a part of law. Barack Obama is more likely to do this. I am definitely a Obama supporter not only due to this but due to a wide spectrum of other issues as well.
The claims made by telcos are mostly lies and deception. The telcos always have been able to tier service based on overall speed, what they have not been allowed to do is effectively censor content by slowing down some sites or blocking access to them. They dont need any capability to censor content or to discriminate against certain content. The corporations agenda is simply a vieled attempt to control information flow over the internet and to block access to things they dont like and dont agree with.
Measures lesser than Net Nuetrality wont be enough to address this. Blocking access or making access more difficult to certain content is innately bad and has no place on what should be an open and democratic form of communication where everyone has equal opportunity to be heard, where things are not biased towards corporations and their content. There is no way to make discriminating against content an acceptable practice or tilting it in favour of powerful corporate interests.
It is little different from what is being done in china, It is different in name only, here we have corporations do the censorship, In china it is government, The US has a composite government consisting of corporations and the republican government which they elect and which represents their interests. The corporations are the republican constituents. When you here a republican talk about their constituents, they are usually referring to the wealthy corporate donors who got them elected and paid for their campaigns. Democrats while not always perfect are certainly have a greater propensity to represent the people and do what is in the best interests of the general population rather than of big corporations.
We complain about what China has done in censoring the internet however we would have the same situation here unless we do something to bolster the internet as a free and open medium where everyone which is open to everyone with no discrimination. The same sort of mentality and insidious objective behinds Chinas censorship and the desire of corporations to censor the internet springs from the same mindset. The corporations have been able to control the flow of information for so long, they have had a monopoly on the media and were the gatekeepers, they could control what people could see and hear and it was very difficult to reach a large number of people, very expensive, though traditional mediums, so it excluded many from being able to express their views. the internet is a democratic form of communication, it is the first time we have had anything approaching true positive free speech where anyone could broadcast their views to anyone else and everyone is on an equal footing, no matter if you are poor or are a millionaire. And if a you re a rich megalomaniac you just cant have a situation where the little people can express themselves and actually make their voice heard to millions, and where there is nothing you can do to stop this and where they basically are on an equally footing, yhou no longer have your built in advantage of traditional media which allows you to more effectively distribute your views. Thje rich hate this because they have been so long accustomed to setting the agenda and manipulating society for their own benefit. So the openness and democracy of the net scared them because they are losing power and the internet has moved us more in the direction of a democratic society, so they are now trying to find a way to desperately shut it down and turn it into some sort of corporate controlled outlet one way sort of medium just like television is, where only the corporations have any rights to express themselves and everyone else is a mindless consumer who pays their monthly satellite subscription bill to be brainwashed by c
Actually, I work for one of the world's biggest tech firms.
"So I'm pretty mystified by how you see it as conceivable that "corporate interests" are opposed to "technical interests."
See DRM, the multiple court cases over DeCSS, the whole DMCA and its restrictions over discussion of security, the massive abuse of the patent system (effectively cutting out or severely crippling many of your "thousand tiny tech start-ups you won't hear about".
I'm pretty mystified that you could have missed out on these themes over the past few years.
"Or are you thinking you still live in some quaint 18th century world where the individual inventor can do it all himself, and there is no real need to form large cooperating teams of technical folks and provide them with good support staff and plenty of capital investment -- i.e. found "a corporation"?"
I'm sorry if my use of the word "corporation" set off your hippie and/or student radar. Neither is the case here and I'm quite capable of backing up my previous comments without resorting to impugning the intelligence of those I argue against. I suggest you try the same, nice ad hominem though.
As for "popular" interests: the "popular" interests are what the vast seething market of consumers want
In other words the people of the United States of America, those that the POTUS is supposed to represent and to serve, right?
they don't give a flying fsck about technical interests at all, because they're not techies.
Didn't say they were, I said the likes of the republican's apparent tech spokesperson was against their interests.
"They want their tech stuff to Just Work and be incredibly cheap, if not free. They're not the least bit interested in coolness, or advancing the art in amazing ways, or any of those other geeky kinds of goals you might find among people who seek each other out and associate into a corporation so that they can spend the productive part of their lives advancing those technical interests."
Do you live in a fantasy world? Tech advances are a means to an end for some companies, not all, and not the only means. Large companies exist to make money. In fact for public companies that's a legal requirement or the board can face charges. Yes, a lot of tech comes from large corps, they are good for that, but please don't pretend that corporate influence, especially on politicians, is always a good thing. Especially given this person's prior record.
In the arena of copyright law, the likes of Time Warner are clearly directly opposed to what the people of the country want and are arguably going well beyond what's best for society and business in general. They don't respect privacy, they engage in campaigns of scaring the population into compliance with their take on IP...
Sheesh, get a clue. Or a job. Find out how the world actually works instead of regurgitating mindless slogans from the 19th century.
Back at you. You've swallowed the "money is always" right line a little too far there. Tell me, in your world, do companies always act in the best interests of the whole population?
Or are there no incidences of monopolistic behaviour, unethical behaviour, exploitation of cheap foreign child labour etc etc?
Obama wants to stop the manned space program for five years and give the money to education. .01% of the each of our tax bill. Yes I will pay that much more in taxes for the manned space program. Any money saved will be spent on the back side when they try and restart the program.
Well stopping it for five years will effectivly kill it. Anybody that is any good will leave for a new job. The total amount for education if any of it gets to education will be something like
All in all a REALLY BAD PLAN.
It will put thousands of people out of work in Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and California and provide little to no help with education. The whole thing reminds me of a town near where I lived. They had a huge problem with drugs and prostitution. There solution was to close the strip clubs. Well that solved.... nothing but sure sounded good.
At this point I am hoping Clinton does get the nomination.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
As a white guy, I just want to vote for somebody who looks like me. Is that so hard to understand?
Dark Reflection
So... you look like Mc Cain ?
If the John McCain from 2000 was running he'd had a serious shot at my vote in spite of my support for Senator Obama.
The John McCain that we all know and loved seemed to have been replaced somewhere around the 2004 election. I stopped listening to him when he started kissing Jerry Falwell's ass and went on the campaign trail for the man that accused him of fathering an illegitimate black child to torpedo his chances in South Carolina.
(To be fair, I did start listening to him again when he stood against his party on torture -- but you don't hear him talking too much about that lately, do you?)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Look, a candidate who can write code obviously may not have an edge over one who can't -- in fact, given the aptness of Philip Greenspun's comparison of pilots vs programmers (see here: http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/aviation ), it's entirely possible programming skill isn't a great test of broad intellectual ability. :)
But tech issues absolutely underly quite a few other issues of economics and liberty, and those are certainly have a weight equal to other big issues like 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.
It's worth paying attention to.
Tweet, tweet.
Since you bring up Futurama, am I the only one who gets a Professor Farnsworth vibe from John McCain?
...and all politicians are liars so why not pick the new color option being offered in 2008?
Blar.
Oh really? Wow no mention of that on spaceref.com.
In fact, it seems he wants to explicitly *continue* the important programs.
But don't let a little thing like facts get in the way of your FUD campaign.
Hillary is a lying sh*thead. Obama is a well reasoned smart guy. Get over it.
There was a poll done on black americans and the large majority said they didn't know anything that Obama stood for, except that he was black. I don't see how this is any different than the white bigot who votes against him only because he is black.
Now what would have been interesting is if someone like a Powell or Rice had run. Would black Americans have blindly voted for a black republican?
In fact, a corporaiton's charter and bylaws determine what the goals of the organization are. Most public corporations include shareholder value and profits among the goals of the organization (why else would someone invest?), but many privatecorporations are not-for-profit; some actually exist to *lose* money (such as some incorporated charitable trusts with a schedule for payout).
At any rate, it is not a legal requirement to try to make money; it is a contractual obligation, which is different. You can't face charges for steering a company poorly, unless your acts themselves are illegal. You can, however, face a tort action for violating the company's charter if some of the shareholders feel there was gross negligence or willful wrongdoing.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Excellent point.
And then you get guys like me. I could personally care LESS about Barack Obama's skin color. Really. His ancestry is of no interest to me.
What is of interest are his positions defined by his voting record. Barack Obama's voting record is the single MOST LIBERAL of anyone in the Senate. More liberal than Ted Kennedy, more liberal than anyone. Even the redoutable Maxine Water of the House, who recently (and infamously) threatened to "socialize" all the American oil companies, isn't as liberal as Obama (and has endorsed Hillary Clinton).
So my vote goes to McCain. Not because I particularly like him, but because he is, by far and away, the LEAST vile and frightening of the available choices.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
But how many white Republicans would have voted for a black person? Carrying 13% of the national vote won't cut it (and that's assuming that every black person is eligible to vote (not true, esp. in Florida) and actually votes).
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
It's bad enough when people mix their metaphors, but you're mixing your cliches. Neither spokesman is a "messenger" in the sense you mean. Neither is reading a script; each is considered by his boss to be an expert on technology. So it makes perfect sense to consider why they're considered experts.
Unfortunately, the larger problem is that most Americans vote nearly blindly in any case.
A voter is either voting for a particular candidate or against one or more candidates. There's nothing wrong with either approach; there are times when it is as important to keep a "bad" candidate from public office as it is to get a "good" candidate in. But how does the voter define good and bad, and determine at which point it is better to make a negative vote than a positive one?
And there's the rub. With the artificial polarization of the bipartisan system, the massive campaigning system and PR/media manipulation, there really is no way to define the candidates in such a way as to make a solidly informed vote. Candidates change their message to suit the target audience, and avoid giving concrete and unambiguous answers when they can. Promises are made which can't be backed up, mud is thrown in order to garner negative votes, and the media spins everything possible.
So in the end, how can a voter not vote blindly? I personally don't vote based on skin color, gender or age, but I can see why people do -- they are among the few facts which can't be changed as the political winds suit. And all of the candidates' personal attributes have the potential to affect decision-making. Whether or not they allow this to happen, and to what extent, is an important question.
Now, voting strictly along party lines? That's intentionally blinding yourself. And this applies equally to the candidates as to the voters.
A vote for Hillary means we're putting a Clinton back in office again.
... but I'm also deeply concerned that he'd just opt for "stay the course" politics that continued in Bush's footsteps, only under a new name.)
Our country has been 4 years of Bush, 8 years of Clinton, and 8 years of Bush already. That means anyone younger than 21 can't even remember a time when one of those two families wasn't in power in our nation!
Given that realization, I'd have to give the nod to Obama over Clinton - just for the sake of "breaking the cycle", if nothing else! (Of course, a vote for McCain would accomplish that too
All too true. What scares me is that the "maverick" label of McCain has stuck. He's no maverick. Look at how he accepted the endorsement of nutcase pastor Hagee until he was finally called out on it. And even then, he didn't actually address the comments Hagee made.
McCain scares me because people actually believe he will be different than Bush. Remember how Bush put forth the image of his "common man" lifestyle and "compassionate conservatism." Hmm...how well does that hold up against the track record of the corporate corruption and lawlessness actively supported by his administration?
McCain has one of the most conservative voting records of anyone in the Senate but somehow people think he's a moderate.
Only Edgar Winter is that white.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Wow, if that's the best dirt anyone has on Obama, he's cleaner than I thought!
:(
But I can't believe someone buys into that. Oh no! He can't find a magazine article that influenced him 20 years ago! What HORROR are we voting for!? He's trying to TRICK US! About ancient _MAGAZINE ARTICLES_! The EVIL DEMAGOGUE must be stopped! Won't someone PLEASE think of the MAGAZINE ARTICLES!?
Oh crap. I just hope there aren't any sarcasm terrorists to go with the cynical ones
1. It has been proven over and over again that reduced tax rates equal greater tax revenue. Less shackles equals more work.
2. Most of what McCain wants to do is keep the current tax rates the same.
3. Think progress is not an independent website.
1. It has been proven over and over again that reduced tax rates equal greater tax revenue. Less shackles equals more work.
Therefore, if we reduce the tax rate to 0 we should have infinite revenue. GREATNESS!!!11!!
On the other hand, maybe some research on the Laffer Curve, which is usually the basis for the "reduced tax rates = greater revenue" argument, is in order. I do not think that it means what you say it means.
The "thriving free market" of insurance co's is raping us. Much like the "thriving free market" of multiple private highways, police departments, fire departments, armies etc. was also raping us, before we centralized them within state, local and fed governments. History itself contradicts the notion of free markets = always automatically awesome. That's because it's simply wrong, even if it's comfortable.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
And what the heck does it mean, anyway, to be the "most liberal?" Can you point out a conservative, so I can have a basis for comparison?
I want to: stop torturing, restore habeus corpus, get us out of Iraq, balance the budget, invest in alternative fuels, and invest some in our own infastructure. If advocating those things makes you "liberal" then sign me up for Obama. He isn't nearly liberal enough.
When "conservative" means torture, gutting habeus corpus, endless war, warrantless wiretaps, secret prisons, the largest deficit in US history, censoring scientific findings to meet political agendas, etc, then you guys don't have much to sell anymore.