Telecom Immunity Flip-Floppers Got More Telecom Money

ya really notes a nice analysis by Maplight.org indicating that those Democratic representatives who changed their vote on telecom immunity between March and June received on average 40% more in contributions from telecom interests than those Democrats who held firm. Maplight asks, "Why did these ninety-four House members have a change of heart? Their constituents deserve answers." Across both parties, representatives who voted for immunity in June had received almost twice as much telecom money as those who voted against. Wired's coverage includes a quote from Larry Lessig, who is on the Maplight board: "Money corrupts the process of reasoning. [Lawmakers] get a sixth sense of how what they do might affect how they raise money."

Comments

Save Money

[kmsigel]

We could have outsourced this flip-flopping to India for a lot less than was paid to members of congress.

Re:Save Money

[Big Hairy Ian]

Why not just outsource congress it's not like the QOS could drop any further.

Ex post facto is prohibited.

[IonHand]

US Constitution, Article 1, Section 9: No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[Romancer]

Holly... Why didin't I hear about this like a thousand times during this debate on immunity?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[eggoeater]

Who marked parent offtopic?
Unfortunatly they'll probably get away with it. From Wikipedia:

A law may have an ex post facto effect without being technically ex post facto. For example, when a law repeals a previous law, the repealed legislation no longer applies to the situations it once did, even if such situations arose before the law was repealed. The principle of prohibiting the continued application of these kinds of laws is also known as Nullum crimen, nulla poena sine praevia lege poenali.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[autocracy]

You never hear about it because the phrase primarily is interpreted as applying when somebody passes a law that marks an individual guilty. Making them not guilty isn't so much of an issue (whatever would we have done with slavery laws then?). eggoeater's quote from the wiki addresses that.

What that basically means is that Congress can't say "John is guilty" (bill of attainder), nor can they say "Wearing blue socks on July 4th, 2007 is illegal" if they pass the law on July 5th, 2007 or later.

Although, I admit when thinking about it now, that changing a civil liability law retroactively may not be tested. Curiouser and curiouser.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why, from your own damn link:

Finally, Calder v. Bull expressly stated that a law that "mollifies" a criminal act was merely retrospective and not an ex post facto law. The current debate over granting telecoms retroactive immunity for their part in warrantless wiretapping is one that does not invoke the ex post facto clause in the U.S. Constitution.

To translate for you: Laws that make something legal, or even just reduces the penalty, that was once illegal are not ex post facto laws.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[bugnuts]

My understanding is that they aren't making it legal, merely that you cannot sue them.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[Chris Mattern]

Because it doesn't apply. Laws that retroactively make things legal are not ex post facto under the Constitution. The wikipedia article you cite specifically states that, and that it applies to the telecom bill (to be fair, that probably got added after you referenced it).

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[IonHand]

IANAL but can this be considered a bill of attainder - as it is taking away the rights of certain American citizens (those who communicate with foreigners) without trial?

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[timeOday]

Honestly, I have decided the written law means very little at all. If enough people dislike what you do, they'll find a way to prosecute you for something or other. If you have enough support, they'll figure out a way to conclude you didn't break the law.

Not saying laws are pointless, but they seem to be more reminders of shared values rather than executable code.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[zappepcs]

Interesting? Can't sue them for what?
I believe that they have broken their privacy commitments. That being a civil matter, they would still be open to litigation... or so the thinking goes. It remains only to find someone to get the full information of who they spied on, and what was monitored.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[Pichu0102]

You speak of that as if politicians care about the law unless it meets their own ends.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[MobyDisk]

That's not all.

US Constitution, Article 2, Section 2.

The President...he shall have power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

Congress can't grant a pardon. So is it okay if they pass a law that says "well... anyone who did something illegal, and was asked by the president, during a specified time, and has 2 T's and an A and an and sign in there name did not actually commit a crime in the first place." --- Is that not a pardon?

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[zehnra]

The problem is that it's the reverse:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amnesty_law

There's nothing preventing amnesty laws in the constitution.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[mlwmohawk]

Generally speaking this is not an "ex post facto" violation.

The government can't make laws that prohibit actions and apply them retroactively. The government has the right to protect against prosecution for the greater good. For instance: A man breaks in to a building, batters some of the residents in order to diffuse a bomb that would have killed everyone. Those people decide to sue for their injuries. The government has the right (and obligation) to protect that man for his good deed.

The telco immunity is something I think is wrong, but can see the reasoning for it. If the president of the united states tells you to do something, there is a presumption (maybe not with this president, anyway) that what you are being told to do is legal or for the good of the nation. Remember, the president has legal powers as part of the government.

I'm not saying the telcos did the right thing, but the piece of shit president should be sued, not the telcos.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[autocracy]

No, it can't. A bill of attainder is specific in that it is equivalent to Congress being able to pass a law saying an individual is guilty of a crime. Nobody's picking up a criminal record or judicial punishment from this law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[sm62704]

Hey, there, now, we have the best politicians money can buy!

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[orielbean]

Look, you quoted the wiki and did not read the end of the US section... "Finally, Calder v. Bull expressly stated that a law that "mollifies" a criminal act was merely retrospective and not an ex post facto law. The current debate over granting telecoms retroactive immunity for their part in warrantless wiretapping is one that does not invoke the ex post facto clause in the U.S. Constitution."

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[servognome]

No a pardon requires the person be found guilty first, what Congress is granting is immunity from prosecution. Technically the party remains innocent, because guilt was not legally established.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoa, whoa whoa! Can you put that in English, not legaly-talk?

After all, I am only a Fox News anchor.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[iluvcapra]

Interesting? Can't sue them for what? I believe that they have broken their privacy commitments. That being a civil matter, they would still be open to litigation... or so the thinking goes.

You can sue them, but you won't get anywhere, because the federal government has put a gag on them and has declared all evidence with regard to your claim a state secret. If the phone company DID try to defend itself by providing any evidence one way or the other, it would be committing a federal crime.

I think this whole debate is pointless because even if you can sue your phone company, the matter of the truth coming out is still a long ways off legislatively; it's really only a detail.

Look at it from the phone company's perspective: the President asks you to let his folks hear all your international phone calls, says its legal, and subtly threatens to take away all your government contracts if you don't comply (this happened to Qwest). And if you tell anyone about it, you're committing a Federal crime. And now, all your customers are justifiably sueing you, but you can't defend yourself without violating state secrets, because in order to allege you were extorted, you have to acknowledge the fact that the program exists. Pain in the ass!

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[Retric]

The President can pardon someone before trial. Gerald Ford, issued a controversial pardon for any federal crimes Nixon may have committed while in office Which is just scary when you think about it.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[iluvcapra]

Oh, I might add, if you the phone company don't comply with our polite request, not only will we keep you from getting contracts, we'll also throw your CEO in prison for "insider trading."

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[sumdumass]

Where is the post facto law?

Existing law at the time gave the telecoms immunity. The problem is that they had to prove that they were provided with a lawful request. Now don't confuse a lawful request with the legality of the program, for this purpose, it is that someone presented them with something otherwise authorized by law that showed the government had th authority and ordered the taps. A simple order o r authorization by the AG would be sufficient.

The problem is that the administration classified that information and it would be a felony to disclose that information to anyone. The immunity bill doesn't give immunity, it provides a vehicle in which immunity that was already existent at the time can be accessed without disclosing state secrets or causing someone to commit a felony in the simple act of their defense.

I'm not sure how people can have such strong opinions and think things like the constitution is at risk when they don't even know the facts about the situation. Typically I would ignore posts like this because I figured the smart people would sort it out. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be happening and now it is being claimed that there is a buy off on congress. And the map light project does this without naming any sources, providing their data showing before or after contributions, methodology or anything that I would consider to be the facts surrounding the situation. For all we know, they simply stated their opinion. It is purely amazing that half backed accusations and suggestive opinion can rule the thoughts of people who have all the tools necessary to validate claims in front of them but fail to do so for whatever reason. I think it is something to do with an ideolocracy of some sort where Ideology trumps life and facts.

BTW, if you look at this site, you see a difference in amounts reported. If you look at this PDF you can see this in action. So yes, some verifiable numbers, data sets and all that is quite important in making the accusation that our leaders are being paid off. Hell according to the PDF, there is around a 11-15% difference between the candidate and PAC reporting in Dick Gepheardt's reporting alone.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[Romancer]

So a wiki referencing a case is now the set of reason for all others to use as standard?

Answer me this, why would the founding fathers craft a document and spend time developing the phrasing and include the "ex post facto law" part in there if they didn't think that it was important? What does it apply to if not after the fact changing the laws to make one guilty or innocent?

Just answer the question, why include it at all if the interpretation was supposed to be that it really didn't apply?
If you commit a crime and then later the laws are changed, guess what, you still committed a crime when you acted. Same with retroactive innocence. If you committed no crime and the laws are changed you committed no crime when you acted. Seems pretty simple to me and probably did to them when they wrote it. Now we have judges and lawyers all with political mindsets, looking at individual cases and setting precidents for all, and the simple rules of law are getting further away from the obviously intended ideas. I can understand new technology and new moral issues having an effect but some of these interpretations are just idiotic.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[AgentFade2Black]

You're thinking of a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[rocketPack]

Will you be running for any kind of office soon? If so, where do you live and what is your name?

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[stewbacca]

I'm not sure how people can have such strong opinions and think things like the constitution is at risk when they don't even know the facts about the situation.

You must be new here. Excellent post, btw.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[Rakarra]

I am sorry but.. what in IonHand's post could have been considered flamebait? Her(?) post was clear that she wasn't offering legal advice and was asking an on-topic question of a legal issue that's entirely related to the discussion. Did someone have a personal grudge?

This is what I save the "Underrated" tag for -- to mod up posts that were unfairly modded down out of the blue.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[Rakarra]

A good example -- OJ. Hey, I think he did it as well, but a jury in a criminal court found him not guilt. Somehow.. somehow trying him for the exact same crime in a civil court is not considered Double Jeopardy, so he still ends up paying everything he owned.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[Asphyxium001]

Unfortunately, it appears that by legalizing the methods of wiretapping, they are basically repealing the previous state of the FISA law, thus bypassing a constitutional violation based on the whole ex post facto issue.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[mOdQuArK!]

The only inherent powers granted by the Constitution that the President has are as the Commander in Chief, granting reprieves & pardons, to make treaties (with consent of the Senate) & to appoint officials (with consent of the Senate). Any other powers have to be specifically granted by Congress through legislation.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[mlwmohawk]

Obviously and there is certainly no argument here.

The full force of the presidency is not something that is easily resisted. If you or I were told, by the president, to do something we thought was wrong or become "enemy combatants," unless it was something akin to murder, I would probably go along and protest to the ACLU from a position of better relative safety.

Remember, these scum in office are criminals and murderers.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[rocker_wannabe]

People don't need immunity if they don't break the law. Because of the classified nature of the reason for the wiretaps it is unlikely that many, if any, of the wiretap orders got the approval of a judge. That's why the telcos need immunity!

Not that I blame the telcos for not wanting to say no to the NSA. They were definitely put in a bad spot by our government.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[Anonymous Coward]

The phrasing in the constitution is just "No ex post facto law." Any retroactive change to legal status would qualify and be invalid by any definition of ex post facto I know.

Of course, it could be read by the same people that read the 2nd amendment and mean that the congress can't write laws that only apply in the future, I expect.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[sumdumass]

People don't need immunity if they don't break the law. Because of the classified nature of the reason for the wiretaps it is unlikely that many, if any, of the wiretap orders got the approval of a judge. That's why the telcos need immunity!

Why don't you pay attention. They didn't need to present a court order to the telecoms. The law since the 70's has had provisions for the AG to present an authorization to them. Why is that difficult for you people to understand? Why is it that this late in the game, I am responding to someone who has it all mapped in their head and basically is missing the entire picture? When the law says, get a warrant or let the AG (and his officers) give authorization, why are you only focusing on the warrants part? I mean do you really have to ignore a crucial point in order to keep your world view on the situation?

The AG or the president through the AG provided the authorizations that are now marked as classified so that they can't present them for their own defense. That is why they need immunity. Not because of some scenario where you ignore relevant parts of the circumstances to make your point.

And don't think that the fact that because the government failed to follow through and get warrants for the AG authorizations as the law requires places some sort of burden on the telecoms. It doesn't. They are presented with a legal document that says we are entitled to this tap and once the telecoms get it, their only responsibility after that is to make the tap happen. It isn't their job to ensure the government crosses Ts and dots Is after that.

Not that I blame the telcos for not wanting to say no to the NSA. They were definitely put in a bad spot by our government.

I agree. But I think the bad spot is afterwards when the government classified the stuff to prevent others from getting details about the opperations. I suspect that it might be a government CYOA more then protecting some investigations from 5 years ago, but it could be the later.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[rocker_wannabe]

Maybe you can explain this Slate article (Slate:

Here, then, is the bitter joke of the new legislation: From 2001 to 2007, the NSA engaged in a secret program that was a straightforward violation of America's wiretapping laws. Since the program was revealed, the administration has succeeded in preventing the judiciary from making a definitive declaration that the wiretapping was a crime. Suits against the government get dismissed on state-secrets grounds, because while the program may have been illegal, it was also so highly classified that its legality can never be litigated in open court. And now suits against the telecoms will by dismissed en masse as well. Meanwhile, the new law moves the goal posts, taking illegal things the administration was doing and making them legal. Whatever Hoyer and Pelosiâ"and even Obamaâ"say, this amounts to a retroactive blessing of the illegal program, and historically it means that the country will probably be deprived of any rigorous assessment of what precisely the administration did between 2001 and 2007. No judge will have an opportunity to call the president's willful violation of a federal statute a crime, and no landmark ruling by the courts can serve as a warning for future generations about government excesses in dangerous times. What's more, because the proposal so completely plays into the Bush conception of executive power, it renders meaningless any of its own provisions. After all, if the main lesson of the wiretapping scandal is that we need more surveillance power for the government, what is to stop President Bushâ"or President Obama or President McCainâ"from one day choosing to set this new law aside, too? "How will we be judged?" Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., asked in a stirring speech deploring the legislation yesterday. "The technical argument obscures the defining question: the rule of law, or the rule of men?"

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[sumdumass]

Maybe you can explain this Slate article (Slate:

What part of that don't you understand? Is it the part that the government has done something that it probably illegal? Like I said previously, the government's failure to follow the law doesn't implicate the telecoms into this lawbreaking. All the government had to do was present an authorization to the telecoms and they were legally bound to comply.

And if they they received that authorizations, existing law says,

(d) Defense.-- A good faith reliance on--
(1) a court warrant or order, a grand jury subpoena, a legislative authorization, or a statutory authorization;
(2) a request of an investigative or law enforcement officer under section 2518 (7) of this title; or
(3) a good faith determination that section 2511 (3) or 2511 (2)(i) of this title permitted the conduct complained of;
is a complete defense against any civil or criminal action brought under this chapter or any other law.

Now notice how that says a complete defense against any civil or criminal action under this chapter or any other law.

That article is concerned with making the administration accountable, not the telecoms who were manipulated. When the administration classified the documents and effectivly took FoIA request and lawsuits against them out of the pictures, the same people turned to suing the telecoms because they knew the telecoms could product the information they were seeking to go after the president in their defense under that law. But now that the president classified everything, the telecoms are in a position that if the mount the proper and legal defense that they have coming, they are in violation of a federal law concerning divulging top secrete information. In other words, the telecoms can't use the law that protects them without violating another law that has worse penalties.

This so called immunity bill, doesn't actually give immunity. It simply creates an system were the AG can certify if they gave an authorization for a tap or not without divulging too much information. If they gave the authorization, then it echoes the same law I posted and says no court can hold criminal or civil suites against them for that act. In other words, they get their complete defense.

And something else that the article does which is more or less fear mongering due to the authors lack of understanding or even failure to read the purposed law, is it asked "what is to stop President Bushâ-or President Obama or President McCain-"from one day choosing to set this new law aside, too? "How will we be judged?"" Evidently, he hasn't read or looked at the document because it limits the relief to specific time lines and specific actions in regards to the NSA program and subsequent programs between 2001 and the present day when the bill becomes law. I suggest that you actually read the bill in and of itself.

BTW nothing you presented counters the point that you as well as other people are ignoring the fact that the AG could present an authorization with the same effect as a court order as far as the telecoms were concerned. If you have to ignore that to make your position sound, then your position is misleading and incorrect.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[shaitand]

A 'lawful request' in this case would be nothing short of a warrant signed by a judge. Everything else in your post stems from the false assumption that the executive branch has the authority to make a request for tap a US citizen without judicial oversight.

This argument was faulty when presented by the administration and its faulty today.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[shaitand]

The law the requires a warrant is the Constitution. Congress does not have the authority to usurp judicial oversight anymore than the president does. There are three branches of government, not two.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[spazdor]

Someone's been reading Lessig.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[spazdor]

If the phone company DID try to defend itself by providing any evidence one way or the other, it would be committing a federal crime.

How unfortunate for them. Then they must lose their court case for being unable to provide evidence to defend themselves, and they may in turn sue the government for exposing them to this liability in the first place.

That is how this would work if we made sense.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[sumdumass]

Maybe you should read up on the subject first. There was no laws concerning wiretaps until the 60's When a court case that specifically said they weren't dealing with the presidential powers to conduct national intelligence operations, reversed the common conception that phone calls weren't private. Since them, and before FISA, the courts have always allowed warrentless wiretaps for national security purposes.

A quick google search would have showed you that. The 4th amendment has a reasonable clause attached to it and the courts have already determined what is and isn't reasonable. The FISA act was originally created because the FBI and other law enforcement agencies were using the national intelligence agencies to tap the phones of people they couldn't get warrants for then passing the information to the law enforcement agencies bypassing the courts. FISA supposedly ended that and you will also find that it is the reason for the mythical wall of separation between domestic agencies and national security agencies.

Either way, it would do you some good to actually look into it a little instead of repeating the tired old sayings that are not only out of context, but completely wrong in the usage you presented.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[sumdumass]

A 'lawful request' in this case would be nothing short of a warrant signed by a judge. Everything else in your post stems from the false assumption that the executive branch has the authority to make a request for tap a US citizen without judicial oversight.

This argument was faulty when presented by the administration and its faulty today.

Are you not paying attention? The damn law said that was what they needed. Look into the history of FISA and learn something. In 1972 Carter wrote an executive order expanding the AG's role into subordinates of the AG so to not tie up the AG. In 1995 or 96 Clinton used the warrantless statures to conduct physical searched related to the OK city bombings.

The only thing faulty is your lack of knowledge here. I may be off on the dates because I didn't care to verify them but I'm not wrong on the actions. FISA never restricted all taps either. So look into some of this stuff before shooting your mouth of and showing the world have bright you aren't.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[rocker_wannabe]

I appreciate the fact that you explained the finer points of this issue. After reading the Slate article, it doesn't seem likely that I will try and read the new surveillance bill.

Sometime today, the Senate is likely to approve the most comprehensive overhaul of American surveillance law since the Watergate era. Unless you're a government lawyer, a legal scholar, a masochist, or an insomniac, chances are you haven't read the 114-page bill. Don't beat yourself up: Neither have most of the 293 House members who voted for it last week. Ditto the mainstream press, who seem to have relied chiefly on summaries provided by the same lawmakers who hadn't read it. To be fair, wiretapping is so classified, and the language of the bill so opaque, that no one without a "top secret" clearance can say with any authority just how much surveillance the proposal will authorize the government to do. (The best assessment yet comes from former Justice Department official David Kris, who deems the legislation "so intricate" that it risks confusing even "the government officials who must apply it.")

When it comes to deciding if the violations of our laws was worth the increased information on possible terrorists, ideology is all we have to go on.

Re:Ex post facto is prohibited.

[sumdumass]

I don't know what they are attempting to prove in the slate article. I think maybe it is to sway your opinion to keep a dead horse running. I will past the portions of the FISA bill pertaining to the so called telecom immunity.

It is under title II sections 202. There is more to it but this part effects the actions by the telecoms. It goes on to tell how the process is to be implemented and protects persons assisting the government too. It seems that people are only concerned with the telecoms though.

SEC. 202. LIMITATIONS ON CIVIL ACTIONS FOR ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION SERVICE PROVIDERS.

(a) Limitations-

(1) IN GENERAL- Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a covered civil action shall not lie or be maintained in a Federal or State court, and shall be promptly dismissed, if the Attorney General certifies to the court that--

(A) the assistance alleged to have been provided by the electronic communication service provider was--

(i) in connection with an intelligence activity involving communications that was--

(I) authorized by the President during the period beginning on September 11, 2001, and ending on January 17, 2007; and

(II) designed to detect or prevent a terrorist attack, or activities in preparation for a terrorist attack, against the United States; and

(ii) described in a written request or directive from the Attorney General or the head of an element of the intelligence community (or the deputy of such person) to the electronic communication service provider indicating that the activity was--

(I) authorized by the President; and

(II) determined to be lawful; or

(B) the electronic communication service provider did not provide the alleged assistance.

(2) REVIEW- A certification made pursuant to paragraph (1) shall be subject to review by a court for abuse of discretion.

(b) Review of Certifications- If the Attorney General files a declaration under section 1746 of title 28, United States Code, that disclosure of a certification made pursuant to subsection (a) would harm the national security of the United States, the court shall--

(1) review such certification

First of all

[Romancer]

First: Dirty rat bastards!

Second: Duh.

Third: Fix it Obama!

Re:First of all

[k_187]

Too bad he's also flipped on his support of the bill.

Re:First of all

[Jhon]

First: Dirty rat bastards!

Yup. Agreed.

Second: Duh.

Yup. Agreed.

Third: Fix it Obama!i>

See. There you lost me. I think both are crap, but this statement of yours is whacked as far as accuracy goes. McCain is the only one who's even seriously TRIED to limit money coming in to campaigns and politicians. Obama blew off his oath to not seek private funds and will now be in the pocket of every major interest group.

Re:First of all

[The Warlock]

On the other hand, McCain has also consistently supported telecom immunity, so I guess we're pretty much fucked.

Re:First of all

[bonkeydcow]

Too bad he's also flipped on his support of the bill.

That doesn't matter. Obama is whoever you want him to be.

Re:First of all

[Anonymous Coward]

Politicians are whomever you want them to be, but only at the time and place of their choosing.

Fixed.

Re:First of all

[Lally Singh]

Hmm, before he shunned the public funding, he shunned interest group funding.

The entire DNC can no longer take money from lobbys or special interest groups, as per his request after Hillary's withdrawal.

He shunned the public funding b/c he could get more money through fairly honest means (mostly private citizen contributions) than the public funding with its restrictions.

Re:First of all

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama blew off his oath to not seek private funds and will now be in the pocket of every major interest group.

First it was a "promise" and now it was an "oath" ? The fact is that if he followed through with his plan to use public funding, he'd be handicapping his campaign; there is no reason for him to shoot himself in the foot like that except to cow-tow to his opposition and hand them an undeserved victory.

Give me a break about some sort of third grade "you promised" b.s. This is just a new entry in the long list of extremely childish (yet strangely effective) PR blitzes from the Republican hate machine. (The ones who brought you the "no nilly queers" as a central part of their platform.)

Re:First of all

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a few that actually have principles of their own, not those dictated by campaign contributions or the polls.
In my opinion a politician should vote on issues according to their conscience and convince their constituents that that is the right thing to do. Unfortunately it seems most politicians these days are more about just getting elected and vote according to the polls and money, rather than provide real leadership.
Fortunately I have one very good senator (Russ Feingold) for who "Honorable" actually seems to apply.
He is also on some key committees (judicuary and intelligence) where he can help protect my rights. I once heard an FBI agent say that having Feingold (and Leahy) on the judicuary committee was a significant obstacle. That's a pretty good indication about who is actually protecting your right to privacy.

Re:First of all

[homer_ca]

The lobbyists have an easier job flipping the Democrats on these votes. The Republicans generally vote as a block because they're all AT&T's bitch (except for Ron Paul who still cares about the 4th Amendment). With the House majority, they only needed to flip 1/3 of the Democrats to win the vote, and that's about how it ended up. 2/3 of the House Democrats voted against it.

Re:First of all

[Torvaun]

We already elected an unqualified individual, and we haven't been seeing a whole lot of limits.

Re:First of all

[Anonymous Coward]

If Ron Paul's so awesome, why didn't he vote against it when it went for a vote in the House? He abstained, because he's a chickenshit politician.

Re:First of all

[homer_ca]

Just to clarify, I'm not a Ron Paul supporter, and I didn't bother looking up his vote on immunity (yeah, shame on me). Just saying that he talks a good game and generally supports the 4th Amendment.

Re:First of all

[Kirijini]

"McCain is the only one who's even seriously TRIED to limit money coming in to campaigns and politicians. Obama blew off his oath to not seek private funds and will now be in the pocket of every major interest group."

Hold on there buddy. Obama has voluntarily restricted his campaign from receiving money from lobbyists and PACs. In other words, his only campaign contributors are citizens. He may or may not be in the pocket of interest groups, but campaign financing isn't why. McCain may have "tried" to limit campaign financing, in your words, but Obama actually has limited the money his campaign can receive.

Also, Obama does have a record of campaign finance laws - he sponsored a campaign and ethics reform bill, which included a gift ban, in Illinois in 1998.

Re:First of all

[dgatwood]

They all talk a good game. Then, they vote one way for the roll call so it gets recorded that they voted in the people's favor, then change their vote after the fact. They can do that as long as the change doesn't affect the vote. Yeah. Disgusting. Or they abstain from voting because they want to vote against something but don't want to look like they are against something that has some public support and/or the support of some major corporate backer.

From what I've seen, almost all politicians on both sides of the aisle are corrupt. We would have to completely replace all of Congress in three consecutive electoral seasons if we wanted to take our country back from abusive corporate interests. Of course, such reform would have to start with the elimination of all corporate and organizational contributions. That includes everything from AT&T and the AFL-CIO down to the EFF and the ACLU. No organization should have the right to push its agenda through what amounts to legalized bribery....

Re:First of all

[Anonymous Coward]

Any halfway competent politician "talks a good game"; that's their job.

Re:First of all

[DeadCatX2]

Barack Obama - Change you can believe in. Like how his stance on FISA changed.

Re:First of all

[scipiodog]

The entire DNC can no longer take money from lobbys or special interest groups, as per his request after Hillary's withdrawal.

Really? I could've sworn that PACs from companies like Microsoft, Time Warner, etc. might come under the heading of "special interest groups."

I'm not suggesting that he's necessarily bad for doing it, but come on - this "sun shines out of his backside" worship of Obama is getting really tedious.

Re:First of all

[homer_ca]

The EFF and ACLU have no political influence per se. They're 501(c)(3) charitable organizations just like, say, Focus on the Family, and it's already illegal for them to participate in partisan political campaigning. Here's the IRS pub.

There's still the loophole of "issue advocacy". Here's another story about that. The IRS is cracking down on issues advocacy ads that attempt to influence an election, but aside from that, charities can advocate all they want on partisan issues, say abortion or media decency.

Re:First of all

[L0rdJedi]

We would have to completely replace all of Congress in three consecutive electoral seasons if we wanted to take our country back from abusive corporate interests.

Except that you'd end up replacing one set of greedy politicians with another every election season. There aren't that many Ron Paul's out there with enough funds to successfully run every season.

Of course, such reform would have to start with the elimination of all corporate and organizational contributions.

Good luck with that being effective. So instead of donating money as a corporation or an organization, they'll just do it as private donors. You'd have to check the background of each and every person everytime they donate any money. I highly doubt that every person that donates money to Obama's campaign has no affiliation with a large corporation.

No organization should have the right to push its agenda through what amounts to legalized bribery....

So instead of having one organization do it with large sums of money, you'd have lots of people do it with small sums of money. The results would still be the same.

Re:First of all

[Lally Singh]

The first paragraph of your link:

The organizations themselves did not donate, rather the money came from the organization's PAC, its individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families. Organization totals include subsidiaries and affiliates.

As PACs are off, then it leaves their employees. Considering that is IP policy is a copy-paste job from Lessig, one can see why software people would like him. As you can't contribute on behalf of your employer, there's a good shot these people are doing it out of their own interests.

Due to the nature of the news cycle, and the utter shallowness of political reporting in the US, every politician will have their name broadcast to the population 10 million times, with a 1-line message. Obama's is unusually positive. People may get tired of it, but that's only b/c we're all so used to the "corrupt, bloodthursty sociopath" we usually get as a message about those running for office.

Nobody (well, nobody worth talking about) thinks he's perfect. Just unusually good, which isn't hard considering the scum that usually run.

Re:First of all

[Mr_eX9]

Chris Dodd has earned my vote for his re-election the next time it comes up thanks to his resolve against Telco immunity. He is as passionate against warrantless wiretapping as people here are. I'm proud of my state (CT) for electing him.

I'd love it for someone like him to get the Presidential nomination...

Re:First of all

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no idea if it applies in this particular case, but usually when Ron Paul votes against something that you'd expect him to be for it is because he feels that the federal government has no place making such a law either way. Remember, he is for smaller federal government and giving more power to the individual states.

Re:First of all

[dgatwood]

I don't think you understood my post. First, I didn't say we should clean house every time. I said three cycles because it takes three consecutive elections to get rid of all of the members of the Senate, two cycles for the House. And yes, you might be replacing a bunch of dirtbags with more dirtbags, but at least they would have less history of accepting bribes^H^H^H^H^H^Hcampaign contributions and might be more sympathetic to the public's desire to reform things. If not, do it again until they are. If we could pull that off as a nation, the message would come through loud and clear pretty quickly.

Good luck with that being effective. So instead of donating money as a corporation or an organization, they'll just do it as private donors. You'd have to check the background of each and every person everytime they donate any money. I highly doubt that every person that donates money to Obama's campaign has no affiliation with a large corporation.

The problem is the inherent inequality of the out-of-band contributions by corporations---contributions that are not given directly to the campaign, but do effectively reduce the expenditures of the campaign, e.g. by establishing an "issue" PAC that runs ads that promote or beat up a candidate without actually crossing the line and saying whether or not to vote for that candidate. Those PACs can also pay for things like travel expenses for the candidates, etc. so long as they don't get spent on ads for the candidate. Of course, the net effect of this is exactly the same as simply allowing corporate contributions to the candidate directly, since every dollar they don't spend on those things can be spent on attack ads and other things that corporate funds can't pay for directly.

If we can eliminate all of those back-channel contributions from the corporations, then everyone is on a level playing field. Individuals have dollar limits that they can contribute directly to a campaign and corporations can't contribute at all. As such, the opinion of a corporate CEO becomes a potential loss of at most $2,000, and the opinion of every other person in the country becomes an equal potential loss of up to $2,000, so everyone's opinion carries approximately equal weight again, give or take---certainly far more equal weight than we have now with many corporations contributing hundreds of millions of dollars of soft money each campaign season. Most individuals don't have that sort of money, and thus even fairly significant groups of individuals have a hard time producing the same sort of influence over candidates that corporations manage effortlessly.

So instead of having one organization do it with large sums of money, you'd have lots of people do it with small sums of money. The results would still be the same.

Not at all. Instead of a few individuals being able to contribute so much money that the candidates can't ignore them, you have tens or hundreds of thousands of individuals each contributing small enough amounts of money that their opinions have little more weight as a contributor than the opinions of non-contributors. It's like comparing the influence of the news media versus the influence of bloggers. Every day, the news media shapes public opinion significantly because they are a few voices speaking loudly. The blogger community has much smaller influence in general because there are many more voices, each contributing a smaller piece of the overall signal. That's not saying that they can't have an effect, just that the effect of most individual bloggers is fairly limited unless other bloggers join in. That's the way democracy is supposed to work. One person's voice is limited, but millions of people's voices who happen to all pick up on the same issue and speak in one voice can overcome much. Right now, corporations have subverted that by allowing small numbers of individuals to borrow the voices of millions by accumulating wealth from those millions and using it to buy votes in their favor, and that's not right.

Re:First of all

[Dan541]

How the hell is this even legal?

Talk about a corrupt government.

Re:First of all

[iminplaya]

...we're pretty much fucked.

Got that headline forty years ago.

Accountability

[hags2k]

Where is the accountability for this kind of thing? Is it a matter of the information not being readily available, or is it just that people don't bother to do the research and find out just who is lining their leaders' pockets?

When a presidential candidate simply speaking about not taking money from lobbyists is considered a "bold move" by many in the media, it becomes terribly difficult to have faith in any of our political leaders, at least for me.

Re:Accountability

[CauseWithoutARebel]

It is available, but it is obtuse. A nice place to find such information is OpenSecrets.org

And the accountability? It's with you. With me. With our neighbors and fellow slashdotters. We are a Democratic Republic, we are supposed to keep our elected officials in check by removing them or not re-electing them when they become corrupt or simply stop representing our interests, which means one of two things is in play here:

1) The American people, generally, support wiretapping without oversight and don't want to see telecoms punished even if their support of the program was illegal

or, more likely:

2) The American people do not fully educate themselves on these sorts of matters and don't have a full grasp of the implications involved in allowing it. They have abdicated their responsibility of oversight of the government.

We are a lazy and selfish people, my friend. It's going to take some serious suffering on our parts to change that.

Re:Accountability

[Hijacked Public]

is it just that people don't bother to do the research and find out just who is lining their leaders' pockets?

Because that would just be an exercise in sorting out which candidates get their pockets lined by people you agree with. And it would just be a snapshot. By the next day a different set of people, with whom you might not agree, would be buying the votes.

And you'd also find out they are all on the take, so whether you agree with any of it or not you have no ready replacements available.

Then you'd end up highly cynical about politics, and government in general, and you'd be here on Slashdot looking for any opportunity to spread that cynicism to people who show any sign of not yet being fully cynicised.

Re:Accountability

[Gewalt]

Honest men are kept honest by fear of repercussions from not being honest. What's the repercussions for these lawmakers for corrupting their office? Additional campaign contributions?

Re:Accountability

[spun]

Honest men are kept honest by fear of repercussions from not being honest. What's the repercussions for these lawmakers for corrupting their office? Additional campaign contributions?

Dishonest men are kept honest by fear of repercussions. Honest men are honest because that's what feels right to them. Politicians are kept honest by burying them up to the neck in sand, head first.

Re:Accountability

[Solandri]

Where is the accountability for this kind of thing? Is it a matter of the information not being readily available, or is it just that people don't bother to do the research and find out just who is lining their leaders' pockets?

You get a chance to hold them accountable in November. But for some reason everyone always figures their Congressman or Senator is just fine, it's all the other ones who are corrupt.

Re:Accountability

[Tubal-Cain]

Really? If I were burying a politician head-first in the sand, I would want to bury him up to the ankles.

Re:Accountability

[Tubal-Cain]

Oh sure, we can kick this particular bunch out in November, but the potential replacements are just as bad.

Re:Accountability

[Sloppy]

They are only accountable if we want them to be. Most people are still considering voting for either McCain or Obama. In other words, most people don't want them to be accountable.

If the people wanted accountability, the symptom would be that in the November election, McCain and Obama would both lose to someone else, as would many incumbents in Congress.

But only about 1% of Americans see a problem with legislation being purchased. Oh, they say they don't like it, but their actions in the voting booth show they're really ok with it.

Re:Accountability

[Pichu0102]

Accountability doesn't exist because it's not surprising that they do this anymore, and that generally, we have no way of getting out of it. It's a choice between asshole A and asshole B. Either way we vote, we lose, and third parties? Voting for them is a waste, you really think the same assholes who screw us over when they're put in office are going to care about how the people feel on issues?

What's worse, most governments across the world seem to be taking on America's example, and since our political system can't die due to how they're got it, there's no where to run, and no way to escape.

Re:Accountability

[Hijacked Public]

It's with you

Which is why it can't work. Often, on Slashdot, the answer to a problem is that people need to educate themselves and then, for sure, they'll make choices we all agree with. If they only understood all there was to understand about a given topic the world would be a better place.

And maybe that is true, but it isn't possible. If we start our list of stuff to be concerned about by looking at the front page of Slashdot we find: Telecom Immunity; Bell puffing up the P2P problem; the offensiveness of WTF; whether we should spend money exploring other planets; China's internet censorship; security on the web; and the big one: a SCOTUS decision on the 2nd Amendment.

Even if you can keep up with all of that, Slashdot is just 1 web forum and it is mostly tech focused.

And even with this limited scope you can find plenty of fundamental misunderstandings. Some people above us right here in this discussion have linked to a Wikipedia article about Ex Post Facto. Those linkers obviously either couldn't be bothered to read all the way through the article or they just didn't get it, because it doesn't apply to the discussion at hand. Look at the comments on the SCOTUS story and there are people writing about how Governments grant people rights, which is about as low level a failure at understanding the concept of rights as there is.

So I don't see education or keeping up with things or people getting more involved as a solution, there is just too much data to work with and getting to it is often arduous. And plenty of it is just beyond their ability to understand. The RTFA meme here didn't come up by accident, and half the time the submissions don't link to actual raw information, they link to a blog summary of an AP story of the highlights of the content of a press release about a paper someone wrote.

Even with a somewhat techy, science oriented, crowd there is still an inability to identify and get at the facts behind any given subject. If our discussions in this limited arena constantly devolve into one Overlord Welcoming post after another, how can we expect anyone else to pay attention past the face on their big screen TV telling them what to think?

Re:Accountability

[Dragonslicer]

Where is the accountability for this kind of thing? Is it a matter of the information not being readily available, or is it just that people don't bother to do the research and find out just who is lining their leaders' pockets?

Most Americans are more concerned about the government letting gays get married or average citizens owning guns.

Re:Accountability

[TubeSteak]

Where is the accountability for this kind of thing? Is it a matter of the information not being readily available, or is it just that people don't bother to do the research and find out just who is lining their leaders' pockets?

While the issue of campaign donations is interesting, it would help to listen to what the Democratic leadership has actually said about their motivations.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/19/AR2008061901545.html

The war spending bill, for example, includes $162 billion for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and an additional $95 billion worth of domestic spending on programs such as unemployment insurance and higher-education benefits for veterans. Bush, who had threatened for months to veto the legislation, said he will sign it.

Leading Democrats acknowledged that the surveillance legislation is not their preferred approach, but they said their refusal in February to pass a version supported by the Bush administration paved the way for victories on other legislation, such as the war funding bill.

The Democratic leadership traded de facto telecom immunity for increased veterans benefits & increased unemployement payouts.

They literally allowed their votes to be bought by the Republicans.
AND it was their strategy all along.
/Shame

Re:Accountability

[homer_ca]

It gets complicated because it's more than just direct contributions from PACs to individual campaigns. There are various PACS like the ones belonging to Blue Dogs caucus and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, that collect corporate contributions and distribute to House members.
The Blue Dogs are a group of about 30 fiscally conservative Democrats in the House. They're reliably in the pocket of corporate lobbyists, so right off the bat, the Democrats were 30 votes behind on stopping immunity.

Re:Accountability

[Stradivarius]

Most people are still considering voting for either McCain or Obama. In other words, most people don't want them to be accountable.

Have you heard of a third party candidate running for President this year whose campaigning skills and positions on the issues are sufficient to get them elected?

I haven't. And that's why I will vote for either McCain or Obama. That doesn't mean I don't want accountability. It means that I recognize that elections are almost always a choice between two flawed options, and that our voting system is biased towards creating a two-party duopoly. The choices we have are:

1) Vote for a third-party candidate who has no chance of getting elected, thus wasting your vote.
2) Vote for the lesser of the two evils, whichever way your political inclinations lean.

The choice we do not have is some third-party candidate who has better positions and sufficient political skills and resources to get elected. If that option ever appears, then I'll vote for them.

If the people wanted accountability, the symptom would be that in the November election, McCain and Obama would both lose to someone else, as would many incumbents in Congress.

While I obviously disagree WRT the presidential election, I agree with your take on Congress. Somehow people always seem to think their Congresscritter is OK even when they think the rest are a bunch of corrupt bastards. Hell, William Jefferson even got re-elected by his constituents after a FBI sting showed him accepting $100,000 in bribe money.

Re:Accountability

[Jason Levine]

No, no, no.

You bury the politicians up to their ankles. You did get the head first part right, though.

Re:Accountability

[CauseWithoutARebel]

You don't need consensus for a healthy democracy, you just need a factually valid and composed discourse that allows people to vent frustration, air grievances, discuss differences, and share information in a safe and reliable way.

We'll never agree on everything, and that's not necessary. But this country has gotten to the point where no matter how important an issue is (as gaged by prior opinions of importance) that there isn't even a factual discussion occurring. Not only are people disagreeing, they're bickering over the tiniest differences, starting discussions by insulting each other, and concentrating their opinions into feedback loops through both major media outlets and specialized websites/periodicals.

People don't need to know everything, but there should be a way for them to learn about things they want to become involved in. We don't have that. Maybe we never did. Maybe the serf-like ignorance we see now has always been the standard and we just see that we have the OPPORTUNITY to put an end to it, but not the will.

At any rate, the point is that people must be responsible for maturely engaging in dialogs on important issues, and we don't have that in this country right now.

Re:Accountability

[sm62704]

There is a big, glaring problem with this - multinational corporations. The corporate owned media has convinced voters that if you vote for anyone but a Republican or a Democrat you've wasted your vote.

That way, the corporatti only have to bribe two candidates for any given office with "campaign contributions". So it doesn't matter which of the two candidates the corporate media even MENTIONS loses, they win.

So a vote for a Democrat or a Republican is a wasted vote. You might as well stay home and be painted by the corporate media as "apathetic".

I used to split my votes between Democrats and Republicans. Now I split them between Greens and Libertarians.

I'd like to see some REAL campaign finance reform, not the sham reforms McCain has touted. I want it to be against the law to contribute to more than one candidate in any given race, on the grounds that contributing to both is a thinly veiled bribe. And I'd like it to be a felony to contribute to any candidate you aren't eligible to vote for.

Pigs will fly first.

Re:Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

America is no longer the land of the free.

America is and has been for some time the Land of the Bought and Paid for.

Elections are bought not won. A large number of state and local elected officials spend more money getting elected to a political position than what the political position pays.

In Illinois we are known for our pay to play politics. Just look at our 2 most recent governors... One is doing time in a federal prison and the current one's long time fundraiser was just convicted of a few federal crimes.

Re:Accountability

[Jaeph]

I do agree with you entirely, but there are many more issues here than you state. Two major ones (in my mind):

- The bills in congress are large lumps of legislation. Sure, the media calls it "The Iraq War bill", but the reality is a large number of projects get attached. (This implies a presidential line-item veto is needed, btw).

- People prioritize lofty issues over boring minor issues. So a politician says "I believe in god" or "I believe in a women's right to choose", and we pick that person even if they are accepting money from land developers, telecom companies, etc. (This to me is a cultural issue.)

Whatever, I think it is more complex than you state. The volume of available data is just one issue.

-Jeff

Re:Accountability

[Gazzonyx]

But first, we kill all the lawyers!

Re:Accountability

[phorm]

I've always preferred. Feet first, up to the neck, sand well packed (or in concrete) far out on a beach during low-tide.

The fun doesn't come in for a few hours, but it could be an enjoyable wait, so bring a BBQ and some lemonade.

Re:Accountability

[rk]

p>1) Vote for a third-party candidate who has no chance of getting elected, thus wasting your vote. 2) Vote for the lesser of the two evils, whichever way your political inclinations lean.

Nobody has ever given me a good explanation as to why this is "wasting" your vote. Is a vote like a racing bet and if my candidate wins, places or shows, I can take my ballot somewhere and get some money for it?

If I vote for someone I don't like, and they win, I've done more than just waste my vote. I've contributed to that person's "mandate" to do the stuff I don't like. I'd sooner stay home on election day than vote for a candidate I don't support.

Re:Accountability

[CyprusBlue113]

I completely disagree that line item veto is needed. You need to restrict the bill aggregation on the front end, and not give the president the power to potentially completely reshape the effect of a bill passed by congress on the back end.

Re:Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

Its easy to characterize americans as lazy and inactive based on the apparent lack of activity on matters that should be of interest at the least and of grave importance at the worst. The reality is that most adults are harried to the breaking point their adult lives. Theres stress and competition at every corner from work to just driving every day. What I see is a drive to the lowest social energy state they can sustain. People are distracted and frayed, short attention spans and frantic dashes for one thing or another is the norm. We're constantly being poked and prodded by the media, merchants and gov'ts to think this, worry about this, thats gonna get you, etc... to the extent that we ignore all but the most immediate threats and work around the rest.

One example is how the current oil crisis is characterized that we're addicted to oil rather then our that our jobs, stores and homes are widely dispersed and we need mobility to function. I have yet to see anyone talk about how living in suburbs without a car is near impossible. The media and its ilk belabor how much fuel we use but never in the context of how much we're doing. Efficiency isn't characterized as productivity but in mpg. So everyone feels guilty about buying all this expensive fuel but have no practical way of doing what they are and saving fuel. So activities and trips are curtailed but they were only a small part of our useage to begin with so theres no real decrease. It boggles my mind that store parking lots still say "parking only while shopping here." instead of a more embracing "Combine your trips as best you can, but don't monopolize spaces."

When it comes to wiretapping, most people feel that these so called controls are a charade to begin with, theres no chance to oppose or confront the accuser before they're invading your privacy in hopes of catching you committing a crime. Law enforcement has no qualms of doing what they feel they need to illegally, unethically or otherwise in order to accomplish their goal. They constantly refer to civil liberties as obstructions, under the false presumption that if they could know everything they'd understand everything and could prevent all evil. People don't fight back because they don't have the strength, and thats not by accident. Alot of us right now are dumb, frightened and alone just the way we were raised to be. Just the way we all felt thru school. We're to blame for our gov't thats for sure, but thats not what we need to know. How do we go forward from here, where do we want to be? We're going to be suffering all right, but not for the better I'm afraid.

Re:Accountability

[c]

> Politicians are kept honest by burying them up to the neck in sand, head first.

Their heads are already buried neck deep somewhere else, but if you bury them up to the waist you'll cover the head, too.

c.

Re:Accountability

[baKanale]

And paint their feet with honey for the ants!

Re:Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

Politicians are kept honest by burying them up to the neck in sand, head first.

In otherwords, doing exactly like ostriches, which is essentially what Bush is doing now.

I don't think it's working like you say it should. :)

Re:Accountability

[FiloEleven]

[H]ow can we expect anyone else to pay attention past the face on their big screen TV telling them what to think?

Give them more information to think with. People are not the dumb, unwashed masses I hear referred to so often here on Slashdot. Most of the generations we're talking about here grew up when TV news was more trustworthy than it is today, as you should know given your moniker. Is it any wonder that they believe it so readily?

One thing to keep in mind is that people respond more strongly to stuff going on in real life than stuff that happens on TV or on the Web. Everybody's got their lists of stuff to care about, but I'm more likely to add something to my list if a friend discusses her concerns over it than I am if it's something I read on Slashdot. In order to effect real change, you have to get out from behind the screen and interact with people. I just finished up a post in the other telecom thread that's a stab in the dark at what we can do. You can't make everybody care about everything, but the more effort you put into something, the more likely others will understand your point of view and become concerned with it themselves.

Re:Accountability

[Atario]

So a vote for a Democrat or a Republican is a wasted vote. You might as well stay home and be painted by the corporate media as "apathetic".

I used to split my votes between Democrats and Republicans. Now I split them between Greens and Libertarians.

You might as well make another copy of this, only swap "Republicans" and "Libertarians", swap "Democrats" and "Greens", and change "apathetic" to "fringe". No third party will ever take hold because of our winner-take-all, first-past-the-post mindset.

We seriously need to change to Approval Voting, and possibly a Parliamentary system.

Re:Accountability

[Dexx]

Makes sense - get 'em at the larval stage, before they mature into politicians.

Re:Accountability

[servognome]

It doesn't even need to get to that level of involvement on specific issues. If people just did their homework on candidates, rather than voting for whoever was on TV more the whole money thing would be moot.

Re:Accountability

[joocemann]

I am fully cynicised.

Re:Accountability

[Jaeph]

Name a way to prevent bill aggregation on the front end. A way that will work.

Line-item vetos are tried and tested in many of the states. It helps keep bills paired down reasonably in the long run.

-Jeff

Re:Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

The RTFA meme here didn't come up by accident, and half the time the submissions don't link to actual raw information, they link to a blog summary of an AP story of the highlights of the content of a press release about a paper someone wrote.

It doesn't help that almost all the submissions kowtow to the liberal ideologues. It's hard to create a productive debate, when you taint the submission with built-in bias.

This is all fine and good, I know plenty of news networks that kowtow to one political ideologue or another. But let's not lie to ourselves and pretend that Slashdot plays host to highly informative discussion on issues that are much bigger than the IT industry, such as the latest rounds of SCOTUS decisions.

Re:Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

And the accountability? It's with you. With me. With our neighbors and fellow slashdotters. We are a Democratic Republic, we are supposed to keep our elected officials in check by removing them or not re-electing them when they become corrupt or simply stop representing our interests, which means one of two things is in play here:

1) The American people, generally, support wiretapping without oversight and don't want to see telecoms punished even if their support of the program was illegal

or, more likely:

2) The American people do not fully educate themselves on these sorts of matters and don't have a full grasp of the implications involved in allowing it. They have abdicated their responsibility of oversight of the government.

We are a lazy and selfish people, my friend. It's going to take some serious suffering on our parts to change that.

*I'VE* exercised my power every election by voting libertarian. I have no effective power, though; people are chumps and think they "must" vote for Dems or Reps so a party that believes in true freedom will never get in power. The Rep voters think the Dems support a huge nanny state, pour money into health care but tell people what they can and can't do (to reduce health costs don't you know..), want to censor media to make it all kid-friendly, and hate guns rights. The Dem voters think the Reps want a huge military and police, a more "traditional" country with plenty of law enforcement to make sure people are behaving themselves; restrict people's rights to be gay or otherwise unorthodox, and want to restrict people's rights if they interfere with "big business". BOTH are right -- both main parties hate freedom and want to restrict rights. But, the public is too narrow-sighted to see this and vote for someone who truly believes in freedom and rights. I know now, MANY people were supporting Dems and Obama in particular because he was against telecom immunity and wiretapping -- oh wait, the Dems and Obama are fine with that now! Oh snap!

          I want to be clear, people shouldn't be afraid to vote libertarian. The libertarian platform wants to severely cut the size of the gov't, and in some cases even eliminate income tax. Clearly that's untenable. But, keep in mind there's checks and balances along with the significant inertia of a large gov't; libertarians in power would not be able to do all that, they would take years to even halt the growth of gov't. Mainly they'd provide strong pressure to hold the gov't to it's constitutional mandates (which don't include blanket spying as the NSA and telecoms except Qwest are doing.) *THIS* is why I vote libertarian -- they'd at least halt gov't growth, and keep it constitutional, unlike the Reps and Demos who say they are interested in this but by actions are clearly not.

Re:Accountability

[4D6963]

We are a lazy and selfish people, my friend.

Duh, cut the hippie crap, it's not our fucking job to do what the people we elected to represent our interests are supposed to do. People have other stuff to do than to get familiar with any arcane piece of legislation that comes up, mainly considered how little they can directly do anything about it.

Re:Accountability

[4D6963]

I hate to break it all down for you, but that N-party ideal so many Americans drool over isn't that great once it really happens. Well I have to agree that it's a shame that in the USA any sort of discussion not coming from the two big parties is suppressed, and as a French citizen who regularly sees people from way over a dozen political parties get air time for all sorts of political issues I think that political variety contributes a great deal to the quality of the discussion, but when it comes to voting, it all comes down to mathematics.

And by this I mean, remember how Ralph Nader was accused of taking votes from the left and hardly any from the right, thus making the Republican party stronger in 2000? Well basically in a French election it's the same thing except with over a dozen different Ralph Naders. So in the end it doesn't come down to who of the two big parties is favoured by the people but which side of the political playground is the most united. Well fortunately we vote a second time between the two front-runners of the first election, which has always been, except in 2002, the equivalent of the Republican and Democrat parties.

And I've gotta add this : greens, libertarians, communists, they all bring a most valuable contribution to the debate by coming up with a sharp analysis and criticism of whatever's going on, but they systematically turn out to fail at suggesting feasible solutions to issues they're so good at point out, and also despite talking bad all the time about the two parties who alternatively assume responsibility and power, they systematically try their best to avoid being in charge. They sound like they try hard to gain access to the presidency, but that's only because they know well they'll never get there. There are exceptions, such as François Bayrou, the centrist leader, but he has no back up, that is, anyone behind him is only waiting for either side to win and brown-nose their way into the government.

So yes, that sucks that no one will give Ron Paul any air time to the point we forget about him, but make no mistake about it, he can only contribute to the debate and bring chaos to the election by favouring the one side he's the less taking votes from. A true N-party system really isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Re:Accountability

[shaitand]

'we have the OPPORTUNITY to put an end to it, but not the will.'

That is the biggest problem we face today. Today we are more 'civilized' than in the past. Almost everyone agrees that our government is corrupt and that many of our representatives lie to us.

Sweeping and immense irregularities were documented in the last election. Whether you blame incompetence, laziness, or conspiracy the fact remains that the most fundemental process in our democracy is KNOWN to be compromised. The people know, the people are outraged, the people have seen it documented on HBO specials if nothing else.

The people of this nation oppose the war in Iraq. The people of this nation support medical marijuana and from my discussions most are under the false impression that marijuana is already legal medicinal purposes.

Despite the fact that our 'representatives' are known to be corrupt, our elections are known to be compromised, the will of the people is ignored as our corrupt government continues to destroy nations and murder their citizens abroad; the people of this nation lack the STOMACH and the COURAGE required to take action.

The sad state of things is that the people of this nation are no longer willing to fight for their rights. They want a corrupt government to choose to protect their interests and when that government does not they roll over and whine about the next issue they beg the powers at be to give them their way on.

Re:Accountability

[shaitand]

'Dishonest men are kept honest by fear of repercussions. Honest men are honest because that's what feels right to them. Politicians are kept honest by burying them up to the neck in sand, head first.'

Sane men are kept honest by fear of repercussions or gains from honesty. Nuts and morons behave in ANY fashion because of how they 'feel'.

As for the rest of your post, I'll go with that.

Re:Accountability

[spun]

That's not how it actually works, though, at least not according to all the research I've read. You may want to read about the Ultimatum Game, the Dictator Game, and the Public Goods Game, among many others. See also Kohlberg's stages of Moral Development. The idea that humans are primarily motivated by rational self interest has been conclusively debunked. Most people act from a basis of fairness and reciprocity, not self interest. The only people who act entirely from fear of repercussions or desire for personal gain are sociopaths and psychopaths.

Dear America,

[Anonymous Coward]

Now's the chance for you to prove to the Rest of the World that Money doesn't rule your country and that you still care about some of your rights that you so ardently want to keep guns to protect.

Love,

Rest of the World.

PS. Feel free to sit back and do nothing. It's worked well for you for the last 7 or so years.

Throw the bums out...

[Notquitecajun]

This Congress is probably the best reason we should throw EVERYONE who is an incumbent out the door, particularly those who have been in place more than 1-2 terms - from BOTH sides of the aisle. Republicans are holding to big-government ideals rather than conservative ones, and haven't been worth much since Gingrich left; and Dems haven't done much of anything but posture and "investigate" with committees that have done nothing but waste taxpayers time (suing OPEC? WTF?), and NO ONE is working together well. The ONE argument that Obama has going for him, in my mind (being a conservative) is that he's relatively inexperienced.

Re:Throw the bums out...

[jollyreaper]

This Congress is probably the best reason we should throw EVERYONE who is an incumbent out the door, particularly those who have been in place more than 1-2 terms - from BOTH sides of the aisle. Republicans are holding to big-government ideals rather than conservative ones, and haven't been worth much since Gingrich left; and Dems haven't done much of anything but posture and "investigate" with committees that have done nothing but waste taxpayers time (suing OPEC? WTF?), and NO ONE is working together well. The ONE argument that Obama has going for him, in my mind (being a conservative) is that he's relatively inexperienced.

One way to avoid the corruption problem: 100% public financing of ALL campaigns for elected office with the provision of equitable free air-time from all media outlets. Any sort of contribution or gift to a politician, monetary or otherwise, will be seen as a bribe and prosecuted as high treason.

I had really high hopes for Obama since, with the bulk of his donations coming from average joe Americans, he had no big business interests to be beholden to. that's the biggest flaw for conventional campaigns, the new pols come in already owing favors.

Re:Throw the bums out...

[Notquitecajun]

No thanks. Maybe somewhere in between, but I think this is a BAD idea - we'd get way too many people involved who would just see running for office as a free paycheck. Plus, there are plenty of business interests which would be shut out of the political process who should have genuine reason to be involved because they would be affected by taxation and regulation.

Public financing would also likely reduce much voting to the lowest common denominator and result in stupid people voting for stupid things. We need to re-work some of the way lobbying and influence peddling is done in politics, but we need to be careful we don't reduce everything to mob rule.

Re:Throw the bums out...

[XanC]

The real answer is to reduce the power of government to the point where it simply isn't so critical exactly who holds what office. Right now, it matters a whole lot, because the federal government is basically unrestrained.

Re:Throw the bums out...

[Pichu0102]

You speak as if voting matters anymore in the US and we aren't a country where people are placed in positions by the wealthy and powerful directly.

Re:Throw the bums out...

[jollyreaper]

No thanks. Maybe somewhere in between, but I think this is a BAD idea - we'd get way too many people involved who would just see running for office as a free paycheck. Plus, there are plenty of business interests which would be shut out of the political process who should have genuine reason to be involved because they would be affected by taxation and regulation.

We've had how many years of over-representation of business interests in government? Forgive my lack of sympathy and concern if we were to actually redress this issue.

Public financing would also likely reduce much voting to the lowest common denominator and result in stupid people voting for stupid things. We need to re-work some of the way lobbying and influence peddling is done in politics, but we need to be careful we don't reduce everything to mob rule.

How could we be any more LCD and stupid than we are right now? At least with 100% public financing, those people we do send to Washington will be able to do as they see fit without having to be concerned with whoring to big pocket donors for reelection capital. The only people they have to worry about satisfying are their constituents. And when it comes to that, the competing interests of all the other interests demanding a piece of the pie should result in compromises that harm the least, or at least that was the theory the Founding Fathers operated under.

Re:Throw the bums out...

[Thuktun]

Any sort of contribution or gift to a politician, monetary or otherwise, will be seen as a bribe and prosecuted as high treason.

Impossible. Perhaps you've forgotten, but the Constitution enumerates what can be considered treason, and this isn't it.

From Article III, Section 3:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.

Re:Throw the bums out...

[jollyreaper]

Impossible. Perhaps you've forgotten, but the Constitution enumerates what can be considered treason, and this isn't it.

From Article III, Section 3: [cornell.edu]

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.

Semantics. I can argue that people who cause harm to the United States are thus enemies. Taking their bribes and working their agenda against America thus constitutes treason.

But to be less sneaky, I'd rather just pass an amendment that elevates bribery to the same level of infamy as treason.

Re:Throw the bums out...

[homer_ca]

Sorry, welcome to America. The Supreme Court has ruled that campaign contributions are "Free Speech" protected by the First Amendment. Limits on individual contributions are still constitutional, but you'll still find plenty of Republicans and Libertarians who advocate no contribution limits under the guise of Free Speech, Steve Forbes for one.

Re:Throw the bums out...

[corbettw]

Any sort of contribution or gift to a politician, monetary or otherwise, will be seen as a bribe and prosecuted as high treason.

What if I set up a web page critical of Obama? Would that be considered a "contribution" to McCain? If so, you've just destroyed the 1st Amendment. If not, there's no point not to allow contributions to the candidate, because people will just donate their own ads instead of money, and make sure the candidate knows how much they spent.

Face it, it's impossible to take the money out of politics, and it's pointless to try. The only thing you can do is make everyone disclose how much they've gotten, from whom, and let the voters make their own decisions based on those facts. "The answer to bad speech is more speech, not less."

Re:Throw the bums out...

[CyprusBlue113]

Plus, there are plenty of business interests which would be shut out of the political process who should have genuine reason to be involved because they would be affected by taxation and regulation.

This is exactly the problem we have now that needs to be fixed!

Re:Throw the bums out...

[Atario]

We tried having weak governments before. Didn't work. Twice.

Re:Throw the bums out...

[sydbarrett74]

we'd get way too many people involved who would just see running for office as a free paycheck.

Erm...and we don't have this situation now? How many people do you think actually run for office in order to serve the public -- as opposed to seeking money, recognition, and power? Not bloody many....

Re:Throw the bums out...

[shaitand]

Who said anything about giving the candidates money? We have prisoners make signs and air all debates and campaign announcements on CSPAN.

Re:Throw the bums out...

[shaitand]

'We tried having weak governments before. Didn't work. [wikipedia.org] Twice. [wikipedia.org]'

Didn't work... according to the weak government who wanted more authority.

Re:Throw the bums out...

[shaitand]

This mistake is allowing corporations 1st Amendment rights.

As long as the government legislates the economy..

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

... companies will flock to politicians. It's one big protection racket.

This is the change we voted for?

[tji]

In the '06 elections, the Democrats won overwhelmingly, taking back control of both houses of Congress. Many of us had high expectations after that.. I mean the public sentiment was about as obvious as it could ever be.

But, what the hell have they brought us? Certainly no meaningful change on the war effort. And no backbone when it comes to any of the tough issues. When the issues get difficult, they fold like lawnchairs.

What a broken system we have.

Re:This is the change we voted for?

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

"I mean the public sentiment was about as obvious as it could ever be."

It's like voting for Kodos after 6 years of Kang. All you're voting for is a different name for the same thing. The public, it would seem, is easily fooled.

Re:This is the change we voted for?

[A beautiful mind]

Finally, you understand why a two party system is just marginally better than a one party system and why a system that tends toward a two party system is bad.

Re:This is the change we voted for?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would suggest you read the first chapter of John W. Dean's "Broken Government". I think the Democrats are making an important improvement, but it gets a bit obscured because the press doesn't like to cover "process" issues. The Republicans were really trashing the House, and the Dems have reintroduced some degree of order. (I can't write about it as eloquently or authoritatively as Dean. You'll have to check it out and make your own conclusions.)

The other thing that I've heard John Dean say, specifically about FISA, sort of suggests that their strategy may have more to do with election strategy than anything else. The idea is that the Dems think the Bush admin will be gone in January. So they're going to let this one pass to avoid turning it into a GOP smear tactic. Then when they win in November they'll correct things.

Of course, then again, the last time I remember being told that a nasty repeal of civil liberties would only be a temporary thing was the patriot act...

Re:This is the change we voted for?

[BobMcD]

Finally, you understand why a two party system is just marginally better than a one party system and why a system that tends toward a two party system is bad.

In my opinion, our system really IS a one party system.

I also have a suspicion that this is a direct result of the outcome Civil War, and was designed to prevent that sort of thing from ever happening again.

In that way, our 'two party' system is actually WORSE, due to the deception involved.

Re:This is the change we voted for?

[Talderas]

Democrats didn't actually win Congress, it make look like it, but what actually happened was the Conservative Republicans just didn't go out and vote for the Republicans that had been betraying Conservative principles.

Re:This is the change we voted for?

[A beautiful mind]

In my opinion, our system really IS a one party system.

Essentially, yes. All you get is a change of paint every four years. The two parties being in power for so long created a stagnant system of politics, where the same financial interests are in the background and where backroom deals and agreements decide the major issues. Voter choice is minimalised, since there is nothing a voter can do when both parties in power have the same stand on most issues.

The "brilliance" of the system is that you can always point and say, "but other parties and candidates are free to run and try to get elected", which is true theoretically, but not practically. The system is rigged in a way to support major power blocks. It's the difference between taking the stairs and climbing the wall. Small and mid size parties have no chance of existing and building public support from there, which prevents voters giving support to smaller parties and taking it away from larger ones. A large amount of propaganda is part of the problem.

Re:This is the change we voted for?

[autophile]

In the '06 elections, the Democrats won overwhelmingly...

In another universe, maybe. In my universe, they captured a little over 50% of the seats. That's hardly an "overwhelming" win.

Re:This is the change we voted for?

[Thuktun]

In the '06 elections, the Democrats won overwhelmingly, taking back control of both houses of Congress.

A 49%/49%/2% split in the Senate and a slight 54%/46% majority in the House is not what I would call "overwhelming" in any fashion. If you're looking for activity, you shouldn't look to a body that's evenly split on one side and without a veto-proof majority on the other side.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/110th_United_States_Congress

Blaming Congressional Democrats for not getting done what they wanted is highly disingenuous, regardless if you agree with them or not.

Re:This is the change we voted for?

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

"Blaming Congressional Democrats for not getting done what they wanted is highly disingenuous, regardless if you agree with them or not."

I would not blame them, but rather thank them for not getting done what they wanted.

Re:This is the change we voted for?

[Anonymous Coward]

What have they brought us? a 25% increase in the cost of gasoline, a block on new solar power applications, Iranian propoganda on the house floor, they're just as bad as the fucking neocons. Bush is bad, but Congress makes the laws, so put some blame where it belongs. Either way, in november, we're fucked.

Re:This is the change we voted for?

[bpjk]

Actually, a two-party system is worse: it allows the equally bad powers to hide behind the old "We're a democracy; if you don't like us, vote for the other guys".

With a one-party system, the people's choice us much clearer as well as more effective: live with your crap one party or stage a revolution.

Re:This is the change we voted for?

[nickhart]

Blaming Congressional Democrats for not getting done what they wanted is highly disingenuous, regardless if you agree with them or not.

The problem is, the Democrats don't want to do what they promised, namely ending the war in Iraq. They keep passing funding bills for the war and giving Bush more money than he has asked for. If they were really an antiwar party they could stop funding the war. The history of the Democrats proves they are just as big a war party as the Republicans. WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and Clinton made more military interventions abroad than Reagan and Bush Sr. combined (not to mention he killed 1 million Iraqis with economic sanctions and committed war crimes in the "humanitarian" bombing of Kosovo). Both parties share the belief that the US government has every right to use its military to maintain its superpower status. The only complaint the Democrats have with the Republicans is not that the Iraq war is bad, but that we're losing it--and that it's a "distraction" from the "real" war in Afghanistan (which is no more justified than the one in Iraq).

The Democrats aren't the party of the people and they never have been. They are the other party of big business and imperialism. They make some progressive-sounding squawkings once and a while because they need a political base to get themselves elected--but they have never delivered any progress without a mass struggle to force them to do it. They are the party that lied us into the Vietnam war and it was under Nixon that it was ended--not because Nixon was a peace-loving hippie, but because of widespread revolt within the military, mass unrest at home and a Vietnamese independence movement that refused to lay down and die.

Re:This is the change we voted for?

[phantomfive]

OK, I used to think that having a multi-party system was the way to go, but have you really thought this through? The first thing that would be created when we add more parties would be an Evangelical Religious Party. Do you want that? And their goal would be to bring the US back to the rule of the bible. Right now we have the republican party talking about stuff like that, but it's mostly just lip service. This party would be insane. At least now each of the two parties is mostly in the center. They can't help it if by nature politicians are a lying sleazy breed.

Think of all the special interest groups we have. These are going to become parties. This is something you want to think twice about. A lot of countries in Europe have fascist parties. That's not something we want. Or maybe you do, I don't know.

Personally I'm looking forward to joining the "slashdot whiners who want to overthrow the government but don't care enough to get out from behind their computer" party. (mods:That's a joke, not a troll.)

Re:This is the change we voted for?

[rhakka]

they WON overwhelmingly, in that election cycle. they did not win an overwhelming majority. That's two different things. Seats considered "safe" by republicans fell in droves in '06.

Re:This is the change we voted for?

[Anonymous Coward]

No but you can blame them for getting things done that we didn't want done. They may not be able to prevent filibusters, but they certainly have the numbers to vote down or filibuster anything they want to. Yet they still pass spending bills and crap like this. They may not have the power to pass everything they want but they do have the power to prevent things from passing, and they don't use it. With the Republicans using a record number of filibusters, it's time for the Democrats to grow a pair and do the same back.

Re:This is the change we voted for?

[HappyEngineer]

Personally, I don't want activity. I want them to stop passing fucking awful laws. You only need 40% to do that. They have 40% and yet they are still passing fucking awful laws.

There is a difference though. While nearly 100% of the Republicans vote for these fucking awful laws, only 50%-80% of the Democrats do, so that's an improvement right? Pfft.

Re:This is the change we voted for?

[Anonymous Coward]

Blaming Congressional Democrats for not getting done what they wanted is highly disingenuous, regardless if you agree with them or not.

Somehow, the Republicans managed to get things done when they often had a small majority.

Heck, during 2001-2002, it was actually the Democrats that controlled the Senate, and they still kept on passing the same agenda that the Republicans favor.

Re:This is the change we voted for?

[steelfood]

Part of it is because it's really hard to get things passed without a true majority, that is, a veto-overriding majority. So anything the Democrats really want to do gets vetoed by Bush. Only the things that get both parties' support would be able to override a veto. Unfortunately, that would mean Republicans breaking with their party, which they're reluctant to do unless their constituents really demand for it, because it would mean less support from their party base come next election.

So the Democrats are forced to compromise on everything. Now, whether their compromises have been wise or not is a separate debate. But compromises are much better than a Republican-controlled congress and white house, as even the smallest checks that a two-party system offers would be completely blown away.

But this is why having multiple parties is a good thing, in particular, an odd number of parties. Far fewer compromises need to be made, and the power of congress actually increases.

Re:This is the change we voted for?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't stand this sentiment, because it's so goddamn easy to quash. If you honestly believe that Gore wouldn't have been better than Bush, then you're completely delusional.

Re:This is the change we voted for?

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

Who's talking about Bush/Gore?

Re:This is the change we voted for?

[HappyEngineer]

I don't know what I was modded a troll. It's a perfectly reasonable response to anyone who claims the Democrats aren't to blame because they don't have a 60% majority.

Re:This is the change we voted for?

[shaitand]

The entire two party vs one party concept is bad. There is no such thing as a one party system, a one party system is a NO party system. With a so called 'one party' system, you just have several individuals standing on their own merits and viewpoints without any party loyalties clouding your judgement. With the two party system you've narrowed the floor to two viewpoints.

Elections with a single candidate are bad but that there is no reason to have any form of partisan politics.

Brilliant Idea

[mr_nazgul]

The solution for this is simply put:
1) Corporate contributions directly or indirectly are banned from politics.
2) Only individuals can donate, and there are limits placed on how much one person can donate.
3) Politicians become honest.
4) Pigs grow wings and fly.

Re:Brilliant Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

corporations don't donate money. It is individuals with an interest in the corporation who donate the money to corrupt officials

Re:Brilliant Idea

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

The problem is there will always be a loophole as long as politicians are able to pass legislation affecting the economy. You're trying to patch things up on the wrong end of the problem, and you'll end up repeating this process forever. The only way to fix it is to ban politicians from manipulating the economy. Then companies will then have no interest in them.

Re:Brilliant Idea

[Fastfwd]

This is already how it mostly works in Canada(not step 4). I think it is a good step but it is not a perfect solution.

Re:Brilliant Idea

[Dorkmaster Flek]

It's not the whole solution, but it's certainly a required step in my mind. I like that aspect of our political system. It seems to me that corporate contributions to politicians are just an obviously bad idea.

Re:Brilliant Idea

[SirGeek]

1) Corporate contributions directly or indirectly are banned from politics.
2) Only individuals can donate, and there are limits placed on how much one person can donate.

2.3) Lower the max amount that an individual can contribute to $ 250 instead of $ 1000. (forces them to get 4 x the contribution)

2.5) An State level board investigates the contributions (i.e. opensecrets.org) and it investigates/fines where you see more than 1 contribution from a single address using variations of the same Name (Alan Smith, A. Smith, Alan B. Smith, A. B. Smith, A. Bob Smith, etc). If any irregularities are found, the politician is fined 5x the amount of the contribution and the contributer is subjected to an IRS Audit.

It should be No Vote, No contributions to a campain.

3) Politicians become honest.
4) Pigs grow wings and fly.

Re:Brilliant Idea

[Verteiron]

EVERYTHING affects the economy.

Re:Brilliant Idea

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

There's quite a difference between saying "we don't have enough cops on the street, so people are afraid of going to the store to buy stuff" and saying "the city has enacted a law preventing loitering in public places." Only the latter is a direct force being applied to people, in violation of their individual rights.

Or, maybe you meant something different by that vague comment. If you did, please elaborate with examples and rationale.

Re:Brilliant Idea

[bar-agent]

corporations don't donate money.

Parent is correct. Corporations cannot contribute to a politician's political campaign, but can solicit money from certain employees and pay for certain ads. Read the Wikipedia article.

The problem, I think, is lobbyists. Corporations are able to hire good lobbyists to deliver a focused and professional message to our representatives. But, really, lobbyists aren't the problem, either. In theory, any group of citizens can get their message out equally well by banding together and hiring their own lobbyists. The problem is, we do not do this.

Re:Brilliant Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

"4) Pigs grow wings and fly."

Of all those, the only one feasible was number four. Just give them Red Bull.

Re:Brilliant Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

2.5) Companies begin handing out extra bonuses to their employees, and "strongly encouraging" them to donate it to politician XYZ.

You can't legislate corrupt people into being honest - they'll always find a way. The solution is to replace corrupt people with honest ones. Clean sweep - fire every current politician.

Re:Brilliant Idea

[ksd1337]

5) Duke Nukem Forever gets released.

Re:Brilliant Idea

[cparker15]

The only way to fix it is to ban politicians from manipulating the economy. Then companies will then have no interest in them.

And how would you suggest we go about doing that?

Re:Brilliant Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

The rich will always find ways to influence those in power. Instead of trying to devise ways for they system to be fair, let's cut regulation out entirely so any person or organization can donate any amount of money to any politician. The catch would be a public website that has the names of the donors, the dates received and exact amount given. At least then we would know what is going on and they could even use the statistics to attack each other (a favored game amongst the political elite).

Re:Brilliant Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is an honest person can go there but the system corrupts. Takes a strong person to walk away from lines on a really hot hookers chest.... Simply put, it is a very good thing for my community that I am not a cop.

Re:Brilliant Idea

[Julian352]

So if AT&T creates a dummy corporation called "People for American Security" that donates $100k per candidate on their behalf, you now can't link it directly to AT&T.
Unlimited donations will heavily encourage shell corporation/entities for donations.

Man are they cheap

[alextheseal]

$8,359 to sell out this country. Didn't Spitzer spend more on some of his romps. Come on Senators, have some pride.

Re:Man are they cheap

[Hijacked Public]

Low prices, high volume.

Re:Man are they cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

$8,359 to sell out this country. Didn't Spitzer spend more on some of his romps. Come on Senators, have some pride.

I believe you mean Representatives

Re:Man are they cheap

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

$8,359 to sell out this country. Didn't Spitzer spend more on some of his romps. Come on Senators, have some pride.

That's typical for the price of a congressmen on almost any issue. Instead of belaboring the fact that they are so cheap, we should take advantage of it. If SourceForge put together a PAC representing stereotypical slashdot interests - maybe even with a voting system for which issues to prioritize, I'd probably support it with a couple of hundred dollars of bribery fodder.

Re:Man are they cheap

[sowth]

That sounded familiar, like something I have heard of before called GeekPAC. I thought they had a website, but I can't find it. However there are stories about it on linux journal and Lisa Rein's blog. I don't know what happened to them.

You should realize there are a lot of congressmen, so "donating" 9k or so to each one would cost somewhere around $100k or $1M+ (you do the math if you want to know the exact amount), that isn't exactly cheap. I suppose if a hundred thousand geeks get together and pay $10 each, you'd have the million you need. :-)

Umm, I'll bet you it's *not* just the telecoms!

[BLKMGK]

I'm willing to bet that if you examine this phenomenon for most any big issue you will find much the same behavior. Oil, automotive, energy, media, name any BIG well funded topic and I'm betting you will see this same sort of activity occuring. In fact I think articles pointing this out for the RIAA\MPIAA have been posted in the past.

Bravo that there's a big spotlight on this but I'll be WAY more excited when this hits mainstream press. Unfortunately the mainstream press is as much a PART of the problem as they are a potential way of informing the public - especially now that ownership rules have been relaxed

Correlation is not causation

[Anonymous Coward]

But it could be.

Re:Correlation is not causation

[mfnickster]

> Correlation is not causation Correlation is not coincidence either. :)

Surprised?

[copponex]

This won't receive media coverage. The ecosystem of for-profit media, for-profit corporations, and for-profit government officials have no interest in their constituents.

They don't need their constituents.

The media will give you only two false options that have zero real policy differences, the gerrymandered lines ensure the "proper" parties are elected. They will avoid offending any of their advertisers by reporting things as unimportant as blatant vote-buying to purchase immunity. Instead we'll get to hear about things that are of no importance: sports, celebrity gossip, and political bickering that passes off as dialogue.

But hey, new iPhone next month! Who's already waiting in line? The best Germans will have theirs first...

Re:Surprised?

[Paranatural]

Agreed. I think there should be very strict rules on any sorts of news coverage, including restrictions on campaign donations, and heavy, if not outright restrictions on parent companies 'owning' media networks. No good can come of one company owning a drug company and a news company who should 'investigate' it.

Re:Surprised?

[Hijacked Public]

And who would we have write and approve those rules?

What a surprise!

[fotbr]

Politicians are bought and paid for. Oh, wait. Its always been that way, and always will be.

Before or after?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they flip-flop as a result of an increase in contributions, or did they get an increase after they flip-flopped. Or were they always getting payed more.

Lessig was close, but fundamentally off

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

Money does not corrupt reasoning. Greed in an uncoerced, free market demands efficiency from all involved parties. What does lead to corruption is when a force-backed entity - such as the government - gets involved in the money game, with the promise of financial protection through favorable legislation. Companies and cronies will immediately seek out corruptible politicians - to do otherwise would be to risk seeing unfavorable legislation passed.

The internet allows us to track and organize...

[jollyreaper]

The Internet allows us to track these offenses and organize against the offenders far better than ever before. We need to start funding challengers against every Vichy Democrat who voted for this bill and against every Republican on general principle. And if Obama really goes along with this shit, if he really proves himself to be just another politician, well fuck him, too.

"Reform the system from within," we're told. "Be part of the solution, not part of the problem." At what point do we decide that the system cannot be reformed from within, cannot be reformed from without, and must be overthrown in its entirety? That'll make for some nasty times to be sure but will such measures be forced upon us by necessity?

Re:The internet allows us to track and organize...

[dreamchaser]

Meet me at the Capitol. I'll bring the torches, you bring the pitchforks.

I'm only half kidding.

Re:The internet allows us to track and organize...

[nickhart]

The problem isn't individual bad politicians, Democrat or Republican. The problem is structural. The system is organized so that the exploiters (capitalists) "earn" their money from the labor of the exploited (workers). The capitalists use their money and power over the economy to run the system in their interests. The state belongs to them. They ensure it represents their interests through open bribery (aka campaign finance and lobbying) and by rewarding players with lucrative jobs when they leave office (on the boards of top corporations, and cushy jobs at law and lobbying firms). Those who don't play along are forced out. The higher you get in office the more compromised you are, of sheer necessity.

If we miraculously elected 535 honest people to Congress and they actually started looking out for the interests of workers, then the capitalists will sabotage the economy by moving their capital overseas. A state requires an economic base in order to function. The threat of economic collapse is more than enough to bring the state to heel. This is *precisely* what happened when the "Socialists" and Francois Mitterand came to power in France in 1981. They promised all sorts of great reforms, the economy tanked, and all of a sudden Reaganism/Thatcherism never looked so good to the them. (This should also serve as a notice to those "socialists" who think you can simply vote a new economic system into being.)

The long and short of it is: don't expect to win reform by voting. It's not going to happen. If voting could change anything it would be illegal! The people in power have too much power and privilege to lose to allow genuine democracy to occur. As the great orator and abolitionist Frederick Douglass once said:

The whole history of progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning, they want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted.

Re:The internet allows us to track and organize...

[jollyreaper]

Meet me at the Capitol. I'll bring the torches, you bring the pitchforks.

We'd be going after corrupt politicians who control the nation's military, not Frankenstein's monster. Realistically, there's no way to compete against that kind of firepower without defections from army and guard units in the region.

I'm only half kidding.

Same here. The last traditional coup attempt in this country was during the 30's, the robber-barons wanted to oust FDR but were ratted on by the man they tapped to lead their forces.
http://www.corporatemofo.com/stories/030928warracket.htm

Since then, the last effective coup we had was when the Supreme Court intervened and declared Bush the victor. Many people argued that this is just hyperbole from the Left and we need to cut back on the sugar and crack. I don't think so. We're in the midst of a gradual erosion of civilian control over this government, dying by inches over decades. The change is so slow it's hard to even point to where it began and the degrees by which it changes. But just look at how both the left and right are howling over issues that are ramrodded through Congress without any input from the people they allegedly represent. I'm bitching about FISA. My dad, a total right wing radio winger, is bitching about the new Dubai ports deal that's working it's way back into Congress. He's bitching about Bush and giving amnesty to illegals. The truth is that the parties aren't listening to any of us, they're just doing whatever the hell they want.

When neither party will represent the will of the people, we no longer have a representative government.

Re:The internet allows us to track and organize...

[dreamchaser]

If I had been truly serious I would have said I'll bring the rifles and you bring the explosives and 10,000 friends.

The only solution to such corruption

[MikeRT]

Privatize the power to conduct a legal prosecution. Imagine the possibilities.

-Lying government witnesses could be targeted for prosecution by defense attorneys.

-Police who break the law could be targeted for prosecution by civil liberties organizations.

-Politicians who take bribes could be prosecuted by rich constituents.

-Prosecutors who pull a stunt like Nifong did in the duke rape case could prosecuted for unlawful prosecution and other charges by the victim's family.

The fact is that until the government loses its monopoly on trying criminal cases, the key parts of the government like prosecutors' offices, police departments and bodies politic will be largely immune from the consequences of their actions.

Re:The only solution to such corruption

[danzona]

Privatize the power to conduct a legal prosecution. Imagine the possibilities.

How can replacing a government function with a group that has government like powers possibly become anything other than the government? In the US we had a system to do all the things you describe, then it got corrupt. The only possibility that I can imagine is that the private prosecution would be corrupted too.

Any group that has authority over others is going to abuse that authority. The trick is to grant enough authority to get the job done, but at the same time limit the authority and therefore limit the abuse. It is apparently a very difficult trick.

Re:The only solution to such corruption

[Ascagnel]

This sounds like a terribly short-sighted plan.

First of all, all you're doing is for some private organization without public accountability come in and take the role of a public organization with public accountability.

Second, you're limiting the power of prosecution to only those with enough money to see it through. If on my way home I get mugged by some random guy on the street, I won't have enough money to make sure that he's caught and put through justice.

Third, what happens when that large organization becomes corrupt itself? When I have to pay them to prosecute someone, what happens if I slip them some money to prosecute my enemies/competition? The government has to have a reasonable amount of evidence with which to charge you for a crime before the government can proceed with prosecution.

And finally, your claims, point-by-point:

"Lying government witnesses could be targeted for prosecution by defense attorneys."
What about a government witness that testifies truthfully, but then is discredited because of some pending criminal prosecution from the defense attorney?

"Police who break the law could be targeted for prosecution by civil liberties organizations."
There's so much crime within the police force that larger police departments have large sections tasked with only monitoring internal affairs. They get better access and have the government-granted power of full investigation and ability to compel witnesses via warrant. While a civil-liberty organization could have some of this, they don't enjoy the full benefits of being the police force.

"Politicians who take bribes could be prosecuted by rich constituents."
Aren't they the most likely ones to be giving the bribes? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to have a politician in office that they can easily buy off?

"Prosecutors who pull a stunt like Nifong did in the duke rape case could prosecuted for unlawful prosecution and other charges by the victim's family."
OK, you've got me on that one. Unless the wrongfully-accused perps can't afford the prosecution. Besides, there are frameworks in place that worked effectively: Nifong was disbarred, and, not entirely sure, but may be facing criminal/civil prosecution for his actions.

"The fact is that until the government loses its monopoly on trying criminal cases, the key parts of the government like prosecutors' offices, police departments and bodies politic will be largely immune from the consequences of their actions."
Except that you either (a) vote for the political official who appoints the leaders of these organizations (i.e.: the Mayor of NYC appoints the police commissioner, and the commish controls everything via his chosen advisers) or (b) you vote directly for the position (where I live, the chief District Attorney is an elected position.

--
"It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine."

Re:The only solution to such corruption

[smellsofbikes]

It isn't a difficult trick. All it requires is feedback. We have to *continuously* monitor the results and change the inputs, since it's a feedback system.
The problem is: that takes ongoing effort, and when the system is first going out of control, it's hard to notice and not very interesting, so a volunteer organization (us, the public) finds it hard to be interested in. By the time it gets bad enough that it's noticeable, it's extremely hard to get back to where it was. To use control theory terminology, we need a proportional feedback system, and what we have is a threshold (bang-bang) control system.
The deeper problem is one of human attention span when working with a system where the benefits aren't immediately apparent. People either have to *need* the system to work, or be paid to make the system work. Otherwise they will ignore it until disaster strikes. So, the framers of the Constitution built a system where people were paid to watch each other: judiciary, executive, legislative. Unfortunately, over the last 200 years, they've gotten used to cooperatively grabbing power from the people as a whole, rather than fighting each other. Cooperation beats competition every time, if it's an iterative process.

Re:The only solution to such corruption

[HappyEngineer]

You can't limit abuse. FISA is a good example of that. You can only spread power around to a sufficiently large number of diverse groups so that abuse will be sought out and punished by other groups.

I dearly wish that it was possible for individuals to sue political officials (and other government employees) for violation of the constitution. They clearly have no intention of policing themselves.

To quote...

[Monkey_Genius]

C. Montgomery Burns; "Damn their oily hides!"

Can a monopoly legally do this?

[BobMcD]

It occurs to me that many of these monies come from government-blessed monopolies. Can they then take such a large portion of their profits and use it to purchase votes? This is a self-amplifying cycle if I've ever seen one.

I can't recall any law that would prohibit it, but perhaps there really should be one...

Re:Can a monopoly legally do this?

[corbettw]

Judge Green called, he said you need to read up on the history of AT&T.

Re:Can a monopoly legally do this?

[BobMcD]

Introduce him to the internet, and explain what a 'link' is for me, wouldja?

Re:Can a monopoly legally do this?

[corbettw]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_H._Greene

Re:Can a monopoly legally do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

The one that says that the federal government can't spend our money on anything but defense, and can't legislate on anything but interstate commerce? As a result the federal government does not have the power to bless a monopoly just as they do not have the power to stop one. I think it's known as the constitution.

I'm well aware that there are many many good reasons that the constitution is so often ignored, but it is certainly a law which says that this cannot happen.

Re:As long as the government legislates the econom

[chthon]

The biggest problem for the USA, it seems, is to change legislation so that it is possible for more political parties to gain influence.

If you have more political parties, it should be possible to elect people who are convinced that change is necessary and are able to pull it off.

Here in Belgium, after some high profile corruption cases involving political parties, laws where introduced which set caps on political contributions, and which alotted government money for campaigning to the several parties, based upon their election results.

Why so hard on the Dems?

[objekt]

A majority of Democrats are still against the bill (105 for-128 against), whereas the Republicans almost unanimously support it (188 for-1 against).

From TFA:
All House Members (June 20th vote:)
Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint gave PAC contributions averaging:

$9,659 to each member of the House voting "YES" (105-Dem, 188-Rep)
$4,810 to each member of the House voting "NO" (128-Dem, 1-Rep)

Re:Why so hard on the Dems?

[objekt]

Also interesting to note that the Dems who switched votes are apparently getting than the Republicans

$8,359 to each Democrat who changed their position to support immunity for Telcos (94 Dems)

$9,659 to each member of the House voting "YES" (105-Dem, 188-Rep)

Re:Why so hard on the Dems?

[BobMcD]

Because the onus is on the Dems to repeal this crap. 'Change' means not supporting the status quo.

Fair or not, they set up the expectation themselves.

Re:Why so hard on the Dems?

[ScentCone]

Why so hard on the Dems?

Because they're the ones that have done so much pandering to their constituency about rolling back security measures, etc. They're the ones that have been screaming the loudest about Teh Evil Repuglicans monitoring overseas calls into the states, etc. With so much of their connection to their closest supporters built around demonizing the administration for something that they, themselves, want to see legal (they just want the option to punish for actions before the status changed), they really look the fools for switching. It's sort a Crying Wolf situation.

Re:Why so hard on the Dems?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is hard on the Dems, becasue they can easily stop this bill in leadership which they control, or by simple majority vote. They have also been the ones saying this was unacceptable, and now accept it. This includes Obama switching sides. You may disagree with the Republicans, but they have been consistently for it and voted for it.

Re:Why so hard on the Dems?

[objekt]

OK, but the alternative is to vote republican, and they are even worse.

Re:Why so hard on the Dems?

[objekt]

"but they have been consistently for it and voted for it."

Which makes them worse if you are against it.

Remember, the dems flipped FOR it, and the dems against it are still the majority (of dems)

Geez, I get the feeling that some people are going to get the repubs are somehow better because they didn't flip from their wrong view. Maybe ordinary citizens who are against it will now vote republican just because they hate flip-flopping, regardless of how repubs are voting. The mind boggles.

Re:Why so hard on the Dems?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who was the 1 republican against?

Re:As long as the government legislates the econom

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

All you're basically saying is, "these two groups got it wrong, so if we throw more groups at the problem, maybe we'll find a solution." The end result is whoever has the most interesting personality will win.

Let me see if I've got this right...

[Kainaw]

So, we allow companies to donate money to our lawmakers. The companies donate more money to lawmakers that vote for laws in a way that benefits the companies. Why should it be different? Should we only have companies that donate money to lawmakers who vote for laws to run the companies out of business?

Re:Let me see if I've got this right...

[Eoika]

The lawmakers are supposed to make laws that protect the people, not protect a small group of companies.

Re:Let me see if I've got this right...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem isn't that the companies are giving more money to the lawmakers who vote for company-benefiting laws.
The problem is that companies are giving money to lawmakers to begin with.

Re:Let me see if I've got this right...

[Anonymous Coward]

You do see that your 'Democracy' is being bought and created, by those with the most money, right? And it is seldom done with your interests in mind.

I hope you see the effect that has, when ALL Corporations are in it to make a profit right? Usually at the expense of the taxpayer.

Are you trying to tell me that It's somehow OK in a Democracy, or Republic for that matter, that Companies 'buy' off the lawmakers who vote on the laws that the Companies lobbied to get created in the first place?

You do recognize that such a thing is a gross breach of ethics and is probably Unconstitutional to boot.

Re:Let me see if I've got this right...

[Anonymous Coward]

How about we only allow companies (and individuals) to donate money to politicians who actually represent their state or district and prohibit donations to everyone else? The whole purpose of a federal republic is to have representatives elected from a certain area of the country to represent the citizens of that area and that area alone. It isn't their job to represent either individuals or companies who did not elect them into office.

Re:Let me see if I've got this right...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but if a corporation wants the rights of an individual it should be held to the laws and limits that an individual is held to. There is a max that I can donate to a candidate and if I try to go around it I am punished. There is no such thing when it comes to a corporation

Re:Let me see if I've got this right...

[rastoboy29]

Why should companies be allowed to donate at all?

Re:Let me see if I've got this right...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the lawmakers should act with wisdom, and in the public interest. This seems so obvious that I'm amazed I'm saying it, or having to say it.

Obviously, it's just wishful thinking.

should read "getting LESS than the Republicans"

[objekt]

should read "getting LESS than the Republicans"

Not just telecom bailout, but government CYA

[Anonymous Coward]

It frustrates me to hear people say that government simply wants to bail out the telecoms, as if all they were doing is caving to big business.

My honest opinion is that those pushing this bill don't care at all about the interest of telecoms in this matter. The real reason is they don't want it to come out in court just what they were doing on behalf of our government.

The bill prevents people from suing telecoms for doing something on behalf of the White House. The case is to be thrown out on that grounds. Now, if you were suing the telecoms about this, don't you think the question of what the White House asked for would come up? Don't you think that in order for a meaningful trial to happen, that information would have to come out?

And from there, it's revealed that the White House has been asking for your phone conversations, in matters that have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism or any of the other things this administration claims it's acting for. And some Democrats probably know this, and don't want to get blamed for it either.

But. Let's also not forget that some Democrats are doing the right thing on this. I checked the roll call, and found that my representative voted no, as did the rep for the district I lived in before. So I can safely say that no one I voted for is behind this. :P

Re:As long as the government legislates the econom

[Abcd1234]

As opposed to no regulating at all, it which point they can happily do whatever the hell they want, wiretapping included.

Yes. That's *so* much better.

Re:Dear rest of the world,

[spun]

You know, plugging your ears and yelling, "You're not the boss of me!" when your elders try to give you honest advice simply isn't very mature.

And the US has allowed tyrants, massive corruption, and wholesale slaughter for the last 100 years as much if not more than any other country. Look at the history of Central and South America: we have a nasty habit of helping overthrow democratically elected socialist governments and installing US friendly tyrannical madmen.

Telecom immunity not the real issue

[darjen]

Why do we allow our government this power to begin with? Immunity wouldn't be an issue if they weren't spying on us in the first place. Let's place the true blame where it should be - on congress, not the private companies.

Re:Telecom immunity not the real issue

[Khisanth Magus]

Actually, the spying was done at the behest of the executive branch, not the legislative, so we can really only blame congress for giving them immunity.

Re:Telecom immunity not the real issue

[darjen]

They executive branch was using legislation like the original FISA, passed by congress, to justify their spying.

Re:Telecom immunity not the real issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, no, I'll never believe that. It's we the people who are to blame. You see, we're actually spying on ourselves. We're taking our own money out of our own pockets, by force, and then voluntarily funding the violation of our own privacy. Why? Because we like it. Why else would we do it? Everybody knows that we all think in unison, like some giant inter-connected Borg, and that's how we arrived at this decision to invade our own privacy. It's a decision by everybody at the same time! We the people! The guns are only there for traditional value. They're not really necessary to get people to pay for what they already want. Without those guns and threats of prison, we'd all continue funding everything government does, just as we do today. Voluntarily. That's the power of a government by the people, for the people. They don't need guns, because everything they do is already pre-approved by we the people. So just go ahead and take away their guns. You'll see. Everyone will continue paying, because thanks to our system, everything government decides is actually representative of the people who don't have a choice. Er, I mean the people who do have a choice. The choice to participate in such a humble, rewarding project, while fully retaining the option to not participate, which nobody does because they're part of the team. Got it?

Re:Telecom immunity not the real issue

[Dragonslicer]

They executive branch was using legislation like the original FISA, passed by congress, to justify their spying.

That doesn't mean the legislation allowed what the executive was doing.

Re:Telecom immunity not the real issue

[OzoneLad]

They executive branch was using legislation like the original FISA, passed by congress, to justify their spying.

They weren't following any kind of law at all, which is why this is a big deal.

Re:Telecom immunity not the real issue

[rhizome]

They executive branch was using legislation like the original FISA, passed by congress, to justify their spying.

I dare you to find a citation where the Bush Administration uses FISA as a rationale behind warrantless domestic surveillance. I think you should look up what the "F" in "FISA" stands for.

Re:Telecom immunity not the real issue

[pluther]

They executive branch was using legislation like the original FISA, passed by congress, to justify their spying.

No, the Bush administration was doing an end-run around FISA, claiming at various times that it was "too slow", "inefficient", or simply "obsolete".

The telecoms were complicit in this. If they had been using actual legislation and following a law somewhere, there'd be nothing to give them immunity from.

Re:As long as the government legislates the econom

[Anonymous Coward]

So I guess we don't have a free market in any sense.

There's an activism campaign pressuring Obama ...

[jdp]

Check out Senator Obama - Please Vote Against FISA. on my.barackobama.com

Outsourcing for Dummies

[Anonymous Coward]

Outsourcing for Dummies

"Their constituents deserve answers."

[longacre]

The masses don't care enough to want answers. The masses are willing to overlook certain indiscretions if they believe it was done to further their safety. So what if some rules were bent to let the Feds listen to terrorists talk on the phone?

Even if they did care, at this point people are too worried about being able to afford gas to get to work to pay any attention to this.

that is just so absurdly impossible!

[swschrad]

it is just not going to happen that fine upstanding civic-minded citizens who happen to be able to pay for a full and frank airing of views on important issues will be able to "buy" the vote.

.
.
.

CUT! PRINT! Thanks, SW, here's a little something for ya.

Freedom or death

[Anonymous Coward]

When are we allowed to revolt? Before they have us under 24/7 surveillance and have lethally enforceable curfews or after?

I mean, everything they're doing is bringing us down this path where freedom is non-existent, and all that remains is a farce of what it really is as told to us by the media conglomerates (who are owned by the same companies that create the US Military Industrial Complex).

When are we really allowed to just say fuck it and start burning congress?

Re:As long as the government legislates the econom

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it is, and every single politician knows it, even as they spend mass efforts (and your tax money) to convince you otherwise.

When buying and selling is controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are the legislators.

-- P.J. O'Rourke

Settle down

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure this is all one big coincidence.

Re:As long as the government legislates the econom

[illumin8]

It's one big protection racket.

Bingo. The temporary backbone that our representatives had while they voted against telecom immunity was just a blip on the radar. The "fix" is in now. Somebody forgot to make their regular protection payments (Verizon, AT&T, etc.) and a lesson was made. "Don't pay up and see how difficult we make doing business in the US." The political system works for those that pay to play. Money flowed freely, laws were bought and paid for, and the citizens were fucked in the ass without lube.

Make note of these fucks and vote them out during the next election.

The thing that really sickens me is that it's the Democratic party leadership that is getting the most payoff. Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer are all near the top of the list.

I'm still a democrat, but right now my party can fuck off for all I care.

Re:As long as the government legislates the econom

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

It seems you do not know what the whole story is about. The government was doing the wiretapping, and demanded companies comply with their requests. Normally, if someone wiretaps you, you can take them to court for violating your rights. Only when the government does the wiretapping do you not have that option. The rights violation has still occurred, however.

Re:As long as the government legislates the econom

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

"So I guess we don't have a free market in any sense."

Currently, we don't. Not even close.

The best democracy...

[Sebilrazen]

...that money can buy.

I'm glad that I'm a member of a huge group of corporate whore-mongers that can buy the laws to protect us.

Isn't it grand?

Is this really news? Does anyone REALLY care?

[Electric Eye]

C'mon, people. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone any more. EVERY politician in Washington accepts bribes. They've made it legal under the guise of "campaign contributions." The sad problem is that, oh, 99.9% of Americans couldn't give two shits about it because they are to desensitized, skeptical, jaded and mostly plain ignorant and lazy to do anything about it. Every single scumbag in Washington needs to be thrown out of office and we need to start from scratch. It's a big, festering pit of corruption. Look at any issue. The guys vote depending on who pays them the most. It's clear as day and they don't even hide it. But no one is rushing to throw these human pieces of garbage out. That's why the US is in such bad shape these days - worse than we've been in a very, very long time.

Wake me when the revolution starts. Hopefully it's before my 90th birthday in 55 years.

Where is the accountability?

[squarooticus]

I'll tell you where it is: with the people who care about their rights being taken away by corrupt politicians.

And what can we do about it? The answer is contained in the second amendment, which was reaffirmed yesterday by (only) five of the gang of nine. The founders made a lot of mistakes, but they were absolutely right when they codified that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is a prerequisite to maintaining a free state.

Just ice

[frisket]

We have the finest politicians money can buy, and they're selling well...

Calvin and Hobbes

[Rob Simpson]

"I don't know which is worse...that everyone has his price, or that the price is always so low."

This just in!

[lewp]

Congress for sale! Also, world round and water wet!

Re:Liberal Media Won't report it in election year

[Electric Eye]

Uh, and you actually think Fox News would report on this? If anything, they'd celebrate it. Normally, this is something the NY Times would scream about on the front pages. But, again, I hold that NO ONE CARES.

So if you sue these people

[Anonymous Coward]

will you be in contempt of court? Will you be countersued because of the retroactive immunity?

If you can get into legal trouble for suing these people for breaking what WAS the law, then this bill is making suing for breaking the law post-facto illegal.

Bill of attainder.

Re:So if you sue these people

[hairyfeet]

No,but you could be hauled away thanks to "evidence" they acquired illegally by striping you of your 4th amendment rights. But the truly sad part is it looks like the only chance any of us have to keep any rights at all is now in the hands of the SCOTUS,because our congress critters with this act have shown that they are nothing more than prostitutes for whatever special interests bring them the most money. And I apologize to any prostitutes who should be rightly offended for being compared to our scummy congress critters. Anyway that is my 02c,YMMV

Bill of Rights, Article I

[Illbay]

You people need to go read it.

In part it says: "Congress shall make no law respecting ... the right of the people ... to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Folks just LOVE to bash "special interests" and "lobbyists," but the fact is what they do is a PROTECTED RIGHT affirmed in the Bill of Rights. If you don't like that these people are "petitioning for the redress of THEIR griveances," then go petition yourself.

This ain't certain other countries I could name, where who gets access to government to exercise that right is predetermined...BY THE GOVERNMENT.

Re:Bill of Rights, Article I

[KozmoKramer]

BizaroSpock says....

The needs of the FEW are greater than the needs of the many.....

Re:Bill of Rights, Article I

[OutSourcingIsTreason]

Telecoms are corporations. They are not people. The Bill of Rights says diddly squat about the rights of corporations.

Easier Money

[cdrguru]

What is needed is the type of "campaign reform" that I've heard of. Basically it consists of paying people to run for office. If you want to run, you get money. Since it takes a lot of work to campaign for office, you need a stress-free existance where you aren't worried about bills piling up. And it is pretty much a full-time job for the duration of the campaign.

Unless we want the only the idle rich lawyers to run for office, this sort of thing is required. Anybody can then go sign up to be a candidate and receive the millions of dollars it takes. No begging for contributions. No prostituting yourself in order to get money for TV ads.

With a system like this the US could be transformed overnight into a nation of campaigners. Everyone could run for office, pretty much non-stop year in and year out. If you lose, as most would, then you find a new office to run for that is coming up in a year or so. This would eliminate just about all of the problems with today's campaigning, finance and re-election nonsense. There would be a sufficient number of people for each office that term limits would be obvious as well. Why would we let any one person hog an office when there were hundreds of people trying to be elected?

Of course, there would be the problem of paying for all of this. The solution to that is obvious as well, because we would just have 100% taxation for all non-campaign related income. If you aren't running for office - and being paid by the government to do so - then any money you have is taxed at 100%.

This would eliminate all of the problems and ensure that elections are much fairer. It would completely eliminate any reelection financing and remove the "money incentive" from all legislative decisions.

Fuck the correlationisnotcausation tag

[GroeFaZ]

Even if, and that's a big if, it's really a cosmic coincidence that the extra grease did not cause the change of mind, then every single one of those politicians is 100% guilty of dealing huge damage to their own image (that's their business) and that of politicians in general. Wait, not damage. Reinforcement.

How's that Democrat Congress Working Out For You?

[Poppa]

Are you sure you want one party to control everything? It's obvious they are in it for their own power; they aren't doing what they were elected to do.

I feel the same way about having Republicans in control. They spent our treasure like Democrats. You can't trust any of them.

Legislative gridlock is the best thing for this country. I've always said they should revoke two laws for every law that they pass ...

Is lobbying really worthwhile?

[tjstork]

Ok, let's have a look at something interesting.

Take a look at the same web site that purports to show the deep influence of money on politicians. It turns out, that despite giving money to politicians, despite all of their public support for various laws, the vast majority of bills they support do not actually become law.

Have a look at teacher's unions. Classic special interest group and typically a democratic bastion...

http://www.maplight.org/map/us/interest/L1300

Out of all the bills they supported, only ONE became law.

Do the number of parties matter?

[phorm]

I think that perhaps what matters more is the overall list of who can get in (it more or less requires big bucks), and how those people are accountable to the public once they're in.

I'm a Canadian. We have more than two parties (mind you it usually comes down to 2-3 main contenders), but it doesn't really matter who you vote in. Until the politicians become more accountable for their actions, to the people, and to the laws of the land (and that includes not being able to write their way out of legal accountability), then nothing will change.

Even the nice ones are just good actors. Hell, Paul Bernardo and his wife Karla Homolka were considered model citizens and all around nice people until they got caught...

Too much power?

[phorm]

Privatize the power to conduct a legal prosecution. Imagine the possibilities

Yes, the ability by such private organizations to blackmail the government would be extraordinary, and then you'd have one more organization accepting bribes...

The Democrats have failed *utterly*

[mkcmkc]

a slight [sic] 54%/46% majority in the House is not what I would call "overwhelming" in any fashion.

On the contrary, it's completely decisive. All government funding must run through the House, and can only pass with a majority. The only thing the Democrats really had to do to fulfill their promises was to stop the war in Iraq, which they could have done trivially by staying in bed and not voting to fund it. They failed utterly in this.

So, with all due respect, f*** them and the horses they rode in on. That goes double for anyone who gets in my face about "wasting my vote" or "handing victory to the enemy" if I don't vote for the Democrat. I voted for the Democrats in 2006, and that's exactly what happened.

Not quite!

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama is still fighting to remove the immunity clause. It's the REST of the bill he supports.

Unfortunately, it will probably pass with or without him. If we had him in the White House, his veto threat combined with the Democratic majority would mean that this wouldn't see the light of day at all.

Sadly, we're stuck with Bush and McCain is no better, being a consistent supporter of telecom immunity.

Re:Not quite!

[Rakarra]

Uhh, ok. So if he votes FOR a bill as a senator, why do you have any confidence that he would -not- vote for a bill as President? Really, there is one and only one reason why he's willing to vote for the bill -- he wants the support of the telcos when he goes against McCain. At very least, he doesn't want to seriously piss them off.

He's selling out to get elected.

Corruption

[Eternal Annoyance]

Gosh... this is a bit too obvious, but who cares? It's the U.S.A. the land where money can get you everything, including politicians.

The people don't seem to care about what the government does until it hits their wallet or their freedom, there where it hurts. Oh well, it's too late already. Democracy has failed you. Choose Democrats and you'll get the same as Republicans only with another face.

It appears to me the U.S. could best be dissolved... it has failed as a democracy and it will keep failing as one until something happens to change the severely broken election system (which won't happen until a revolt happens, or the U.S. starts falling apart).

While you're at it, maybe a good idea to fix that broken justice system of yours (trial by jury isn't righteous, it's prone to abuse). Also, those ridiculous penalties need to be revised as they're quite over the top.

Go ahead, mod me down to -1 flamebait... for telling the truth.

Do Something about this !!

[virchull]

Write your Senator and tell them 2 things. 1st, oppose telecom immunity - it trashes the Constitutional idea that we are all equal under the law. 2d, urge them to add an amendment that collects the names of all legislators who received over $5000 from the telecoms, and reads these names into the Congressional Record, so every American can see that the telecoms bought this vote.

To heck with Score 4, insightful. Do something.

DONT JUST SIT THERE!

[Anonymous Coward]

PEOPLE IF THIS UPSETS YOU, AND IT SHOULD, DONT JUST COMPLAIN HERE, TAKE ACTION! Look at that list of representatives that changed their vote. Contact those from your state or more and tell them what you think!

Contact info here:
https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml

The Next Civil War

[Anonymous Coward]

The second American civil war is going to be much bloodier than the first one.

stanjam

[stanjam]

Correct me if I am wrong, but as stated the current FISA bill only provides immunity from Civil litigation, meaning that they can still be held criminally responsible. However, since most of the progress on this has come from civil litigants, it may just shrivel up and die. The only hope is that the Civil litigation has raised enough attention that something may actually still happen.

And the list...

[Anonymous Coward]

And the list of muthafuckers who go up against the wall cum the revolution gets longer and longer

Except Ron Paul

[SonicSpike]

Except for Ron Paul. See my sig, then check his voting record, then check his donors list.

Re:Except Ron Paul

[Zeio]

Yes: (Ron Paul is America's last/only hope)

After passage of the Patriot Act of 2001, Rep. Paul told Insight Magazine that the 2,200-page bill was not made available to Congress to read before the vote. So the most corrupt Congress in history rubber-stamped the most fascist legislation they had never read. Our constitution enumerates inalienable rights that are emphatically restated in the first 10 amendments known as "The Bill of Rights." Under the Patriot Act, the "right" to free speech, peaceable assembly and security in one's person, papers and effects have been relegated to "privileges" that government can take away at whim. Patriot Act authority has suspended the right to due process and a prompt and public trial; it even cancels protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Agents serving the fascist state can freely wire-tap our phones, enter our homes/offices, search and seize without warrant and detain us indefinitely without charges-ostensibly to keep America safe.

Orwell:
The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they need not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare.

War, it will be seen, accomplishes the necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way. In principle it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labour of the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them. But this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society. What is concerned here is not the morale of masses, whose attitude is unimportant so long as they are kept steadily at work, but the morale of the Party itself. Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist. The splitting of the intelligence which the Party requires of its members, and which is more easily achieved in an atmosphere of war, is now almost universal, but the higher up the ranks one goes, the more marked it becomes. It is precisely in the Inner Party that war hysteria and hatred of the enemy are strongest. In his capacity as an administrator, it is often necessary for a member of the Inner Party to know that this or that item of war news is untruthful, and he may often be aware that the entire war is spurious and is either not happening or is being waged for purposes quite other than the declared ones: but such knowledge is easily neutralized by the technique of doublethink. Meanwhile no Inner Party member wavers for an instant in his mystical belief that the war is real, and that it is bound to end victoriously, with Oceania the undisputed master of the entire world. All members of the Inner Party believe in this coming conquest as an article of faith. It is to be achieved either by gradually acquiring more and more territory and so building up an overwhelming preponderance of power, or by the discovery of some new and unanswerable weapon. The search for new weapons continues unceasingly, and is one of the very few remaining activities in which the inventive or speculative type of mind can find any outlet. In Oceania at the present day, Science, in the old sense, has almost ceased to exist. In Newspeak there is no word for " Science ". The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc [Ingsoc is ol

In russia, it is called CORRUPTION

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes her laws.
Mayer Amschel Rothschild