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Obama Significantly Revises Technology Positions
method9455 writes "Barack Obama has edited his official website on many issues, including a huge revision on the technology page. Strangely it seems net neutrality is no longer as important as it was a few months ago, and the swaths of detail have been removed and replaced with fairly vague rhetoric. Many technologists were alarmed with the choice of Joe Biden before, and now it appears their fears might have been well founded." Update: 09/22 18:07 GMT by T : Julian Sanchez of Ars Technica passed on a statement from an Obama campaign representative who points out that the changes in wording highlighted by Versionista aren't the whole story, and that more Obama tech-plan details are now available in a PDF, saying "there is absolutely no substantive change to our policy - folks who want more information can click to get our full plan."
When are people going to learn to assess politicians and parties on their actions, rather than their promises? Those that might have really introduced change have already been weeded out. Vote for the puppet of your choice, folks.
Many have. Obama's tech-related voting record is certainly better than most candidates that come to mind. He's voted against telecom immunity, and FISA fairly vehemently in the past. Perhaps the vague language is merely a way to package both Biden/Obama's views into a single declaration? It was probably just a way to describe both of their technological goals without smearing their respective stances. Should that be the case, it's still the top of the ticket that calls the shots.
The problem is that you can't vote on actions until after they've been taken.
Personally, I'm in favour of a nice, simple system where if a politician makes a promise before an election and then breaks it, a court can remove him or her from office. I imagine we'd soon see some changes in the way manifestos were presented, and perhaps those who are not just puppets and actually intend to act according to their stated principles would get a bit more recognition since voting for someone based on their campaign pledges would actually mean something. Those who just say whatever the current audience wants to hear but never really promise anything would stand out by a mile.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Which is why I am voting 3rd party this election. I do not believe either major party candidate is worthy of my vote. Do I think the 3rd party types have any chance of winning? Not really, but if third party candidates took 20% or so of the vote away from major parties, it might force them to do a reality check.
I've also proposed this kind of system before (i.e. that a manifesto should be a legally-binding contract with the voters), but I suspect that the result would be candidates putting such fluffy terms in their pledges that the courts would never be able to determine whether they'd actually broken them or not.
Before New Labour (same as the old conservatives) came to power in the UK, they handed out 'pledge cards' with five election pledges on them. A very simple and powerful message. The Friday Night Armistice made a massive version of these, and each week in their first year crossed off the ones that they'd broken. It was depressing how quickly they all went away.
Democracy requires an informed electorate to function just as capitalism requires informed consumers. The same level of truth in advertising laws should apply.
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This is why I agree with notion that the president should have a line-item veto power, and I feel that way regardless who is in office
I disagree. We've already made the Executive Branch much more powerful than the Framers intended it to be. Signing statements, refusals to testify, appointments to un-elected Federal agencies that can impose laws (err, "regulations") on the citizenry, warfare without a declaration, international agreements that don't need to be ratified by the Senate, trade agreements that don't need input from Congress, blah, blah, blah, blah.
You really want to make the Executive even more powerful? Are you nuts?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
His blackness was questioned by other black people. I believe the quote was about him "lacking slave blood." [Charles Kenzie Steele, Jr.] And let's not forget that by having a white mother he is just as much white as black.
Funny how both sides can simultaneously make race an issue and denounce race as an issue.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
Or, alternately, we could probably do without lawyers if we'd just simplify the damn legal code, and we could DEFINITELY do with fewer lawyers if we'd stop making stupid laws.
Take drug laws for example. The US annually arrests upwards of 800,000 people for marijuana violations alone. That means you're creating 1.6 million opportunities for lawyers (prosecutor and defense) on an annual basis. I don't know about you, but I'd much rather open up that industry to farmers, pot-bar/"coffee-house" owners, and other related private ventures, instead of creating jobs for lawyers, judges, police officers, and criminals.
There are countless such examples - marijuana was just the first one to come to mind because I was recently discussing the idea with some friends in law enforcement. Eventually it evolved into a discussion about law enforcement as a whole, and the general consensus seemed to be that we just have way too many pointless laws.
If you want to have a society in which law and order are taken seriously, it's much better to have a few very important laws which you enforce with a high degree of success rather than having a whole slew of laws, half of which you can't effectively enforce, and the other half of which you can only enforce sporadically because you're forced to waste resources on stuff that shouldn't be illegal in the first place. Not only does the current criminal code make law-enforcement less effective, but it makes the legal system unnecessarily complex, wastes taxpayer money on jobs that shouldn't even exist, and actually encourages crime.