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White House Petition To Investigate Dodd For Bribery
Walkingshark writes "Chris Dodd's recent statements complaining that congressmen who receive donations from the RIAA and MPAA should toe the line has spawned a firestorm of anger on the internet. Among the bits of fallout: a petition on the White Houses "We the People" site to investigate him, the RIAA, and the MPAA for bribery! This petition gained more than 5000 signatures in 24 hours and is still growing. When the petition reaches 25,000 signatures the White House is obligated to respond to it in an official capacity."
[comment goes here]
Of course nothing will happen. Since when do crooks convict themselves ?
Seriously, what's the difference between lobbying and bribery?
That would result in pretty much every lobbyist and politician in America being investigated for giving or taking bribes. We will not see this happen, just like we never saw electronic voting machines being properly audited.
Palm trees and 8
nothing will come of it
So might as well.
They've got my signature
And I DEMAND that once bought, you STAY bought!
By the way, the law is for you "little people".
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The petition to take the petitions seriously (AKA the "calling shenanigans on "representation" petition) gained the required number of signatures already and was subsequently completely ignored.
Link: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#%21/petition/actually-take-these-petitions-seriously-instead-just-using-them-excuse-pretend-you-are-listening/grQ9mNkN
When the petition reaches 25,000 signatures the White House is obligated to respond to it in an official capacity.
Will this response be of a similar nature to how the UK government response to its equivalent petition site? i.e. the official response is to make it clear they are officially ignoring the petition?
Carlin - The Real Owners Of America
"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying  lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else."
"But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.
"You know what they want? Obedient workers  people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club."
"This country is finished."
I mean that.
Sincerely,
Signature # 7,023
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
As I post this comment, every comment posted in this thread before mine was an apathetic "signing the petition will do nothing". It would have taken just a few seconds longer to sign the petition, even if also creating an account to do so.
Signing the petition might indeed do nothing. But posting a comment here saying so is absolutely guaranteed to do nothing. The corrupt politicos like Dodd absolutely count on people insisting on doing nothing. Just as bribery is the oxygen for their corruption, cynical apathy is the 78% nitrogen that makes the air they breathe.
Sign the petition, and at least have done something to strangle these parasites. Even if that's just being a small part of forcing the president to defend or deny them. It's better than nothing - certainly better than a loudly committed nothing.
--
make install -not war
First I thought he was Lou Dobbs, and was just being an idiot financial advisor. The I thought he was the financial loud mouth guy who yells a lot, and then I figured out he was a corrupt former senator.
The last time I saw a response to one of these petitions, it was one for the elimination of the TSA. The response was written by the head of the TSA. Not to say you shouldn't push the button anyway. If the Obama administration is going to ask for our input and then blatantly disregard it, we may as well have them on record as doing so.
Former US House candidate, TN-5
"Thank you for signing the petition "Investigate Chris Dodd and the MPAA for bribery after he publicly admited to bribing politicans to pass legislation." We appreciate your participation in the We the People platform on WhiteHouse.gov.
The We the People Terms of Participation explain that "the White House may decline to address certain procurement, law enforcement, adjudicatory, or similar matters properly within the jurisdiction of federal departments or agencies, federal courts, or state and local government." The Department of Justice is charged with investigating federal crimes and enforcing federal criminal laws. Accordingly, the White House declines to comment on the specific law enforcement matter raised in this petition."
RICO indictments for ALL INVOLVED, INCLUDING POLITICIANS.
RICO indictments for ALL INVOLVED, INCLUDING POLITICIANS.
RICO indictments for ALL INVOLVED, INCLUDING POLITICIANS.
RICO indictments for ALL INVOLVED, INCLUDING POLITICIANS.
RICO indictments for ALL INVOLVED, INCLUDING POLITICIANS.
Did I mention RICO indictments for ALL INVOLVED, INCLUDING POLITICIANS?!
Every single conversation, in person or over media (phone, email, etc) that any elected official has with anyone should be recorded and archived in the Library of Congress. And noted in a public schedule, except meetings a subcommittee in the House or Senate votes can be hidden. Any investigation should be able to subpoena any recording. With no expiration or statue of limitations.
That kind of evidence generation would protect the honest conversations from the corrupt ones, and steadily improve the ratio.
--
make install -not war
The less government involvement there is in business, the less business will want/need to be involved in government.
Simple logic, really.
For some reason, there are many who only complain about the corporate side of this without realizing the cause - which is the government's involvement in the first place (or the government's ability to be involved).
Limited government is a good thing. You don't get to require unending government involvement without paying the price of corruption. Never has happened in history, never will.
The irony of Larry Lessig voting for big government while decrying corruption is delicious - decrying the effects while supporting the cause is just craziness.
Politicians being bribed by industries? Is this news? That's the essence of most democracies. Anyway IMO this petition scheme is only used to create the illusion to the people that they can participate in the government and change something for the better. They even made up a term for this, its called "electronic government". Well it takes more than a few thousand signatures or facebook groups or whatever you call it, to trigger an investigation on a senator (former or not). Probably a lobby with more power and influence (aka money) than the RIAA/MPAA combined ? Now that would be a good start.
I read his (Dodd's) comment to mean, essentially, "Don't expect to keep getting campaign support from people that don't think you're supporting their interests."
How is this any different than a thousand donors to, say, Obama's last campaign saying, "We don't think you still care about [topic x] the way you did in 2008 when we supported you with cash, and if we still feel that way, we may not support your campaign next time around."
Saying that - because you don't like a politician's posture/policy on a topiuc - you won't give a campaign donation next time doesn't mean that when you did support their campaign in the past, you were bribing them. If that were true, then every dollar donated by every person or organization is always bribery. Which is ridiculous.
I dislke Dodd. He's an ass. But he's perfectly within his (and his employers') rights to say the same thing we can all say: "Mr. Politician: you're not committed to what I think is important, and so I'm probably not going to help your campaign fund next time."
Anger "on the internet" about him being that straightforward is just the usual anger at the fact that a trade association made of up people who run studios and labels puts a priority on protecting their members' works. Shocking, I say! But thousands of people calling it "bribery" is just an adolescent display of ignorance or a disingenuous display of pandering rhetoric aimed at uninformed people.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Eric Holder's Justice Department? Like Fletch once said, "Thank goodness, the police."
an ill wind that blows no good
First step in fixing Government is this. Get rid of the lobbyists.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
The same Chris Dodd who, along with Barney Frank (you remember him, his lover ran a gay brothel out of his house a few years back), are the very crooks behind the housing crisis that started this whole recession.
At least these two won't be able to do actual damage in Congress anymore.
It's pretty insightful at how pretty pointless they are.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-online-petitions-that-prove-democracy-broken/
It won't let me sign! I'll log in god knows how many times, but the sign button doesn't work. What a strange software bug.
I'm reminded of Blagavitch. The man so corrupt he didn't think it was against the law to sell a senatorial seat.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I'm a little outta touch on this one. If I recall correctly, Frank said his boyfriend was running the brothel. Unless... Was Chris Dodd Barney Frank's gay lover? And I'm just going to assume that having a gay brothel run out of their house lowered property values because... of all the jizz on the sofa or something? And this eventually caused the collapse of the entire mortgage industry in the USA?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Theo Calder: I'm Dr. Caulder. You've been charged with one count of murder, and found incompetent to stand trial.
Pete: She had a demon in her for a while, my neighbour Mrs Karsh.
Theo Calder: Mm-hmm.
Pete: It would come and go. Nobody saw it... except me.
Theo Calder: What did it look like, the demon?
Pete: Um... Did you ever see Alien with Sigourney Weaver?
Theo Calder: It looked like a giant insect?
Pete: No. It looked like Sigourney Weaver.
I thought the surpreme court equated paying someone as free speech?
I am not trying to be a troll here but rather I am asking seriously (sadly).
http://saveie6.com/
Don't be offended that Dodd is telling the politicians that took money from his employers to favor their interests and vote to the advantage of their benefactors.
Be offended that:
Our politicians take money from corporate interests that can NEVER be to the advantage of the nation or the people.
Our politicians, having the power to ingratiate themselves to the corporations, also have the power to benefit from their positions by making investments based on the confidential and advance information they receive as a result of their work in Congress.
It is legal that our Congress can take advantage of this information to make investments based on that information.
It is illegal for us, even corporate officials, to make similar investments based on this information. Entirely illegal.
So far as I have read in this discussion, no one has noted Chris Dodd's political party afilliation, which would not be the case, in my opinion, if his afilliation were different.
Dodd's complaint that Congress took the money and isn't delivering speaks volumes. It is time to require complete and immediate disclosure of contributions. It is time to require membes of Congress be subject to insider trading laws just as corporate officials and private investors are. It is time to re-enact Glass-Steagell. It is time to abandon current campaign finance laws as ineffective. It is time to throw them all out. Every one.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I have a valid ID for the website, but whe attempted to sign in to sign the petition, it wouldn't allow it, even after turning off all my blocking add-ons for the site, and restting my password several times. I've left a feedback via their site form. Hopefully, that still works.
How many people don't think that money in politics is a bad thing? I believe the answer is 541.
435 members of the House of Representatives.
100 members of the Senate.
5 judges on the Supreme Court
1 President of the United States.
If Dodd had been a Republican Senator for thirty years the story would have read "former Republican Senator from Connecticut Chris Dodd..."
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Toe the line?
Surely you mean tow!
something strange is afoot...
I also sent an email to my US Senators (McCain and Kyl - both supportes of PIPA) asking if Mr Dodd was referring to either of them!
Seriously, he's just a symptom, not the cause. The only thing that prosecuting or censuring him will do is remind other elected representatives to be more clandestine in their dealings. It's like saying "it's ok to peddle your loyalty to the highest bidders, just don't be open about it."
What we should be outraged at is that we allow a system where this can and does happen. And what we need is an overhaul of the legislative process so that it *can't* happen, or at least not in enough quantity to matter.
One possibility is a system similar to the White House petitions, where proposed legislation be posted for everyone to see for 30 days before it could be voted on, and any legislation which reaches a critical threshold of public interest could only be passed by referendum. True, some legislation would fail to generate interest until after it was passed, but if repeals could be publicly submitted and subjected to the same thresholds of public interest, it would be relatively easy to abolish laws that aren't working (as it should be).
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Same happened to me. I created an account a couple months ago to sign a petition, but after verifying the account and signing in, the "sign this petition" button was still grayed out. Tried it again today, and it is still happening. Obviously it isn't a problem for everyone as people use the site all the time, but I haven't figured out what the problem is.
I am running Firefox on Linux, and the only plugin I have installed right now is flashblock.
a corporation made up of specialists in a field would know better how things in their expertise work as opposed to politicians (e.g. technology, education, environment, etc.).
The experts really think that an issue is important, then they can lobby as individuals for that issue - whatever it may be.
If only there was a line that can be easily identified between "Corporation that knows what it's doing for the greater good" and "Corporation that is trying to abuse the hell out of the system and/or doing something stupid".
Yes there is a line.
Corporations always do what's necessary to bolster their bottom line and it is always at the expense of people.
By all means, post an example - just one would be more than sufficient since I stated an absolute - of a corporation lobbying on the behalf of the public good AND that is detrimental to their profits.
Just one to blow me out of the water and I'll kiss goatse on the ass.
What crime are they suggesting he be investigated for? Taking campaign contributions is legal. Voting however you want, including in ways that benefit your contributors, is legal. That's how our government works, and it's what all politicians do. You can object to the fact that it works that way, and you can try to change it. But as long as it remains legal, demanding an "investigation" (whatever that means) of someone for publicly admitting that's how it works is just silly.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
If the "Sign Petition" button is grayed out, turn off Ghostery and other tracking-protection browser plugins.
US law on campaign contributions is very favorable to contributors, but there is a line beyond which a campaign contribution becomes bribery. Dodd probably just crossed it. The relevant Supreme Court decision reads "[A]ccepting a campaign contribution does not equal taking a bribe unless the payment is made in exchange for an explicit promise to perform or not perform an official act." It's one of those laws that requires proving criminal intent. Dodd's statement on national television probably provides that proof.
by acknowledging that big time donors are paying for legislation, rather than pretending they get nothing for their investment.
Now people want Dodd investigated. For what? For being candid for once about what *everyone* in *both* parties does?
Fine, but don't stop with Dodd, or the message becomes clear: pretend nobody does it, and be treated like you don't do it. Or tell the truth, and be treated like you're the *only one* doing it.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
but their page to create an account will not work with FF 9.01 or the current Chrome, both on Linux. I finally had to install Opera, which worked just fine, but why is all that fancy B.S. and browser incompatibility necessary for a government site?
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
And that's why nobody gives a shit what nerds think.
Just shut the fuck up and fix my computer.
As many have noted, the petition might get ignored. We should aim at 10 times that, 250,000. That might get some attention to the real problem that our government now listens to the corporations and very little to the people.
I'm not as upset about this specific incident, as the bigger problem it represents for the real Americans.
I can't help but notice Chris Dodd's party affiliation is missing from the summary. Why could this be? Could it be an inconvenient narrative that we'd all like to avoid?
I just checked Google and sure enough, he's a Democrat. Surprising, isn't it? If he were a Republican, you can be sure that the party affiliation would be mentioned up front and prominently featured as the reason he's corrupt in the first place. Sure, the natural response is "both parties are two sides of the same coin". That doesn't compute, however. Whenever an (R) is featured, the narrative is that all Republicans are uniquely evil. Whenever something bad happens to a (D) then it's both parties are the same. The technical term for this is "a double standard".
What makes this particularly interesting is that Chris Dodd is a former US Senator. Shortly before he left the senate, he vowed not to lobby congress, a vow that now appears questionable. Within a few months of leaving the senate, he was hired as the head of MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), causing some controversy in the process.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Street_Project
Creating a 3rd party won't solve anything (the voting system in the USA naturally only leads to the result of 2 major parties). Splitting the vote by attempting this will yield another Nader + Gore = Bush as president. Won't work..
The solution is to infiltrate one of the parties, like the tea party did. As the republican party seems the most overtly corrupt right now, maybe that one, but the democratic party is good too (or better, both of them!)
Hijack their machinery, their internal elections and caucuses , the selections of the candidates they run. Use technology to leverage our numbers. Think "Alien", invasion from inside the machine.
The platform is simple..get rid of money in politics, make it illegal and enforced with teeth.
Do it for both parties.
Middleclass 99% : profit!
Do it...now!
because thats the only place where 'education on a complex topic' is what is going on with lobbyists in washington.
People waking up is much more important than any petition. For the first time people are openly reacting against corruption.
Read radical news here
http://articles.cnn.com/2012-01-17/tech/tech_web_wikipedia-sopa-blackout-qa_1_jimmy-wales-wikipedia-community-anti-piracy?_s=PM:TECH
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/01/18/wikipedia-goes-dark-for-24-hours-to-protest-us-web-piracy-bills/
I saw it covered on TV on the nightly news on some network. I'm not sure which, it was just on when I turned my TV on, I didn't tune to it on purpose.
If you don't look at the commercial news sites, don't say that there was nothing there.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
a true 'audit' would be combing through every piece of legislation the congressman voted for, and determining whether or not the $500,000 worth of campaign donations that helped him and his party over the past 5 years were from people who benefited from line items in the bills he sponsored or passed.
and in case you didnt notice, congressman have sweet jobs - massive salaries, free health care, pensions, and, on top of that, after they get through, they get jobs as ---- lobbyists, making untold fortunes using their contacts in washington to keep the gravy train going.
these objections people are raising here about the legitimate uses of lobbying are like someone arguing about the legitimate uses of dynamite in a banking environment.
Obama lobbied on a platform of cleaning up and changing the way the government operates, and what do we have to show for it? We have to sign a petition to have the government take a look at possible bribery.
I usually run Firefox, but when I want to do something that might pollute my cookies/tracking info/black helicopters I switch to Arora. It works OK, and then I can nuke all the bits associated with it and not lose anything I care about.
I refuse to believe corporations are people until Texas executes one. -- desert rain on http://www.dailykos.com/user/
"On the brink" by hank paulson
"the sellout" by charles gasparino
"the big short" by michael lewis
"econned" by yves smith
"confidence game" by christine s richard
"house of cards" by william a cohan
"and then the roof caved in" by david faber
"the trillion dollar meltdown" by charles morris
"diary of a very bad year" by anonymous hedge fund manager + keith gessen
"lost trust" by lang gibson
"a colossal failure of common sense" by lawrence mcdonald + patrick robinson
"all the devils are here" by joe nocera and bethany mclean
-----
read all that, then you will not embarass yourself with your ignorance.
The magic of Confirmation Bias.
As if this is the only thing Dodd was bribed on???
Meh.
Nothing will come of it. Just another show . . .
dodd was on the fucking senate banking committee through the whole recession. he was part of the machine that pumped more and more money into fannie and freddie, and refused to look at the banks when they started acting like private versions of fannie and freddie, and he was asleep at the wheel through the whole subprime thing, the CLO thing, the CDO thing, the hedge funds inside of banks, etc etc etc. it was his job to regulate the banking system. the banking system collapsed. we all payed for it. trillions of dollars. we still pay for it.
and you and the moron apologists for these ass clowns have the nerve to lecture us about how they had nothing to do with the recession.
I love gall (the other kind, not bile). Dodd has gall for standing up to America and admitting who he really worked for, bravo! While others shrink away and obfuscate, Chris comes forward and cuts to the chase. I suspect he never plans to run again for public office (except the presidency, of course). With his connections in Congress and the White House, there is no chance of any legal reprisal. Kudos for standing up and telling the truth about who gets their way in Washington.
Now, when is somebody going to admit that the entire two-party system is rigged? Chris, you're on a roll; here's your chance.
It's a Sunday evening, and though they have until February 20th to gather 25K signatures they've gathered more than a third of that in less than two hours.
I'm not registered with them, apparently, and my new registration is not coming through so I'm guessing they're slashdotted.
It indicates to me that, conventional wisdom about the short attention span of the American people be damned, people are still quite worked up about this and are not letting it go. Wouldn't it be funny if this one issue became the floodgate through which the pent up anger about copyright, the economy, corruption, the 1%, and everything else poured out?
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
The White House will investigate. Obama is whored up with Big Content.
Seriously---check out Pro Publica and follow a couple of links to see how much money the supporters got from the movie and recording industries.
I'd like to think that if I were to sell out the Constitution, it would take at least $5M. :-/
I refuse to believe corporations are people until Texas executes one. -- desert rain on http://www.dailykos.com/user/
Actually I would argue that JUST lobbying is fine i.e. putting an argument to a politician that a law should be changed. It's when the lobbying involves large amounts of cash, fancy holidays and expensive gifts that it stops being lobbying and becomes bribery.
by the way, he patented it... so you will be getting a call from his lawyers.
you figured it out! the democratic party is totally getting a pass on all of their financial and corrupt misdeeds!
if only we could get 'the big, liberal, communist media' to start being 'fair and balanced', then every single politician would always have their party affiliation stamped on every story done about them. then we would realize the truth: Democrats are corrupt. and Republicans, of course, are not, because they just are totally, totally, different.
Bribery/Lobbying is only a VERY SMALL part of the picture here.
Politicians accumulate their vast wealth chiefly through blind trusts that are set up in their name - but they often can direct legislation at interests which directly benefit them. Nancy Pelosi is an example, as she has stocks in defense contractors. Lots and lots. There are loopholes in these rules about how "blind" their trusts are. Then - there's Richard Cheney's so-called "deferred compensation" from Halliburton, which was so blatantly corrupt, it sparked an investigation. Of course, the investigators decided it wasn't an issue, because most of them knew which side of their bread was buttered as well.
This is a huge, and largely intractable problem, with connecting money and politics. It would be nearly impossible to demand that anyone going into politics completely divest. Yet it seems that this would be the only way to eliminate the gross conflicts of interest that have arisen, and which drive all national issues.
When I went to the linked site to view the petition it displays "You've already signed this petition". I've never been there before. How do they record signatures, by IP address or what?
"Support your government...
Buy a congressman"
I've been watching the numbers all day and as of the writing of this comment...the petition is now at 10,030 signatures.
Keywords for the NSA overthrow oppressive regime true believers marathon Manhatten the financial district blueprints I
Yes there is a line.
Corporations always do what's necessary to bolster their bottom line and it is always at the expense of people.
By all means, post an example - just one would be more than sufficient since I stated an absolute - of a corporation lobbying on the behalf of the public good AND that is detrimental to their profits.
Just one to blow me out of the water and I'll kiss goatse on the ass.
A union?
Depends on your definition of corporation.
I don't think corporation means what you think it means.
Corporation != greedy people
NGO in a foreign country being backed up by another's foreign government...
Your view is very simplistic.
The problem isn't lobbying per se, it's money.
Why would a government care what a huge megacorp company wants unless it is being 'paid' somehow?
It all comes down to money.
Make the system slightly more transparent in your country or set limits and you'd see the lobbying (in your meaning of the word) drop and real lobbying have more noise.
I'm appalled often at the 'democratic process' of the USA in terms of who has the biggest dollars has the most powers.
It's already over 10K. Seems like people from /. alone should be able to easily get it over 25K by Monday morning.
Wow... site will not even allow me to log in to sign it... defending their own?
has no clothes
The site will not allow me to create an account. How fortunate for a long time bedfellow of the White House's current occupier.
I counter you with "Concience of a Liberal" by Paul Krugman. Written pre-crisis, but well summarizes the trends of the last 30 years and why we need to swing the pendulum the other way.
when congress at least tried to hide the bribery and corruption? Ahh......
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I actually worked for a period of time with a former deputy counsel at the Federal Election Commission - What most people don't understand is that the definition of "bribery" here implies that the recipient was doing something illegal - which representatives weren't. By the legal standards, absolutely nothing wrong occurred (the ethical part is another matter). The sad fact is that it's perfectly acceptable for someone to tell a congressman that they will "give you X amount of money" if they vote a certain way, introduce a bill, etc.
I know a decent amount about this stuff because I spent a number of months pursuing a concept that was right up this alley - it allowed average people to band together to help influence legislation by providing a way to collectively say something like "20,000 people will give you $10 dollars each if you introduce legislation to save the whales and vote yes". The idea was to balance out corporate and special interests (in an admittedly sort of perverted and crazy way. The money would actually leave donors hands and sit in a pool until some conditions were met to release it). Was serious enough about it for a while, and we actually ended up interviewing as finalists in Las Vegas for TechStars (not 100% sure why they were interested lol, but they invited us out, although we ultimately didn’t get in). I eventually decided the whole thing was probably too crazy and I needed a real job.
I worked with the lawyer to vet the whole thing and make sure we wouldn’t end up getting sued by the FEC. He had concerns, but the idea of holding money over people’s heads in exchange for votes wasn’t one of them. He didn’t even bat an eye about it. I honestly have no idea what actually counts as a “bribe” anymore after working with him. Maybe there are still ethical concerns (violating congressional ethics rules, that is, not general ethics), but legally, I’m pretty sure this isn’t even remotely a concern.
The website is still up as it was when we applied to TechStars and such if you care to look at the concept – http://oltest3.heroku.com was the testing site. The site’s name was OpenLobby (openlobby.com will just bring you to the landing site. ) Shame it didn’t work out. :)
If you want a great read on how fcked up campaign finance is, check out "Unstacking the Deck: A Reporter's Guide To Campaign Finance". A bit outdated now, but I found it hard to read without thinking that half of congress deserves to be thrown in jail.
Why are they still making Jack (Johnny Depp) Sparrow movies?
The petitioner wrote This is a brazen flouting of the "above the law" status people of Dodd's position and wealth enjoy.
Apparently he doesn't understand the difference between "flout" and "flaunt." He's actually complaining that Dodd is ignoring his "above the law status" not that he's showing it off. Sigh.
but everyone including those doing it and the public were pretending otherwise.
this being vocalized so directly and openly, is having a veil-shattering, facade-breaking effect. those who are doing it are not even keeping up the farce anymore.
Read radical news here
Wouldn't it be funny if this one issue became the floodgate through which the pent up anger about copyright, the economy, corruption, the 1%, and everything else poured out?
if you all keep up the heat, it can.
Read radical news here
I attempted to sign in with Firefox on windows and was unable to get the "sign" button to activate with any combination of scripts enabled. I tried again with both IE7 and IE8 and neither of those worked as well.
Even more strange, is that in each browser a different number of total signatures appeared. In IE it showed several hundred less than Firefox. What is going on here?
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Over at DailyKos, Wil Wheaton (CleverNickName) links to the techdirt article on this and puts in his own comments:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/21/1057058/-Chris-Dodd-threatens-politicans-who-arent-corrupt-enough-to-stay-bought?via=search
I just hope Chris Dodds et al doesn't decide that post constitutes "not paying any attention to me when my job is at stake.", and Wil loses out on anymore acting gigs.
That stupid Whitehouse site fails to work on Safari - every time I log in I'm brought to the account editing screen, when I go back to the poll it wants me to log in again to sign....
It does work in Firefox though, so if you are using Safari just off the Firefox.
You almost have to wonder if they broke some login paths on purpose to reduce the number of people signing...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A FireStorm Erupts.
Seeing Obama, Beiden and all Cabinet Secs and all Supreme Court Justices, naked, schackled, and lead one-by-one in their chains, off to Maximum Security Cells at Gitmo.
Then, a series of suicides; George H.W. Bush and his misanthrop George W. Bush, and their "mothers" in a parade of death by fire on a street corner of Huston, Texas.
Hillary Clintion, killed, by her lesbian lover in a New York city "girl" brothel.
Bill Clinton, a heart attack, so the coroners report will tell ... "he payed the poor sap not to mention cocaine supporsitories." Billy C, loved his supporsitories, oh much more than ,,, Hill ,,, and even more than ... life itself.
Ally Ally Ox Em Free.
I once had an idea that I never followed through with, and it could be completely infeasible. But I was thinking, if you could take the info that opensecrets provides, mash it up with public comments by legislators and votes on certain bills, you could have a nice little graph of how corrupt each congressman was, and how "bought" a particular bill was. Would take a considerable technical effort, but I think that might be useful.
At 6:00 PST it had 11837 sigs, at 6:30 it had 12199, and at 7:30 it had 12948. That's pretty consistently about 740 signatures per hour, which means it could hit 25000 signatures before the end of tomorrow, well before the Feb. 20 end date. Obviously, that rate shouldn't be expected to keep up forever, and I wonder how much of that is due directly to Slashdot, but... At least we'll get to hear what Obama has to say about it. Unless he decides to just ignore it like he's started doing.
Also, WTF is up with signing in? I couldn't do it with Chrome, had to use Internet Explorer of all things.
This may be the biggest can of worms in the history of U.S. Federal corruption. The only way this can be handled is through a special prosecutor. The petition should request one. It should get to the point of a special prosecutor, but I doubt it. And I wouldn't be surprised if the Wal-Mart argument was used -- the investigation would be too broad, covering the administration and 70% of Congress -- possibly going back as far as the 1990's or earlier. This corruption is potentially pervasive and a way of life inside the beltway.
We can't do anything about him even if he did. Corporations are considered people and thus can donate directly to campaigns. We need to fix the law before we can even go after the arrogant bastard.
For the White House, i.e. President Obama, to petition Sen. Cristopher Dodd about comments to the effect, "congressmen who receive donations from the RIAA and MPAA should toe the line" is like a gay homosexual man in New York City accusing a Lesbian Whore in New York City of Faggotery.
Doing such by the White House on provacation of President Obama makes no logical sense whatsoever.
They are BOTH, Gay, Faggot, Lesbian and Whore, all rolled into one, each. May their political marriage be bountiful.
Just signed up on the Whitehouse.gov website in order to sign this petition.
After properly logging in, the "Sign this Petition" button was grayed out.
Guess the don't like the subject matter.
I can't sign the petition. The sign this petition button stays grayed out when I log in.
When I first read this I thought oh my, this baby is going to have another 100,000 slashdotters sign it in the next 10 minutes, and bring that website to its knees.
I'm kinda disappointed! Where is everybody? We MAYBE added 8,000 signatures to it.
Fucking Weak I Say!
Now I gotta hope Michael Kristobot puts all 500 of his signatures on it...
MPAA should be disbanded and the rating system put in the hands of a non-political group.
You could limit campaign contributions to a point where any particular organization's ability to contribute was not worth anything to the legislator.
If campaign contributions are limited to $20 per person per year, you'd be in good shape. Hell, even the current $2,300 limit isn't too bad.
It's the $2 million that ends up in SuperPAC coffers....
paintball
They'll just end up responding with some bullshit excuse... and then we're back to stage 1.
We all know it's a mess. Sign the petition, make it be heard.
Nobody will probably ever read this comment, but I just need to get this out there. The idea you had is certainly interesting, and has probably been had by many people, but I don't think it can ever really have a significant impact, and this is why. If only a few of the richest people/corporations throw their money behind something, you would need an impossibly large portion of the population to oppose it to have any hope of balancing out the numbers. This is why I think the notion of allowing any kind of financial contribution in politics, beyond a tiny amount per individual that a significant portion of the population should be able to afford (e.g. $100), is deeply flawed in a mathematical sense.
There may be rare exceptions to this -- your idea might be effective if for example there is no corporate interest on certain topic, and the few thousand $ you raise happens to catch someone's attention enough to make it worth for them to bother spending any amount of time on it, but I think you'll agree that this is pretty rare. Another instance would be if there really is immense popular support for one side of an issue that can actually counterbalance the corporate opposition, but at those levels of popular support I think it really isn't a matter of money anymore, i.e. any reasonable politician would be more worried about public perception at that point than about campaign funding or whatnot.
weinersmith
Help me out here. I'm 30, so I started voting and paying attention to politics around 2000. For my entire adulthood, it's been taken as a given that politicians vote based on who pays them most. If we took away bribery, how would they know how to vote? I feel like we're saying we need to take the tomatoes out of marinara sauce. All politicians have is bribery and pandering. Without bribery to give them something to do, they'll just keep passing laws about abortion every couple weeks.
More Details On Drug Cartel's Clandestine Communications Network http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/11/12/27/1346220/more-details-on-drug-cartels-clandestine-communications-network If a drug cartel can do it, I'm pretty sure geeks can.
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
It's like their developers don't know anything at all. How can we expect for them to deliver a petition if they can't even build a website (that serves the country) that is at least cross compatible with all the mainstream browsers. This site is impossible to use in Chrome. I bet they developed and tested in IE. Time for a new government.
I'm looking at the signature count climbing every second. I suspect it will hit 25K today. We'll see if anything happens after that. The government is not exactly eager to enact self-examination and accountability. Look what happened to the Conyers and Waxman panels when the Dems took over. The congressmen got cushy posts, far away from any kind of oversight committee. Oversight and accountability were all the rage when the Dems were the underdog, but bad for business when they were on top. Now that they are underdogs again, it's too bad they deliberately de-fanged their pit bulls.
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
-H. L. Mencken
The problem would probably be in holding the money in escrow. The eventual payment would be $200,000 from a single source. Definitely not the same as 20,000 $10 payments.
Dodd was also the largest 08 campaign recipient of AIG money and Obama was second. By the way, those donations occured after AIG received bail out money. I wonder if they paid any back???? The big problem of accepting huge donations is you have to give something in return. Some people call this structure "corruption". Looks like the joke is on the US people once again.
"We demand justice. Investigate this blatant bribery and indict every person, especially government officials and lawmakers, who is involved."
plural and plural who _IS_?
Our government can't speak its own language.
200k from a single source would violate contribution limits. This WOULD have actually been 20,000 10 dollar payments - The site would operate as what the FEC calls a conduit - merely an intermediate stop before the money is contributed from the donor. Same concept as a bundler for campaign contributions. THe bundlers aren't doing the donating, it's the individuals - the bundlers are just the middlemen.
Sorry, think I misunderstood your comment. The actual amount contributed would vary based on a number of factors (and if people decided to withdraw their donation - one of the benefits of just keeping the money in escrow if the person's "standards" weren't met). Yes, they'd get a fat check, but it would still have been made up of individual contributions as reported to the FEC.
I wasn't entirely sure it could have an impact either, though I figured it was worth a shot. :P
There's a difference though between what would amount to campaign contributions and other forms of support corporations/rich people could provide though. Corporations are still limited in the amount they can contribute (more or less the same limits as people). It's the individuals associated with those companies giving the money, not the company itself (beyond $5000 dollars). If I remember right, the average senate campaign spent something like 6-8 million. Not as much as you'd think. The average house campaign was around 1.8 million. I believe the two top recipients of the "Fracking Lobby" (for natural gas) received something like 300k from the lobby?( I might be off there). I think it would definitely be possible with an organized campaign by activists to get that amount of money. Part of the thinking was that it could provide an alternative for politicians to take money from actual people, rather than corporations. The whole system is stacked in favor of corporations with the way donations can be made and political action committees work.
And yes, one of the other aspects was motivating congress to act on things it would otherwise not be interested in, but have a number of vocal supporters willing to throw a bit of money behind it ($50k doesn't seem like such an unattainable goal). The point here wasn't to donate to YOUR representatives, but to SPECIFIC representatives. The average congressman has no power to get the ball rolling on anything, but someone like a committee chairman is a completely different matter.
Though yes, there were challenges. :) Who knows what would have happened with it.
Individual contribution limits have traditional been skirted by using lists of "donors." They gather a very large list of people who usually agree to be the officially the one to donate the money whereas the actual source of the money is somewhere else; typically a corporation or wealthy individual. The money is funneled from the wealthy individual or corporation through the fake donors and into the campaign funds.
A well written response from Obamma or his cabinet that sounds nice but doesn't really promise any specific action
Christopher Dodd is publically fired
Christopher Dodd is privately well compensated. He will never be heard to complain publicly again.
A new leader of the MPAA is appointed and it is mostly back to business as usual but with some lessons learned.
Future efforts by the MPAA & RIAA continue to move in the same direction but take smaller steps... laws are bought with smaller scopes working slowly towards the same goal of destroying the internet. Huge, one stop power grabs like SOPA/PIPA aren't repeated for a while. On the other hand... ACTA has already been accepted in the US. Expect the fruits of that one to start appearing in 2013 or maybe 2014.
The internet apocalypse has been delayed. Hooray for the internet! We haven't won the war yet but we won a battle. Let's keep it up! Next fight ACTA? Too bad we didn't kill that one at an earlier stage of development though!
Also responsible for the oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?
Just sayin'.
-Styopa
I read this :-)
Not happy with the result?
Why not do something about it instead of sitting on your ass and bitching about it.
Here's a place to start:
https://tips.fbi.gov/
Our representatives sell us out every day for stock tips! Perpetual war, financial oppression, institutionalized fraud, erosion of liberty, unborn generations made zombie debtors, and a lack of political to change anything at all! This is the open petition with the most signatures, behind an anti-ACTA item. Does this disgust anything else? People, please stop worrying about your torrents/porn/tweets/blogs/yadayada and look around you. Why can't we use the /. effect for something more meaningful? Please mod me down until I get to Hell; I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
The White House is not responding because all he was talking about was absolutely legal campaign contributions that anyone can pull up on the public record. Disagree with campaign finance all you want, but this story is coming from knee-jerk poo-flinging ignoramuses.