Cybersecurity Bill Fails Today In US Senate

wiredmikey writes "A development following the recently posted story Senate Cybersecurity Bill Stalled By Ridiculous Amendments — The Cybersecurity Act of 2012 failed to advance in the US Senate on Thursday. The measure was blocked amid opposition from an unusual coalition of civil libertarians — who feared it could allow too much government snooping — and conservatives who said it would create a new bureaucracy. The bill needed 60 votes in the 100-member Senate to advance under rules in the chamber, but got only 52. The failure came despite pleas from Obama and top US defense officials. The US Chamber of Commerce argued that the bill 'could actually impede US cybersecurity by shifting businesses' resources away from implementing robust and effective security measures and toward meeting government mandates.'"

Comments

we already got a thread

[ganjadude]

on this issue... http://politics.slashdot.org/story/12/08/02/1437240/senate-cybersecurity-bill-stalled-by-ridiculous-amendments I mean its still on the front page even.

Re:we already got a thread

[dwillden]

Well to be honest this thread still makes sense, as the prior post was about all the amendments. Whereas this one is about it dying.

Re:we already got a thread

[jhoegl]

Thanks, it was in the summary there genius.
As for the bill itself, I dont know what it is supposed to do. Force companies to make sure their shit is secure?

Businesses can only make it as secure as the latest vulnerability.

Re:we already got a thread

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, this is the second dupe samzenpus has posted today, (s)he should go back to sleep.

Re:we already got a thread

[ganjadude]

Actually it was not there when I made the post thank you very much

Re:we already got a thread

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

It does nothing to enforce real security. Instead, it enshrines another layer of surveillance and privacy-reduction in law - with an enforcement arm that will be rewarded by stopping "cyber-threats" like using a UK proxy to watch the Olympics online. Then, like under the DMCA you can be treated like a terrorist.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/03/dangerously-vague-cybersecurity-legislation

Re:we already got a thread

[dgatwood]

Did you actually expect the government to improve security? These are the same people who keep telling us that the TSA makes us safer. For the most part, congresspeople don't even understand the most basic aspects of meatspace security. How could they possibly understand cybersecurity, which is orders of magnitude more complex? If you asked all of the U.S. Congress what a buffer overflow is, you would probably have fewer than twenty people who could answer the question, and I would not be entirely surprised if not a single one of them could answer it. And I can just about guarantee that none of them could construct even the most basic threat assessment for even the most simple network protocol.

No, Congress will create an organization whose job it is to understand it, but they'll give it a mission statement that is entirely perpendicular to anything that would actually improve cybersecurity. Then, when things don't improve, they'll say that it needs more funding. All the while, they'll be siphoning off hundreds of millions of dollars to overpriced contractors in their districts so that when they leave the public sector, they'll have cushy consulting jobs waiting for them. Sadly, this is the way Congress usually does things. They don't take the time to understand the issues, and instead let a bunch of lobbyists write laws that almost invariably only serve to make the problem worse.

For this reason, government is almost never the answer to this sort of thing. Industry standards bodies are. Until our congresspeople are clueful enough to understand that cybersecurity is fundamentally a problem caused by bugs in software, not a social problem caused by evil, malicious "hackers", they cannot possibly do anything but cause harm. Improving cybersecurity by trying to catch the hackers is like protecting a chicken coop by trying to catch all the wolves in the country. There will always be more wolves. What the coop needs is not traps, but rather walls and fences. Similarly, the only way government can usefully improve cybersecurity is by hiring computer security experts to serve as a cybersecurity swat team that does nothing but review code and software designs upon request from government agencies, private businesses, and open source projects. That level of scrutiny is useful. Anything else is a waste of time, money, and civil liberties, with no hope whatsoever of positively affecting our nation's cybersecurity.

Re:we already got a thread

[Shifty0x88]

Actually not only are their bugs in software which let hackers in, but have you heard of social engineering??? That is the social problem that lets hackers in, people trust them too much.

As for this quote: "The US Chamber of Commerce argued that the bill 'could actually impede US cybersecurity by shifting businesses' resources away from implementing robust and effective security measures and toward meeting government mandates."

Oh, is that why everyone is getting hacked, because they are putting resources into security? HA, HA, HAHAHA. Yeah right.

That is exactly the problem, we trust these companies to secure our private data (SSNs, Credit Card Numbers, etc.) and most of them cannot even do that right. I am not saying the government is the answer, but we need to make companies want to secure their data and web site, and to tell employees there that they need to be vigilant when it comes to security.

Re:we already got a thread

[jamstar7]

As for the bill itself, I dont know what it is supposed to do. Force companies to make sure their shit is secure?

The big problem was the ammendments. They had a little bit of everything in there cause it was the last bit of law they were gonna look at before their summer break. So they loaded it up with every pet project of 70 braindead idiots^F^Ffavored son Senators and were surprised when they only got 62 votes to pass this abortion.

Re:we already got a thread

[dgatwood]

Actually not only are their bugs in software which let hackers in, but have you heard of social engineering??? That is the social problem that lets hackers in, people trust them too much.

Social engineering is, indeed, a social problem, but it isn't specific to cybersecurity. You can do social engineering just as easily by postal mail as email, just as easily by telephone as by IM, etc. The only way to solve it is by convincing people that they need to think before they disclose information.

More importantly, the most damaging social engineering risks, at least as far as cybersecurity is concerned, can usually be thoroughly mitigated by proper design. For example, the old "I'm from your ISP. Could you verify your password?" trick fails completely if you require a physical token in addition to a PIN. To the extent that social engineering attacks are still successful, it almost always points to fundamental failures in the design, like requiring the user to keep something secret that the user doesn't perceive as having any importance.

Oh, is that why everyone is getting hacked, because they are putting resources into security?

First, not everybody is getting hacked. Second, my proposed solution, making government-paid security pros available to audit and scrutinize businesses would solve those problems. It might be beneficial to add laws to make those audits mandatory whenever companies over a certain size or with certain pieces of information roll out major redesigns or something, but just having the resources available without huge costs associated with using them would be a great first step.

Either way, no amount of network surveillance could possibly prevent any cyber attacks other than the most trivial denial of service attacks. In order to detect that bad requests are bad, you have to know that the flaw exists. Otherwise, you'll end up blocking legitimate requests. There's no reason I shouldn't be allowed to have "dgatwood'; drop table users" as my username, and unless you know that you have a quoting problem in your handling of usernames, there's no legitimate reason to disallow it. For that matter, if you treat such patterns as suspicious, I wouldn't be able to post this comment, so legitimate security discourse would be impossible.

You don't prevent attacks by trying to chase after the bad guys. Period. That can't ever be effective because there are simply too many people outside the reach of U.S. law that have reasons to want to compromise our security, whether to steal money, pirate software, steal credit card numbers, or whatever. The only thing you can do is to try to make those systems as robust against attack as possible, and you can't do that through surveillance; you can only do it through actual code hardening, design hardening, etc.

Re:we already got a thread

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not a "thread," genius. Put down the bong and pick up a dictionary.

*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

I really wish we'd make these freaking unrelated add-ons illegal.
Just post up one bill and only one bill at a time.

Re:*sigh*

[Bigby]

How would one do that? And before you say "you can't have two bullet points in one bill", what about bills that provide a service and a tax to pay for it. Should they be separate? Should there be a vote on each service individually?

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

Disallow adding random irrelevant shit to the bill. Anything irrelevant to the original bill, actually.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

My state tried passing a law for something similar at the state level, essentially stating that all amendments to the bill must be directly related to the original purpose of the bill. In other words, you couldn't tack on "Undo Obamacare" to "Cybersecurity" because there's no direct link, even if you are claiming that you are getting rid of Obamacare in order to pay for the cyber security implementation, that wouldn't count.

On the other hand you could get everyone to agree to pass the Cyber Security bill, raise taxes to pay for the Cyber Security Bill, and then, as part of that deal, get promises to repeal the Obamacare bill to and with the money saved give tax payers a credit on their taxes to offset, or even eliminate the increased taxes for the Cyber Security bill. So it wouldn't completely get rid of stupid tie-ins to bills, it would just make it take more work.

The free market will fix it

[Anonymous Coward]

Just keep the government out of the way and the companies themselves will take care of it. No need for worries.

Re:The free market will fix it

[Anonymous Coward]

"Keeping government out of the way" leads to shining free-market bastions such as Somalia.

Re:The free market will fix it

[Anonymous Coward]

Just keep the government out of the way and the companies themselves will take care of it. No need for worries.

Yes!

We should have let:

Enron take over energy policy,
Madoff take over social security,
Lehman Brothers take over mortgages,
and so on

The free market is perfect and always optimizes (someone's wallet).

Re:The free market will fix it

[JBMcB]

Enron take over energy policy,

You assume we need one, big, monolithic "energy policy." As though a single entity could create an effective policy of that magnitude and complexity.

Madoff take over social security,

Well, it *is* a Ponzi scheme to begin with:

Where do social security surpluses go? To buy treasury bonds
Who gets the money from the sale of treasury bonds? The federal government
What does the federal government do with that money? Spend it
When the social security administration cashes in those bonds, who has to pay them? The federal government
Where is the federal government going to get the money to reimburse social security? Good question, any guesses? :)

The free market is perfect and always optimizes (someone's wallet).

The free market is not perfect, but if a good or service is poor allows for alternatives that might be better. When the government has a monopoly on something, there ARE no alternatives. You better hope it's run damn well, because with a bureaucracy that large, you aren't going to change it.

Re:The free market will fix it

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's okay for the government to virtually take over and run the whole mortgage market into the ground, only to turn around and blame the 'free market.' We haven't had a free market for quite a while -- it's a government managed economy. If you don't like it, it's government you have a problem with.

That's why, economically, government should only act to make the market safe and free. When government strays from these basic tenets, we have the problems you see today.

There will always be bad actors. If government can focus on putting those bad actors in jail and stay away from trying to manage the economy, we would be much better off. That's what people mean when they say: keep the government out of the way.

Re:The free market will fix it

[CanHasDIY]

The idea that those who believe in small and limited government actually think there should be no government is a common and worn out liberal straw-man argument.

FTFY.

Re:The free market will fix it

[dgatwood]

Just keep the government out of the way and the companies themselves will take care of it. No need for worries.

You're half right. The correct solution for cybersecurity is pretty much the same as everything else: let businesses manage their own security, but provide harsh penalties for companies that fail to protect the privacy of their customers' information. For example, if a company's failed security causes your SSN to become available to somebody else, they have to pay someone to provide credit protection services for you for the rest of your life. If a company leaks other types of information that could be used for identity theft, it's a fine of $1000 per account per incident, payable to an account that helps people who are the victims of identity theft as a result. And so on. Then, get the government out of the way, and let the companies find ways to keep from losing their shirts.

Another useful thing the government could do is to expand its program of reviewing open source code (and, ideally, closed source code) for security vulnerabilities. If the systems are secure in the first place, then none of the stupid surveillance crap they're trying to ram down our throats would be useful. The only reason it is even ostensibly useful is that the quality of most code out there ranges from bad to worse....

What the government should not do is use this as an excuse to become more of a nanny state, to require specific security policies, require specific password schemes, require specific... well, pretty much anything. As soon as you do that, you create a homogeneous attack surface in which everybody is equally unprepared for new types of attacks, in which every password is probably shared across every website (because they all have the same standards), etc. Better to have the bad guys regularly demonstrating the flaws of a few weak systems than suddenly demonstrating flaws across every website because they all were forced to use some standardized, government-designed software system. At least if there are choices, people with common sense can lean towards working with companies that do things the right way.

Re:The free market will fix it

[Anonymous Coward]

There was no need as what you added was implied. Thanks for the emphasis though. It never hurts with this bunch. :-)

Re:The free market will fix it

[medv4380]

Well, it *is* a Ponzi scheme to begin with:

Nice to see you don't know how a Ponzi Scheme works.
Their are 5 steps to it and if you skip one it's not a Ponzi Scheme, but the critical part is Initial Investors Are Paid Off. This is where it falls apart. Not every Initial Investor actually gets Paid off. Not everyone has eligible survivors and not everyone lives long enough to collect. That's the critical part to the entire thing.

The system only fails when you have too few workers to support the retired population. So because of Declining Birth Rates like Japan, or because of increased life expectancy like most of the world. Which is eventually a problem, and the Social Security Surplus should never have been put into the General Fund, but that money can only delay a collapse due to the other two issues. If the other issues don't come up then the surplus is never used.

Re:The free market will fix it

[Anne Thwacks]

The idea that those who believe in small and limited government actually think is common

FTFY

Re:The free market will fix it

[CanHasDIY]

The idea that those who believe in small and limited government actually think is common

FTFY

hmm, that might be clever, if not so childish and pedantic.

So, what's wrong with preferring small, limited-scope government, as opposed to the ever-expanding, expensive, bloated oppression machine we have now?

Re:The free market will fix it

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing on the surface of it, but the actual implementation proffered is usually a poorly-thought-out list of personal grievances with no understanding of the subject, nor any understanding of how we got here. For one thing, nobody is actually in favor of "ever-expanding, expensive, bloated" government. The whole stance is a straw man.

Re:The free market will fix it

[khallow]

For one thing, nobody is actually in favor of "ever-expanding, expensive, bloated" government.

Well, not when you put it that way.

Re:The free market will fix it

[zippthorne]

Social Security Surplus should never have been put into the General Fund

Well, sort of. it really should never have been collected in the first place. Instead, it should've just charged what was needed, and published the expected rates going forward 60 years out based on actuarial tables and the expected benefits.

The problem is that the surplus, having been collected, needs to go somewhere. You can't just stick it under a mattress - inflation would eat at its value, and it would also have a chilling effect on the economy. But you can't invest it, either, because that involves risk, and no one wants to be held accountable for a hundred million person's losses.

The only "safe" thing to do is invest in the instrument that defines the "risk-free" rate - treasury bonds - which are backed by the ability of the government to tax its citizens. The money wasn't "put into the general fund" per se, but it was used to incur an additional debt obligation on the part of the taxpayers, which is one big, "huh?"

Since SS is just a branch of the government anyway, and the premiums are also collected as taxes, that doesn't really accomplish anything except to keep some bean-counters busy making up numbers. Far better to just never have collected the surplus in the first place - the amount people pay in taxes would not change, as they would be paying less in "regular" taxes to match the "more" in SS taxes, but there would be no resources expended maintaining the fiction of a "lock box" and the bureaucracy involved in all the transactions in both directions.

Re:The free market will fix it

[jamstar7]

Personally, I'm happy as hell we don't get a tenth of the government we pay for.

And saying that, I'm all in favor of a smaller government. Put it on a diet, liposuction the shit outta it, and let's see how those poor bureaucrats do when they have to work for a living.

Re:The free market will fix it

[khallow]

Their are 5 steps to it and if you skip one it's not a Ponzi Scheme, but the critical part is Initial Investors Are Paid Off. This is where it falls apart. Not every Initial Investor actually gets Paid off. Not everyone has eligible survivors and not everyone lives long enough to collect. That's the critical part to the entire thing.

I can't believe you seriously think that step didn't happen just because a small number didn't make it to the payoff.

Re:The free market will fix it

[JBMcB]

The problem is that the surplus, having been collected, needs to go somewhere. You can't just stick it under a mattress - inflation would eat at its value, and it would also have a chilling effect on the economy. But you can't invest it, either, because that involves risk, and no one wants to be held accountable for a hundred million person's losses.

You absolutely could invest it. There are lots of *very* low risk, just-over-inflation investment instruments the government could take advantage of. Commercial paper, in particular, comes to mind. Municipal bonds are usually pretty stable, as well.

I think the underlying motivation of creating the surplus was just to create a back-door tax increase.

Dont forget gun measures slipped in

[Anonymous Coward]

Dont forget this bill had horrible anti gun measures slipped in targeting semi-automatics.

Re:Dont forget gun measures slipped in

[Urza9814]

It had ATTEMPTS to get horrible anti-gun measures slipped in, along with a metric fuckton of other absurd amendments. I don't believe any of them were actually passed and added on to the bill though. Big difference.

Re:Don't forget Healthcare, Infrastructure, et al.

[Reverand Dave]

it had horrible anti-tons of shit tacked onto it targeting tons of shit. It's not like the gun provision alone is what made or broke it. I'm not sad to see it die at any rate.

I'm so sick

[nrasch]

I'm so very very very very sick of our govt doing their damnedest to turn us into a police state.

This law like so many others is just a pathetic attempt to force ridiculous and unnecessary controls on us while giving the govt the ability to do anything they wish.

I truly wish someone knew how to wake up the majority people who live in this country, because this sort of nonsense needs to come to an abrupt halt.

Not unusual to to blocked by anyone

[SuperKendall]

The measure was blocked amid opposition from an unusual coalition of civil libertarians â" who feared it could allow too much government snooping â" and conservatives who said it would create a new bureaucracy.

This is not unusual. This is the new normal.

Conservatives are currently the ONLY civil libertarians left in government, apart from a handful of Democrats that still respect civil liberties and are willing to break away from the mass of Democrats voting in lock-step.

Even if some are doing it to pander to voters - WHO CARES as long as it means less intrusive government and representatives that really think twice (or four times) before supporting the next SOPA or Patriot Act.

Even if you feel compelled to vote for Obama for some reason, consider picking for the other offices you vote for the most conservative candidate possible, for the candidates that at least say they want to reduce the power and scope of the federal government. That is the only way we start to get some of our rights back, instead of losing even more.

Re:Not unusual to to blocked by anyone

[MickyTheIdiot]

If you think conservatives are civil libertarians then I have no idea what to say to you.

Today's conservatives believe for absolute freedom of corporations that that's it. They have absolutely no care for any other freedoms save MAYBE the 2nd amendment. They don't care about any individuals rights... just whatever gets their corporate buddies a bit more money.

Re:Not unusual to to blocked by anyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem: Conservatives don't want to reduce the power and scope of government. Also, they do not have a track record of doing so.

Libertarians do, at least many of them. You could vote for them.

Re:Not unusual to to blocked by anyone

[Urza9814]

They care about more than just corporations. They also care about things like banning free speech to "fight terrorism" and banning abortions to "protect a right to life" while encouraging an increasing number of deaths at the hands of our police and military...

Re:Not unusual to to blocked by anyone

[Microlith]

Conservatives are currently the ONLY civil libertarians left in government

Conservatives? You need to get specific, as currently the Republican party lays claim to that term and they are ANYTHING but "civil libertarians."

the mass of Democrats voting in lock-step.

Hilarious. The diversity of opinions in the Democratic party is one of the reasons they've had a hard time pushing past Republican stonewalling. If you want lock-step voting, look at the Republican party.

as long as it means less intrusive government

You will not see this from anyone currently in DC.

consider picking for the other offices you vote for the most conservative candidate possible

Again, define "conservative." The most "conservative" candidates today seem to be religious fundamentalists who are all too happy to cater to corporate interests.

for the candidates that at least say they want to reduce the power and scope of the federal government.

They at least "say" that, but then do so by attacking useful bits of the government in favor of the corporations stuffing money in their pockets.

Re:Not unusual to to blocked by anyone

[CanHasDIY]

If you think conservatives are civil libertarians then I have no idea what to say to you.

Today's conservatives believe for absolute freedom of corporations that that's it. They have absolutely no care for any other freedoms save MAYBE the 2nd amendment. They don't care about any individuals rights... just whatever gets their corporate buddies a bit more money.

No; those are called Neo-Cons , and in no way does their liberal bullshit reflect upon those of us who truly fit the classic definition of a political conservative.

Fuckers hi-jacked our label...

Re:Not unusual to to blocked by anyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Real conservatives do -- like those backed by the Tea Party. That's the difference between establishment Republicans and real conservatives. You must have heard of this distinction. Although, it's much more convenient for your kind to conflate the two.

Re:Not unusual to to blocked by anyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess I'll feed the trolls. The Tea Party are just further right neocons with a louder voice. Either way, the TP arguments are usually items that if one had a basic education in economics 101, are pointless. They do make good talking points to the masses, though... the same masses who wonder why freshly deregulated companies will happily serve their cats melamine, who move their jobs overseas, and the industries who are trying to survive in the US end up getting destroyed by foreign competitors (the US solar industry for example.)

So, Tea Partiers are either just plain dumb, or they absolutely like seeing the quality of life with every American be eroded. Food supply free of aniline dyes just like in "The Jungle?" Can't have that, companies need to make a profit. Usable roads? Private companies don't make them, so we don't want them. Clean air? Bah, interferes with business earnings.

And I start realizing why Europeans fall over themselves laughing at the stupidity of the "USA-ins". One might pay a VAT to live in their countries, but at least your food isn't going to be poisoned or full of chemicals, the water is safe to drink, the beer is actually drinkable, and the average person on the street actually is educated about something other than Snooki's baby.

Re:Not unusual to to blocked by anyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Neocons are even more fucked-up conservatives than the regular conservatives.

Re:Not unusual to to blocked by anyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Just another liberal straw-man argument. Economically, conservatives feel the government should only act to make the market safe and free. So your poison air and food argument is bunk. And, we need not have a socialist government to achieve it.

Basic economics and history dictates that free markets grow economies most efficiently. It's liberals that fail in these very basic subjects. No wonder Obama won't release his grades . . . what a joke!

Re:Not unusual to to blocked by anyone

[readin]

Today's conservatives believe for absolute freedom of corporations that that's it.

You're only slightly correct. There are some conservatives who act that way - and they tend to get the most funding and get elected. This is one of the reasons the tea-parties formed. The rank-and-file was sick and tired of sending politicians to Washington based on their promises to cut spending, only to have those politicians betray them.

So what happened, the media made every effort to discredit the tea-partiers, calling them names and making unreasonable accusations of racism. Was this because the media tend to be left-wing, or because the media is owned by corporations? I don't know, but either way the effects weren't pretty.

The rank-and-file conservatives are trying to get control of the party from the corporate sponsors. This is what separates them from the liberals. Liberals want their party to make the government and corporations one entity (oh you think you don't? the sad fact is the more power you give government, the more effort the industrialists will put into controlling that government, and they will succeed).

It isn't easy shrinking the government and wresting control from the corporations, but it would be nice if people who claim to be on our side would help us instead of constantly seeking to discredit us.

Re:Not unusual to to blocked by anyone

[Omestes]

Are they not true Scotsmen as well?

Re:Not unusual to to blocked by anyone

[readin]

Conservatives are currently the ONLY civil libertarians left in government

Conservatives? You need to get specific, as currently the Republican party lays claim to that term and they are ANYTHING but "civil libertarians."

Tea-party conservatives, specifically. There would be a lot more people saying they support the tea-parties if the media hadn't worked so hard to portray the tea-parties as things they are not (like racist).

the mass of Democrats voting in lock-step.

Hilarious. The diversity of opinions in the Democratic party is one of the reasons they've had a hard time pushing past Republican stonewalling. If you want lock-step voting, look at the Republican party.

You've been watching too much liberal news, where Republican teamwork is always called "marching in lockstep" and Democratic teamwork is called "unity". It of course confuses you when you see Democratic teamwork called "marching in lockstep".

as long as it means less intrusive government

You will not see this from anyone currently in DC.

Ron Paul was a Republican. Rand Paul, I'm not sure if he is as strict as his father, is also a Republican. But you're right that there are very few elected in either party who stand by their claims to want limited government. This is why after 8 years of disappointment from GWB and the Republicans, the tea-party formed. We always knew the Democrats opposed freedom, but the Republicans betrayed us it was clear a new movement was needed.

consider picking for the other offices you vote for the most conservative candidate possible

Again, define "conservative." The most "conservative" candidates today seem to be religious fundamentalists who are all too happy to cater to corporate interests.

Religious fundamentalists tend to be the most pro-freedom these days because their freedoms are increasingly threatened (e.g. the HHS mandate). But there certainly are politicians who are religious fundamentalists and willing to cater to corporate interests on both sides (though the liberals will claim their religious beliefs aren't really religious)

for the candidates that at least say they want to reduce the power and scope of the federal government.

They at least "say" that, but then do so by attacking useful bits of the government in favor of the corporations stuffing money in their pockets.

It's a problem. How about if we all vote for politicians who say they'll reduce government until they all have to start saying it? Then we can vote of the politicians who do the best job of following through.

Re:Not unusual to to blocked by anyone

[dryeo]

This is what is weird about American politics (disclaimer, I'm not American). You've managed to totally warp language.
Conservative basically means someone who wants to go back to the old days. The old days varies but is usually some imaginary time when things were perfect for their kind of people.
Progressive is the opposite, they want to go forward to some imaginary time where things are perfect for their type.
Liberal means freedom so by definition liberals want freedom, so are the opposite of authoritarian.
The right wing is the branch of government that supports the aristocracy, which usually means authoritarian as by their very nature the aristocracy wants to keep their station in life and will use authoritarian means to keep it.
The left wing is the branch of the government that represents the common person and often respond to authoritarianism with their own authoritarianism or being nice people get hijacked by authoritarianism types.
Personally I've always been anti-conservative as I've always believed in freedom, equality and keeping the government out of my life. Having watched the conservatives actual actions for 40 odd years I haven't seen any reason to change my mind even though they always do say the opposite of what they do.
You seem to have totally flipped the meanings of these words, claiming liberals want to unite business and government when as usual the right wing is full of business men (and women, yea for progress) who want to use government to further their business agenda and the left wing seems to have been banished sometime in the early 20th century so now you have 2 branches of the right arguing that they are actually for the people yet both act almost the same except for a little bit of lip service.

Re:Not unusual to to blocked by anyone

[khallow]

Today's conservatives believe for absolute freedom of corporations that that's it.

Even if that were true, that's better than any other large bloc in Washington. For example, Obamacare didn't come about because someone cared about anyone's freedom.

Re:Not unusual to to blocked by anyone

[khallow]

the same masses who wonder why freshly deregulated companies will happily serve their cats melamine

Only if they're ignorant of the consequences:

A huge recall of contaminated pet food is likely to cost Canada's Menu Foods Income Fund MEW_u.TO at least C$45 million ($42 million), even without taking a slump in sales into account, the company said on Wednesday.

This for one business and is in addition to customer law suits and loss of sales.

who move their jobs overseas

We ignore here that all those wonderfully expensive social programs and burdensome labor regulations make us very expensive to hire, especially when the competition is a small fraction of our cost. But somehow this little thing is the fault of tea partiers rather than the people who created the situation with Free Lunch thinking.

the industries who are trying to survive in the US end up getting destroyed by foreign competitors (the US solar industry for example.)

Last I heard, the latest attempts to "save" the US solar industry ended up a hard fail due to a remarkable level of corruption and gullibility.

or they absolutely like seeing the quality of life with every American be eroded

The quality of life people have been helping us since the 50s. Why are things so shitty now? Because that approach doesn't work. All that spending that allegedly improves your quality of life comes out of your quality of life as well. And if it does less benefit than harm, which I might add is a common occurrence, then quality of life suffers overall.

Food supply free of aniline dyes just like in "The Jungle?"

First, you have to show there is a problem. A bullshit documentary doesn't cut it.

Usable roads?

Here's a good reason to be a tea partier. Money spent on other things isn't money spent on roads. There are clear needs that government can deliver. But they can't deliver if the money is spent on other things.

Clean air?

We have that. But we won't be able to keep it, if we don't clean up the government bureaucracy.

Look, your ideas have had decades to work. If they really were going to curtail the power of businesses and improve our quality of life, then they'd have done so by now. They don't and that's why we're in the situation we're in. And state-by-state, the states that tried the hardest to improve quality of life through government funding are the ones with the worst government services.

Misleading Vote

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The bill needed 60 votes in the 100-member Senate to advance under rules in the chamber, but got only 52.

That is one of those technically true but exceptionally misleading statements.

Senate bills normally only require a majority vote to pass. But what started in the 80s and has increased markedly since the last presidential election is the abuse of the filibuster. Nowadays a bill can pass in the senate with only a majority vote if the minority party - the GOP - supports it. But if the GOP leadership is opposed to it, they filibuster it such that 60 votes are required, which is generally impossible because of the intense partisanship. So despite the senate being slightly majority democrat, they only tend to pass things that are favored by the GOP.

What's worse is that it doesn't take an actual filibuster, only the threat of one. And even when an actual filibuster is invoked, it doesn't require that the senators stand on the floor and engage in ongoing debate or speechifying like the way us non-politicians would expect.

Re:Misleading Vote

[guises]

Thank you, came here to say the same thing. There's no rule that says it takes 60 votes to pass the senate, that's a GOP invention.

Re:Misleading Vote

[readin]

Thank you, came here to say the same thing. There's no rule that says it takes 60 votes to pass the senate, that's a GOP invention.

It was the Democrats' invention.

According to Wikipedia, "Finally, in 1975 the Democratic-controlled Senate[5] revised its cloture rule so that three-fifths of the senators sworn (usually 60 senators) could limit debate, except on votes to change Senate rules, which require two-thirds to invoke cloture." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster_in_the_United_States_Senate

Re:Misleading Vote

[guises]

There's no rule that says it takes 60 votes to pass the senate, that's a GOP invention.

It was the Democrats' invention. According to Wikipedia, "Finally, in 1975 the Democratic-controlled Senate[5] revised its cloture rule so that three-fifths of the senators sworn (usually 60 senators) could limit debate

What a stupid... you're claiming that when the Senate in 1975 reduced the requirement for cloture from a 2/3 majority to a 3/5 majority that is what made the Senate today so incapable of accomplishing anything? Because if only more people were required for cloture then the GOP wouldn't have hatched on this idea to filibuster everything?

Re:Misleading Vote

[readin]

I'm saying the 60 vote rule, the only rule in question, was invented by the Democrats. The use of filibuster has been increasing for a long time. I agree that it is overused. It ought to require more than a threat - the majority should have the guts to force the other party to stand up and talk. If they did that it would focus national attention on the subject and the party with the less popular view would be pressured to give in.

But the current state is not the all the fault of the Republicans. Yes, the Republicans let the Democrats get away with too many filibusters when the Republicans had control. And yes the Republicans used the filibuster too much. But the Democrats have also let the Republicans get away with too many filibusters and the Democrats have also used the filibuster too much. Both parties are guilty.

The filibuster is a good thing, but in its current form it has many problems.

Re:Misleading Vote

[khallow]

But what started in the 80s

The filibuster is far older than that and it used to be even harder to overturn than it is now. As to the mean old Republicans getting only what they want passed, same goes for the Democrats or any other voting bloc of large enough size. The Democrats can pull the very same trick, say for example, in 2013 when President Romney wants his laws passed.

The point of the filibuster is to encourage deliberation and compromise, not expedite passage of law. Given what crap gets stymied these days, I really don't see the point of getting rid of filibuster. It works as advertised.

Your favored side won't always be in power. It's foolish to wish for something that will be turned against you at some point.

Re:Misleading Vote

[guises]

You're correct in general of course, the trouble isn't the filibuster itself. That encourages compromise and helps to prevent absolute rule of the majority. The trouble is that it only works when you have a minority that's willing to compromise. That has been the case to a greater or lessor degree in every senate up until now, but the number of filibusters since Obama took office has been more than double that of any previous senate.

An ideal solution wouldn't be to simply eliminate the filibuster but to replace it with some rule that would do a better job of requiring compromise rather than simply allowing it.

Re:Misleading Vote

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The filibuster is far older than that and it used to be even harder to overturn than it is now.

I typoed out the URL to one of the hundreds of charts illustrating when abuse of the filibuster started.

Given what crap gets stymied these days, I really don't see the point of getting rid of filibuster. It works as advertised.

If only it were, for some reason the democrats don't seem to be using the same way as the GOP does. Maybe because if they did, basically nothing would ever pass.

Re:Misleading Vote

[khallow]

I have to disagree. The unusually deceptive and pathological nature of the current administration and their congressional allies means that compromise is a bad idea. Obamacare is a classic example. Unconstitutional and it hurts health care reform. It's too bad that the Republicans couldn't block it permanently. And then there's the several hundred cases of accessory to murder from the Fast and Furious case.

This sort of situation is exactly why filibustering is such a useful tool. And if Romney wins with a majority in both branches of Congress, I'll once again be happy that filibustering is there to at least slow down things, if the Republicans go out of control.

Re:Misleading Vote

[khallow]

I typoed out the URL to one of the hundreds of charts illustrating when abuse of the filibuster started.

Huh, doesn't look like abuse to me. Looks like good strategy to prevent remarkably bad law.

Re:Misleading Vote

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Huh, doesn't look like abuse to me. Looks like good strategy to prevent remarkably bad law.

By that logic, prior to the 80s, hardly any bad laws were ever considered.

Re:Misleading Vote

[khallow]

By that logic, prior to the 80s, hardly any bad laws were ever considered.

Well, that probably is true to a degree. The quality and constitutionality of law I think has gone down over the decades. It's too easy to bulk up bills in the age of the word processor. These become harder to vet as they grow longer. And a lot of constitutional challenges are rearing their ugly little heads right now.

I think the US is at a decision point, whether to continue with a constitutional government and play by set rules or to follow some charismatic leader off a cliff. Fortunately, Obama turns out not to be that leader. But if he were a lot more competent, we might be a lot closer to the end of the US. It is a danger we should have avoided in the first place.

But also I imagine that prior to the 80s, there were other tools for the minority to delay legislation.

Why is it...

[Anonymous Coward]

... that whenever I hear about a widely publicized bill in Congress getting shot down, I feel a little safer.

Congress should be in the business of protecting liberties instead of constantly trying to take them away.

dammit

[Anonymous Coward]

what am I going to do with all of these hi-cap magazines now?

In a way? Too bad (but not due to human nature)

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: What really, Really, REALLY PISSES ME OFF, is when politicians take something potentially VERY GOOD, and "twist it" to their own "nefarious ends", or rather, should I say, that of their "masters" (and yes, we truly have "the best politicians money can REALLY BUY" here, and it's probably the same, everywhere - hence the HUMAN NATURE part of my subject-line above)

Sure... this could be a great thing, but putting shit in it that might allow yet MORE circumventions of the United States Constitution & Bill of Rights is what we do NOT NEED MORE OF! That's a big part of what made the USA, what she is (or was)...

* Pity is, I'm VERY for making mandatory filtering of known malicious sites &/or servers off @ the DNS level via DNSBL's (DNS block lists) + other methods (routing based ones at the levels of ISP/BSP here), but the "snooping" part bothers me... wtf!

See, there is 1 "bright side" to this though:

I think that many of the folks in gov't. probably don't *LIKE* what they're told to do, and would screw it up ON PURPOSE if not eventually, but are in fear for a good job, their families, & themselves... but, if "push came to shove"?

Yes, sure - They'd disobey their "masters", such as U.S. Soldiers ever being commanded to fire on U.S.Citizenry (we don't need another Kent State Massacre etc.)... we are, after all, their countrymen & families + friends too!

I think a great many of them would "turn" on "the man/master" if things came down to that, & THAT is what "the controllers" know, fear, & realize... they have people on the "inside" with them (that would do so one day if things got THAT bad!)

APK

P.S.=> Dear U.S Politicians: For once, would you people QUIT catering to the "1%'ers & your "KORPORATE AMERIKA" lobbyist bosses from the corporatocracy & do something good "For the People, & BY THE PEOPLE", please? That'd be nice - Thank you... Sincerely, APK...

... apk

government-paid security pros

[bradley13]

"government-paid security pros"

ROTFL

You have got to be kidding. Even if you get a real security pro to work for the government, in 10 years, he/she will be totally out of date and heading an evergrowing empire of unqualified idiots. These bureaucrats will secure their jobs by getting out of the consulting business entirely and writing regulations that they can enforce.

Never start a new government program.