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Republican Staffer Khanna Axed Over Copyright Memo
Bob9113 writes "Ars Technica reports that Derek Khanna is getting axed over his memo detailing the conflict between laissez-faire-oriented free market ideals and the regulatory monopoly that is copyright. 'The Republican Study Committee, a caucus of Republicans in the House of Representatives, has told staffer Derek Khanna that he will be out of a job when Congress re-convenes in January. The incoming chairman of the RSC, Steve Scalise (R-LA) was approached by several Republican members of Congress who were upset about a memo Khanna wrote advocating reform of copyright law. They asked that Khanna not be retained, and Scalise agreed to their request.'"
Yeah, heavens forbid that elected officials ever be given information that they might disagree with. Shame on this person for thinking that law makers should be exposed to a wide variety of ideas and opinions. Next thing you know they will have to try to justify claims of wanting less government while at the same time pushing for laws limiting marriage laws or privacy laws. What was he thinking?
You younger Slashdotters may not believe this, but at one time we had conservatives (and Republicans) with principles.
(Not that the Democrats are all that great.)
Anyone wonder why the political process does not serve the people?
I was with you until "rightfully". Fuck you.
There are at least two important points we can take away from this:
1. The republican party lies about having free market ideals.
2. The current IP regime is NOT an example of free market economics, even though it is widely touted as so.
He had to know this would cost him his job.
He could not have expected anything else.
He's 24 and probably still believes that United States politics offer an open and free forum where you can put forth ideas no matter what side you're on and the change that follows can be a good thing if the logic behind it is sound. Surely the worst that could happen is that your party would have to explain again logically why your brief was incorrect and unsound?
Boy it sure was hard typing that with a straight face.
My work here is dung.
I don't know what he was thinking, but I think we all can correctly guess what he learned about Washington and politics in general.
It's an old boys' club, the yes man gets ahead, and messengers get shot when exposing contradictions.
More Twoson than Cupertino
From the article:
Many things the Republican Party is doing are surprising moves, for a party that is looking for ways to attract...well, anyone. It almost seems like the party forgot that the point of democracy is to represent your own people, not try to tell them that you know better than they do what would be good for them.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Scalise is one of my representatives, I actually kinda know the guy.
Dunno if a letter will help...but, I'll sure send one...this move sucks.
I don't think this is just a R problem...I think both R's and D's up there are so bought and paid for that no reform will likely happen that will benefit you and I, but I'll certainly send a letter about this....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Your on the right track, the Tea Party led a purge of the moderates from the party a couple years back. The result was that the shifted even further to the right and lost a bunch of moderates in the middle of the political spectrum. The result was to also chase away a lot of the moderates / independent voters as well.
Since there are more independents in the US than there are Democrats or Republicans this is what cost them the election. Independents /always/ decide the winner of the presidential election.
They need to have a hard look at their internal hard line on political issues. Even Reagan would fail to meet most of the current Republican agenda and would be cast out (as would a number of other historically significant Republicans). The net effect is to ostracize younger voters and the result is costing them future voters. It's not that moderates were voting for Obama and the Democrats nearly as much as they were voting against Romney and the Republicans.
The Republicans need to go back to giving the general population something to believe in. Study Reagan and you will see that he did that so well the term "Reagan Democrats" was coined to describe the effect. People can't believe in tax cuts for corporates and the rich, it's too abstract for their day to day life. Unless they regain the moderates and start giving people something to believe they will continue to lose more and more voters.
I was with you until the loud "WOOOOOOOSH" drowned out what you were saying.
Politicians are not just corrupt, politicians have been raised, grown up, got their experience in a system where the truth is told, more or less. In the real world, we know evil exist but politicians are shielded from the real world pretty early on. They are in a rare world where meetings and negotiation "work". As you learn the world of politics in high school and university were your adversary are at worst teachers or fellow students and then ONLY those students who are interested in politics. They are surrounded and protected by people who share the same world view, not just left or right wing but the idea and knowledge that money is never an issue, you can always find another job, multiple at the same time, hard work is having a long meeting and there is always a deal to be made with the other side and the other side is never ever really just out to screw you over.
In Holland, when the rail system was privatized, a contract was drawn up that allowed the rail company to do its own customer survey reports and ignore user reviews that scored to low. Choose its own lines to ignore for judging its punctuality, not have to count canceled trains as delayed and a lot more stuff that any sane person would NEVER have allowed in a performance contract. So... were the people who signed it bought off? To stupid to be allowed to live?
Yes... and not exactly. The parties responsible BELIEVE in privatization, all their models, all their advisers say it must work and surely business wouldn't lie to them because they don't lie, they just present facts that exist in their mind and not in the real world. Their was a parliamentary investigation on whether privatization in the last two decades had a positive effect and the answer was NO and the two parties (CDA VVD) STILL said what was needed was MORE privatization.
They can't do anything else because it has become their identity, it is what they are, their faith, their gospel. And any evidence to the contrary isn't going to shake a faith they grew up on. The left isn't much better, the multi cultural society is falling apart and the best the left can manage is "we shouldn't want that"... Groen Links (Green Left) was decimated in Holland when it became clear the party had lost all touch with reality in supporting several right wing measures, forgettin they were supposed to be a LEFT wing party. CDA has been recudeced to a fraction of itself and still doesn't know why. SP scored big in the polls but lost it all during the actual election and still is wondering what happened.
The arstechnica article expresses suprise at this move because it thought the republican party was trying to appeal young voters. WRONG. Oh it wants to attract more voters but it is NOT going to change itself, it can't. It is what it is. To change itself, it would first have to admit it was wrong, ALL if it, ALL of them, ALL they ever believed to be true. WRONG. People don't do that. Especially people who live in an ivory towers removed from all reality. Romney wasn't a particular evil guy, he just really believed his fantasy land, the made up world of Fox News.
And people living in made up worlds are easily manipulated by people good at telling stories. The Lobbyist know how to bend the world of make believe to reflect their wishes. The ordinary voter doesn't. Not only is the average voter barely coherent but everyone one of them has an endless amount of conflicting wishes so any politician who tries to actually listen will quickly realise that if you can't please them all, why bother. In the mean time, the lobbyist gives a clear simple and therefor sensible and achievable story.
Basically, we are screwed. We need more REAL people in politics but the only way to get anywhere in politics is to grow up in it and become part of the system. Any real person will either quit in disgust, be torn apart by the pack for daring to rock the boat (any outcast public figure like Assange) or become part of the system.
You could try an experiment if you got the time. Write down your
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You are thinking small scale, sir. A software development team throwing shit at each other is a completely different scenario. Imagine, however, that you run the development team and one of your underlings published an article in The Washington Post/New York Times illustrating what a moron you are. Throw away your ideas of "what is fair". Neither business nor the government (or even life for that matter) is fair. He played the asshole, so he got served by an asshole.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
You have too much faith in humanity. He wasn't making a joke.
Dear Derek Khanna,
You have made more friends than enemies. You may have been canned today, but you could easily replace your boss. RUN FOR OFFICE!
Sincerely,
Someone who actually votes.
I think most of us realized long ago that when politicians claim to be "pro-business" they are referring not to some abstract ideal of free markets, but rather to being in favor of the incumbent players getting richer and more powerful. But just in case anyone on Slashdot hadn't figured this out yet, hopefully after this event they will have.
No, this is not a party line problem at all. Both R's and D's voted for copyright extension, and I know the D's are at least as bad as the R's because so many of them also supported crap like SOPA.
Basically, it's whoever takes money from the [MP|RI|MAFI]AA is who votes in favor of copyright extension.
John
Copyright reform should be the conservative position since our current state of copyright is so far out of line with the original constitutional text and intent. Conservatives rightly complain when we use foreign law to influence interpretation of the Constitution, yet our copyright has been warped to follow the copyright schemes of most foreign countries, not ours, and that's somehow considered constitutional.
Abandoning their principles, the basic reason the Republicans lost, and will keep losing. All the Democrats have to do is not screw up too badly.
This comment is in no way insightful. It is the very definition of flamebait, according to the slashdot FAQ.
Why this comment is not -1 is baffling.
The moderators who modded this up are abusing their points and I shall report them to the proper authorities to have their privileges revoked for this vile and sick abuse of power.
But they didn't lose, they were just given 4 more years of control of one house of congress, a mandate by the people to prove how bad obama is for america!
Except more people voted for Democrat representatives than for Republicans. The Republicans only won more seats due to Gerrymandering. That is hardly a mandate.
Gerrymandering is easier for Republicans because Democrats tend to be concentrated in urban areas. It is easy to set up reasonable congressional districts that are 80-90% Democrats, leaving Republicans to sweep the rest. But even when the Democrats control the redistricting process, it is hard to find anyplace that is more than about 60-70% Republican.
But there isn't much of mandate for the Dems either. Polls showed that more voters agreed with Republican views of smaller government, but were turned off by their social policies. Single young women voted for Obama by two to one over Romney, not because of economic policy, but because they don't accept that rapists have a God-given right to father children.
I don't mean this to stick up for the Republican party at all but does anybody really believe that the Democratic party would welcome this report any more than the Republicans? Would a Democrat who wrote this report still have a job afterwards? I doubt it. Both sides are in bed with corporations and especially the media ones.
Seniors, yes. Children, no.
The following groups are included in the 47%, in pseudo-order of sympathy:
1. Rich people with good accountants.
2. Poor people too lazy to work.
3. Long term unemployed, probably made up mostly of people who have paid income taxes most of their lives and will do so again in future.
4. Short term unemployed, most of whom have paid taxes most of their lives and will continue to do so after they regain work.
5. Seniors. Who, by the way, paid plenty of taxes for their working lives.
6. People who work crappy jobs to make ends meet.
7. Blue-collar workers in low wage states, such as most of the south. Ironically, this is a Republican "base".
8. Most of the military. True fact: starting salary for a grunt is less (as in way south of) $20,000 a year. It doesn't get much higher either if you're not an officer.
Putting the military at the end there because of the current Troop fetish in this country.
The interesting point to me is that between 1, 5, 7, and 8, it doesn't seem improbable to me that Romney was completely off-base when he suggested the 47% would never vote for him, no matter what. I think it's quite possible the majority (if only a slight majority) of the 47% voted for him - at least, those who didn't realize he was talking about them.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I think the person's point was that the GoP is being hypocritical in this case since the idea of government backing away from industry is one of its major planks, which is what I suspect the person was referring to as the 'problem'. So the GoP is coming across as being in favor of regulation that supports industry against citizens, but not regulation that supports citizens against industry.
It's more of an R problem
Wow, somebody's not paying attention. Look, I know that on Slashdot it's hip to bash Republicans at every turn, but this is so wrong it's not even funny. Insane copyright laws is a bipartisan problem, but Democrats lead the charge. They're all in the pocket of Big Media in places like California and New York that lean heavily Democratic. Chris freaking DODD is running the MPAA now.
There are plenty of valid criticisms of the Republican party, and they're certainly not clean on this issue. But to say that they're worse than Democrats on copyright just sounds like uninformed Republican bashing.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
This isn't about the old boys club. If this had been just-another-report, they would not even have known he was involved. You can be 100% guaranteed that the 'representatives' who complained were NOT representing us. They were representing the RIAA. You can be sure that the RIAA gave these guys a call and explained in no uncertain terms that campaign contributions and getting re-elected hinged on certain.... favors.
Sorry, just keeping track of who voted for bad things is hard enough. Keeping track of who is being hypocritical in Congress is a full-time job, best left to late-night-comedian-staff-writers. And it turns out that is pretty much non-partisan. The harder task is keeping track of those who occasionally aren't being disingenuous.
John
From the article:
Many things the Republican Party is doing are surprising moves, for a party that is looking for ways to attract...well, anyone. It almost seems like the party forgot that the point of democracy is to represent your own people, not try to tell them that you know better than they do what would be good for them.
Actually, that attitude is very much in line with what large chunks of the hard-right fundamentalist Christian faction believe. They want someone with greater authority to tell them what to believe, what to do and think.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
I don't really think this is a contradiction. I think the reality of the party line is more "Corporations are people .. the only people." Less government, less taxes, less regulation, more rights. These apply to real people: corporations, not you or me.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
It's an old white boys' club, and Derek is a brown (Indian) guy with a brain...
Yup, just look at our shiny new white president...
No, the D's say business is evil and go around forcing government on everyone. Safe effect, though.
What I can't figure out is why no one seems to understand that big government at least as bad as big business, except it makes the rules and doesn't need to make money. They are both destroying the country.
Meanwhile, the D's are big friends with Hollywood, so I doubt they would take advantage of this issue. They don't want copyright reform any more than the R's do. The only people who do want it are non-politicians who actually understand what essentially-infinite copyright does.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I don't think this is just a R problem...I think both R's and D's up there are so bought and paid for that no reform will likely happen that will benefit you...
I don't see that. Saying both sides are equally bad is an intellectual cop out that let's one side keep moving the corruption goal post.
Once we deal with the side openly on the side of the wealthy and big money interests, we can start picking through the exceptions in the other side.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
He released the memorandum on his own, totally undermining other staffers and most likely bypassing any sort of vetting, validation, and/or peer review stages. It's naturally in the RSC's best interests to put forth memos and reports that present a consistent argument and (most importantly) don't express opinions in a way that may offend constituents.
While I hate to see them distance themselves from a sane and rational argument for copyright reform, I can't help but think that any other organization would do the same thing when one of their employees decides to go all "cowboy" and fire off memos and reports without organizational consent.
His committee asked him to write it and then signed off on publication, so he neither blindsided nor upstaged the management. They changed their minds, and then went for plausible deniability.
davecb@spamcop.net
So the GoP is coming across as being in favor of regulation that supports industry against citizens, but not regulation that supports citizens against industry.
The GOP is in favor of regulation that supports businesses against the citizen and
The GOP is in favor of deregulation that supports businesses against the citizen.
When GOP interests and the Democratic Party's interests align, the citizens generally get the short end of the stick.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
When it comes to copyright, it's mainly a D problem. For the most part, they're the ones bought and paid for by the entertainment industry. Think of it logically, who does Hollywood support? Who do you see musicians and actors supporting? Who do you see entertainment industry doing fundraisers for? Democrats, almost all the time. And the Democrats pay them back.
There are a few Republicans that are also hard-core entertainment industry reporters. Coble comes to mind. I'd bet he's behind this firing. Few others probably wanted to do this, but they weren't willing to risk their positions defending a mere staffer, so Coble's will happened.
More importantly this lays bare the fact that there is now only one party in Washington D.C. and it suckles the teat of the highest bidder. Contrary to Rush Limbaugh and the bloated talking heads on either side of the aisle, there is no fundamental difference save the verbs in their patter. I'm betting you get the majority and minority whips to perform a live sex show on the Senate Floor if only Monsanto would sponsor it, and at least that would be an honest day's work for a whore. The Republicrats are for sale, and as such so is our Constitution, Civil Rights, Juris Prudence and the security of the Middle Class. Any sane act of remediation regarding our failing system of government or economics must first pass the test of whether or not its inconvenient to the wealthy and powerful. Which is why we have the best government money can buy,