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To Open Source Obama's Get-Out-the-Vote Code Or Not?
An anonymous reader writes "There's a battle brewing amongst Obama's election team. The political folks want to keep the get out the vote code closed source so republicans never get access to it, but the programmers want it open sourced so it can be improved upon. 'In this sense, the decision to mothball the tech would be a violation of the developers’ ethical principles. But the argument is about more than whether putting the tech back in the hands of the public is the right thing to do. "The biggest issue we saw with all of the commercial election software we used was that it’s only updated every four years," says Ryan. It was these outdated options that convinced team Obama to build all the campaign tech in-house. If the code OFA built was put on ice at the DNC until 2016, it would become effectively worthless. "None of that will be useful in four years, technology moves too fast," said Ryan. "But if our work was open and people were forking it and improving it all the time, then it keeps up with changes as we go."'"
The summary doesn't say, so we may never know!
Ok folks put up or shut up time
Open source and 'bad people' can use your code. Or keep it closed...
Personally I wouldn't want my code maintained to levels I've come to expect from open source "standards".
... open sourcing the software may be critical; not only does it expose to anyone who needs to know that its done well and ethically, but it can also serve as a platform (at all levels) for the majority of voters to fight back against the exponentiation of aforementioned gerrymandering.
Have the DNC set aside $400k or so to keep a 3 member team of coders updating it for the next 4 years. Don't forget, there are midterms in 2 years.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
A bit like a Linux distribution, they used existing components and avoided as much work from scratch as possible due to the time constraints and need for as reliability and flexibility as is possible. Some of the AWS wizardry and front-end stuff may be what's really missing from the picture.
If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
I'm not sure why they are worried about that. Obama is the most conservative president the US has had in at least 30 years. If the next democratic nominee runs on the notion of continuing what he has done so far the GOP won't be able to field a candidate who is more conservative.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Why would they put it on ice for four years? There are plenty of state elections, local elections, and Congressional elections between now and the next presidential election, and I find it hard to believe that the software is so specialized that it's only good for presidential elections - for one thing, if it were that specialized, open sourcing it likely wouldn't help, since no one's going to bother working on code that's of no use for anything else.
And also, "none of that will be useful in four years" sounds like BS to me. The hyped usage was in targeting who to have workers phone or visit. Polls, addresses, phones, etc. aren't going to change significantly in four years, and unless they did some seriously messed-up stuff, their code should still compile and run with only minor tweaks at worst four years from now.
The bean counters running the campaign will never agree and (one of) the techies will just release anonymously.
Who owns the code? Who paid for it?
If it is copyrighted then the copyright owner can decide how to release it. End of story.
Of course the republicans are going to fork the code...and keep it secret, regardless of the license in use. You think they really care about playing fairly and contributing to a common goal? NO WAY.
This raises the interesting question of who owns the software and who's decision it is to open source it or not. The LA time link claims that specifically Obama and his campaign team is retaining the software, not the DNC.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Obama won 2 elections. Republicans' Orca software was a big wet flop, and they have the most to gain out of an open source code.
It gets as simply as this:
The developers who created the baby want it grow to be a nice piece of useful code that can benefit everybody.
Politicians want to have an edge on their rivals.
Considering we only ever get to pick from two hand selected candidates who will pretty much sell us out in very much the same way I'm not getting the joke here....
At least for half (47%) of the country...
The code should be used with Organizing For Action (Organizing for America?) in the next 4 years to spur volunteering in the community and connecting people with causes.
I'm sure the GOP could hire a few programmers to make the same software...
Let the DNC hire the programmers and keep them on staff. Keep the code closed-source (so the Rs don't get it) and also expand it to work with local races in the House and Senate.
If the code is open, we might then have a notion of the scope, depth, and detail with which all of us are being tracked by the party. And that would probably be shocking to all of us who thought we had some level of privacy left. So I don't expect it to be open for just that reason.
The alternative to limited government is unlimited government.
Probably doesn't matter then. Reading articles about Orca, there were hints that Orca ran using Micorosft technologies (like the fact that Microsoft did some consulting on Orca).
I'll probably get a troll mod for this from some Windows fanboi!
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Someone who is confident in their beliefs has no qualms with a level playing field. ...then again, isn't this a manipulation tool?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
They tried... there was a /. article about what a train wreck it was.
In this sense, the decision to mothball the tech would be a violation of the developers’ ethical principles.
Unless the developers were tricked into thinking they were developing an open source software platform, I don't see where ethics come in. Why would a business release the software that is widely believed to have given it a competitive advantage?
. "It’s going to send a very bad signal to engineers who might consider working on the next election cycle in 2016," says Rathee. "It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how we work."
There are lots of programmers that understand confidentiality and realize that their code is never going to be open sourced. Is there a growing body of developers that want everything to be open sourced and free to the world?
The things we built off of open source should go back to the public," says Manik Rathee, who worked as a user experience engineer with OFA. The team relied on open source frameworks like Rails, Flask, Jekyll and Django.
Isn't this exactly the type of thing Rails, Flask, Jekyll and Django were built for? To allow developers to quickly develop and deploy applications? This is the kind of FUD that makes corporations afraid to use open source - they think that if they take advantage of an Open Source framework then they are obligated to open source their code even if it's used only for an in-house application.
I don't see the source code for Google's search engine or Facebook's core code available for download even though both companies take advantage of FOSS software in their infrastructure -- that's not to say that they haven't released some of their support code, but the "secret sauce" that runs the business is still private.
Seriously, the RNC should set up its own programming task force and pay good money to develop their own system. It would put money into the economy and . .
Wait, how many H1-B's do you think they'll hire to save money??
We have met the enemy and he is us - Pogo (Walt Kelly)
Conservatives wouldn't stoop to using open sores code written by a bunch of lazy hippie socialist slackers who apparently can't get a real programming job in the private sector. They'll prefer to outsource the task to private contractors represented by the management consultants that they're used to dealing with.
Just to make sure, the Democrats could release the code under the GPLv3. Then the GOP would be afraid of even downloading the source, lest it virally appropriate the GOP's IP.
for closed: *if you actually look at the stats of open source code, you see it's primarily written and maintained by a small handful of very good and very productive coders. *elections are war. and war is by nature closed-source. *programmers are like 99% democratic, since the brain structure for programming and thinking like a democrat go hand in hand. i don't think they want to give the fruits of their intellectual labor to the intellectually lazy. that's kind of anti-darwinian. *it's pretty much certain that RNC will try to sabotage it if it's open-sourced. after all, that's essentially their modus-operandi. for open: *benefits of open sourcing is not to be disregarded. i'm sure there are peopel who can come up with better probability models and what not. *open-sourcing the code is not the same as open-sourcing the data. *the RNC already has very high voter turnout. it probably won't be that much of a benefit to them, certainly not in proportion to the benefit to the DNC, which has low voter turnout.
If the code is open, we might then have a notion of the scope, depth, and detail with which all of us are being tracked by the party. And that would probably be shocking to all of us who thought we had some level of privacy left. So I don't expect it to be open for just that reason.
It's not the Democratic Party that is doing the tracking - its the commercial data sources that they buy their data from. And you don't need to look at Obama's source code to see the depth that we are all tracked.
Let us know when you get to something the a GOP president hasn't or wouldn't have done in the same situation...
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
I say open-source it. Much like the NRA, the more they communicate with the American public, the less they're liked. Some of the biggest helpers in Obama's success were the off-color comments of Romney (47%), and those two wacko abortion Republicans. Another lost election or two and they might figure out they don't represent the majority of Americans anymore.
With the amount of money in politics, I would be extremely surprised if the RNC was not already investing in their own software development. In fact, take a look at this recent press release
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
The republicans run Windows. the GOTV code from the Obama campaign would be unusable to them.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
"Flamebait && Disagree" works for me. Troll.
I know for a fact the Republican Party of Florida has similar a software/database setup that is constantly tweaked, maintained and used. There are too many elections between Presidential ones to let it go to waste. The DNC just needs to sell it to the state party offices to keep it useful.
Shawn Moore http://www.teuse.net
The NDAA byt ys the only thyng here that ysn't stupyd.
As always the political people keep looking at this issue in the short term, not the long term, with "sound good" assumptions that may be dead wrong. At this point you need to look at your adversary's weaknesses. The GOP's weakness is their hesitation to change is the key. Therefore the assumption that the Republicans wouldn't come up with something this effective independently by 2016 is wrong, they would, unless you make the system open source and allows improvements to be made at a faster rate than they can cope with the changes, much like someone trying to shoot an accelerating target without "leading the target". The GOP historically has been slow to embrace change, with some rare and noteworthy exceptions. If anything the GOP tends to be more reactionary than the Democrat party. At least some of the Democrats know that what worked for 2012 maybe not work the same for 2014 or 2016.
For one thing, were the programmers paid for the work they did and was it clearly understood that their work may not be released as open source before they started (IOW, who holds copyright on the code?)
For another, that code could come back into play in 2014 for the midterm elections. Or it could be used sooner depending on how quickly 2016 starts to heat up.
You talk like the code is all locked away, and that the keepers have the power to keep it that way.
Trying to keep widely spread information away from "bad" people is a fool's quest. How many programmers worked on this project? Dozens? How easy would it be to duplicate the ideas, if not the exact code? Pretty easy. The data may be more difficult, thanks to the sheer quantity, but that's also the most perishable part.
Do you realize how easy it is to design nuclear weapons? I suppose you'd like to think it's a big, carefully guarded secret. It's not. Why else would a backward nation like North Korea be able to build them? The hard thing is obtaining the material. Also, the rocket science required for the preferred delivery method is not exactly easy. But as for the bomb itself, if you have enough material, a very weak explosion, or even just slamming two hunks together with a sledgehammer, is enough to set it off. With high precision, less material is needed.
And this is source code we're talking about here, not munitions, WMDs, or assault rifles. Such being the case, why make a big stink about it? Release it, and save everyone the trouble. Let's head off the possibility of people being dragged into court to defend themselves for leaking.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Open source and 'bad people' can use your code.
Puh-leese, that ship has already sailed. They worked hard to re-elect a guy who, according to the NYU/Stanford report has killed nearly a thousand civilians with drones, including 176 children, not to mention the number of injured.
That's a fantastically low number for a US president.
You're doing great so far, and I like where it's headed. If I could change one thing, I'd say, "Leave out the bit about telling women what to do with their bodies," because that's more or less explicitly written into their national platform. Otherwise, great work, I can't wait to see more next week.
Obama helped pass the requirement for people to buy health insurance, which while more conservative than single payer, is not conservative. Obama allowed homosexuals in the military, not a social conservative position. Obama has been in favor of financial assistance for underwater mortgages. Obama wanted a program to double American exports.
Bush tried to get rid of Fannie Mae. Bush wanted Congress to get rid of Social Security. Bush opposed Federal regulation of electricity sales in the aftermath of the 2001 California electricity price runup. Bush greatly restricted federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.
If the Democrats open-source, and the Republicans don't, won't such a situation provide a permanent edge for the Republicans?
But if our work was open and people were forking it and improving it all the time, then it keeps up with changes as we go.
And meanwhile, will help all the Democrats* in down-ballot and off-year races--who, near as I can tell, are typically disorganized as possible about GOTV.
Yeah, and Republicans, too, but really the downballot Dems need more help as a rule and IMHO Ds will benefit far more in aggregate than Rs will.
Getting more people to vote is good for the democratic process so the DNC should not look at it as a benefit to the Republicans but instead it is a benefit to all Americans. It should be open sourced so America benefits.
These people are the developers for heaven's sake. If they introduced 50 really hard to find bugs before they open-sourced it then some of them are likely to go undiscovered while naturally occurring bugs get fixed by whoever does contribute back. It improves the version the Dems have while still crippling the version out in the wild. Of course, the Repubs could always contribute back their own bugs, but even those might be revealing.
Nullius in verba
Those errors included the software, but the biggest error was a basic failure to provide necessary information to their poll-watchers. Regardless of how you set up the software, if your boots on the ground don't know WTF they're supposed to accomplish for you -- you will fail.
Worse, someone will do something stupid and make you look like an asshole to boot.
Shouldn't the candidate/administration that originally ran on ushering in a whole new era of government transparency be eager to share its software????
Fork the political software!
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
You realise that it's congress that wrote the NDAA? No, since you only watch FOX of course you didn't... it's all Obama's fault!
How many civilians did Bush kill? Why weren't you protesting then? Same reason you weren't protesting Bush's deficits (he had none when he came into office and left with a record sized one) but tear Obama a new one because of the deficits that were caused by the worst recession since the thirties? Same reason you scream "Taxed Enough Already" when federal taxes are lower than any time in your entire life (if you're not old enough to collect social security, taxes are lower than any time since Truman).
You, sir, are either rich, a racist, or a nitwit. Fuck off.
I bet if you could make a movie out of the code they'd find a way to leak the information.
In fact, open sourcing voting tools will push them into active development and maintenance mode, as other countries could opt-in to use these tools by themselves, and it could also help to push forward democracy around the world.
from the article:
"If the code OFA built was put on ice at the DNC until 2016, it would become effectively worthless. "None of that will be useful in four years, technology moves too fast," said Ryan. "But if our work was open and people were forking it and improving it all the time, then it keeps up with changes as we go."
He was referring to code OFA built. I don't think he means the personal data (addresses, phone numbers etc.) because they talk about separating the codebase from the database and retaining the database for privacy concerns. The code might run and compile in 4 years but will the mediums such as facebook or twitter still exist or be popular? Maybe the algorithms to identify the most cost effective efforts won't be relevant with the demographics in 4 years? I have no idea.
I thought the idea was to get EVERYONE out to vote, fully discuss all ideas, vet all candidates, and then trust the people to make up their minds who should lead them...
Apparently, by keeping this code "closed source" the Democrats are conceeding that they fear they might not have the best ideas or candidates, and instead have to rely on telemarketing-type gimmicks to "get out the vote".
Ken
What made OFA better was that people were willing to let Obama For America get access to their friend's list, .mailrc, gmail contact list etc etc. I, for one, would be very terribly upset if OFA shares the contact graph created by me allowing OFA access to my private list of friends shared willy-nilly and every Tom-Dick-or-Harry politician starts calling my contact list pretending to have my approval or endorsement. I gave Obama access to my contact list. I don't want it shared with DNC without my explicit approval.
I trust Congressional democrats less than I trust Obama. In fact I trust Congressional Republicans less only by a slim margin compared to congressional Democrats. Looks like Harry Reid is preparing to cry uncle and surrender everything in the filibuster reform.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Not opening the source is extremely short-sighted. On one hand, the opposition (read republicans in this case) may be able to leverage the progress of Obama's campaign developers. However, third parties would also be able to leverage this software. This would aid the third (or forth, fifth) parties to gain visibility and thus choice for the American people. Opening the code would be a net positive for those that matter; the American people.
ymmv
Post-election it was widely reported that the tech powering the Obama camp was a big factor in its success, whereas the Romney camp was handicapped by poorly tested & implemented systems.
Why would they want to give that away that sort of advantage?
My suggestion would be to make it easy to volunteer on the project, & hack on the code, but not go so far as to open source it. This enables participation from folks who are motivated, but doesn't give the competition a leg up.
Getting more people to vote is good for the democratic process so the DNC should not look at it as a benefit to the Republicans but instead it is a benefit to all Americans. It should be open sourced so America benefits.
Actually that is not true. Getting more people who care enough to know who they are voting for to vote is good for the democratic process. Getting people who vote based on what they learn about candidates in the last 30 days(or less) before the election is not good for the democratic process. The latter results in people voting for incumbents whose record while they were in office is exactly contrary to what many of those voters think they are voting for.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
It's not that simple.
Elections are unique in that you need nothing for 729 days. On the 730th you need a system that is so robust it can handle the entire country, so easy to use 1 million volunteers with 30 minutes training and virtually no experience can run it, so fast that people who literally only have 10 minutes to talk to you can get done in 5, etc.
This is not necessarily harder then anything the private sector does, but it's just so different. You can't just put out an ad and expect everything to work. You not only need programmers, you need programmers who have walked walk-lists, called call-sheets, dealt with Octogenarian political volunteers, etc.
Obama's advantages seem to be two-fold. First as an Organizer he understood how hard this is. He got his guys making a system like this during the primaries, whereas Mitt and McCain waited until they were officially nominated. Second Obamans from Silicon Valley seem a lot more common then Romneyites. If you're a campaign you don't really have the tech budget to compete with Facebook or Twitter. You need people who are happy to work for no money, and no stock options. And most of those people are pro-gay-marriage Democrats.
In a lot of ways that's probably why the campaign team doesn't want this to be Open Source.
The DNC likely owns this software. 1. The DNC keeps the software closed source because the #1 priority is defeating republicans. 2. The programmers loyal to the DNC will continue to maintain the software. 3. The programmers loyal to freedom will write a new bit of open source software that does the exact same thing. 4. Republicans will make a closed source copy of the software and use and update that themselves. 5. Eventually the open source one will just be better, but both sides will maintain a closed source duplicate of the open source software in order to bluff to the other side that they have a secret advantage.
the president of my country is decided by the effectiveness of one's campaign software. I would hate to see it determined on the effectiveness of the candidate...
Karma: Bad
which it might be fair to say we're still fighting at some levels.
I'm with you on the basic sentiment though. I would rather work with what we have than try to rebuild it from scratch. Revolutions and civil wars suck for those who live when they happen.
One of the Democrat's huge advantages last election was that they apparently could hire competent software development teams.
If you've ever been involved in software development, you know how rare this is.
The Republican software never worked properly. Why would you give away that advantage?
Once they catch up, whatever, but I woudn't do it now.
expandfairuse.org
If it's open sourced, the Repubs will never use the technology for (rightfully) fearing that it will "call home" to the Dems reporting on their activity, voter database updates, GOTV efforts, precincts, micro-targeting, etc.
Seriously? Somebody thinks that Republicans can code??? It's witchcraft and voodoo to them. Don't you think the Romney campaign could have afforded to hire the best, if they could find one Republican-sympathetic programmer who knew his ass from a Sarlacc?
Please help me in my campaign to extend the age of late-term abortion to 18 years. The number of psychopaths, douche-bags, simpletons and assholes has proliferated beyond Charles Darwin's worst nightmares thanks to the efficacy of modern medicine. Believe me, letting a child know that his life/death depends on his parents until he is of the age of consent will fix many of society's "problems".
Iit has been done before: at various times the Roman Empire allowed the father of the family complete control over the life and death of his children, which makes perfect sense to me.
So help me to support a Roman "Pater Familias" amendment to the Constitution. (At the very least let us sell the little bastards into slavery).
"Kill your parents before they kill you!" - Ted Rall
... Obama was not a natural born U.S. citizen, and therefore not qualified to be president?
Oh look, the brainwashed, self-hating white cretins are leaping to Obama's defence! You idiots. Your country is owned by Jews and they are destroying it through non-white immigration and endless propaganda - are you seriously telling me you don't want to live in an all white country?
Why aren't you moving to HAITI then?
If there's software out there that will help more Americans to vote why keep it closed? Seems hypocritical to me.
all this talk about gerrymandering. the solution is very simple, technologically speaking. here it is. open-source this:
block and length data can be taken from a standard dime file, which i presume any municiplality has. the census data, well i'm sure they have it electronically, cause hey, they draw districts. so getting the geolocation dataset is not a problem. you still have to add in code to make sure the districts are contiguous, though. b
class District {
Vector blocks;
double getEdgeLength() {
double length = 0;
for( Block block : blocks)
for( Edge edge : block.edges)
if( edge.block1.district != edge.block2.district)
length += edge.length;
return length;
}
}
class Block {
int district;
double population;
double prob_turnout;
double[] prob_vote = new double[num_parties];
Vector edges;
double[] getVotes() {
}
}
class Edge {
Block block1;
Block block2;
double length;
}
public double[][] getRandomResultSample(Vector districts) {
double[] popular_vote = new double[num_parties];
double[] elected_vote = new double[num_parties];
for(District district : districts) {
double district_vote = new double[num_parties];
for( Block block : district.blocks) {
double[] block_vote = block.getVotes();
for( int i = 0; i most_value) {
most_index = i;
most_value = district_vote[i];
}
}
elected_vote[most_index]++;
}
return new double[][]{popular_vote,elected_vote};
}
public double[] getGerryManderScores(Vector districts) {
double length = 0;
for(District district : districts) {
length += district.getEdgeLength();
}
double kldiv = 0;
for( int i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
double[][] results = getRandomResultSample(districts);
double[] popular_results = results[0];
double[] election_results = results[1];
}
return new double[]{length,Math.exp(kldiv)};
}
Code that made it possible for Obama to get elected by telling low information voters whatever it took to get them to vote for him, and a subroutine to smear Romney. Two lines? Its the compiler I'm impressed with. The NEA compiled two generation of idiots who are so blind to reality the put Obama in office twice and haven't even seen the final bill yet - the best part is the teacher unions were able to get the tax payers to foot the bill. 12 percent real unemployment. A demigod in office and don't even get me started on the wookie.
'I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes, when it takes a man's life.' ~ Four Leaf Tayback
http://www.theonion.com/articles/bush-our-long-national-nightmare-of-peace-and-pros,464/
Obama = Bush X 10 ie... Wer'e all screwed
who cares about the code, When will a president pay the light bill?
The Republican-controlled house that hates America so much that it spends all its time passing laws about women's health issues, naming post offices and ass-licking lobbyists does tend to limit what the President can accomplish, somewhat. It's the bad part of separation of powers, I guess.
It only matters who legally owns the code. It is their decision to open source it or not. I hope they do not. I do not want the Republicans gaining advantage they did not pay for.
I remember reading that Romney campaign workers found their expense cards shut off between the time Romney finished his confession speech and the cabs they took to arrive home. If somebody like that is too cheap to take care of people who were fighting for him he shouldn't get a freebie to help him win.
To the developers of that software,
I do not want to see that software open sourced, possibly giving Republicans an advantage and one they did not pay for. I am one of the people who contributed a non-trivial amount to President Obama's campaign. I'm sure other contributors do not like the idea of liberal donated funds going to help a Republican downstream.
If you want open source political software, make something new, make something that will be fair to all candidates and make something that will serve the public good.
How about an open source "get out the vote" software for local elections? Due to years of intense gerrymandering Republicans still won the House, despite more people from their areas voting for other people. Gerrymandering happened in part due to not every liberal who could have voted in local elections doing so.
Help reverse that trend with open source software to inform the ordinary voter of that situation and to get them out to vote when the battle to reverse that gerrymandering begins.
That will give all candidates, from every party a level, fair, playing field. More importantly it will give people fair representation.
Why not skip the decade-long cycle of getting out the word, and simply introduce mandatory attendance at elections?
Many other countries do it, and it makes for significantly fairer elections with fewer batshit insane^W^Wextremist candidates.
if (voter.type == NIGGER || voter.type == SPIC) {
democratProbability +=100
}
Those so-called evangelicals are just a subset of Christians. Not all Christians, nor even all conservative Christians, identify as evangelicals and in fact some liberal Christians call themselves evangelicals.
Are you implying that they engage in politics from the pulpit?
Left-leaning pro-Democrat churches (particularly in the black community) have long practiced politics very openly from the pulpit. Democrats like Jesse Jackson have actually passed the plate and had their rallies in churches. Left-leaning churches have hosted get-out-the-vote actions including transporting voters to the polls etc. Right-leaning churches have been threatened with legal action and the potential loss of their tax-exempt status by the IRS if they even mention a candidate or cause. I am personally aware of a church that was threatened because they allowed a pro-life group (NOT a candidate-affiliated org) to circulate an ant-abortion ballot measure petition in their parking lot. As a result, most churches you would presume are right-leaning stay far away from politics and we do not know just how successful they would be as political organizers. There has in recent years been an effort on the right to get churches to stop self-censoring and take the legal attack from the IRS (with the hope that the resulting court cases would make it to the Supreme Court and permanently destroy the IRS mechanism for threatening conservative churches). Interestingly, some such churches have take-up that cause and defied the IRS, finally touching politics directly from the pulpit in the past couple of years only to find that none of the IRS threats has been carried-out.... so apparently the IRS is not too eager to get into a court on a 1st amendment fight
"Republicans with their friendly corporations can hire better programmers and put together equal or better code."
Seriously???
First, We got a rather obvious acid test only two months ago that says this is demonstrably FALSE ... the Billion-dollar Obama machine (you know, the one that is friends with all the big music, movie, TV, and video game companies ... oh, and that little enterprise called "Google") trounced the supposedly big business machine of captain Romney and his whale. Sure, Romney got some fair-weather-friend cash from Wall St Bankers (Obama got THAT money 4 years earlier) but that cash simply was not enough to beat the piles of cash Obama took in AND it was from a source (bankers) that could provide none of the sort of additional tech know-how that team Romney clearly needed.
as for:
"I gave Obama access to my contact list. I don't want it shared with DNC without my explicit approval."
Sorry, nearly died laughing. I presume you also believed Obama when he attacked Bush for deficit spending? Team Obama has been publicly bragging for months about how they vacuumed-up every last thing they could learn about their voters and would be using that valuable info. Didn't get a clue when they started telling Democrats who else in their neighborhoods were Democrats???? You no longer have any privacy if you disclose anything to either Google OR team Obama
"you will be hard pressed to find a single bill that he has signed that would not have been signed by Reagan. Hell, Obama has even raised taxes fewer times - for a lower total percentage - than Reagan did in his first term"
First, let's get the slam-dunk out of the way:
That handles the two big laws Obama signed in his 1st term (and some of his orders) for which he'll be remembered most.
Now onto the squishier stuff: Reagan would not have repealed DODT and would not have boosted the funds to Planned Parenthood. While you are correct about how many TIMES the two men raised taxes, you are very misleading here. First, Reagan was pulling tax rates down from very high levels (which the super-rich never paid anyway) while eliminating lots of loopholes and gimmicks so that when he left office the rich were paying a bigger percent of the burden (but with lower RATES) than when he started. Second, Reagan had a congress who opposed him and fought him continually... so he signed many bills that were important to him during the Cold War and into which the Democrats had injected many tax hikes. Third, Obama rammed through the largest tax increase in the history of the human race... but he did it in just 3 bills, each of which includes many taxes we will all pay but which most people have not yet heard of and many parts of which are not yet being collected... wait for your mid-2014 pay stubs.
One of the Democrat's huge advantages last election was that they apparently could hire competent software development teams.
Or maybe they were just fortunate that it all fell together. Somehow I doubt that these software developers were getting full freight for their services. No, they donated their time and expertise because they liked Obama and wanted to see him reelected. I doubt that they care much about the DNC or would be willing to come back and do it again for Joe Biden or Hillary, should she choose to run in 2016. On the other hand, I find it fascinating that so many of my fellow software professionals supported Obama. Do they not see that they, being amongst the upper middle class, will be some of the first ones hurt by higher taxes and health care costs? The US tax code is especially unfriendly to young, single and well paid professionals which is precisely the group that many of us fall into. The poor are subsidized and the rich don't care so it's always the middle class, and especially the upper middle class, that's hurt most by the sorts of tax and spend policies favored by Obama. College students can be forgiven for being useful idiots, but we professionals ought to have known better. I cannot help but think that those of us who voted again for Obama were voting with their hearts and not their heads.
"How is driving customers to businesses - which are free to set their own prices to maximize profit - not conservative?"
This is a lie. First, Obamacare mandates the things those insurance policies must cover and any policy that does not meet his demands is eliminated (so much for his most-famous lie "if you like your health insurance, you can keep it"). Second, Obamacare sets a limit on the percentage of profit any health insurance company can make... in fact back in August the administration was high-fiving over the refund checks some companies were sending out and saying that when people got their rebate checks they would be happy and vote for Obama. Third, Obamacare sets-up government-run insurance exchanges which are designed to provide insurance plans to people at lower rates than the free markets can (this will undercut the for-profit companies with all the mandates). Fourth, Obamacare sets the penalty for not having insurance so low that it is designed to drive employers to drop the big expensive mandated policies and dump everybody into the exchanges... in twenty years there will be no health insurance companies. Nothing about this is Conservative.... it is in fact entirely fundamentally anti-American
"It sure as hell isn't liberal or even centrist."
You are right... it's a slow-motion march into the gulag of Marxism. When the market, so massively distorted by the rules of Obamacare, ultimately collapses the left will offer-up "single-payer" as the solution to a public who needs healthcare. That's the goal. Your car insurance company would collapse if ordered to accept all drivers (no matter how reckless) pay-off for all pre-existing crashes, ordered to provide only premium policies, and then forced to compete with government subsidized efforts, while being restricted from making too much profit (so no "good year" would provide the execc cash to cover for the losses of "bad years"). Once the government controls your health, it controls your life... and that's why nobody on the continent of Europe even knows what freedom is; their politics are so severely limited to a narrow leftist spectrum between national socialism (NAZIs ... which they consider "far right") and international socialism (Communists ... which they consider "far left"). There's no true freedom there; all their political fights are just minor distractions over the small details. I've never met a European who could imagine life without the government. That's the extremely narrow ideological blinders Obama wants future "tamed and docile" Americans to wear .... and he presumes they'll be happy living their lives that way ... like trained pets
"Go all the way back to Hoover and you won't find a republican president who would not have signed that measure in particular."
Bull Provably bull. No Republican has ever signed such an abomination. It will take several decades but this will end with bloodshed. A sizeable portion of the American population will never tolerate the sort of government-run health rationing that will happen after single-payer kicks-in. When people have private insurance, they can select from among several providers. If a provider gets a reputation as "evil" people leave it. If a provider gets too far out of hand, the people can appeal to their government (as a neutral party) for intervention. When people get something from the government, they have nowhere to appeal. By well-established US law and court precedence, you CAN sue the government... but it can choose to not pay you anything and it need pay no attention to any 3rd party. When Americans start to see their own government withholding healthcare and actively killing them they will fight back. I'll happily be dead-and-buried by then, but I'll leave enough guns and ammo to the kids who will need them..... and millions of other Americans will as well.
Do they not see that they, being amongst the upper middle class, will be some of the first ones hurt by higher taxes and health care costs?
They might think that they're already being hurt excessively like that, and that the Dems are more likely to change things in a way that they favor. Or they might be valuing other objectives more highly where the Dems have a stronger policy advantage (in the eyes of those concerned) such as action on climate change or infrastructure investment. It doesn't matter whether you agree with them. It's their free decision, just as you're free to decide what you do, and presumably they and you have a different weighting of the importance of various objectives.
The real problem is when you've got zealots around who reject all compromise and who drag their party with them. Right now, that's especially the Tea Party (which is blocking the rest of the Reps from negotiating properly) but the risk is always present; the Dems, for all their faults, are mostly sitting on their zealots. For now. Who knows what will happen in a few years?
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Just pass a law making voting a requirement. Everybody votes; no need for software, canvassers, or massive exhortations about our "civil responsibility."
Remember -- the apps they're talking about here don't provide people with information about the candidates or even try to change their vote. They (the apps) just ID people who both are likely to vote for the desired candidate and need some "encouragement" to vote at all.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
The code was great. I used it, and marveled at it. But hoarding it also says to me that OFA might not have enough faith in it’s team or it’s supporters. I believe that republicans used [another similar software] as it is, and obviously not real competently. Maybe they are forgetting it was people using those tools, and people that cast their votes. $.02
I loaded the application for 20 seconds and it uses a database combined with location information.
Knock on a door and you know, who, what, when, and gosh most anything else you might want to know.
Privacy issues abound because as a tool it clearly identifies "friends" and "foes" of a campaign.
It {is||can be} used selectively by gvment funded groups to provide transportation to those they wish to transport to polling places.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
It doesn't matter whether you agree with them. It's their free decision
Indeed it is, but I question the wisdom of their priorities. The mid 20s and early 30s are critical to the future financial and career success of the budding young professional. Maximizing savings during these early years maximizes the long term returns from compounding interest and investment growth. If income goes instead to higher healthcare premiums and taxes during these critical years, as seems likely during the second Obama term and going forward, it hurts young people much more than someone already in their 40s or 50s encountering these higher costs for the first time. Many young people aren't financially literate enough to see this and by the time they do figure it out, they will have already missed their best chances to retire as millionaires. Life is easier when you're younger, but age and infirmity catch up with us all so it's far better to have substantial private savings than to rely upon the self serving promises of elected officials who will all be dead and gone by the time we're left holding the empty bag. So if skillful management of private savings and the exercise of sound financial judgement is zealotry then I suppose that I'm a zealot, but who would you rather be when you retire? Rich Uncle Pennybags or your broke second cousin who still lives paycheck to paycheck at age 50?