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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 It was these outdated options that convinced team Obama to build all the campaign tech in-house.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.
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.
Because they don't care about good policy, they care about their team winning.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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.
Unless that copyright owner is considered to be "The US Government" or any subsidiary group, in which case it is open by default as far as I know? (eg NASA images)
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
You forgot to call them Nazis who want to tell women what to do with their bodies and shoot gay people with assault weapons.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
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.
Yup... it still a hard choice, though. Means to an end? It's OK if your candidate wins because of advertising, money spent, catch phrases and slogans, or computer software instead of winning because they had the best ideas and most tenable solutions to problems? I'm not starting an argument about whether or not Obama won that way - we're talking about the future. If the people involved actually wanted the best candidate to win, then they wouldn't try to advantage one over the other. Obviously, people want their side to "win," whether or not their candidate was better. Who are we to tell them what to do with their software?
Stupid sexy Flanders.
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.
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.
Nice. I reserve that for the teabaggers ;).
They tried... there was a /. article about what a train wreck it was.
Doubtful, considering the "dream team of engineers from Facebook, Google and Twitter". I'd bet linux servers, running apache &mysql, with either PHP or ruby running the server side language.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Yup... it still a hard choice, though.
No, there's no hard choice. Neither major party has the best ideas or most tenable solutions to any of our problems. Any support for either is supporting the continuation of our anti-democratic system. Whether Republicans win or Democrats win in 2014 or 2016 is irrelevant. The only question that matters is when we fix our electoral system.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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)
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.
Ron Paul is a loon. Like a broken clock he's right twice a day, as in Liberty'O'Clock. But other than that, he's quite literally batshit crazy.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
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.
You are right actually, Microsoft was a Consultant. And you're right about getting Modded down, every time I mention 'Linux' I am marked as a Troll and I JUST registered. We should all just go back to posting as AC lol.
As for this Code being Open Sourced, I can understand the reluctance from the DNC and the urgency for the RNC.
One and the same. We're using broad brushes here ;-)
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
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
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.
Ron Paul is a loon. Like a broken clock he's right twice a day, as in Liberty'O'Clock. But other than that, he's quite literally batshit crazy.
... But the people who keep voting in the same oligarchs, time and time again, expecting said aristocracy to actually do things differently at some point, are not somehow 'batshit crazy?' Or are you silently acknowledging that the D and R voters are just-as-if-not-moreso crazy than those who vote for Paul?
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results" -- Albert Einstein
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
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"
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 by batshit crazy you mean advocating the withdrawl of U.S. troops overseas and not wanting to start pointless wars, or supporting 1st, 2nd and 4th Amendment rights and opposing the expansion of TSA, Patriot Act, stop the indefinite detention of American citizens, or wanting to reduce federal spending and balance the budget, or legalize marijuana and stop the war on drugs, or support gay marriage and other civil rights for gays, then yeah I guess he's batshit crazy.
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.
"Most conservative?"
You have avery limited definition of Conservative. He's the left-most President in history on gay rights. He's left of Bush on health care, taxes, military spending, Immigration Reform (he supports a path-to-citizenship for all illegals, not just DREAMers), and regulating Wall Street. That encompasses pretty much everything in most Americans top 10 issues facing DC. And we still haven't gotten to the #1 Conservative project: re-making the Supreme Court in their image.
Pretty much the only area he could be considered right of Bush is his use of drones, and that's only because Bush didn't have this many drones to play with.
Who are we to tell them what to do with their software?
The fucking owners, that's who.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
This is a joke
I'm not getting the joke
Make up your mind?
Everything is better with chainsaws.
If the Democrats open-source, and the Republicans don't, won't such a situation provide a permanent edge for the Republicans?
I understand saying Obama is conservative for Europe. But you are comparing him to other US presidents from the past 30 years.
He is the most (publicly) pro-abortion president we have ever had. He is for socializing healthcare (just wasn't able to get that far.) He is trying to severely limit the 2nd amendment. He firmly believes the government is best suited to solve with most social and economic issues. He speaks vocally against corporations. He is pro-gay marriage. He is against limiting to Social Security and Medicare. He relaxed the welfare requirements. There are tons more examples. Whether you agree or disagree with his goals, you can not honestly say he is more conservative than Reagan, Bush Sr, or even Clinton.
Just because he claims to be Reagan, doesn't make it true.
Who owns the code?
Well, let's see... It was written by public employees, for the public election of a public official, paid for by public monies...
Who honestly has to ask that question? "Honestly" being the key word in that sentence.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Considering we only ever get to pick from two hand selected candidates
That's not true - in the majority of states, there were no less than 4 candidates on the ballot.
That you, and people that think like you, don't consider third-party candidates as viable is part of the fucking problem, you know.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
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.
You care about your team winning because you think your team has the best policy. Either the tax burden on the wealthy is a drag to economic growth; or it needs to go up so we can pay for the troops who protect the economy that makes those people wealthy. Either the health system is choking economic growth because people pay too much for care (ie: they delay care until it gets really expensive, and then they can't successfully negotiate a good price because they're fucking dying), or it's choking economic growth because people pay too little (ie: they have no reason to negotiate a good price). Either the military is the perfect size, but could probably use some more toys, or it's too big and needs to get smaller. Either deficits are terrible and will destroy America, or they're not a big deal and we should continue them until the economy picks up some more.
There really isn't a lot of middle ground here.
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.
If the code was done by the government, the US citizens should own the code, after all they paid for it directly or indirectly with their taxes. And if well to US citizens could care or not of getting the code on how to schedule internal meetings in some random government agency, they are directly involved in the code that makes them citizens with right to vote and not just monkeys doing a vote simulation every 4 years that dont affect at all the already choosen result.
It was written by PRIVATE employees, paid for by PRIVATE monies. Obama's campaign did not take PUBLIC money for his re-election.
The code is either owned by the Obama campaign, or the DNC, or perhaps a specific individual. It all depends on who payed and who commissioned the work. Regardless, no government civilian workers had their government paychecks granted to them because they worked on coding the Obama campaign's get out to work widget.
Fork the political software!
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
My mistake, too many keywords in headline. If was for a campaing for a particular party, opening the code could be a signal of good will about wanting an open government, but is up to them to open the code unless they based on existing code that requires to have it open or closed.
You are making a critical error in your comparisons. You are comparing what Obama has said to what other presidents have done. Obama has been president for a full term now, it is time to look at what he has done.
And if you do that, 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.
Every president as a candidate says they will do various things, and each president accomplishes a varied amount of those things (one could argue Obama is distinct in how few of those he has accomplished). However if you are talking about what Reagan, Bush, Clinton, or Bush Jr did, then you need to compare it to what Obama has done. And if you do that, you'll find that he is easily the most conservative of the set. We can even go back further and add Nixon to that set and Obama is arguably more conservative than him as well.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The "Dream Team" worked on the Democratic tool. Orca was Romney's tool.
Part of caring about policy is caring about what can get through Congress.
If we were a Westminster-system Democracy I'd have a lot more respect for potential third-party candidates as policy-makers. But we aren't. We've got a bicameral Legislature, and an independent Executive. To actually get your ideas implemented you need a majority of both houses (and probably 60% of the Senate), and no US Third Party has a plan like that. Most don't even have warm bodies in a majority of Congressional districts and Senate seats, and it's very rare for those candidates to be qualified for the job. Note that I'm including Ron Paul in this, because he doesn't seem to understand that being doctrinaire Libertarian dooms you in Congress despite having years of experience getting jack done in Congress due to his excessively doctrinaire Libertarianism. Their plan tends to be:
1) I, Ron Paul/Ralph Nader/etc., will make the speech that energized the neckbeards/hippies/etc. a bunch more times.
2) ???
3) Victory!
They really honestly have no idea how they're gonna win a) Congressional seats where they don't have candidates (aka: most of them), or b) how they'll convince Boehner/Cantor/Pelosi/etc. to support their agenda.
In the UK or Canada this would be fine. By winning the top job, or even getting a significant proportion of the vote, you'd get seats in Parliament and the big parties would have to pay attention to you. At a minimum you'd be able to give the actual Prime Minister the third degree come Question Period. But in America you get a footnote in the history books. Just ask Debs.
Ron Paul is not a candidate for people who care about policy because he will never make policy. He's a candidate for people who care about looking good on Slashdot.
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.
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
This is where I think you are wrong. Campaigns are paid for by donations, not from a government fund. Who does own it? I'm not really sure whether it would be some entity tied to Obama but not to the government or perhaps the DNC. Point being it's nothing like NASA, or any other government funded initiative and whoever does actually own it can do with it as they please.
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
Just because he hasn't been as successful as he would like, does not make him conservative. Clinton, Reagan, Bush, and Obama were better at negotiating than Obama. Obama had a tough time even passing things when he controlled both branches. Republicans winning in the mid terms was probably the best thing that could have happened for Obama since Republicans opposition diverted attention from his own party's dissension.
He's the left-most President in history on gay rights. He's left of Bush on health care, taxes, military spending, Immigration Reform (he supports a path-to-citizenship for all illegals, not just DREAMers), and regulating Wall Street. That encompasses pretty much everything in most Americans top 10 issues facing DC.
And, that pretty much sums up why the US won't solve its problems unless they elect someone from a 3rd party, as none of those issues can be "solved" without major changes.
For example, one party would like more military spending, while the other wants more spending on health care. Yet, neither want to raise taxes enough to finance their desired spending, nor could they do so even if they wanted to, so instead we see devastating cuts to things like NASA, when a couple of days worth of war budget could pay for NASA for a year.
Likewise, both parties have differing opinions on hot button social topics (gay marriage, abortion, etc.) that affect a relative minority of people, while both strongly support the erosion of the freedoms guaranteed by the bill of rights (which should concern many more people). There are indivdual politicians in both parties who do not fit this stereotype, but if they number 10% of the power, I'd be surprised.
OK, I have many problems with Ron Paul, but he is by no stretch of the imagination a fascist. Please explain to me in what ways Ron Paul favors the government telling businesses how they should operate (that is what fascism is)? I have never seen anything in which Ron Paul has expressed support for any type of central planning of the economy.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
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.
Bush and Obama are actually far to the left, if you consider the far left to be total government and far right being no government.
They both believe that the government has a right to regulate in everything that you do. Obama has done nothing but expand everything that Bush started.
He was only recently for gay marriage but both believe that the state can decide who can or can't marry.
Both agree the government should be involved in healthcare
Both twiddled with the income tax but both believe that the government in principle owns everything you make and only allows you to keep a portion of it.
Both increased military spending and both believe in preventative war, policing the world and expanding the empire.
both have left the border wide open. Bush only paid lip service to any immigration issues.
Both believe in giving bailouts to corporations. Obama's so called regulation just gave the Federal Reserve more power, which is nothing but a cartel of private banks who have a monopoly on printing fiat currency.
Both spy on you.
Both have eroded habeus corpus.
Both have said that they can assassinate any American citizen without trial.
The only difference is in their rhetoric, but when it comes to basic, fundamental freedom, they are complete statists.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
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
He speaks vocally against corporations.
And yet, he (like every other politician) takes their money and does their bidding, instead of listening to what the people want.
For example, if recreational drugs were legalized but regulated, every federal law enforcement officer involved in the "war on drugs" over the past 20 years could instead have been tasked to fighting terrorism, and maybe we'd still have the World Trade Center standing. Maybe not, but the fact that there isn't nearly as strong a criminal element in the alcohol business after prohibition was repealed points out that legalizing drugs would have all sorts of ripple effects in reducing crime, allowing existing law enforcement to be able to help with crimes that can't be legislated away.
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.
No, those are the sane parts of his opinions. Unfortunately they go along with his ideas to change our money to shiny rocks, get us out of all trade agreements, shut down the department of education, remove most federal regulations (but not women's rights!), never raise taxes, and of course his questionably racist remarks.
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
I dunno, I voted for the Dems and got Healthcare out of it. Unfortunately I also got a GOP minority that has flat out admitted they only intended to stop Obama, not actually govern. Seriously, the night of his 1st inauguration the GOP brain trust met and decided the term would be spent solely opposing anything Obama supported.
Only thing more amazing that that bit of anti-American politicizing is the fact that they admitted it on record!
Does anyone really believe the Dems would have instituted the pseudo secret police state we have now on their own? Granted Obama and Dems have kept it mostly so they get strikes for that, but we're a boatload better now than in 2008.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
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
advocating the withdrawl of U.S. troops overseas
So you'd be ok with letting South Korea be run over by the North? Because it would happen in a heart beat without our support. Or perhaps Russian/Chinese control of the Middle East or pretty much the rest of the globe?
not wanting to start pointless wars
His party is the one who did that...Obama opposed it. Dems are tarred with not having the spine to stand up to the GOP fear-mongering but do you really think the Dems would be out starting wars? Seriously?
supporting 1st, 2nd and 4th Amendment rights and opposing the expansion of TSA, Patriot Act, stop the indefinite detention of American citizens
See Liberty'O'Clock'
wanting to reduce federal spending and balance the budget
Nice platitude. How about specifics? It's hard. When asked "if a child of an illegal alien is brought to a hospital and needs treatment, do you treat the child?" His response was a five minute monologue on his various crazy theories. In the immortal words of Jon Stewart: "I'm sorry, the correct answer was 'Yes'".
legalize marijuana and stop the war on drugs, or support gay marriage and other civil rights for gays
Again see Liberty'O'Clock'.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Which is just a long winded way of saying there are no candidates for people who care about good policy. If you care about good policy, you can't vote for either Democrats or Republicans, because they won't implement good policy. You can't vote third party, because they can't implement good policy.
The only conclusion is that our system is well and truly broken and must be scrapped. If you care about good policy, fixing the electoral system is the only thing that matters. And that won't happen for as long as D & R monopolize politics in this country.
So if you care about good policy, who are you going to vote for? Is voting for a D or R going to bring about electoral reform? You and I both know that it won't. But voting third party might. Therefore voting third party is the only responsible choice for people who care about good policy.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The more I read about this, the less it seems such a simple, black-and-white issue. For example, according to TFA, the Obama campaign team based their work on existing open source software - If the aforementioned base software was licensed* as GPLv3, wouldn't that mean that all derivative works must also be licensed as GPLv3, and thus, be open source and publicly available?
Murky waters...
* As far as I can tell, TFA doesn't mention what the base software was licensed under, only that it was open source.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Please explain to me in what ways Ron Paul favors the government telling businesses how they should operate (that is what fascism is)?
No, fascism is the other way around. When businesses tell the government how they should operate. It is the merger of state and corporate power. In other words, very much like the United States.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I dunno, I voted for the Dems and got Healthcare out of it.
Did you? I voted for Obama in '08, partially because of his promise to completely socialize health care (as a real, hardline fiscal conservative able to see beyond the end of my own nose, I find myself supporting programs that many people who claim to be fiscal conservatives balk at).
Thing is, that didn't happen - not only did the "compromise" do nothing to fix the massive cost issues associated with healthcare, it really didn't do anything good for anyone who doesn't own an insurance company.
So, in short, yea, you got "healthcare," but not the healthcare you voted for.
Unfortunately I also got a GOP minority that has flat out admitted they only intended to stop Obama, not actually govern.
Yea, that's just dumb, regardless of political philosophy.
Only thing more amazing that that bit of anti-American politicizing is the fact that they admitted it on record!
Please don't use that term - it's indicative of a subjective, completely emotional thought process that eschews reason in favor of sensationalism.
And yes, that applies to pretty much every single instance in which that term is used.
Does anyone really believe the Dems would have instituted the pseudo secret police state we have now on their own?
Libertarians have been lamenting the psuedo-duopolistic oligarchy's slow march towards authoritarian fascism for as long as I've been alive, probably longer.
Not their fault nobody listened before now.
Granted Obama and Dems have kept it mostly so they get strikes for that, but we're a boatload better now than in 2008.
Depends on how you define "better."
Fiscally, yes, the country isn't quite as tits-up as it was 4 years ago (still pretty fucked, just not as fucked), but from a human rights standpoint, we were better off with Bush*.
Think NDAA, PATRIOT Act renewal, attacks on the 2nd Amendment (yes, that counts, regardless of your personal opinion regarding firearms), rampant prosecutorial abuse, the straight-up assaults by police on peaceful protestors, the increase in deportations, and of course, the President's personal hit list, or as he prefers to call it, his "disposition matrix," which has included at least one American citizen; an American citizen who was executed summarily, with not even a semblance of due process.
*OK, technically we were better off before Bush, but you specifically mentioned the end of his Presidency, so I feel mentioning anyone prior to that would be non sequitur to this particular discussion.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
He's the left-most President in history on gay rights. He's left of Bush on health care, taxes, military spending, Immigration Reform (he supports a path-to-citizenship for all illegals, not just DREAMers), and regulating Wall Street. That encompasses pretty much everything in most Americans top 10 issues facing DC.
And, that pretty much sums up why the US won't solve its problems unless they elect someone from a 3rd party, as none of those issues can be "solved" without major changes.
For example, one party would like more military spending, while the other wants more spending on health care. Yet, neither want to raise taxes enough to finance their desired spending, nor could they do so even if they wanted to, so instead we see devastating cuts to things like NASA, when a couple of days worth of war budget could pay for NASA for a year.
Dude, I hate to break it to you, but no President can actually solve America's problems the way you're saying.
The reason none of this will change is that Congress won't agree to significantly change any of it. The President can't force Congress to do anything.
We have a state with more then locus of power. The power-loci are designed to fight each-other. They aren't allowed to change things much unless they all agree. Putting a third party leader will make the situation worse. With no ties to the other loci of power he doesn't get 45 Senate votes, and 190-odd House votes for free. He has to earn them all, on every issue. A Third-Party President would get nothing done. Ever.
If we had a Parliamentary system with no Separation of Powers, and Checks and Balances were limited to Judicial Review then we'd have policy that makes sense at a Macro level. As is we have small-c conservative policy that only changes when somebody really pushes for a change. NASA's budget was set back when Reagen really pushed for it, and it can't grow unless Obama (or the Speaker, or a key Senator) decides to give up a lot of other stuff for it. However it can shrink, because the right-wing power locus believes that Non-Defense Discretionary Spending cuts are not a big deal and nobody else has the energy to prove them wrong.
Now if Obama had gotten the House along with the Senate we'd be in a different situation. NASA is stimulative so it wouldn't get cut, and taxes (at least on the top 2%) would go up to partially pay for it. But he didn't.
BTW your math is wrong. ObamaCare was paid for by a combination of tax hikes and Medicare cuts. Those tax hikes/cuts are now part of the small-c conservative Federal Budget, and cannot be gotten around without the agreement of Obama and both Houses of Congress. Obama is not likely to let the GOP gut his signature achievement, so they will happen until at least 2016.
Anarchists really try too hard.
You for example are claiming that Obama is a statist for not using state power to close the border, while simultaneously claiming he's a statist for paying the troops that would allow him to close the border.
As for the rest, you do realize that 90% of the state's job is to prevent other, more tyrannical, states from taking over? And that Anarchism has yet to demonstrate an ability to replace this very important function of the state?
Always remember: Jim Crow did not happen because Washington DC imposed it on a bunch of white people who really did not want to be racist. It happened because Washington DC decided that opposing the oppression of blacks was not a valid use of state power. In most of the country (ie: outside the South) state-power had nothing to do with segregation. Detroit was actually more segregated then the South simply by virtue of having all the Real Estate Agents conspire to not sell black people houses in certain neighborhoods/suburbs.
State powere = freedom for anyone who does not have military training, but does have militarily-trained neighbors who want to oppress his ass.
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
I'm not really sure I'm disagreeing with you. My strategy to implement good policy is to become a Democratic insiders and work from there. In the mean-time I'll have more ability to get good policies considered as a party activist then I would as a guy who votes every two years for doomed candidates. The pro with my strategy is that it offers an actual solution to the problem, the con is that it (at best) takes forever.
Electoral reform would be somewhat helpful from a policy point of view. For example a US House elected by PR would be led by Pelosi, because the Dems won the popular vote; which means that Obama would actually have a lot more room to consider policy implications of his proposals rather then simply doing a Hard Count.
OTOH it probably requires a Constitutional Amendment (IL and TX ain't giving the ability to be dicks to the out-party without a fight), and if you're gonna do that you might as well get rid of the entire concept of Separation of Powers. In policy terms it just doesn't seem to be very useful. In the early 19th it was useful for keeping Jackson from establishing a dictatorship, but in the context of modern diversified economies it just seems like a recipe for arguing about stupid shit.
because of his promise to completely socialize health care
You don't get everything you want, that's called compromise. I too would have liked full on socialized medicine. Perhaps in time.
it really didn't do anything good for anyone who doesn't own an insurance company.
Spoken like someone who isn't on the margins of society. Can't be cut from your insurance for costs, denied for pre-existing conditions, children stay on parents till 26 etc. All are massive benefits to those who don't own insurance companies.
anti-American
If you have a better term for describing their thought process and actions during the Obama presidency, I'm all ears.
Think NDAA
Uh, Bush had them too. He just didn't codify into 'print' what he was doing, but he was doing all of it pretty much.
PATRIOT Act renewal
Somehow the 'renewal' makes it worse? Again, do you seriously believe the Dems would do this on their own?
attacks on the 2nd Amendment (yes, that counts)
Only if you can come up with *any* of these so called 'attacks' prior to Newtown?
rampant prosecutorial abuse
Two words, Alberto Gonzales and three more "I don't recall".
the straight-up assaults by police on peaceful protestors
A direct line from the war on terror fear-mongering started under Bush. Doesn't excuse it but pinning that on Obama? Not so much.
the increase in deportations
Uh, we're deporting 'criminals' aren't we? Not illegals, but illegals who commit crimes. Somehow this is bad?
the President's personal hit list
Uh, you're claiming Bush didn't have the exact same thing?
which has included at least one American citizen; an American citizen who was executed summarily, with not even a semblance of due process.
two more words. Jose Padilla.
We are a damn sight better than we were. We haven't started any ridiculous wars in 4 years. We helped topple a couple dictators without shedding any blood. Bush? not quite so good.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
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)};
}
"Most conservative?"
You have avery limited definition of Conservative. He's the left-most President in history on gay rights. He's left of Bush on health care, taxes, military spending, Immigration Reform (he supports a path-to-citizenship for all illegals, not just DREAMers), and regulating Wall Street. That encompasses pretty much everything in most Americans top 10 issues facing DC. And we still haven't gotten to the #1 Conservative project: re-making the Supreme Court in their image.
Pretty much the only area he could be considered right of Bush is his use of drones, and that's only because Bush didn't have this many drones to play with.
Or perhaps your definition of conservative is limited. Face it, Bush was a very liberal president in the classical sense. He made lots of sweeping changes that deviated from the status quo. He created an entire new branch of government for heaven's sake. If Obama is actually trying to tune that back, then he is being conservative than Bush as he is trying to return to the former status quo. As far as left and right, that's an entirely different set of definitions that one should really set down before beginning the discussion, because like many terms, what you think they stand for may not, and probably isn't, the same as what other people think they stand for even if they agree with you on the issues at hand.
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
Good point.
'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
In the mean-time I'll have more ability to get good policies considered as a party activist then I would as a guy who votes every two years for doomed candidates
Why would Democrats work for good policy that pleases you if you're going to vote for them either way? The only way to get them to listen is to jeopardize their ability to win elections. The only way to do that is to vote for someone else. Voting for either major party is throwing your vote away.
The pro with my strategy is that it offers an actual solution to the problem, the con is that it (at best) takes forever.
A solution that takes forever is no solution at all. Turing could have told you that.
you might as well get rid of the entire concept of Separation of Powers. In policy terms it just doesn't seem to be very useful. In the early 19th it was useful for keeping Jackson from establishing a dictatorship, but in the context of modern diversified economies it just seems like a recipe for arguing about stupid shit.
Separation of powers doesn't seem useful now, because we are effectively a dictatorship. The arguing about stupid shit is to keep us distracted from that fact. There's less actual diversity of opinion between the two major US parties than there was in the old USSR Communist party. The Republican aide who wrote a white paper in favor of copyright reform lost his job, and R isn't even the party that's owned by Hollywood for fucks sake.
And that was his job! He was being paid to identify issues the Republicans could use to differentiate themselves from the Democrats, and win the hearts and minds of the undecided and disaffected. He found one, and lost his job for it. And you're going to try the same thing in the party of copyright maximalists? Get real.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Really? Businesses told Mussolini how to operate the government? Hitler?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
And let's not forget shutting down the CDC, NIST, NOAA, and NASA. Ron Paul is all for that. Woo.
Pretty much the only area he could be considered right of Bush is his use of drones, and that's only because Bush didn't have this many drones to play with.
How is that policy a left/right issue?
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
I dunno, I voted for the Dems and got Healthcare out of it.
Did you? I voted for Obama in '08, partially because of his promise to completely socialize health care (as a real, hardline fiscal conservative able to see beyond the end of my own nose, I find myself supporting programs that many people who claim to be fiscal conservatives balk at).
Obama never promised or even advocated to completely socialize healthcare. If you wanted that, you should have voted for Hilary. I actually like Obamacare. I think making the health care companies only be able to keep 20% is great.
Just because he supports stuff that you agree with doesn't mean he isn't batshit crazy.
Imagine getting rid of the FDA. All those horror stories from China of melamine in milk and methanol in alcoholic beverages will be a reality here. Or what of the EPA, who keeps your groundwater from being contaminated and your cities from looking like Beijing. What of the FCC keeping your wi-fi from being jammed by a local TV or radio station. Or the SEC (though they failed mightily), preventing executives from dumping all of their stock right before they release bad news.
It would be a nightmare without these regulatory agencies.
The liberterian agenda sounds good only when applied to the individual. Corporations require heavy and strict policing. The ideology fails in that regard.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Conservative? Try anocratic. Every president since FDR has been a little more powerful. Every government since Eisenhower has been influenced by more corporate and special interest money. At this point, there are a rich and powerful few at the very top pulling on the strings of the government.
The Obama administration's deeds are only the tip of the evils that plague the current system. The two party system, the police state, media consolidation and conglomeration, suburbanization, social effemination (not roe v wade or women's rights, but political correctness and the idea that there are no losers and no winners), these are all contributing to the decline of the system. Making the population more ignorant, making them more interested in entertainment and less in the more important matters of governance, making them more dependent on the grace of the powerful and less self-sufficient, these are where to place blame. Obama's deeds and actions are merely a reflection of the social decadence plaguing the entire country.
I do wonder if things haven't actually gotten worse, only that we know more about it than before. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the latter was true. After all, Obama's drone strikes are probably nothing compared to what the CIA did in South America during the Cold War. And the FBI now is no worse than Hoover's FBI. But like all others, I seek progress, and the recent transgressions by the government both Federal and local are anything but that.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Like many people who only think about politics in terms of the sexy shit they talk about TV, you have no idea what I mean when I say "work within the party."
A guy who shows up to every party meeting has power because everyone has to talk to him. State Reps, State Senators, people on the Congressman's staff, etc. Everyone has to say something on copyright. In the Democratic party in the suburbs these meeting typically take place at a niceish restaurant where everyone eats. So for the price of eating out once a week you get the opportunity to force the next generation of Senators, Reps, etc. to defend their copyright maximalist position to you.
Let's say in addition to that you volunteer once or twice a month for an hour. You are now one of the top Democrats in your suburb. You can probably get an official position within the party (ie: Treasurer, Secretary, Endorsements Committee). Depending on how big your suburb is relative to the state the actual Congressman will probably meet with you. If you're a copyright minimalist, and you make sure he knows it he's going to have to consider the possibility that you'll endorse his opponent in the next primary unless he assuages your concerns re: copyright.
If I can manage to rise higher within the Party -- say District-level Treasurer -- then the actual US Senator is going to pay attention to what I think. More importantly I'll be very well-positioned to get the endorsement of the Party for a relatively low-level office (think State House, State Senate, County Commission, etc.) that could be used as a stepping-board to the US House or the Senate. And, obviously, if I'm the US Senator from Michigan I've got a whole lot of influence over Federal copyright policy.
The key to this strategy is I'm not trading my support in the General election for their vote. I'm trading it in the primary. I'm also offering volunteer time, my donations, etc. As such it's not really me persuading those people in the Democratic Party to stop being copyright maximalists, it's me becoming them and thus ensuring at least one of them is a copyright minimalist.
If every geek did this, even if it was solely on the level of going to the weekly party meetings for the party he despised least, there never would have been a SOPA.
You're asking how using the military to blow people up, in countries that have specifically asked you not to blow anyone up, is a left/right issue?
Granted the Obama position is currently the very definition of moderate (ie: only a handful actually oppose him), but it's still pretty much the only policy where he can be portrayed as right of Bush.
That would be a reasonable way to frame it, if Obama framed the bills he has signed into law as "starting points". Instead he tries to sell these conservative acts as being his own creations. The regressive taxation plans that he has signed so far, he takes credit for. The massive bailout of the health insurance industry that was sold as health care "reform", he takes credit for. The bailout of wall street banks, he takes credit for. The extension of a great number of other policies that were initiated by his conservative predecessors, he takes credit for.
No president is remembered primarily for what they wanted but did not get. For every person who talks about Reagan's proposed "Star Wars Defense System" there are at least 10 who credit him for personally tearing down the Berlin Wall (often with his death-ray eyes).
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
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.
Corporations require heavy and strict policing.
That seems correct on the surface, but it gets really weird when you think "well, then who policies the FDA?" It's cronies all the way down, you know. The Big Medical companies love a top-heavy regulatory system, because it shuts out troublesome innovators.
if (voter.type == NIGGER || voter.type == SPIC) {
democratProbability +=100
}
How about if (voter.type = RACIST) {
democratProbability -=100
}
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.
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'!"
Ron Paul is a loon. Like a broken clock he's right twice a day, as in Liberty'O'Clock. But other than that, he's quite literally batshit crazy.
... But the people who keep voting in the same oligarchs, time and time again, expecting said aristocracy to actually do things differently at some point, are not somehow 'batshit crazy?' Or are you silently acknowledging that the D and R voters are just-as-if-not-moreso crazy than those who vote for Paul?
Perhaps those voting for the "same oligarchs, time and again" actually like the result they get. Or perhaps they prefer to have nothing accomplished, if the alternative is to elect someone (Ron Paul) who has batshit crazy ideas.
Did you vote for Romney, then, so that you could get a more liberal or progressive president?
No from what he's done, he's not a conservative. He's a right-wing authoritarian: http://politicalcompass.org/uselection2012
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
Haha, good luck with that. You'll either wash out when you realize they're only using you, or you'll sell out in order to not believe you wasted so much of your time.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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
I was short on time earlier so I'll elaborate. They will listen to your complaints. They might even address them during the primaries. But those promises will be lies. They will say whatever they want to you in order to get your vote in the primary. Then they will say whatever they want to the rest of the country in order to win the general election. Once in office, they will rule any way they damn well please.
And if you have a problem with it, what are you going to do? Vote Republican? Obviously not. Vote for a different Democrat in the primary? That Democrat will lie to you too.
The only option is to vote for a third party, which is the same thing I'm advocating. You're just wasting a bunch of time before you make the realization that I'm right. If you're not willing to vote for another party, they have absolutely no reason to consider your opinion. Unless you have more money than Hollywood, that is.
Deal with it. We do not have a democracy, we have democracy theatre.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Bush and Obama are actually far to the left, if you consider the far left to be total government and far right being no government.
Except that is not what left and right mean. Left and Right are real words. They have definitions.
I suppose a batshit feminist is going to come around next and say Bush and Obama are both extreme right because they're male?
Political polarization is at an all-time high (roughly equal to just before the civil war). The parties have never been so far apart, yet you want to say there is no difference because they still agree on a few things. Doesn't that seem a bit off to you?
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
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.
Political party platforms are not determined by God, never to change. Frequently they change radically.
In 1950 the Republicans could rightly claim to be the party of black voting rights. Today they are trying to ban Sunday voting, mostly on the basis that black people do it and we (Republicans) should not let them (Democrats) get easy votes. Parties are simply coalitions of people who have agreed to use each-other. If you change the coalition by joining it you will change the Party.
You're also not understanding the internal dynamics of the Democrats. The reason Dems side with Hollywood is the Hollywood unions side with Hollywood, the other unions defer to their brothers in Hollywood, and nobody else cares. If somebody else cared the unions would get ignored, just like they get ignored on Card Check and a half-dozen different issues. Pretty much the same thing happens in the GOP, except they have guys who actually bitch about copyright. Then Hollywood calls the Chamber, which calls House leadership, which crushes the dissent.
Let me put it to you this way: who in Michigan do you think would actually vote against an anti-Copyright candidate in a primary? Ohio? More importantly how does your third party get to enough support that anyone cares about it? The Greens and Libertarians have been trying this strategy for years, with larger potential pools of voters then an anti-copyright party, and nobody takes hem seriously.
Political party platforms are not determined by God, never to change.
No, they're determined by the people who bankroll them.
You're also not understanding the internal dynamics of the Democrats. The reason Dems side with Hollywood is
Hollywood money, that's why. Do you have more money than Hollywood? No? Then expect your dissent to get crushed just as quickly.
Let me put it to you this way: who in Michigan do you think would actually vote against an anti-Copyright candidate in a primary?
Anyone who wants an "electable" candidate in the general election. Which is just about every rank and file democrat.
The Greens and Libertarians have been trying this strategy for years, with larger potential pools of voters then an anti-copyright party, and nobody takes hem seriously.
And people like you have been trying to "change the system from the inside" for decades. And the system has just gotten worse and worse and worse. What are you going to do differently? Why do you expect it to work this time?
And on a personal note, how do you sleep at night knowing that you've supported candidates that support atrocities like the war on drug users, the private prison industry, prosecutorial abuses like plea bargaining, etc.? How do you sit down at a table with such reprehensible creatures and not lose your appetite? How do you speak to them without telling them what corrupt lying pieces of shit they are?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
No, I don't see how it's a left right issue, that's why I asked. I was hoping for an actual answer. . .
The left, concerning distributive justice, leans toward government involvement. Concerning social issues, rights, etc., the left fights for the issues their donors care about. When it comes to foreign policy . . . WWI - Wilson; WWII - FDR; Korean War - Truman; Vietnam - Kennedy/Johnson.
The right, concerning distributive justice, leans toward less government involvement. Concerning social issues, rights, etc., the right fights for the issues their donors care about. When it comes to foreign policy . . . Bush and Bush Jr.'s desert skirmishes are about the most notable thing.
For the past century our military has killed many more foreigners with a Democrat in charge than with a Republican. I get that Democrats are generally less enthusiastic about military spending than Republicans (i.e. they realize how absurdly gross and pointless most of our military spending is, but they don't have the spines to actually articulate that opinion), but that doesn't mean that it's against leftist ideals to use military force.
The only consistent ideological stance either party stands behind is their views of distributive justice. The rest is money. You think atheist Randians such as Paul Ryan like pretending they're Christians and paying lip service to pro-life and all sorts of other bullshit they don't believe in? No. But they need money and votes from those people. You think most Democrats in congress give a damn about homosexuals marrying one another and preventing digital copyright infringement? Hell no they don't. But they cash checks from people that do.
Lincoln was one of the most liberal presidents in history and he started a catastrophic, unconstitutional war that killed more Americans than almost every other American war combined. Jefferson, who opposed massive military spending, was quick to enter combat against those who threatened American mercantile security, despite the fact that he almost completely disbanded the military and navy. I don't see how the use of military force is a major right/left thing. If it is in any way, I would say that the right tends to use the military for bogus reasons to rake in cash for the military industrial complex whereas the left tends to use military force when they feel there is a moral imperative (doesn't mean they're always right, but at least the intention is there). Maybe that's just my bias speaking, but that was my original problem with your post -- it seemed to imply that liberals are usually too softhearted or perhaps too anti-war to use military force and historical that has just not been so. I think you meant it in the opposite way, that the right tends to consist of warhawks, but I don't see that as any real ideological difference. The ideological difference is in military spending, not military use.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Gee, somebody's bitter.
On the money issue you're just wrong. Google Matty Moroun if you don't believe me. Don't get me wrong. Money really helps in politics. Being able to credibly argue your fight is the same as other interest groups fights helps in politics. Guys like Moroun can do the first forever, they can do the second for awhile. But when their ideas are actually opposed by the electorate it just doesn't matter much.
As for my odds of success, they're about infinity times better then your plan, which is apparently to sit on your butt grumbling about third parties on the internet.
As for your last paragraph, how do you survive in society if every time somebody disagrees with you on the drug war you "tell them what corrupt lying pieces of shit they are?"
When I talk about right vs. left I generally don't refer to actual Presidential policies, because in the US the President is so constrained. For example it would be fairly silly to say that expanding Medicare to everyone was not a left-wing policy, because left-wingers really love that idea; but no President has ever proposed it. In other words I'm referring to what people bitch about when they have no power, rather then what they do when they have power. When you have to get 60 votes in the Senate you have to do pretty much what the Bill Nelsons and Joe Liebermans of the world want, even if your dearest desire is to inform the Secret Service anyone who murders those guys gets both a pardon and a promotion.
It's pretty clear that a) many many left-wingers complain about violations of international law, excessive use of force, etc. when Bush did something analogous to drone strikes; and b) very few right-wingers complained about any of those things when Obama turned the dial to 11 on drone strikes. Some (very few, but some) left-wingers still complain about the drone strikes even when Obama does them.
BTW I did a check on military spending. Since WW2 at least military spending has tended to increase when we were at war and decrease when we were at peace. The only real exception seems to be Reagan. And he wasn't arguing that we need more tanks just because, he was arguing we could force the Soviets to over-invest in their military, which would gut their civilian economy, and it actually may have worked. The chart I used is the second one on this page:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/07/everything-chuck-hagel-needs-to-know-about-the-defense-budget-in-charts/
As for the Civil War we'll have to agree to disagree. My firm opinion is that slavery is the single most evil thing the United States has ever done, so no matter how terrible or unconstitutional the war was it was a great thing.
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?