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"Net Neutrality" Coiner Tim Wu Is Running For Lt. Governor of New York
speedplane (552872) writes Tim Wu, the popular Columbia Law Professor, author of The Master Switch, and the guy who coined the term Net Neutrality, is running for Lieutenant Governor of the great state of New York. He "has waged a shoestring anti-establishment campaign," that is well underway, and has even begun receiving attacks from the incumbent: "It has not always been smooth for Mr. Wu .... Surrogates for Mr. Cuomo have pounced on his admitted lack of 'message discipline' for comments he made comparing net neutrality to the suffragist movement (which he says were taken out of context) and sympathizing with Airbnb (which he says is 'fair game' because he has a 'wait-and-see approach' to regulating start-ups)."
i'll get the popcorn.
Suffrage not suffragist
Net Neutrality is another name for "Give me the Internet, not a subset." and is a key part of what a legitimate ISP does, as opposed to a censored ISP like sometimes exists in the USA and often exists overseas.
It is about time we got some tea party democrats.
I know, tea party is a bad word, but anti-establishment is almost synonymous with it. It finally sound like we might see a democrat who is still actively supporting the working man instead of riding the coat tails of the real democrats who went before him.
There already are a bunch of Democrats in the TEA Party - NOT at the top, but at the grass-roots and they tend to be blue-collar working types who've voted "D" their entire lives (because that's the way all their friends and families voted and that party las long pretended to be "for the working man"). Some of those more-conservative rank-and-file Democrats who, like many conservative base voters, have "caught-on" to the game the leaders of both parties are playing and the destruction that is resulting have joined the TEA Party. The TEA Party is generally associated with the GOP though because you cannot reduce taxes without reducing government and modern Democrats tend to be the party that proposes fixing every problem with the application of more government. While the GOP establishment has never actually supported lower taxes or smaller government, they have long lied to their base voters and claimed to support those things (because that's what the base voters in the GOP want), so this makes the GOP a better place to start for the TEA Party. (3rd party in the US only ever, at best, becomes a "spoiler" that splits a political majority and lets a minority squeak through, thus backfiring on the majority of voters)
An interesting development was the New York Times not endorsing any candidate for governor, but did endorse Wu for Lt. Governor over incumbent Cuomo's choice. The editors liked Wu's desire to transform the position of Lt. Governor into a public advocate, where he can proclaim the messages for fairness not only in Internet governance, but in governance in general.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/opinion/timothy-wu-for-lieutenant-governor.html
Democracy Now! recently had an interview with running mates Teachout and Wu as well as gubernatorial candidate Randy Credico, whose quest against inequality includes fighting Rockefeller drug laws.
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/9/4/new_york_candidates_zephyr_teachout_randy
And I think that incumbents have things way too easy for re-election.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Yeah, Tea Party is too specific to an existing dogma. But, there are quite a few liberals who skew closer to Noam Chomsky's brand. I think a number of liberals take anti-establishment seriously and believe that libertarianism has some insightful observations on how things work ( e.g. regulatory capture). But a number of liberals have different solutions. Very different from Chomsky's "Anarchist Social Libertarianism" (or whatever he calls it). And especially different from the pro big business of "libertarian" politicians.
There is room to agree on populism.
There is room to agree on that things are broken.
There is room to agree things need to change.
But what we need is to stop fighting on abstract idealistic polarized solutions.
It's time to start thinking beyond these extreme dogmatic and impractical abstract ideas of how to run things. We dont want oppressive big brother government, and we dont want out-of-control, laissez-faire, libertarian capitalism.
meep
>> great state of New York
Citation needed.
Until third party candidates take state and local offices to a point they are know as well as the R and D parties they are wastes of voted on a federal level. They are generally so close in all but a few issues that few people care about specifically that they either pull votes from whomever is closest to them and cause the opposite candidate to win or they are so radically different, only a fringe set of people look at them seriously.
The GOP Estavlishment DESPISES the TEA Party
When the TEA Party first got going, the GOP establishment thought they were just another energetic little speciel interest group that they could fool into contributing cash and boots-on-the-ground during elections ... but once they found out that the "TEA People" wanted actual changes (including lots of anti-corruption reforms) they went nuts. Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey actually showed-up at a TEA Party office brandishing a gun and trying to take the place over. Why do you think the GOP in Washington are having endless hearings into the IRS abuse of the TEA Party (good for the GOP anti-IRS voters) but are not actually doing ANYTHING to punish the IRS or prevent the IRS from continuing to hunt the TEA Party????? (Hint: being anti-IRS is good for Republicans, but they are not going to lift a finger to actually help the TEA Partiers, who the extablishment hate)
Oh, and that "keep the government out of my medicare" is a funny Democrat joke, but like the faux Palin quote about seeing Russia from her house, it's a phony bit of comedy that liberals who get their news from late-night comics stupidly believe is true.
the only wasted votes are non votes, and votes for the lesser of 2 evils, as you are still voting for evil
hell we had this conversation since at least 96 (dont blame me i voted kodos) and people still believe the same stupid bullshit. If everyone who said "a 3rd party vote is a wasted vote" actually voted 3rd party...it wouldnt be a fucking wasted vote!
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Can't stand the other guy. He's a crook.
While Wu is a smart, well-meaning guy, his coining the phrase "net neutrality" set back the public debate by a couple of decades. Introducing a new term for an old concept was, at best, dumb. If he had stuck with "common carrier" - a centuries old legal term - which is well understood, we'd probably have "net neutrality" today.
The US made telegraphs common carriers in the 1840s and later, telephones. The term also applies to railroads - whose bad behavior outraged farmers in the 1800s -and trucking companies. Telco lobbyists would have a much tougher case to make against common carrier than they do against the new-fangled "net neutrality."
You mean, recumbents.
"New York is well called the Empire State ... not only because of the vastness of its resources, but because it so conspicuously illustrates the imperial power of law-abiding liberty among the people." Alexander Flick, 1902.
Now it refers to entrenched political cronyism, Cuomo's promises notwithstanding.
No votes have more power than third party votes. Like I said, the third party candidate is either so close to the other parties that their one or two differences aren't enough to gather a majority (remember, not everyone thinks like you and no everyone will think those differences are important enough to vote outside their party) or they are so different from those parties that they appear like loons.
We have had that conversation since before 96 too. Ross Perot took enough voted from Bush that Clinton could legitimately claim he won by the highest margin in 50 years and not even get half the votes in the popular vote.
But you are ignoring the biggest problem. Until third parties take state and local elections and garner the same types of support that the two parties have, they will be absolutely powerless if the win. I mean seriously, one third party senator, what is he going to do? You need so many supporters to get a law onto the floor, so many more to have anything done with it. So in comity, which because the parties take care of their own usually based off seniority, they will be in low level committees, with low ranks. Again, what can they do? Vote no on something everyone else will ensure passes? Big whoop.. Suppose a third party candidate gets elected president, he has no support in congress, it will be just like Carter's administration when he decided he was going to clean up congress and even his own party abandoned him and voted to pass laws he vetoed.
Like I said, until the third parties actually invest the grass roots efforts and gain the support, they are a waste of voted. Better to infiltrate and change from within. Better to do the tea party thing seeing how the vast majority of positions that will crop up, you will already be in agreement with the major parties (one of the other). Corrupt and co-opt those who will lend you support from within.
*and by corrupt, I don't mean dirty illegal stuff, I mean convince them your way is better so they abandon the party line or change the party line to your way. It's easier to do when you are one of them and have their ear.
Vote for whomever you want. Just understand that when voting for a candidate with no potential to win or little chance of accomplishing anything if they do win, you are taking one vote against whomever you want to win the least away.
That's why I think it is better to infiltrate and work from within. You do your battles in the primaries, if you win, you have both a chance of winning and change, if you lose, the one candidate you don't want in the most doesn't benefit from your vote not strengthening the most likely candidate to beat them.
But you are free to vote for anyone you want. You are free to accept logic, ignore it, make it up on the spot or do whatever. You can even close your ears when I say I told you so. Just as I can do all of the above too.
If you have three candidates, one you want to win but will not likely gat enough votes, one who you like a lot less but could get enough votes to win, and one you do not want to win at all but could slso win, and if you vote for the first instead of the second, you are making it easier for the third to win.
As for the primaries, each party that is registered with the state and has more than one candidate running for any office up for election gets a ballot to settle which candidate they officially want to support for the general election. Each voter in the primary can request the ballot forc a single party and it will list the candidates for the party and any specisl issues like school funding or whatever they sneak in. The winner of the primaries are the only candidates associated with those parties in the general election. And candidate not selected can run as an independant or any of the third parties who did not field a candidate for a seat (assuming the third party agrees). If you and I are both greensi coul run as a republican and you as a democrat in the primaries. If we win, we would be the rep and dem candidates in the general election.
I wouldn't change the vote tallying system. You can vote whoever you want but your vote can very well enable the biggest evil to be elected. That is why going after the primaries is so important. Most third parties are the same as the big parties on a majority of things. You can knock the evil out and have your guy stand a chance of einning the general because so many people are strait ticket voters.
I don't need to look up instant run off voting. I know what it is and do not care for it.
Agreed that straight ticket voters are stupid, but they are the prevalent constituency in the US and there is little if anything that can be done about it. Many people don't even bother voting unless they are somehow inspired by a single candidate or scared into not wanting another. Many people are two busy with all the other crap that goes on in their life to invest in 30 or so different politicians running for 10-15 seats between local, state, and federal offices up for election. Sadly, what Brittani or whoever is doing this week is part of that being too busy.