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Larry Lessig Reaches Funding Goal and Is Running For President
LetterRip writes: Lessig has met his funding goal of one million dollars, and thus is committed to run for President. ABC reports: "After exceeding his $1 million crowd-funding goal, Harvard Law School professor Larry Lessig announced today on “This Week” that he is running for president. 'I think I'm running to get people to acknowledge the elephant in the room,' he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. 'We have to recognize -- we have a government that does not work. The stalemate, partisan platform of American politics in Washington right now doesn't work.'”
If it is not for nerds, then who is it for? Certainly nerds are the only people that will potentially vote for Lessig?
I suppose it's "news for nerds" in the sense that:
* they're using a more publicly accessible technology for funding than we're used to in politics
* Lessig is a member of the FSF and EFF, which are institutions that matter to nerds mainly
* he's active in stuff that matters to software nerds like IPR
I watched the TV interview. I'm not American but US politics has a way of affecting everyone, so I think it's cool what he's trying to do.
That said, I think he needs to practice his TV interviewing style a bit. He spoke VERY fast, sounded kind of shrill, and the tumble of words didn't communicate as much as I expected given their quantity. There were a lot of things that sounded like generic political soundbites any candidate might say. The basic ideas of political reform are solid - he could slow down, hit one or two points solidly and then stop.
There are a few other issues I don't really understand.
The main one is that he's strongly Democrat. For reasons I don't fully understand (electoral college mumble mumble) it seems US candidates cannot ever be independent, they have to pick a side. So that's going to cause issues right there. Reform of Washington should be a bi-partisan issue: I had expected him to run as an independent and then resign and trigger fresh elections once his platform was passed. That way anyone could feel secure voting for him. But I guess that sort of thing isn't possible.
The other is that surely he it takes more than one man to deliver the reforms he wants. Why isn't he creating a political party rather than running for President? This must be the only-two-parties rule again? I heard once that there are more than just Dems and Reps in the US political system but I never hear much about them.
There are 2 basic philosophies at work.
1. "We know The Right Way for everyone to live their lives and make their choices." This philosophy won't agree with you. The Right Way goes for everyone, regardless of how many they are. If they don't agree, they're stupid or whatever, and their objections can be thoughtlessly dismissed.
2. "We'll live our own lives and make our own choices." These people might agree with you, but it's hard for them to rein in government because of all the money and power to be made enforcing The Right Way on people. Also, these people seem to be a small minority. The majority seem to want to spend their neighbors' money and to make their neighbors' choices for them.
Lessig is exactly wrong.
Stalemate is great, because it keeps the inept groping hand of government from raping all of us, either from the left OR the right.
The problem recently is lack of a stalemate. One party held too much control and was able to progress, and after that period ended the president has decided to keep progressing despite a stalemate via executive orders. The next president, left or right, will decide that is a fine idea and carry on to a much greater extent.
Nope, the problem we have now is not lack of the ability of congress to do anything, but the lurching shambling mass of government has freed itself from the thin tethers we were trying to use as a bridle and is now unstoppable and un-steerable.
I'm in a position where it will not affect me too much personally; I just feel really bad for the younger generation being trodden upon.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There are a lot of problems with what he is doing. If he runs as an independent, he will siphon votes from the Democrat, and help the Republican win.
This is the old "strategic vote" or "vote for the lesser evil" argument.
Not only does this kind of reasoning lead to the two party system but it also leads to a situation where neither of the parties has any reason to cater to anyone but the voter who is just in between them which means that the two parties becomes the same in anything but the name.
There is only one thing you should vote for and that is whoever you feel represents you the best. It might not win you the election in short term, but it adjusts the political landscape towards your view in the long run. The alternative is to vote for someone that doesn't represent you which not only makes things bad for you now but keeps them that way in the future.
This is the old "strategic vote" or "vote for the lesser evil" argument.
In a two party system, this is a valid argument, whether you like it or not. In 2000, there is no question that Nader threw the election to Bush.
the two parties becomes the same in anything but the name.
Except the two parties are not the same on the only issue that Lessig cares about. ALL of the Democratic candidates (including Hillary) have said they will work to overturn Citizens United, and if elected, they will almost certainly follow through on the only way to change it: appoint more liberals to the Supreme Court.
Lessig adds nothing new. His position is no different than the Democrats, and a vote for him is equivalent to a vote for the Republican. His campaign makes no sense.
OK, so clearly at least one of the two major parties works well for you.
Don't pretend that they work for all voters or that it is anything wrong with voting for another alternative or that those who do are to blame when your favorite party doesn't win.
The original superpac was strictly non-partisan.
This isn't actually true. The group's rhetoric assumes that businesses (and buisnessmen) shouldn't be able to fund politics because business (and businessmen) are evil, while government (and so called public interest groups) are righteous.
By and large, that is the argument of the American Left, rather than the Right. If your argument assumes that to be true, you shouldn't expect support from the right. Also, he named his group after a socialist holiday... Because it's a leftist group, and he's lying when he claims it isn't.
Yeah, but the Republicans have their own Ralph Nader/Ross Perot in 2016. His name is Donald Trump.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I believe he is about 3.5 orders of magnitude of money away from a serious run for President.
Serious run, eh?
I don't believe you could get any more obvious that elections are bought with a statement like that, no matter how truthful.
In other words, eliminate the Free Speech, Freedom of Press, and Peaceful Assembly clauses of the First Amendment. I don't think that's a 'fix' for anything.
Some might say that AC's should be banned, or perhaps even that /. should be eliminated because 'all propaganda channels are bad'. Who gets to decide? Putin, Kim Jong-un, Ali Khamenei, or perhaps whoever is at the head of ISIS currently?
Crazy idea...a confederation of states, each nominally sovereign and controlling their own systems within the bounds of a federally agreed set of boundaries, nominally tied by a minimalist federal government that only is responsible for a basic set of functions like defense and printing money and the post office?
In short, You mean, like how the constitution was originally written?
-Styopa
Are you trying to insinuate that, if Trump were elected, he would not try to raise taxes for himself?
blasphemy.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
There is no way you can effectively centrally plan for a country of 300M people. People keep saying we should be more like Europe and I agree. There are very few decisions made by the EU. Most of the decisions are made by the member States. Let's try that. One state could be very capitalistic but with a big welfare state like the Nordic countries. Others could be more socialist like the French. Some can be crazy libertarian gun and gold nuts like the Swiss.
This was tried, it led to the Civil War. The south, more than anything else, wanted strong states rights and weak federal government. The north disagreed and it ended up in war.
Slavery and other issues were just the hot button topics that got the average person engaged, that isn't really what it was about.
That is why the US has a strong federal government today, the north won the war, reconstruction happened, and you have what we have today.
What most people don't know is that the US Government that we have in 2015 is not actually the same government we had in 1776. It is close, it follows the same piece of paper, but really it has been changed over the years. This is glossed over in civics class of course.
I wish we could figure out how to limit the money they can spend or "is spent in their behalf". And I am annoyed as hell with paying for serving officials working on behalf of their own or a member of their party's campaign. It's our money they're being paid with.
There's really no good solution here.
The problem is that campaigning is synonymous with marketing plus a healthy dose of propaganda thrown in.
This takes manpower & organization. Leasing and staffing hundreds of offices. Buying TV/radio airtime and media production staff. That all costs money. A national/worldwide campaign for president of the US, astronomically so.
Handing each qualified candidate (and who determines who is "qualified" and who decides what the hurdles are and if they've been met?) a set amount to spend totally disadvantages challengers vs incumbents and/or already publicly well-known candidates. Plus, different candidates with different campaign issues, styles, and demographic footprint require differing strategies and different spending levels. There's no way to account for all the factors involved for a meaningful comparison. It would effectively eliminate any remaining and already-marginal chances of any 3rd-party/independent candidate or anyone else not approved by major-Party 'establishment'.
The authors of the US Constitution warned again and again against large political parties and the threats they pose. Combined with a large government that means the apparatchiks have plenty of government to sell large donors.
One thing that absolutely has to be stopped is the foreign money coming into US political campaigns & political organizations, along with "bundling" and other methods used to avoid leaving trails back to the sources to obstruct any future detection and/or investigation as well as skirt legal limits on contributions.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
If it is not for nerds, then who is it for? Certainly nerds are the only people that will potentially vote for Lessig?
It's only nerds who will even have heard of Lessig.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it