This is an idea with merit, but depends on one critical fact...the ability to identify the purported rights-holder. It can frequently be harder to license (and use) abandoned material than copyrighted material which is actively guarded. At least if it is actively guarded, there is someone you can turn to and try to negotiate a deal with ("I'll pay you $1000 if I can publish this poem in my next novel"). With abandoned works, there is frequently no identifiable person to negoitate with--it is impossible to notify an unidentified individual or corporation. Indeed, private investigators get a lot of business from IP attorneys trying to trace down IP owners (IAAIPL--I am an IP lawyer--and speak from personal knowledge).
Sorry for the reply delay, just got out of Torts. One of the requirements of my proposal would be a move of copyright to something closer to patent insomuch as a creator would have to apply for the sanction of a copyright. Immediate copyright on all works creates some very real problems.
My broader point is that the entire intellectual property regime (and corporate personhood) need some serious reforms. Whether that reform will occur through legislation or litigation remains to be seen. In another 3.5 years, I'll be in a better position to have some effect on the latter.
Intellectual property, e.g. copyright, is a legal fiction along the same lines as "corporate personhood". The mistake it appears the courts and the legislature are making is to imbue intellectual property with the same sanctity as actual physical property.
Now I'm a Libertarian who works in an idea business, so I understand the utility of intellectual property, but it seems reasonable that the law should require an actual rights-holder to affirm their rights and/or create a process by which someone who wanted to republish abandoned intellectual property could give notice to the purported rights-holder. If there was not a negative response in say, 60 days, the person would get the rights to publish the work.
Jerry Kohn is running as a Libertarian. Last I checked, he didn't want to ban polling and he actually shows up for debates, something neither Obama or Keyes seem willing to do.
I personally find Badnarik a bit... I don't know... idealistic isn't quite the word. His ideas are mostly good, his background research seems to be good, his disclaimers are encouraging but I'm left with the nagging suspicion that he seriously underestimates the power of bureaucratic inertia and much other self-interested short-term thinking which keeps the USA in this current unhappy homeostasis. OTOH, possibly that's entirely appropriate for a candidate who doesn't genuinely expect to win this time around.
His chances of winning are directly proportional to the mnumber of people who are persuaded by his ideas. My personal opinion is that he's so honest and honorable that I don't care that I don't agree with him 100% on everything. I'm damn sure I agree with him more than Bush or Kerry.
This guy is a true popularist, he promises people what they want even though there is no chance of realizing the promises. Well, there is also no chance of getting elected, so that's even:)
That's actually not true. If the people truly like what he says, they can elect him. He's on 49 ballots. The only thing that can stop him from getting elected is if people don't vote for him.
It's interesting that you bring up as a positive one of the things that I see lacking in modern polling methodology. The "normalizing" of poll data is a great threat to the ability of polls to actually reflect shifts in public opinion and one of the ways that observation can taint the observed data.
Say, for example, that a great number of American voters have figured out that Bush and Kerry agree on most of the major issues and have decided to vote for Badnarik instead. When the pollster sees say, a 10% figure for Badnarik, he may decide the result is outside the "norm", and adjust the Badnarik figures down.
People reading the results of the poll will feel odd and outside the norm, since a pollster told them that they were part of 3% of the population instead of the 10% as the original data suggested. There's danger there, especially when norming for party in a society full of people that increasingly register and vote independent.
I would, but he till he gets rid of his idea that the borders of the United States should no be protected at all, that immigration should be unlimited and that goverment has no business protecting workers I will be unable to vote for him.
Peaceful immigrants should be allowed to enter the US at conveniently located Customs and Immigration stations, subject only to brief vetting to ensure that they are not terrorists or criminals. They should not be forced by restrictions or quotas to place their lives at risk by crossing the border at remote locations, often under the guidance of ruthless "coyotes" who are as likely to leave them to die as to get them safely across, and to then lead lives of fear of detection, detention and deportation. I do not regard the existence of the social "safety net" as a good excuse for excluding immigrants. The welfare state needs to be eliminated. It would need to be eliminated whether immigration was an issue or not.
Not only are immigration restrictions bad policy in and of themselves, they make national defense a more difficult task. Immigrants crossing into the US illegally, because they were denied legal entry for no good reason, provide cover, by sheer dint of numbers, for terrorists and criminals. The black market in smuggling humans constitutes a vector for bringing the nation's enemies into our homeland.
Coupled with open, easy immigration for the peaceful, I advocate a vigorous national defense against our enemies. Terrorists and criminals who attempt to enter the US via a Customs and Immigration station should be denied entry and, where applicable, arrested or extradited. Terrorists and criminals who attempt to enter the US via other points along its 95,000 miles of border and coastline should be treated as what they are: invaders against whom our armed forces must respond. There are obvious exceptions--Cuban and Haitian "boat refugees" who don't have much control over where they make landfall, for example--but they are exceptions, not the rule.
As a Libertarian, I reject a conception of national defense that keeps American troops overseas, meddling in the affairs of other nations. Instead, I advocate a national defense which, sans any attack which might require retaliation elsewhere, focuses on the logical area: the nation's borders. As president, I would work to eliminate the Border Patrol and treat border issues as what they are: defense issues coming under the mission and scope of the armed forces. In an age where the equivalent of a large invasion force can be packed into a suitcase-sized box containing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, no lesser response will do.
Doesn't sound like Michael Badnarik advocates that, "the borders of the United States should no[sic] be protected at all," to me. But maybe my reading skills are fading.
As other's have mentioned, Nader was ordered off, then an elections administrator put him back on the absentee ballots, then the Florida Supreme Court ordered the elections administrator to not send them until it could rule.
At the end of the day Nader doesn't matter because people have already watched him lose before. Cobb doesn't matter because he can't decide whether he's really a candidate or not ("Vote for me, unless you'd rather vote for Kerry, I mean, vote for me"). Peroutka doesn't matter because he's a religious nut.
Badnarik matters. He is the only candidate on 49 ballots who is against the war. He is the only candidate on 49 ballots who is against the Patriot Act. He is the only candidate on 49 ballots who is not wasting the American people's fucking time with silly accusations about who did or not do what during Vietnam or which memos are fake.
It just requires a candidate in the debates who is willing to tackle them. Hearken back to 1992, when the major party candidates were busy nattering on as they do. Along comes Ross Perot, a quixotic little Texan with a penchant for flip charts and one burning issue: the deficit.
Perot did not win the election, but the man who did ended up moving us from a deficit to a surplus. He didn't want to do it, but being publicly shamed by a Texan with big ears will get someone to change their mind mighty fast.
You can help. These bastards want to keep Badnarik out of the debates. Send a letter to your local paper telling them how you feel about that. Send a letter to the Bush and Kerry campaigns telling them that you will not even consider voting for their candidate unless he debates Badnarik. Let a thousand voices ring out with the cry, "We're not going to take it!"
Umm, all your cites are about the Brady Bill. This topic is about the Assault Weapons Ban. They are not the same thing.
Get your facts straight.
Yours truly, Mr. X
...cite checker...
Re:OD is a radical cheap labor conservative scam.
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Umm, Jamin Raskin, professor of Constitutional Law at American University? One of my professors and a progressive's progressive? I didn't know he was a conservative.
Commentators from both sides of the gun control debate have gone on record as saying that the Assault Weapons Ban didn't have an effect on crime. Certain guns were banned because of how they looked (folding stock, pistol grip, etc.), not because of how they functioned (all the banned guns fire the same caliber of bullets and at the same speed as ordinary hunting rifles). In addition, large rifles are not weapons of choice for committing crimes. Criminals prefer handguns.
The ban is sunsetting because it didn't really do any good and nobody is willing to risk their political career on renewing it. Even if it did come to a vote, I'm not sure Kerry would risk the swing state votes by voting to renew it. Bush would probably be forced to eat his words when it comes to signing it.
The whole thing is one great political football. The assault weapons I'm worried about are those that are being used on both sides of our failed war in Iraq, not the ones sitting in a gun collector's safe.
Yours truly, Mr. X
...common-sense...
68% of Americans want Badnarik in the debates
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From a Rasmussen poll:
Sixty-eight percent (68%) of American adults believe that Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik should be invited to participate in the Presidential Debates this year. A Rasmussen Reports survey found that just 20% believe Badnarik should not be invited while 12% are not sure.
Ah, the critical difference between voting to let the President go to war and voting for the war itself. How could I have missed such an important distinction?
Maybe it's this quote from the Post that has me confused:
"Responding to President Bush's challenge to clarify his position, Sen. John F. Kerry said Monday that he still would have voted to authorize the war in Iraq even if he had known then that U.S. and allied forces would not find weapons of mass destruction."
I guess I thought authorizing a war was the same as voting for it. My bad.
Kerry supported giving the President the authority to initiate the war in Iraq. That's not the same as launching the war. When Bush and his campaign say that Kerry "voted to go to war," they are lying.
Not only did Kerry support going to war, he's since said publicly that he'd do it again, even in hindsight.
The war was a mistake. Still is. Why should I vote for a candidate who can't see that? Why should I vote for a candidate who can't even give a cogent answer to his own question from that 1971 Senate testimony?
"How do ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" - John Kerry
Kerry's answer? He hopes to get our troops out by 2008. That's not an answer.
Michael Badnarik's answer?
"Thirty years ago, John Kerry asked 'how can you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?' It was a good question. His answer, and President Bush's, seems to be that you don't -- that you just let the killing go on and on rather than admit the mistake and put an end to it. Bush says 'stay the course.' Kerry says he hopes to have the troops out four years from now. I say 90 days, and only that long because it takes time to move troops out of hostile territory safely, displacing by echelon and providing mutual security." - Full Story
Am I the only one who thinks that it doesn't matter what Bush or Kerry did or did not do 30 years ago?
What does matter to me is that they both support sending my family members in the Army to Iraq to fight a war we shouldn't be fighting.
The death toll for American soldiers just passed 1,000 and neither Bush nor Kerry will get us out of there. That's a lot more important to me than how Bush got into the Air National Guard.
Slashdot Mirror
This is an idea with merit, but depends on one critical fact...the ability to identify the purported rights-holder. It can frequently be harder to license (and use) abandoned material than copyrighted material which is actively guarded. At least if it is actively guarded, there is someone you can turn to and try to negotiate a deal with ("I'll pay you $1000 if I can publish this poem in my next novel"). With abandoned works, there is frequently no identifiable person to negoitate with--it is impossible to notify an unidentified individual or corporation. Indeed, private investigators get a lot of business from IP attorneys trying to trace down IP owners (IAAIPL--I am an IP lawyer--and speak from personal knowledge).
Sorry for the reply delay, just got out of Torts. One of the requirements of my proposal would be a move of copyright to something closer to patent insomuch as a creator would have to apply for the sanction of a copyright. Immediate copyright on all works creates some very real problems.
My broader point is that the entire intellectual property regime (and corporate personhood) need some serious reforms. Whether that reform will occur through legislation or litigation remains to be seen. In another 3.5 years, I'll be in a better position to have some effect on the latter.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...budding barrister...
Intellectual property, e.g. copyright, is a legal fiction along the same lines as "corporate personhood". The mistake it appears the courts and the legislature are making is to imbue intellectual property with the same sanctity as actual physical property.
Now I'm a Libertarian who works in an idea business, so I understand the utility of intellectual property, but it seems reasonable that the law should require an actual rights-holder to affirm their rights and/or create a process by which someone who wanted to republish abandoned intellectual property could give notice to the purported rights-holder. If there was not a negative response in say, 60 days, the person would get the rights to publish the work.
Just a thought.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...killer Benihana shrimp...
Get your country back.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...Badnairk is badass...
I went to their site to post a question, but it appears that Michael Badnarik is not being included in this debate either.
It must be the logistical difficulty of sending and receiving emailed responses to more than two candidates.
"Gosh, I think everyone would be confused if more than two candidates answered questions."
"Yeah, the youth of America are too stupid to choose between more than two options."
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...let Badnarik debate...
Jerry Kohn is running as a Libertarian. Last I checked, he didn't want to ban polling and he actually shows up for debates, something neither Obama or Keyes seem willing to do.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...let Badnarik debate...
Vote for Badnarik!
He's so not a lizard.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...let Badnarik debate...
Operation American Freedom, Michael Badnarik's weblog.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...let Badnarik debate...
I personally find Badnarik a bit... I don't know... idealistic isn't quite the word. His ideas are mostly good, his background research seems to be good, his disclaimers are encouraging but I'm left with the nagging suspicion that he seriously underestimates the power of bureaucratic inertia and much other self-interested short-term thinking which keeps the USA in this current unhappy homeostasis. OTOH, possibly that's entirely appropriate for a candidate who doesn't genuinely expect to win this time around.
His chances of winning are directly proportional to the mnumber of people who are persuaded by his ideas. My personal opinion is that he's so honest and honorable that I don't care that I don't agree with him 100% on everything. I'm damn sure I agree with him more than Bush or Kerry.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...vote for what you want...
http://debatebadnarik.blogspot.com
Join the Badnarik Army, put the pressure on, demand that he be invited.
The power is yours. Use it.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...let Badnarik debate...
This guy is a true popularist, he promises people what they want even though there is no chance of realizing the promises. Well, there is also no chance of getting elected, so that's even :)
That's actually not true. If the people truly like what he says, they can elect him. He's on 49 ballots. The only thing that can stop him from getting elected is if people don't vote for him.
Operation American Freedom
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...let Badnarik debate...
It's interesting that you bring up as a positive one of the things that I see lacking in modern polling methodology. The "normalizing" of poll data is a great threat to the ability of polls to actually reflect shifts in public opinion and one of the ways that observation can taint the observed data.
Say, for example, that a great number of American voters have figured out that Bush and Kerry agree on most of the major issues and have decided to vote for Badnarik instead. When the pollster sees say, a 10% figure for Badnarik, he may decide the result is outside the "norm", and adjust the Badnarik figures down.
People reading the results of the poll will feel odd and outside the norm, since a pollster told them that they were part of 3% of the population instead of the 10% as the original data suggested. There's danger there, especially when norming for party in a society full of people that increasingly register and vote independent.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...let Badnarik debate...
From his issue paper on immigration:
Doesn't sound like Michael Badnarik advocates that, "the borders of the United States should no[sic] be protected at all," to me. But maybe my reading skills are fading.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...let Badnarik debate...
Admit nothing, deny everything, and make counter-accusations.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...let Badnarik debate...
As other's have mentioned, Nader was ordered off, then an elections administrator put him back on the absentee ballots, then the Florida Supreme Court ordered the elections administrator to not send them until it could rule.
In other, more pertinent, news, Michael Badnarik is on 49 ballots. 49, not the low 30s like Nader.
At the end of the day Nader doesn't matter because people have already watched him lose before. Cobb doesn't matter because he can't decide whether he's really a candidate or not ("Vote for me, unless you'd rather vote for Kerry, I mean, vote for me"). Peroutka doesn't matter because he's a religious nut.
Badnarik matters. He is the only candidate on 49 ballots who is against the war. He is the only candidate on 49 ballots who is against the Patriot Act. He is the only candidate on 49 ballots who is not wasting the American people's fucking time with silly accusations about who did or not do what during Vietnam or which memos are fake.
Your conscience called, it wants its vote back.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...let Badnarik debate...
The correct blog link is:
http://www.badnarik.org/blog/
The blog link in the story points to the main site.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...checker...
What is your position on the War in Iraq and how does it differ from the positions of your opponents?
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...looking for a clear position...
It just requires a candidate in the debates who is willing to tackle them. Hearken back to 1992, when the major party candidates were busy nattering on as they do. Along comes Ross Perot, a quixotic little Texan with a penchant for flip charts and one burning issue: the deficit.
Perot did not win the election, but the man who did ended up moving us from a deficit to a surplus. He didn't want to do it, but being publicly shamed by a Texan with big ears will get someone to change their mind mighty fast.
It's 2004 now and we're in worse shape than in 1992. Thankfully, there's another Texan with big ears who has some good ideas about fixing our economic crisis. All we need to do is get him into the debates.
You can help. These bastards want to keep Badnarik out of the debates. Send a letter to your local paper telling them how you feel about that. Send a letter to the Bush and Kerry campaigns telling them that you will not even consider voting for their candidate unless he debates Badnarik. Let a thousand voices ring out with the cry, "We're not going to take it!"
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...it's time...
Umm, all your cites are about the Brady Bill. This topic is about the Assault Weapons Ban. They are not the same thing.
Get your facts straight.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...cite checker...
Umm, Jamin Raskin, professor of Constitutional Law at American University? One of my professors and a progressive's progressive? I didn't know he was a conservative.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...check your facts...
Commentators from both sides of the gun control debate have gone on record as saying that the Assault Weapons Ban didn't have an effect on crime. Certain guns were banned because of how they looked (folding stock, pistol grip, etc.), not because of how they functioned (all the banned guns fire the same caliber of bullets and at the same speed as ordinary hunting rifles). In addition, large rifles are not weapons of choice for committing crimes. Criminals prefer handguns.
The ban is sunsetting because it didn't really do any good and nobody is willing to risk their political career on renewing it. Even if it did come to a vote, I'm not sure Kerry would risk the swing state votes by voting to renew it. Bush would probably be forced to eat his words when it comes to signing it.
The whole thing is one great political football. The assault weapons I'm worried about are those that are being used on both sides of our failed war in Iraq, not the ones sitting in a gun collector's safe.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...common-sense...
Complete poll results
It's obvious that the American people want more options and it's only the major party candidates who are standing in the way.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...vote Michael Badnarik...
Ah, the critical difference between voting to let the President go to war and voting for the war itself. How could I have missed such an important distinction?
Maybe it's this quote from the Post that has me confused:
"Responding to President Bush's challenge to clarify his position, Sen. John F. Kerry said Monday that he still would have voted to authorize the war in Iraq even if he had known then that U.S. and allied forces would not find weapons of mass destruction."
I guess I thought authorizing a war was the same as voting for it. My bad.
Badnarik Last Anti-War Candidate Left Standing
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...voting Badnarik...
Kerry supported giving the President the authority to initiate the war in Iraq. That's not the same as launching the war. When Bush and his campaign say that Kerry "voted to go to war," they are lying.
Not only did Kerry support going to war, he's since said publicly that he'd do it again, even in hindsight.
The war was a mistake. Still is. Why should I vote for a candidate who can't see that? Why should I vote for a candidate who can't even give a cogent answer to his own question from that 1971 Senate testimony?
"How do ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" - John Kerry
Kerry's answer? He hopes to get our troops out by 2008. That's not an answer.
Michael Badnarik's answer?
"Thirty years ago, John Kerry asked 'how can you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?' It was a good question. His answer, and President Bush's, seems to be that you don't -- that you just let the killing go on and on rather than admit the mistake and put an end to it. Bush says 'stay the course.' Kerry says he hopes to have the troops out four years from now. I say 90 days, and only that long because it takes time to move troops out of hostile territory safely, displacing by echelon and providing mutual security." - Full Story
I know which answer sounds better to me.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...support our troops, bring them home...
Am I the only one who thinks that it doesn't matter what Bush or Kerry did or did not do 30 years ago?
What does matter to me is that they both support sending my family members in the Army to Iraq to fight a war we shouldn't be fighting.
The death toll for American soldiers just passed 1,000 and neither Bush nor Kerry will get us out of there. That's a lot more important to me than how Bush got into the Air National Guard.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...disgusted...
I agree. We ought to add an amendment to the Constitution that lets people say whatever they want, whenever they want.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...just a thought...