The only way to remove the corporate-whore money culture from washington is to REMOVE ALL INDIVIDUAL FUNDING of Candidates.
Actually, there is another way -- remove most of the motivation for bribery.
Influence peddling is the root of the problem. If a wealthy donor believes that Senator Jones can pull some strings on an important issue in exchange for $5 million, then that donor will find a way to get that money into Senator Jones' pocket, campaign finance laws be damned; just as water finds a way to flow downhill.
So attack the first cause of all this nonsense and reduce the amount of influence which can be peddled, by reducing the size and scope of government (particularly at the federal level). The less power a government official holds, the less attractive he becomes as a potential recipient of bribes or campaign financing.
Of course, actually doing this is much harder than simply passing another campaign finance law, but it's also more effective, and has less impact on everyone's rights to boot. The current situation of stratifying political speech based on completely arbitrary criteria is ridiculous in the extreme.
1. This seems like flame bait, not insight. (perhaps I'm just overly sensitive, but he calls 3,000 people's lives not a major loss of life
Nobody (sane) is arguing that 3,000 people dying is unimportant in itself; obviously it would be great if such things never happened.
But the point is, terrorism is a comparatively small issue when you consider the risks incurred simply by living our daily lives -- you could die crossing the street, be in a serious traffic accident, or somebody could even break into your house and kill you. Those are all far more likely to occur than a major act of terrorism, so completely restructuring our society and giving up a large measure of freedom is a response out of proportion to the threat.
It feels good emotionally to spend billions of dollars and order the federal government to prevent another terrorist attack ever again, but rationally it doesn't make any sense, especially considering the fact that preventing any conceivable attack is flat-out impossible except perhaps in the most repressive police state imaginable.
That's not to say we should do absolutely nothing at all, but let's take the simple, sensible precautions (like having any border security at all) first, rather than opening up secret prisons and suspending everyone's constitutional rights.
You act like this president, Supreme Court and Congress are like the ones that came before them: that they respect government. They don't.
Ah yes, the good old days of respect for government. Like when FDR decided that if the Supreme Court rejected his policies, he'd just make it bigger (using his own appointments) until the required number of justices could reach an agreement. Or when pretty much every administration since the creation of the FBI has used that agency to spy on political enemies. Or endless porkbarrel projects created amidst bribery and backroom dealings.
That respect for government? Or did you mean some other time when politicians haven't been hopelessly corrupt?
Hey, don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of Bush. But putting the "other guy" in office has never solved these problems. Something much more drastic is required at this point.
Libertarianism fails because it expects people not to do harm to each other.
Huh? The role of a libertarian government is precisely to prevent people from doing harm to each other, so it's nonsensical to say libertarians don't expect for that to happen. Of course, some people have creative ideas about what constitutes "harm", and reason that by failing to provide someone else a certain standard of living out of my own pocket, I've committed an act of aggression against them. Most libertarians have in mind force or fraud when they speak of "harm".
Indeed. I think anybody who believes the current administration represents real conservative values needs to consider the fact that Reagan once promised to eliminate the entire Department of Education (after all, such is not a constitutional duty of the federal government). Now that's small government!
In this case, you might not want to make an argument by numbers -- most of the world is a pretty miserable place to live in, the US and Europe being more the exception than the rule.
A big problem with socialism is that it's basically a pyramid scheme. As long as the base is larger than the top, things roll along nicely. But as soon as you approach the inversion point where not enough people are working to fund those social welfare programs, there's a big problem afoot.
Most of Europe is in the process of discovering this fact, due to plunging birthrates. The solution currently being tried is massive importation of cheap foreign labor, which as Theo van Gogh found out, can sometimes be a pain in the, er, chest.
Interesting how you chose to leave out the other part of my comment -- so, are these direct quotations of Pelosi "bullshit"? Or is it really so hard to admit that a "right wing" news source is reporting something factually?
Complaining about bias is useless without presenting specific facts that show how the bias affects some particular story. I suppose you also ignore everything printed in the NY Times because they've employed pathological liars in the past?
If slashdot only linked to news sites without any bias, you'd be looking at an empty page.
In this case the article is little more than a direct quotation of Pelosi's speech with a little snarky editorializing. If you think CNS News is lying, it shouldn't be difficult to find out. It's the responsibility of the reader to consider the source and make appropriate judgements, so complaining about bias is just another way of saying you prefer the biases of other news sources.
Compared with the £100,000 front projection CRT systems with line doublers etc that were necessary only 10 years ago, a modern cheap DLP blows that away for the most part
The only problem with DLP is, those budget projectors will have a single chip and color wheel, causing the "rainbow effect" for those who are susceptible to it (like me). I can't watch a single chip DLP for longer than 15 minutes or so, the rainbows cause horrible eyestrain.
So I've got an LCD projector at home; not quite as nice as DLP in some respects, but good enough for me until 3-chip DLP becomes affordable for mere mortals. And certainly good enough to avoid movie theaters, as I have for the past 2 or 3 years. For the price of one movie ticket, a snack, and a drink, I get Netflix instead.
Slashdot Mirror
The only way to remove the corporate-whore money culture from washington is to REMOVE ALL INDIVIDUAL FUNDING of Candidates.
Actually, there is another way -- remove most of the motivation for bribery.
Influence peddling is the root of the problem. If a wealthy donor believes that Senator Jones can pull some strings on an important issue in exchange for $5 million, then that donor will find a way to get that money into Senator Jones' pocket, campaign finance laws be damned; just as water finds a way to flow downhill.
So attack the first cause of all this nonsense and reduce the amount of influence which can be peddled, by reducing the size and scope of government (particularly at the federal level). The less power a government official holds, the less attractive he becomes as a potential recipient of bribes or campaign financing.
Of course, actually doing this is much harder than simply passing another campaign finance law, but it's also more effective, and has less impact on everyone's rights to boot. The current situation of stratifying political speech based on completely arbitrary criteria is ridiculous in the extreme.
1. This seems like flame bait, not insight. (perhaps I'm just overly sensitive, but he calls 3,000 people's lives not a major loss of life
Nobody (sane) is arguing that 3,000 people dying is unimportant in itself; obviously it would be great if such things never happened.
But the point is, terrorism is a comparatively small issue when you consider the risks incurred simply by living our daily lives -- you could die crossing the street, be in a serious traffic accident, or somebody could even break into your house and kill you. Those are all far more likely to occur than a major act of terrorism, so completely restructuring our society and giving up a large measure of freedom is a response out of proportion to the threat.
It feels good emotionally to spend billions of dollars and order the federal government to prevent another terrorist attack ever again, but rationally it doesn't make any sense, especially considering the fact that preventing any conceivable attack is flat-out impossible except perhaps in the most repressive police state imaginable.
That's not to say we should do absolutely nothing at all, but let's take the simple, sensible precautions (like having any border security at all) first, rather than opening up secret prisons and suspending everyone's constitutional rights.
You act like this president, Supreme Court and Congress are like the ones that came before them: that they respect government. They don't.
Ah yes, the good old days of respect for government. Like when FDR decided that if the Supreme Court rejected his policies, he'd just make it bigger (using his own appointments) until the required number of justices could reach an agreement. Or when pretty much every administration since the creation of the FBI has used that agency to spy on political enemies. Or endless porkbarrel projects created amidst bribery and backroom dealings.
That respect for government? Or did you mean some other time when politicians haven't been hopelessly corrupt?
Hey, don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of Bush. But putting the "other guy" in office has never solved these problems. Something much more drastic is required at this point.
Libertarianism fails because it expects people not to do harm to each other.
Huh? The role of a libertarian government is precisely to prevent people from doing harm to each other, so it's nonsensical to say libertarians don't expect for that to happen. Of course, some people have creative ideas about what constitutes "harm", and reason that by failing to provide someone else a certain standard of living out of my own pocket, I've committed an act of aggression against them. Most libertarians have in mind force or fraud when they speak of "harm".
Indeed. I think anybody who believes the current administration represents real conservative values needs to consider the fact that Reagan once promised to eliminate the entire Department of Education (after all, such is not a constitutional duty of the federal government). Now that's small government!
Socialism works, and most of the world uses it.
In this case, you might not want to make an argument by numbers -- most of the world is a pretty miserable place to live in, the US and Europe being more the exception than the rule.
A big problem with socialism is that it's basically a pyramid scheme. As long as the base is larger than the top, things roll along nicely. But as soon as you approach the inversion point where not enough people are working to fund those social welfare programs, there's a big problem afoot.
Most of Europe is in the process of discovering this fact, due to plunging birthrates. The solution currently being tried is massive importation of cheap foreign labor, which as Theo van Gogh found out, can sometimes be a pain in the, er, chest.
Interesting how you chose to leave out the other part of my comment -- so, are these direct quotations of Pelosi "bullshit"? Or is it really so hard to admit that a "right wing" news source is reporting something factually?
Complaining about bias is useless without presenting specific facts that show how the bias affects some particular story. I suppose you also ignore everything printed in the NY Times because they've employed pathological liars in the past?
If slashdot only linked to news sites without any bias, you'd be looking at an empty page.
In this case the article is little more than a direct quotation of Pelosi's speech with a little snarky editorializing. If you think CNS News is lying, it shouldn't be difficult to find out. It's the responsibility of the reader to consider the source and make appropriate judgements, so complaining about bias is just another way of saying you prefer the biases of other news sources.
Compared with the £100,000 front projection CRT systems with line doublers etc that were necessary only 10 years ago, a modern cheap DLP blows that away for the most part
The only problem with DLP is, those budget projectors will have a single chip and color wheel, causing the "rainbow effect" for those who are susceptible to it (like me). I can't watch a single chip DLP for longer than 15 minutes or so, the rainbows cause horrible eyestrain.
So I've got an LCD projector at home; not quite as nice as DLP in some respects, but good enough for me until 3-chip DLP becomes affordable for mere mortals. And certainly good enough to avoid movie theaters, as I have for the past 2 or 3 years. For the price of one movie ticket, a snack, and a drink, I get Netflix instead.