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Obama Significantly Revises Technology Positions
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Sep 22, 2008 05:48 AM
from the platitude-adjustment dept.
from the platitude-adjustment dept.
method9455 writes "Barack Obama has edited his official website on many issues, including a huge revision on the technology page. Strangely it seems net neutrality is no longer as important as it was a few months ago, and the swaths of detail have been removed and replaced with fairly vague rhetoric. Many technologists were alarmed with the choice of Joe Biden before, and now it appears their fears might have been well founded." Update: 09/22 18:07 GMT by T : Julian Sanchez of Ars Technica passed on a statement from an Obama campaign representative who points out that the changes in wording highlighted by Versionista aren't the whole story, and that more Obama tech-plan details are now available in a PDF, saying "there is absolutely no substantive change to our policy - folks who want more information can click to get our full plan."
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McCain Campaign Uses Spider/Diff Against Obama 1171 comments
Vote McCain in 2008! writes "McCain's campaign is doing everything it can to erase Obama's online advantage, this time they ambushed Obama by detecting edits to his website when he updated some of his policy positions. This isn't the first time the Republicans have shown up the Democrats with their web savvy — you may remember the previous reports about the Republican Web 2.0 Consultants and their online campaigning game. This just proves that old Republicans can learn new tricks." Assuming the spider adheres to robots.txt, this is clever and well done.
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All hail the new king, same as the old king. (Score:5, Insightful)
When are people going to learn to assess politicians and parties on their actions, rather than their promises? Those that might have really introduced change have already been weeded out. Vote for the puppet of your choice, folks.
Re:All hail the new king, same as the old king. (Score:5, Interesting)
When are people going to learn to assess politicians and parties on their actions, rather than their promises? Those that might have really introduced change have already been weeded out. Vote for the puppet of your choice, folks.
Many have. Obama's tech-related voting record is certainly better than most candidates that come to mind. He's voted against telecom immunity, and FISA fairly vehemently in the past. Perhaps the vague language is merely a way to package both Biden/Obama's views into a single declaration? It was probably just a way to describe both of their technological goals without smearing their respective stances. Should that be the case, it's still the top of the ticket that calls the shots.
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Re:All hail the new king, same as the old king. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yay - rationalization that your "team" is okay, because, after all - they're your team.
Please folks, there's no way you're voting for a democrat and republican and *really* thinking you're going to get change. They're all part of the same party, they're all buddies, and they all have roughly the same goals - take lots of your money, waste it, pass laws to control your life, invade other countries.
The OP is correct, any candidate for change has already been eliminated (Ron Paul, Mike Gravel...)
Vote third party. Any third party, for that matter.
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Re:All hail the new king, same as the old king. (Score:5, Informative)
The GP was correct, he voted against telecom immunity in the past. In addition, in the most recent vote, he voted against telecom immunity each time the subject came up (ie for all of the amendments that were aimed at removing telecom immunity from the FISA bill), but voted for the final FISA bill (which was about a lot more than telecom immunity.)
Whether the FISA bill was a good thing is open to question, I was disappointed in Obama voting for it myself, but it's a stretch to claim he supported the telecom immunity aspect of it when he supported all the attempts to remove telecom immunity from it.
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Re:All hail the new king, same as the old king. (Score:5, Insightful)
but it's a stretch to claim he supported the telecom immunity aspect of it when he supported all the attempts to remove telecom immunity from it.
How much more "for it" can you be than a YEA vote for a bill which contains it?
As a congress critter, if there is a part of a bill you don't like IT IS YOUR JOB TO VOTE AGAINST THE WHOLE THING!!!!
That's what the whole "checks and balances" thing is all about.
The immunity is unconstitutional (see ex post facto [wikipedia.org]) even without the 4th amendment violations.
Between FISA and the Patriot Act, why even have the 4th amendment any more?
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Re:All hail the new king, same as the old king. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, nice dream world you live in. If "congress critters" actually did that then nothing would get passed.... though that might not be so bad :P
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Re:All hail the new king, same as the old king. (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't go voting for a bill which contains all of the things you were just voting AGAINST, and it's idiotic to think that there is any reason to believe this would ever be acceptable!
Here's a hypothetical situation for you; I draft a bill to reduce the criminal sentences for minor drug offences to fines (hefty fines, but still no prison time), and to revoke all patents on proven life-saving chemicals currently patented by multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical companies, but I include a clause which brings new legislation which states that terminally ill patients are not entitled to medical care of any kind, as it is quite simply a waste of resources.
If you're against the last statement, how can you, in good conscience, vote for bill which contains it? Voting for the bill in whole is exactly the same as voting for its constituent parts seperately. He should have voted against it until the parts he disagreed with were removed, and he's a coward for not sticking to his principles.
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Re:All hail the new king, same as the old king. (Score:5, Insightful)
And if the immunity is unconstitutional it won't be a problem as SCOTUS will strike it down yeah?
The american constitution didn't even manage to remain an upheld document till it's 50th birthday. It's time to just deal.
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Re:All hail the new king, same as the old king. (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that you can't vote on actions until after they've been taken.
Personally, I'm in favour of a nice, simple system where if a politician makes a promise before an election and then breaks it, a court can remove him or her from office. I imagine we'd soon see some changes in the way manifestos were presented, and perhaps those who are not just puppets and actually intend to act according to their stated principles would get a bit more recognition since voting for someone based on their campaign pledges would actually mean something. Those who just say whatever the current audience wants to hear but never really promise anything would stand out by a mile.
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Re:All hail the new king, same as the old king. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've also proposed this kind of system before (i.e. that a manifesto should be a legally-binding contract with the voters), but I suspect that the result would be candidates putting such fluffy terms in their pledges that the courts would never be able to determine whether they'd actually broken them or not.
Before New Labour (same as the old conservatives) came to power in the UK, they handed out 'pledge cards' with five election pledges on them. A very simple and powerful message. The Friday Night Armistice made a massive version of these, and each week in their first year crossed off the ones that they'd broken. It was depressing how quickly they all went away.
Democracy requires an informed electorate to function just as capitalism requires informed consumers. The same level of truth in advertising laws should apply.
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Re:All hail the new king, same as the old king. (Score:5, Insightful)
The "Contract with America" worked really well in the '94 elections, though.
Honestly, there are two reasons I can think of why politicians in the U.S. won't commit to anything:
1. If lobbyists know they are committed for/against what they are lobbying for, they won't shower the politician with contributions and "gifts."
2. Legislators often buy the votes of their colleagues by promising to vote for the colleague's legislation if their colleagues will vote for theirs.
And then we need to keep one other thing in mind: riders. Legislation that gets ONE vote often contains extra pieces of legislation that has nothing to do with the original legislation. This is why I agree with notion that the president should have a line-item veto power, and I feel that way regardless who is in office.
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Re:All hail the new king, same as the old king. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is why I agree with notion that the president should have a line-item veto power, and I feel that way regardless who is in office
I disagree. We've already made the Executive Branch much more powerful than the Framers intended it to be. Signing statements, refusals to testify, appointments to un-elected Federal agencies that can impose laws (err, "regulations") on the citizenry, warfare without a declaration, international agreements that don't need to be ratified by the Senate, trade agreements that don't need input from Congress, blah, blah, blah, blah.
You really want to make the Executive even more powerful? Are you nuts?
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Re:All hail the new lump, same as the old lump. (Score:5, Insightful)
Eh, I just don't see a line-item veto as anything more than a power grab by the Executive. Have the balls to veto the whole bill if the riders are that bad.
If you really want to fix this problem then I'd suggest starting with gerrymandering and not the line-item veto. If Congressional races were actually competitive maybe our Congress-critters would be more responsive to the citizenry.
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Re:All hail the new king, same as the old king. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would I feel betrayed? Bush wasn't part of the contract with America.
Bush has been a horrible president, and I'm voting third party. I've never much liked either of the mainstream parties or politics in Washington in general. If you want a real change, don't vote for Obama, vote for a third party.
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Re:All hail the new king, same as the old king. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:All hail the new king, same as the old king. (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is yet another great example of why voting third party is not a "wasted" vote.
I'm sick of people telling me I'm wasting my votes (it won't be the first time I voted for a third party), and yet the same people whine about how bad the government is.
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Re:All hail the new king, same as the old king. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sick of people telling me I'm wasting my votes (it won't be the first time I voted for a third party), and yet the same people whine about how bad the government is.
You aren't wasting your vote but if you live in a battleground state you really ought to consider the broader ramifications. Do you really think that if Al Gore had won in 2000 that we'd be in Iraq right now? Do you really think that he would have alienated all of our Allies?
You say your sick of people telling you that you are 'wasting' your vote -- I'm sick of people telling me that there is no difference between the Democrats and Republicans. Both parties are too beholden to corporate interests but there are differences on extremely important issues.
I've voted third-party myself when both major party candidates suck (as recently as the 2006 NYS Comptroller election) but I really don't think this is one of those times.
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Re:All hail the new king, same as the old king. (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny, I'm sick of third-party supporters telling me that the democrats are the republicans are "the same," which is an utter lie, and I'm also sick of being urged to vote for someone whose policies I detest (like Ron Paul) simply to make a statement.
I remember back in 2004 every political discussion devolved into people urging all of us to vote for the libertarian candidate, Michael Badnarik. It was ridiculous how much support he got here, and the idea was because he was a self-identified libertarian we should all jump on his bandwagon. Now if you did a little background checking you'd find out he was a paranoid conspiracy theorist who explicitly promised to violate the Constitution his first day of office, but that's the sort of background checking that people didn't want to do. Voting strictly along party lines is stupid, whether the candidate is democrat, republican, or part of a third party.
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Important Differences (Score:5, Insightful)
These are guesses, or even hopes. I agree that any of the viable candidates are going to serve the corporate interest, but there are important differences.
1. Obama will engage in diplomacy with Iran, and hopefully in covert ways with Hezbollah, Hamas, and the nationalist Iraqi forces. If you're serious about ending terrorism, you have to engage the enemy dipomatically and address the conditions that lead to it. Protip: killing more muslims with western weapons isn't helping.
2. His Administration will sweep out the Bush/Reagan Administration, while McCain would probably keep a lot of it. That's worth my vote right there.
3. Obama does not pander to Jerry Falwell or any of his imitators. It's America, so he has to recognize the religious element, but he doesn't associate with the fundamentalist nutcases.
4. Obama has shown his distaste of the Bush and Clinton Dynasties. Change is good.
Most importantly, Obama is not McCain. McCain has turned from a moderate Republican, who I would have seriously considered voting for in 2000, to a complete shill, pandering to evangelicals, touting proto-fascist military slogans, and most importantly, has shown the same inability to engage in serious self-criticism that has truly frightened the rest of the world in regards to the Bush Administration. McCain also claims to believe that the Iraq war has something to do with counterterrorism or the spread of freedom, which to any serious observer, is total fucking nonsense.
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Re:All hail the new king, same as the old king. (Score:5, Informative)
If you all (including the editor) would read the page, current as of 17 September, it specifically mentions Network Neutrality as a guiding principle.
Seriously, the whole commenting section is debating about something entirely wrong. RTFA!
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It's not just NN (Score:5, Informative)
They've cut out about half the content, and large chunks about what they'll do for kids.
Either they've had advice that they shouldn't be promising definite things (makes it harder to weasel out of stuff later) or they're just cutting down the page size for some reason.
Either way, bit of a non story.
Politician changes mind, big whoop.
Re:It's not just NN (Score:5, Insightful)
The main page got changed, not the actual plan pdf, which is available at the bottom of the page, and is the exact same as the old page was.
It looks like they just cut down the word count for people who want to glance, and hid the details a layer under.
http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/technology/Fact_Sheet_Innovation_and_Technology.pdf
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Re:It's not just NN (Score:5, Informative)
"Politician changes mind, big whoop."
Except he hasn't changed his mind, he has simply edited several points to make them more readable.
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"Change" is normal: Look at earlier campaigns. (Score:5, Informative)
I was watching campaign ads from previous American presidential elections here [livingroomcandidate.org] -- it starts with the Eisenhower campaign and works forward -- and I was struck by how many candidates used the same rhetoric. "Change" has been a staple campaign theme for a long, long time.
It seemed there were three major types of ads:
There might also have been a fourth, "Our candidate is a nice human being!"
Here are some examples of #2, "Change," below (I've quoted the last sentences from a number of the ads at the above URL):
"Change" is exactly what you can expect the opposition party to be selling in any election. The only reason Obama's campaign seems novel is that we have the collective memory and attention-span of a goldfish.
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America vs Freedom (Score:5, Funny)
Every American election always reminds me of the phrase from Alien vs Predator.
"Whoever wins, we all lose." or something like that.
Re:America vs Freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
10-second civics lesson for you: America has a president, not a dictator. Congress wields considerably more power. No single person, not Bush or McCain or Palin, not even Obama, has the capacity to wreck the country. Or to fix it, for that matter. Much less the entire world.
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Re:America vs Freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
sorry, but by the looks of it from the outside in you might as well have a dictator. Your president is ignoring the laws of his own country as though they did not exist (or at least do not apply to him), let's not even get started about the vice president.
That he has a lot of people enabling him goes without saying but it is a very serious situation nonetheless.
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Net Neutrality Position Remains Unchanged (Score:5, Informative)
"Barack Obama strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet."
Barack is completely behind net neutrality, where as McCain is not [tmcnet.com], but don't let the facts get in the way of the way you try and put FUD out there.
WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
What the fuck are you talking about? It's THE VERY FIRST GODDAMN THING HE MENTIONS.
Barack Obama and Joe Biden's Plan
Ensure the Full and Free Exchange of Ideas through an Open Internet and Diverse Media Outlets
* Protect the Openness of the Internet
If you're a McCain supporter trying to weasel votes away on Slashdot, you need to say so.
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)
Don your tinfoil hats, please...
It appears that the media have decided that it's time for Obama to lose the election. There is nothing in the news now directly about Obama, none of his own words, there is everything in the news about his campaign with words like "beleagured", "desperate", and this "vague rhetoric" stuff. Coming out of the Republican Convention there was the "rock star frenzy" about Sarah Palin, until facts started to reveal that she is really something of a Dan Quayle. There was a brief news cycle of fact discovery about Sarah Palin, and now things seem to be over to Dog Pile on Obama. By the way, notice how Iraq has pretty much disappeared from the news lately? The one thing I did hear is that the central government is beginning to arrest Sunnis, essentially dismantling the "Anhbar Awakening."
It's certainly good that we keep being told about our terrible Liberal Media, because I surely wouldn't have guessed it from what I've seen, lately.
I had thought the media were trying to keep this a tight horse-race, because that enhances their own status and ratings, by keeping us watching. That doesn't appear to be the case. Coming into the conventions, we had a Democratic rock-star candidate against a Republican whose own party had very little enthusiasm for him. Coming out we have an invisible Democratic candidate and an energized Republican party, and as far as I can tell, it's largely done with media coverage.
Oh, and we haven't even see this year's "October Surprise" yet.
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Concise speech, soundbites (Score:5, Insightful)
I call bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
This post is pretty much pure bullshit.
If you look at the revisions, Obama has shortened some bullet points to make them more readable.
He still lists what he supports, but he does not going into massive detail in each one of them.
For instance, his current stance on network neutrality is now (emphasis mine):
"* Protect the Openness of the Internet: A key reason the Internet has been such a success is because it is the most open network in history. It needs to stay that way. Barack Obama strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet."
Instead of:
"* # Protect the Openness of the Internet: A key reason the Internet has been such a success is because it is the most open network in history. It needs to stay that way. Barack Obama strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet. Users must be free to access content, to use applications, and to attach personal devices. They have a right to receive accurate and honest information about service plans. But these guarantees are not enough to prevent network providers from discriminating in ways that limit the freedom of expression on the Internet. Because most Americans only have a choice of only one or two broadband carriers, carriers are tempted to impose a toll charge on content and services, discriminating against websites that are unwilling to pay for equal treatment. This could create a two-tier Internet in which websites with the best relationships with network providers can get the fastest access to consumers, while all competing websites remain in a slower lane. Such a result would threaten innovation, the open tradition and architecture of the Internet, and competition among content and backbone providers. It would also threaten the equality of speech through which the Internet has begun to transform American political and cultural discourse. Barack Obama supports the basic principle that network providers should not be allowed to charge fees to privilege the content or applications of some web sites and Internet applications over others. This principle will ensure that the new competitors, especially small or non-profit speakers, have the same opportunity as incumbents to innovate on the Internet and to reach large audiences. Obama will protect the Internetâ(TM)s traditional openness to innovation and creativity and ensure that it remains a platform for free speech and innovation that will benefit consumers and our democracy. "
So instead of a massive (and unreadable) paragraph, it is now a very simple bullet point saying that Obama strongly supports network neutrality. How on earth is this "downplaying" network neutrality?
Re:Vote with a bullet. (Score:5, Funny)
They're all rich white men
You mean, except the one black guy, right?
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Re:Vote with a bullet. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Vote with a bullet. (Score:5, Funny)
Ha, but you're forgetting one thing. Well two actually, he can dance [youtube.com] and he can jump [dummytv.com]! If that doesn't make him black, that makes him pretty fly for a rich white guy.
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Re:Vote with a bullet. (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, well. He fulfills the requirements of 'blackness' for racial stereotyping, or at least he fills in the checkbox on two items on the list, for the camera.
Er, he also fits the white guy by racial stereotyping. Is it any wonder the blacks in America have such a crappy time if people question their "blackness" as soon as they start to achieve? It's like to be black is to fail from these posts.
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Re:Vote with a bullet. (Score:5, Interesting)
His blackness was questioned by other black people. I believe the quote was about him "lacking slave blood." [Charles Kenzie Steele, Jr.] And let's not forget that by having a white mother he is just as much white as black.
Funny how both sides can simultaneously make race an issue and denounce race as an issue.
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Re:Vote with a bullet. (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama is just another lawyer
Could we please stop attacking lawyers just for being lawyers? Do civil rights attorneys bother you? Consumer rights attorneys? How about the lawyers who argued Brown v. Board of Education? How about Clarence Darrow (argued for the defense in the Scopes Trial)? What about John Adams (Founding Father)? What about Ray Beckerman (aka: NewYorkCountryLawyer [slashdot.org])?
I guess what I'm trying to say is that not every lawyer is a RIAA extortionist.
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Re:Vote with a bullet. (Score:5, Insightful)
US law schools churn out far more lawyers than we need, yet we have a looming shortage of family physicians since the insurance companies (i.e. their employers) don't want to be bothered actually paying them. The average salary for non-ivy league lawyers is far lower than you might think, particularly if you exclude the hapless drones working at the big lawsuit factories.
We will be able to do without lawyers once we can all agree to make and abide by the rules rationally, i.e never. We COULD do with fewer lawyers which could happen but probably won't.
I'd suggest we would do better with a major reform of the health insurance industry so every doctor doesn't feel compelled to specialize in order to make their investment of time and effort to become doctors (which is far more difficult than in law) pay off.
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Re:Vote with a bullet. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the legal profession is a bit like a priesthood, it actually thrives on obscure interpretations of language and on serious consequences of failing such interpretations. It's like an arms race, if your opponent has a lawyer then you'd better get one yourself and so on. The end result is a legal system that is well beyond the average smart persons capability to interpret.
It should have never ever gotten this far.
If you simply removed all lawyers and let the parties argue their own cases exclusively we'd see two things:
- a significant drop in caseload
- a return to reasonable verdicts instead of verdicts on technicalities
Of course it's a pipe dream (especially in criminal law) but like with most extreme positions it has a grain of truth in it somewhere and it would be nice to be able to shift the 'middle ground' to the point where lay people would stand a chance against a seasoned lawyer, and where verdicts would actually make sense to an informed outsider.
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Re:Vote with a bullet. (Score:5, Informative)
Um, Barack lives right here on the South Side of Chicago. And brother, let me tell you, this ain't the suburbs.
Also, he only became a "millionaire" in the past three years or so after writing a couple of best selling books. He only paid off his and his wife's student loans about five years ago.
He was never "just another lawyer". Ask any of his students from the UofC law school or the people at the community organization at which he worked, for about $29,000 per year.
Don't be a bozo.
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Re:Vote with a bullet. (Score:5, Funny)
He became a 'millionaire' because he wrote a couple memoirs? Huh? So writing a couple memoirs is a 'get rich quick' scheme that we should all engage in, it isn't a way for the politically connected to siphon in some green?? Well, then, I guess we should all write our memoirs.
So now we hate authors too?
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Vote with a list. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Actually the black guy qualifies in anyone's book as a rich white guy ... Unless you're totally obsessed with skin color."
Or checklists.
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Re:Vote with a bullet. (Score:5, Funny)
I keep forgetting -- does having a wife and kids make you rich, or white?
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Re:Vote with a bullet. (Score:5, Funny)
OMG! Green leafy vegetables! How did it come to this? How can someone who eats rabbit food be this close to the White House?
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Re:Vote with a bullet. (Score:5, Funny)
My colour-sampler puts him at #A67A61
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Re:Lobbiest money. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Lobbiest money. (Score:5, Insightful)
Open Secrets shows Obama accepted far more money from the employees of large corporations than John McCain.
Fixed that for you.
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Re:it does not matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Although I'm sure you and I agree on how big of a jackass GWB is, you can hardly say he *created* the national debt. I think that honor is shared among a long line of democrats and republicans.
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/history.gif [brillig.com]
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/inflation.gif [brillig.com]
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