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Lessig Campaign and the Change Congress Movement
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Feb 20, 2008 09:23 AM
from the real-change-please dept.
from the real-change-please dept.
GoldenShale wrote a follow up to last week's discussion about Lessig running for congress. He writes "Larry Lessig has created a Lessig08 website, and it looks like he is getting serious about running for congress. In his introduction video he proposes the creation of a national "Change Congress" movement which would try to limit the influence of money in the electoral and legislative processes. Having a technologically savvy representative and a clear intellectual leader to head this kind of movement is exactly what we need to counter the last 8 years of corporate dominance in government."
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Your Rights Online: Lessig For Congress? 137 comments
luge writes "With the unfortunate passing of Congressman Tom Lantos, parts of Silicon Valley and San Francisco will be holding a special election in June to send a replacement to Congress. Given the area, it would be great to have someone who is both tech- and policy-aware fill the seat — and it looks like that just might happen. Lawrence Lessig has apparently bought 'change-congress.com.' A 'Draft Lessig' group is forming on Facebook, featuring some of Lessig's old co-workers at Harvard and Jimmy Wales, among others. No word from Lessig himself yet, but he's been increasingly vocal about politics of late. If it happens, it would be a huge step forward for the representation of technology in Washington."
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Lessig Decides Not to Run For Congress 80 comments
micheas writes "Larry Lessig has decided that running for U.S. Congress himself in a special election would be too risky to his Change Congress movement and has decided not to run. 'With lots of mixed feelings, I have decided a run for Congress would not help the Change Congress movement. I explain the thinking in this 5 minute video (a new record for me!). First question: What happens to the contributions to Lessig08? As explained on the ActBlue page, all will go to (the yet to be established) Change Congress organization.'"
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last 8 years? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:last 8 years? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Funny, I figured this out a long time ago. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
You won't overcome the republicans or democrats in one big presidential election. Never gonna happen. If you want to make any progress, you will have to build from the bottom up. Start getting candidates into local and state positions, and build on a track record of good governance at the local and state level to leverage your party into the House and the Senate. Once you have enough support in the House and Senate (at least 1/3rd of each), and are nationally known as a party people like and trust, then you are in an excellent position to run a Presidential candidate as a true, meaningful alternative to the two establisment parties.
Otherwise, your just a flash in the pan.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Each branch has different powers, but none can exerc
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bush's foreign policy is awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's fine and dandy, and I think you were unfairly modded troll, by the way. All I'm saying is, if Europeans aren't fighting for us, why should we fight for them? Why does it matter to the USA if Poland or Germany are independent from Russia any more than Iraq is liberated from Saddam? There's no difference. I'm saying, let Europeans deal with their own security, the USA can trade with them, but lets
Re:Bush's foreign policy is awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
As to what the difference to the USA is, in case you have forgotten you were involved in a cold war with the USSR. The USA and Europe provided a counterbalancing force to the USSR and China. How long do you think the USA would have lasted if the USSR, Europe and China had been allies? US involvement in Europe, as in South-East Asia in the last century was all about national security.
[1] Yes, unlikely, I know.
Parent
Re:Bush's foreign policy is awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
And once the radioactive cloud drifts over your midwest and destroyes the agriculture there, you'll feel really stupid for doing so.
Parent
Completely disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
I think Europe is anti-American solely because of what they perceive to be American militarism. I think Europe is so scarred from the World Wars that anything that smacks of a risk of a war terrifies them. And, I think that is understandable. Everyone in Europe, especially Germany, has a family member that was killed on the Eastern Front. Everyone in Europe has families tales of occupation, the bombings, the postwar starvations, the homelessness. They have had enough war to last for generations and they see us as fools for seemingly seeking it out.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, but you really think they hate our "freedom" and not our meddling (i.e., causing w
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I'm sorry, but that's pretty arrogant. I understand the notion, but you have to look at it this way. We are considered the evil war monger superpower now. That's not a good thing. If we were to take a step back, let the world work it's magic and help them instead of inhibiting them, we might actually make it off this planet and on to better things. The whole idea behind living a cooperative existence is to NOT go to war unless absolutely
Re:Bush's foreign policy is awesome (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't disagree with any of that. That is why I am saying that the USA should not be military allies with anyone. We should bring all of our troops home from everywhere, cut down the size of our army, and focus on trade. We can sit fat and happy behind a mountain of nukes and a missile defense system for our own national security, plus with a sufficient navy to guard our waters and an air force for our air. But we don't need to be operating in 100 countries across the globe. Iraq is the least of our military perception problems.
Parent
Now since you've proven yourself a moron... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the reason we are in Iraq is that for over a decade, Saddam Hussein flaunted and refused to comply with the terms of an armistice he himself had signed.
And then he added to that by doing far too good a job blustering and trying to convince people that he had an active WMD program - so good a job that the Russians, French, Germans, Spanish, Chinese, and even the Swiss thought he did still have it going. Why was he doing it? Because it was the only thing keeping Iran off his ass. Problem? He fooled everyone else too, and his history scared the crap out of people that he'd lob a nuke towards someone (Turkey, Israel, Kuwait, Iran) that he considered an "enemy" and touch off even more crap.
We're in Iraq today because the Middle East is ruled by a bunch of fucktards who use a 7th-century religion to justify barbarity and evil, towards each other just as much as towards the "dar al-harb" they profess to hate.
Parent
Re:Now since you've proven yourself a moron... (Score:4, Insightful)
We're in Iraq today because the Middle East is ruled by a bunch of fucktards who use a 7th-century religion to justify barbarity and evil, towards each other just as much as towards the "dar al-harb" they profess to hate.
No, we're in Iraq today because the U.S. is now run by a bunch of petulant chicken-hawks (funny how Clinton didn't feel the need to invade Iraq whereas Bush couldn't wait) who use a 0th-century religion to justify the murder and torture (yes, kids, you can watch Christians defend torture!) of people in a different religion who happen to be sitting on a bunch of oil that wasn't being used enough. What's that? They shot at our soldiers? Guess what, our soldiers wouldn't be getting shot at if we had not invaded in the first place. What's that? We really thought Saddam had nukes. Sorry but anyone with an ounce of sense knew that he didn't have them because if he had them he would have used them (argue this all you want but the fact is that Iraq didn't have them and wasn't working on them). I think this is the point where you bring up 9/11 and implore me to support the troops.
Parent
Re:Now since you've proven yourself a moron... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, we're in Iraq because we really, really though they had, or were about to have, nukes and threatened nearby countries? Okay. Why aren't we in North Korea? They have nukes, and they sure as hell pose a threat to South Korea. Why can we deal with North Korea through diplomacy, but we had to invade Iraq?
Excepting that Iraq was one of the few places in the Middle East with a largely secular government and peace between different religious groups. Saddam Hussein was a terrible, brutal dictator, but he wasn't a religious zealot, he was a powermonger. He paid lip service to religion because it gave him some political benefit.
Anyone who thought Hussein and Iraq presented a credible threat that was imminent enough to warrant an unilateral invasion was deluding themselves.
Parent
Clueless moderators? (Score:4, Insightful)
Last time I checked, it was the US government which tried to convince those countries that Iraq had WMD, and they used a significant amount of fake or exaggerated 'evidence' to do so. Look up Colin Powell's address to the UN, for example.
Europeans opposed the invasion of Iraq because they didn't let themselves be fooled by that. If the US had had a case, most Europeans would have supported the invasion.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I beg to differ. IMHO, the primary reason we're in Iraq is so we can have a "sufficiently major and long-lasting" war. After all, you can't be a "wartime President" without a war, and it's really hard to make executive power grabs without using war and national security as a pretext. So we're at war in Iraq, in order to be at war, in order to "enhance" executive power.
Beyond that, Iraq was just too attractive:
Afghanistan was (incorrectly) perceived as not being m
Re:Bush's foreign policy is awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multinational_force_in_Iraq [wikipedia.org] A lot of European countries have troops in Afghanistan.
Sorry for not fighting all your ill-concieved wars.
Parent
*Cough* *Britain* *Cough* (Score:3, Insightful)
Bein allied with someone doesn't mean "invaeds the same places despite advice", it means mutual defence and giving consideration to any other military actions.
Frankly I've more respect for those that didn't go than those that did.
Re:Bush's foreign policy is awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Bush's foreign policy is awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
2. If the dumbest thing you can think of is to appease the largest economic power outside of North America, then you clearly haven't watched American politics for the last 50 years.
3. Europeans ARE fighting with Americans in Iraq. United Kingdom, Poland, Romania, Denmark, Bulgaria, Latvia, Albania, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Armenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Estonia (in decreasing number of troops) all have troops in Iraq. Not all of these are EU members, but some are, and all are part of Europe. Europe is not France and Germany, no matter what France and Germany may say about that. That said, Germany is a staunch US ally, host to US bases that are key in moving troops and equipment around the world, and a key member of NATO that helped us during the cold war. Discount such an ally at your own peril....
4. All of the above nations are quite concerned that they've done quite the opposite of what they intended (bring instability to the region rather than stability).
Parent
Re:Bush's foreign policy is awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Bush's foreign policy is awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:last 8 years? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:last 8 years? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's plenty of artists that would like to see copyright be extended as well, so don't pretend that this is merely a right wing corporate thing. There's quite a few liberals earning a living selling books, songs and movies that are delighted to know their grandchildren can inherit their royalties!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But are corporations the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not Walmart's fault that people shop there and buy so much Chinese stuff. It's not Toyota's fault that Americans would rather pay Toyota and get a nicer car than have a better standard of living for American auto workers. It's not just that a banker on wall street is greedy. It is that -every- American is greedy, and therefor, we got the institutions we asked for.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Please stop with the "USian" nonsense. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:But are corporations the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't turn a startup company into a national giant without being better than your competition. That's what Walmart has done. Some companies when they get big get lazy, and start to charge higher prices. To their credit, Walmart has done the opposite - they've used their size and influence to create even more efficiencies and provide their customers even lower prices.
The result is that millions of Americans are better able to afford the necessities of life. And that sounds like a Good Thing to me.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't take a conspiracy theory to see why the Japanese own the car market. The truth is the American companies dropped the ball on engineering.
Saying that every American is greedy probably wasn't meant as an insult either, but as a point about how we view economics. The common argument is that capitalism counts on each individual to make decisions that benefit themselves which results in a greater whole. The problem is that it doesn't always work out ideally as seen
But how? (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, there is a 'donation cap' of $2300 per person for individual contributions to a campaign or party, I believe. I could think of ways to get around such a donation cap. Most people don't have $2300 to
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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It would also be the single largest transfer of money from the poor to the rich. That is why it'll never happen: because there is still some sanity in government, even if it's not much.
Dan Aris
Really original thinking here (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm all for this, but as the old spam form response says, "Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical".
Re:Really original thinking here (Score:5, Insightful)
Any time we allow our fundamental rights to be legislated away, we lose...
Parent
The problem isn't the Bill of Rights (Score:4, Insightful)
If the First Amendment wasn't an obstacle, what would you want to do? Limit political contributions, and all you do is restrict the power of middle class individuals' money (which must be pooled to buy a single commercial) in favor of the rich (who can afford to advertise without going through campaign middlemen. We've seen some of that in these primaries, where the $2,300 cap on ordinary Americans' contributions obviously doesn't apply to wealthy candidates who can "loan" millions of dollars to their own campaigns. Limit political advertisements, and all you'll do is force some of those advertisements to call themselves "fair and balanced news", concentrating power still further into the hands of media owners. Limit news that doesn't pass "Fairness" laws, and that just moves the power into the hands of the incumbent politicians and judges who get to write and arbitrate such laws.
The best we can do is encourage the dissemination of less corrupted political information, to inoculate people against the misinformation that money can buy. By the time a voter is watching the commercials that have been pushed at him rather than trying to pull information on issues and candidates for himself, it's practically too late.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
To change Congress, we first have to change the attitude of the voters who think their CongressCritter is giving them a "free lunch" by stealing someone else's tax dollars and funding a local project. Earmarks are just the tip of the iceberg.
How about a Constitutional Amendment requiring all money raised for a campaign MUST be raised from registered voters in
Intellectuals make terrible politicians (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyway, the only way to change the game is to play it - if the congress is run by corporate types, then you need to become a corporate type to change congress. Revolution happens, but it's pretty rare - and frankly I don't think that Lessig has it in him.
Your sort of thinking is exactly the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
One compromise after another, until eventually we're in this mess. What we *need* are people who actually have some ideals and well thought out principles and are willing to stick to them or go down in flames trying. Then we might actually see some change, rather than continued appeasement of the entrenched interests.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Congressmen get to vote on issues that affect the country. They pass budgets. They make laws to regulate business. If Lessig had a voice in Congress, that would be One vote plus the number of other Congressmen his logic and arguments can influence.
And hell... a vote FOR LESSIG is a vote for FREE CULTURE [google.com]. He wrote the book on the subject. :)
Anybody who would vote against Lessig clearly is more concerned with stifling American Culture, then freeing it. Culture is music, movies, art, and literature.
Only eight years? (Score:4, Insightful)
I recognize the temptation to blame Bush, but this is too old and it runs too deep to pin on him alone.
last 8 years of corporate dominance in congress... (Score:5, Funny)
No limits on money (Score:4, Interesting)
No, it is better, really, to just have money go to whomever and without restriction. That way, we can at least see whom is owned by who, and vote accordingly. Better a billionaire writes a million dollar check to a senator than the same billionaire indirectly invests into a bevy of people to work some foul valve of power in the furnaces of Washington.
The First Ammendment... (Score:3, Insightful)
You can not "limit influence of money" without trampling the First Amendment-provided right to free speech. McCain-Feingold [washingtonpost.com] did just this, but it does not make it right (it is the primary grudge against McCain, in fact)...
Funny, how the same people, who complain about First Amendment violations almost all the time — right to sell porn, right to distribute copyrighted (by someone else) material, right to create/publish law-breaking software are all deemed protected by the same Amendment by these people — not only fail to see this trampling, but actually demand more of it... Or, rather, it would've been funny, if it weren't sad.
I thought more of Lessig...
Influence of government - influence of money (Score:3, Insightful)
The government has exactly one job: to monopolize violence to ensure that people can make arrangements free of violence. Everything else, people can arrange for themselves through voluntary peaceful means.
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The FairTax is anything but.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Anything else is unfair, but necessary simply because not everyone can afford their fair share.
The tax code boils down to extracting unfair amounts of money from whomever can pay and the way that is done is by the politics of helping friends, punishing enemies and pandering to the voters.
So, in the US, with a $3T budget and 300M citizens, if your family is not paying $10,000 a head in federal taxes you are not paying your fair shar
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)