Silicon Valley Stays Quiet As Washington Implodes 299
dcblogs writes "In a better time, circa 1998, Cypress Semiconductor founder and CEO T.J. Rodgers gave a provocative speech, titled 'Why Silicon Valley Should Not Normalize Relations with Washington D.C.' This speech is still important to understanding the conflict that tech leaders have with Congress, and their relative silence during the shutdown. 'The metric that differentiates Silicon Valley from Washington does not fall along conventional political lines: Republican versus Democrat, conservative versus liberal, right versus left,' Rogers said. 'It falls between freedom and control. It is a metric that separates individual freedom to speak from tap-ready telephones; local reinvestment of profit from taxes that go to Washington; encryption to protect privacy from government eavesdropping; success in the marketplace from government subsidies; and a free, untaxed Internet from a regulated, overtaxed Internet.'"
Bah ... (Score:3, Insightful)
The only difference is which rich assholes get richer.
The tech companies want to be given the ability to do anything to make a profit. The government wants to be given the ability to do anything to spy on us.
It's douchebags on both sides fighting for their piece of the pie -- we all get fucked over in the end.
Re:Bah ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The only difference is which rich assholes get richer.
The tech companies want to be given the ability to do anything to make a profit. The government wants to be given the ability to do anything to spy on us.
It's douchebags on both sides fighting for their piece of the pie -- we all get fucked over in the end.
Without a government that is forcing you to give your money to someone, those "assholes" have to compete with others for the privilege of serving you.
Re:Bah ... (Score:5, Insightful)
What "competition"? Maybe in your libertarian fantasy world. But here in the real-world, powerful corporations collude, buy monopolies, crush any smaller competitors--and generally do everything to ensure that there is no real competition, and never will be. The "free market" is a bunch of horseshit shoveled to gullible suckers.
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You forgot Somalia.
You're right, we don't have a free market. But pessimism isn't going to fix that, and inaction isn't going to result in a better situation. We're not going to end up in a socialist utopia, but state-run capitalism that rewards the elite, yet treats the worker as mere chattel.
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Already there.
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You don't know what chattel means. I wouldn't want to own the flat foots that make up most of the working stiffs. You can't own someone who has multiple standing offers from your competitors.
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It means the exact same thing in the context that I used it that it does in the context I quoted, and your comment about "standing offers" is hardly the norm in a corporate culture that views employees as largely interchangeable "resources" rather than people.
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...and your comment about "standing offers" is hardly the norm in a corporate culture that views employees as largely interchangeable "resources" rather than people.
Depends on a few things...
1) the job. If we're talking about a burger-flipper or "barista", then yeah they are mostly interchangeable. If we're talking about a sysadmin or developer with a solid professional reputation, then good luck with finding one, and don't be surprised if he bails the moment a company really pisses him off.
2) experience. Retail salespeople that can stock shelves at the local mall clothing store are approximately 8 cents per baker's dozen. A top-notch sales pro with a huge client list
Re:Bah ... (Score:4, Informative)
No competition? Tell that to the old AT&T, which got crushed by it's children. Or Yahoo as it watches Goggle zoom ahead. Or Google, as it watches Facebook grow its mobile ad revenue like there's no tomorrow. Or Microsoft as even microsofties use iPads. Or PanAm as Southwest ate their lunch. In my company, I get a win/loss email every week about how we won a customer from our rivals and they beat us at another.
It's a mixed bag. Some markets are more open to competition than others. But competition is alive and well in many, many places.
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No, AT&T was "broken up" because they *asked* to stop being the exclusive national long distance phone service utility.
You have no clue. AT&T was broken up as part of a consent decree where they divested themselves of the LOCAL telephone services (the RBOC -- regional Bell operating companies) so they could KEEP the long distance operation. This consent decree came about as the result of an anti-trust lawsuit from their vertical integration of everything from local to long distance to telephone equipment.
MCI also helped the breakup by filing anti-trust lawsuits.
To claim that AT&T asked to be broken up is just rid
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Here in the real-world, powerful corporations get limited legal liability from the government, buy monopolies from the government, and generally do anything to make sure the government doesn't allow any competition.
Note that there are some things that SHOULD be run by government. Which is not synonymous with "the government should
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What "competition"? Maybe in your libertarian fantasy world. But here in the real-world, powerful corporations collude, buy monopolies, crush any smaller competitors--and generally do everything to ensure that there is no real competition, and never will be. The "free market" is a bunch of horseshit shoveled to gullible suckers.
The competition that is possible when the police power of government is not playing favorites on who gets to do business. THAT competition. The only time monopolies persist is when governments protect them. When they are at the mercy of consumers and competition they are fleeting at best. One positive outcome of the persistent monopoly when government is not shoring them up is decreasing prices, increased quality, and increased efficiency of production. You cannot show one example of a business to supp
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Here in the real world they use lock-in or back room agreements to divide the territory and keep newcomers out.
The power of the free market was provided by unicorns but they caught those and sold them off as a cheap spam substitute.
real dichotomy (Score:5, Insightful)
The only difference is which rich assholes get richer....It's douchebags on both sides fighting for their piece of the pie -- we all get fucked over in the end.
I sympathize with your frustration but, no you're wrong.
Look at *policy*...Dem's and Repub's are very, very different. One party has a coordinated effort to end all abortion (including fertitlity tests in Louisiana) and teach young-earth creationism.
That's Repbublicans, that's "libertarians"...don't kid yourself....you want to criticize money in politics? welcome to the fucking club...the rich get richer **in any situation** fact is, even the best case scenario, with two functional, representative parties, money in politics will still be just as much of a problem...
no....the fact that humans can be corrupt does not validate your argument
In the end, the defeatist "Bah...it's all bullshit...meh" is immature and reductive. It's not an intellectual conclusion....it's the opposite...the refusal to engage a complex situation...something that requires mental effort to dig below the rhetoric.
Your position reminds me of Dr. Zeus in Planet of the Apes...covering his ears and screaming so he doesn't hear the human speak.
Democrats are the only people trying to do anything resembling professional governance right now. **accept and deal with that fact** if you think about it, the Chinese idea of 'crisis/opportunity' applies...
I'm surprised at Republicans...for 'free market' people their party is remarkable bereft of any new ideas.
trolls: if you want to express your hate for what I've said, please use blockquote to specify which part of my post you are criticizing
Re:real dichotomy (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of a free market is that the politicians don't have the ideas. They keep government from interfering with others who do have the good ideas. Of course the Republicans aren't very good at that either. They're just as meddling as the Democrats.
grumble-grumble (Score:4, Insightful)
trying not to freak out here...but you *did* make a coherent point and used blockquotes as requested...so here goes:
this is Ayn Rand revisionism...Paul Ryan type stuff...people who understand economic theory through the lense of **ONE** theorist only...that's your mistake.
the 'free market' is a heuristic of human behavior....it is independent of political/social systems (ex: the huge black market in Soviet Russia, street vendors, etc)
the 'free market' applied to government means a competition of ideas...
**competition of ideas**
my point was/is, that of the two, the Repubs and their supporters talk often and loudly about their love of the 'free market'
if you apply 'free market' ideas to politics, logically you would expect a lively debate of new ideas and old ideas adapted in interesting ways...
also, what is the difference if Robert Oppenheimer makes the A-bomb for Boening or for the DoD? does it really matter who signed his paycheck? he went in and did his work...
the 'free market' isn't any better or worse than the 'government' at doing any one project...that's comparing apples and oranges...b/c the 'free market' isn't an economic system its a heuristic of human behavior
that is a drastically reductive idea of what government does...based on Ayn Rand...a bad reading of Rand even...
The US Constitution spells out why our government exists, and it makes alot of sense.
I certainly agree that **YES** you are right, one function of government (of many, many functions) is to protect the 'idea people' from unfair competition!!!
I really want you to know that you're right on there...but I think your premise is wrong...
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In the end, the defeatist "Bah...it's all bullshit...meh" is immature and reductive. It's not an intellectual conclusion....it's the opposite...the refusal to engage a complex situation...something that requires mental effort to dig below the rhetoric.
Unless by "mental effort" you mean "advancing technology to the singularity and welcoming our new AI overlords," human nature is what it is, and you're just pissing into the wind.
reclaim 'libertarian' (Score:4, Interesting)
In common usage, yes they sure as hell are ;) this is measurable...
However I agree that using proper definitions, yes Libertarian ideas are wholly independent (and in conflict with) most of what Republicans do.
I always liked the Political Compass [politicalcompass.org]
It identifies 'authoritarian/libertarian' and 'left/right' dichotomies on a two axis scale (instead of just a binary)
Sure it has its weaknesses, but its a great converstation fixer when things go off the rails over definitions...
I'm a 'left-leaning libertarian' according to academic definitions...
Your problem: You have bought into Republican/Tea Party propaganda that to be "libertarian" means to oppose whatever Democrats do
All libertarians...except strongly totalitarian leaning...should logically support the Democrats right now on a ***POLICY basis***
policy basis...look at what the GOP actually proposes as law...go ahead...on virtually every issue voted upon, the Democrat side is the more rational side of the two
I would love to reclaim the word "libertarian" from the maw of the GOP/Fox brainwash machine...
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They why do they seem to always hob-nob with Republicans? If you are a libertarian and vote Republican you are a de facto Republican.
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Well sure. That's one way to look at the world and for the moment, let us suppose it is just which assholes get richer.
I'd much rather some asshole get rich providing me with a service/product that I actually want to use.
Yes, I'd rather some asshole get rich providing me with good transportation, communication, housing, shelter, food... you know all the things you want/need in your life.
Better still, a rich asshole who interferes the least with my life.
It absolutely matters who that rich asshole is and wha
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I smell a market opportunity [bloomberg.com]!
If only... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's an interesting attitude that I wish more companies would take. I think many of our laws would be better designed to protect "we the people".
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It's an interesting attitude that I wish more companies would take. I think many of our laws would be better designed to protect "we the people".
At least SOMEBODY is on the proper side of the line here.
But make no mistake: other parts of California, like Hollywood and the music studios, have been staunchly behind Obama and the others who have been attempting to take our freedoms.
Still, it's glad to see businesses -- especially big businesses -- supporting the good causes too.
Re:If only... (Score:4, Interesting)
The Anti-SOPA stance was a good day.
But by and large, I think these organizations have been too quiet. If they have not normalized relationships with Washington, then why did it take a leak by someone from Washington for some of these organizations to admit what vast information has been shared?
And it's ludicrous to not-normalize relationships with Washington. That's where the laws are defined. There should be pro-privacy politicians with the backing of these companies. With Citizens United, shouldn't tech organizations have the strong advantage of getting the word out about what kind of society we want to create?
The stance of burying heads in the sand is no better than those fools who talk of secession, or try to create their own militia societies. The brain drain occurring today in Russia, is likely to reoccur here in the United States due to gerrymandering if we stay disengaged.
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Sadly, they've been staunchly behind BOTH parties to try to pressure them into such things. This "latest battle" started with the DMCA - which would have been a lot worse if it weren't for some CongressCritters who actually stood up for us - and those were largely Democrats, btw.
While BOTH parties are doing a horrendous job with such things, one party is entirely ignoring the public on this matter - the corporate donations to that particular party are coincidentally a lot higher.
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This "latest battle" started with the DMCA - which would have been a lot worse if it weren't for some CongressCritters who actually stood up for us - and those were largely Democrats, btw.
Not very damned many. Speech before the House, Rep. John Conyers [D MI], 1998, before passage (Conyers, by the way -- a Democrat -- was chairman of the committee and pushed very hard for passage):
"I think everyone has heard that we finally reached a conclusion that I think may satisfy nearly every Member in the House of Representatives...
I am proud of the product, and like all the speakers before me, I urge its favorable confirmation."
About as many Democrats spoke in favor as Republicans. There were few if any naysayers.
It passed overwhelmingly in the House, and unanimously in the Senate. EVERY Democrat in the Senate voted in favor. (Not to give the GOP a pass... they did too.)
I'm not trying to say the Republicans were any better. But stop
Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
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Bullshit. Plenty of decentralized services (including, but not limited to HTTP, email, IRC, etc.) work just fine and centralizing them like Google attempted with XMPP has no conceivable benefit (except to the likes of advertisers and the NSA).
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Let look at the rest of the statement in the write up:
1) Freedom vs. control. How do we reconcile this with patent trolls, DRM, and de facto unlimited copy rights?
2) Local reinvestment of profit from taxes that go to Washington. Yeah right, reinvestment. If reinvestment means CEOs line their pockets. What I see is a bunch of freeloaders not paying taxes to support the educational system that benefits them. And also such basic research institutes such as DARPA, NASA, and a host of others.
3) A free untaxed unregulated internet. It is regulation which prevents the internet from becoming a captured, by business interests, internet.
4) Success in the marketplace from government subsidies. LMAO, see point 2 above as well as how many tech companies have their snouts in the government trough.
That's probably just a start.
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Agreed. I'll enlarge it by pointing out that without the evil government, there would BE no internet at all. Just a handful of walled gardens on dialup mailing us worthless CDs every month and charging by the hour.
The closest thing to an actual internet before that was Fido and UUCP. Neither of which were created by these 'benevolent' masters of Silicon Valley.
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Your post doesnt really make much sense. A webmail provider (like Google) has to be able to see what your email is, even if only because they are sending you the HTML containing your emails. Everything Ive seen suggests that the Google et al taps were done via tapping at the ISP level or else sending NSLs, neither of which a company can really do much about so long as they are based in the US.
You could sell adverts on a webmail even if it werent tappable (say, they require the use of VPN)-- the server cou
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All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
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Ever eaten a burger with reasonable confidence that it wouldn't give you TB?
The divide is the same everywhere (Score:2)
But the folks in Silicon Valley have the means to at least complain about how bad things are. The rest of the country can't or won't speak up.
Silence until NSA spying hurts sales (Score:5, Interesting)
They'll stay silent until America's reputation, and the NSA spying specifically, starts to impact sales. Until then, Silicon Valley's lobbying policy seems to be "pray they don't affect us".
Since TFS doesn't list it, here's Why Silicon Valley Should Not Normalize Relations With Washington, D.C. [cato.org] from the libertarian think tank Cato Institute.
Who elected this guy to speak for Silicon Valley? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no such thing as what "silicon valley wants". It's not even a valley and it is definitely not made of silicon. But, that's beside the point. He basically makes it sound as if everybody there is libertarian without mentioning the word, but it is far from the truth. People who matter are involved with the government up to their necks, including all the things he says silicon valley is against: eavesdropping, subsidies, protectionism, non-free internet. All major tech companies maintain nice and expensive lobbyists in Washington. Not that I blame them, they have to live in real world and deal with the biggest and most powerful gorilla in the jungle and that is the government. And it's getting bigger.
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Actually, I'm sure that silicon makes up about 30% of the land in Silicon Valley (just like it does everywhere else), and San Francisco Bay was a valley until the end of the last ice age (when it filled up with ocean).
Re:Who elected this guy to speak for Silicon Valle (Score:4, Informative)
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The problem with that argument is that nothing convinces me the GOP is packed with nuts faster than watching Fox News. Even when they put their best face forward the nuts show through.
That's not to say that I'm thrilled with the Democrats either. Just that Democrat brand (TM, pat pending) nutsery is less likely to starve people out and will take longer to blow our society apart.
I'd still prefer a 3rd party to have an actual chance of winning.
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A few points.
1) It was written 15 years ago. Since then we've had 9/11, the Patriot Act, Wikileaks and the NSA invasion of privacy just to mention a few interesting events. So many actors have changed their stripes (Google seems to be a prime example) since this was written. Yet his points are still relevant! If we had paid attention to Dr. Rodgers points then maybe we wouldn't be in the mess we are today.
2) It IS a valley idiot. I stand outside and see two mountain ranges, one on either side... a valley!
3
Power corrupts, and all that. (Score:2)
We've seen it over and over again. Once a few large successful companies develop an entrenched market position, they drop all of their pretenses of ideals and form a sort of symbiosis with the government.
The difference between now and 1998 is probably that internet companies at the time saw government control of the net as an impediment to their growth, where now they see it as an opportunity to make more money and protect their position from competitors.
It isn't any different elsewhere (Score:3, Interesting)
There are those who have fallen for the false, artificially created dichotomy of Republican-Democrat and those who have realized that the real problem is politics as an industry.
What really needs to be done is to wipe out the concept of two parties both of which are so ossified in untenable positions that the combination is destroying the Republic.
1. Term limits for Congress. 12 years.
2. Campaign Finance Limits. 100 dollars per candidate/person.
3. Eliminate Gerrymandering. Districts must be drawn that are representative of the state's demographics.
4. Eliminate the electoral college.
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3. Eliminate Gerrymandering. Districts must be drawn that are representative of the state's demographics.
There's no way to eliminate gerrymandering. There will always be someone who draws the boundaries, and whoever draws them, no matter what rules he follows, will be able to find some way to make some districts lean more than they should.
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Specify an algorithm and you can take the pols out of the process.
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There's no way to eliminate gerrymandering. There will always be someone who draws the boundaries, and whoever draws them, no matter what rules he follows, will be able to find some way to make some districts lean more than they should.
Use a garden variety splitline algorithm - see http://rangevoting.org/GerryExamples.html [rangevoting.org]
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You need to study the effects of what you propose and try to post again.
We have term limits in California. They have empowered the permanent staff and the public employee unions. They have made things worse, not better.
Campaign finance limits always run up against First Amendment challenges. Sort that out coherently, then let's talk. Until then, it's a pipe dream. You don't get to ingore the parts of the consitution you find inconvenient in the moment.
What do you mean by "representative of the state's d
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We have term limits in California. They have empowered the permanent staff and the public employee unions. They have made things worse, not better.
Indeed, I used to believe in term limits. The truth is that in practice they seem to "distort the market of politics" the same way price controls distort the market. They force the real economy of power away from elected officials competing in the marketplace of the voting booth and push real power into the darker "deep state" of bureaucracies.
By the way, the s
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The reasons I want to eliminate the electoral college are:
1. Past history of Presidents elected despite not having a plurality of votes.
2. Proposal by Rance Priebus describing a method to corrupt the election process by tying electoral college votes to gerrymandered congressional districts.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/172191/rncs-priebus-proposes-rig-electoral-college-so-losing-republicans-can-win# [thenation.com]
There are huge problems with the current gerrymandering system. For example, we have a Republican majority in
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1. Past history of Presidents elected despite not having a plurality of votes.
This ignores the fact that there is no national election for President. There are a lot of smaller elections in which the States decide who wins the State electors. You cannot have a "plurality" in a vote unless there is a real total to count. Just taking the results of fifty or more individual elections and summing them up isn't how the system was designed to work, and it doesn't accomplish the goals that drove that design.
2. Proposal by Rance Priebus describing a method to corrupt the election process by tying electoral college votes to gerrymandered congressional districts.
I could come up with a lot of dreamscape systems for corrupting the existing syste
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3. Eliminate Gerrymandering. Districts must be drawn that are representative of the state's demographics.
How? Who determines that? Who gathers and manages the data? Who draws the lines? It would be far easier and less manipulable to just do a single transferable vote [wikipedia.org] ballot and elect representatives at large.
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I wonder about modifying a few of those:
2: 100 dollars per US citizen with documentation that this was done. No, corporations are not citizens. If a court wants to dispute that, then allow people to take their LLC incorporation articles in a passenger seat while driving the HOV lane.
And adding a few:
5: David Chaum has a way to verify voting. Use it. No e-Voting machines which have been shown to be hacked by a monkey (as per a Free Republic article in 2004.) The venerable voting machines which used le
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2: 100 dollars per US citizen with documentation that this was done.
And we abolish the first amendment at the same time? Isn't telling someone how much speech they can have an infringement on the right to free speech itself?
No, corporations are not citizens. If a court wants to dispute that, then allow people to take their LLC incorporation articles
"Papers" are not people. D'oh. But the people who formed that corporation are still people and still have rights. Your analogy would be more correct if you said "corporations are not people. .... then allow people to take the four members of the board of directors in a car and drive in the HOV lane." That makes the issue a bit more obvious. Of course t
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No, corporations are not citizens. If a court wants to dispute that, then allow people to take their LLC incorporation articles in a passenger seat while driving the HOV lane.
Even better, if a corporate citizen commits a felony, it goes to jail just like everyone else. Buy nothing, sell nothing, do nothing but sit in jail. Once out of jail, report to parole officer weekly, all books open for inspection, all major decisions subject to approval or back to jail.
If that can't be made to work, then nobody goes to jail, just issue fines in proportion to income.
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50K max would mean a Congress with 6000 representatives. There is no way this would be workable.
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Why not?
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There is a huge problem with the existing districts that results in entrenched, invulnerable elected officials.
I'd be in favor of a system that prevented the formation of districts that resulted in minimization of noncompetitive elections.
Perhaps the election theorists could come up with such a system.
Another problem is the makeup of the Senate - the lack of population sensitivity causes gross underrepresentation of much of the US population. Population concentration in a few states is now much more pronoun
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I'd say the lot of them are describable as 'at large'
on a poster
in the post office.
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I think that's called a parliamentary system.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Vulgar libertarian propaganda (Score:4, Insightful)
We are glad your non-libertarian Democrats and Republicans in Congress and the White House are doing such a great job!
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The main reason that we think that libertarian rants are vulgar is mostly due to the volume of ANTS-IN-THE-PANTS-CRAZY that gets exhibited by a frightening percentage of people calling themselves "libertarians". That and I've known libertarians in person and they've been assholes. All of them. That's... you know... judging a group by a vocal minority, but it's the vocal minority that steer the boat. If you stood up and disagreed with them, managed, regulated, and control the party/philosophical movement, th
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#1) You seem to have an awfully narrow definition of "ugly". What about gun violence? Rampant obesity? People getting dumped at hospitals for emergency care? What about those damn whipper-snappers who don't cut their lawn? Lemme guess, while you're "libertarian" you're totally backing the social security entitlement program?
#2) Dude, the only thing this says is that people are allowed to spend their own money. What the hell? This is your solution to education? "Spend your own money"!? Take a guess about h
They're not quiet (Score:2)
You just need lotsa untraceable lobby money to hear them.
-Congress
" local reinvestment of profit ...." (Score:2)
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Sure it is. As long as you're on the right side. Otherwise you're a terrorist.
Re:Stay strong President Obama (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Stay strong President Obama (Score:4, Funny)
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We've got your back. Don't negotiate with the Republican terrorists.
Stay Strong Conservatives, don't negotiate with the libtard fascists.
Yes, everyone just "stay strong" (a weird choice of speech, because you have to actually be strong in order to stay strong) and never negotiate! We don't need to negotiate! Negotiation accomplishes nothing!
I think the American people need to stay strong and kick out everyone in Washington who would rather hold the country hostage by refusing to negotiate instead of doing their actual jobs. Their job, by the way, is to negotiate.
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Fascism has always been a flavor of socialism. We know you're all in denial. Doesn't change history.
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Look, Obama isn't involved here. Congress is the legislative body(s). Until they pass a bill and send it to the White House, they haven't done their job.
If Obama is vetoing bill after bill, and Congress can't override, then it's time for the Congress and the White House to confer and compromise. That's not the case right now. If the Congress was doing their job, Obama would be just another asshole with an opinion (although, surely, an asshole with a "bully pulpit"). Placing responsibility for this mess
Re:Nerds Should Shut Up About Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
Alternatively, everyone else should shut up too and give all power to a benevolent saintly king who will rule fairly. Oh, we don't have one of those? Well then, how about everyone gives their opinion and we don't resort to ad-homenim attacks.
On the contrary, it's an obligation (Score:3)
Intelligent educated people have a duty to speak, especially about science and technology issues. It's this whole "democracy" idea that only works when people participate.
They have very privileged, sheltered lives.. (Score:2)
So Silicon Valley and DC politicians do have some common ground.
Why do you keep electing a privileged elite to represent you in DC, but you shy away from a privileged tech elite that have a track record for economic growth?
Something doesn't add up here, and I suspect it's your own personal bias. Try take a more anti-establishment stance, at least when the world is crumbling around us.
Re:Don't pay your taxes (Score:4, Funny)
"It falls between freedom and control" (Score:2)
Would you like a Palantir [techdirt.com] with your Siri, [venturebeat.com] or just plain Narus and Amdocs? [mondoweiss.net]
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And with CONgress being what it is, I suspect that if you approach the right type of congressmen (vitter, Duke Cunningham, Mark Foley, Larry Craig, Spitzer, Springer, Tom Evans, Newt Gingrich, etc), you can use hookers to get out of paying taxes.
WASHINGTON NOT IMPLODING (Score:5, Interesting)
Stage management. Drama. Theatrics.
In the end? The powerful will be more so - you will pay more, and get less.
Mission accomplished, and your expectations diminished, as planned.
Re:WASHINGTON NOT IMPLODING (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't say the sky is falling simply because you could see one way in which it COULD fall. For one thing, it's not going to cancel it's plans to fall simply because you discovered them. If the shutdown causes the worst to happen, you'll be able to say "Told ya so!' and everyone else in your shantytown will roll their eyes. If it doesn't, you just stressed yourself out, made everyone more cynical about politics, and less likely to take steps to prevent your prophecy from coming true.
Granted, the chances of anyone reading your post doing anything about it are really low anyway... Fuck, I think I just talked myself into looking up my house of reps number and considering calling them.... goddamn desire not to be a hypocrite...
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Free bread and circuses! Or is that reality TV and fast food?
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It will be a good thing, when America slides down the hole that swallowed Rome, Assyria, Babylon and Egypt.
Which one? Taxation to support an oversized army, not having a big enough army, climate change, or having the Greeks in charge?
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Ash-heap of history.
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Stage management. Drama. Theatrics.
In the end? The powerful will be more so - you will pay more, and get less.
Mission accomplished, and your expectations diminished, as planned.
Related to the above and regarding the title of the article, why would big Silicon Valley heads care if Washington DID implode? They are all sitting on massive warchests of "foreign" money sitting in US dollar accounts in American banks beloning to their foreign subsidiaries for tax avoidance purposes. This money will NEVER be brought home (in terms of paying tax: it is actually back in America), it just sits there piling up, acting as a bank account, and when someone cashes in his shares he pays longterm c
Re:WASHINGTON NOT IMPLODING (Score:5, Insightful)
Jeremiah Cornelius snorted:
Stage management. Drama. Theatrics.
In the end? The powerful will be more so - you will pay more, and get less.
Mission accomplished, and your expectations diminished, as planned.
Oh, horseshit.
The "drama and theatrics" of which you so dismissively speak is ALL on the Tea Party side. The House clowns behind this public tantrum ARE the agents of plutocrats - but they are unwitting ones, blinded to the control of their puppetmasters by their ideology and prideful ignorance. That's an argyle horse, because all their non-TP peers understand EXACTLY who has purchased them.
The Tea Party currently controls the Republican Party - and, because of gerrymandering and the fact that most Democrats only vote once every four years, that is unlikely to change any time soon. It is unlikely to change, because mainstream Republican voters don't turn out in significant numbers for primary elections. Instead, they're happy to cast their vote for a Republican slate in the general election, and go away satisfied that they've done their duty to party and (only incidentally) country. So it's the "base" - the evangelicals that Ronald Reagan's campaign strategy so empowered - the NRA lifers, and the slack-jawed Fox News addicts that turn out for the primaries. Those are the identical constituencies of the Tea Party, and they'll uncritically accept and vote in accordance with any propaganda effort that gets them sufficiently riled up over abortion, gun rights, taxes, and "socialism" (all while happily depositing their Social Security checks, and leaning as heavily on their Medicare coverage as they do on their walkers and canes).
Cue the Koch brothers [americansf...perity.org] - the oil billionaires who have (thanks to the Roberts Court's decisions that money and speech are somehow equivalent, that "corporations are people" for purposes of political speech, and that unlimited secret spending on political campaigns - as long as it pretends to be "educational" and "issue-based" - is a bastion of fr-r-ee-dom!) essentially bankrolled the entire Tea Party monster from its inception, as a proxy for their personal business interests.
Only now the monster has escaped their control - as Victor Frankenstein could have told them it inevitably would. And it's far too late to chain it back up in the basement, because the Tea Party is now a self-sustaining reaction.
THAT's the difference. Washington's establishment pols are self-aware. The Tea Party is not. It's all id - and the Republican superego has left the building, so its ego, the career Republican establishment, has been left to fend for itself. The result is that the career Republican pols are falling all over themselves to embrace all things Tea, in perfectly-justified panic over being "primaried" (a nonce verb that owes its very existence to the Tea Party) out of their comfy jobs as shills for whoever pays them to be.
It's the triumph of arrogant ignorance over calculated self-interest - and that is Not A Good Thing for the country. Or you and me, for that matter, because the Tea Party is the very definition of a faith-based movement. And I'm not talking about their Christian evangelism, here. I'm talking about their blind hatred of "socialism" - despite their personal dependence on it - of taxes - even though our tax rates are still near historic lows (and FAR lower than during the Eisenhower administration, which is a Golden Era in the Tea Party credo) - and of all things Obama - regardless of the fact that our 44th president is an enthusiastic centrist, and ardent supporter of the status quo.
Your sneering dismissal of all pols as corrupt representatives of corporate plutocracy represents a faux-sophisticate's rhetorical overreach: they're NOT all the same. The Tea Partiers are DANGEROUS, precisely because they're NOT subject to the "business-as-usual" corruption of Washington politics. They're True Believers - and not in the good, Marvel-comics way, but in the terrible Spanish-Inquisition-and-Crusades way.
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We're in the coffin corner now, printing our own debt, as predicted. Buying votes with bennies always ends badly. The EBT glitch showed us, once again, what sort of people we're made of now.
American Exceptionalism is a genuine phenomena. We're about to prove it again by imploding ourselves. It won't be like Europe; angry protesters briefly painting signs and throwing rocks while the adults finally impose reality. We've bred millions of hate filled, feral animals and they're going to get hungry fast.
Before anyone starts getting scared by the Wal-Mart riot, look again at the "people of Wal-Mart". If they went on a rampage they'd make it, what, 30 yards before being too out of breath to continue? Just head up the nearest flight of stairs, you'll be fine.
I believe the current government shutdown is a sign of the "end times": beyond planning to help my parents out when the SS checks stop coming regularly (or stop being worth much: same outcome), I doubt I'll see any effect except on the news when either
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As long as people continue this mentality of my guy is better than yours we're screwed.
Welcome to the human race?
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What's currently happening in Washington doesn't fundamentally impact most people day to day....The fact that certain high profile programs have seen funding cut is nothing but a political ploy to make citizens feel some of the pain. We're supposed to believe that the sky....
Nope, the programs affected by the shutdown are discretionary spending, that means nice to have, but not essential. So if we open national parks, memorials, museums, etc. What would you suggest we close in its place? The military?
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Sounds good to me. The US had a tiny military until WWII.
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How about the NSA's domestic programs? Those aren't even nice to have.
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I've begun to think there is a fundamental difference in how people look at solutions to problems that guides them towards liberal or conservative solutions. It's a simplistic theory, but interesting.
Basically, liberals place more emphasis on the primary effects of a solution, conservatives place more emphasis on secondary effects of a solution. Sort of mirrors the "change is good" vs "change is bad" poles. But not entirely.
Example: abortion
Problem: unwanted pregnancies are a problem
Solution (primary eff
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That's where it gets tricky. Your abortion example is about a method used as a solution, as opposed to a problem to be "solved." The problem in this case would be how to handle unwanted or unintentional pregnancy, not abortion itself. To me, it comes down more to each side having certain views on what is effective and what is counterproductive. I think a better example would be reducing gun violence.
Everyone wants to see an end to these senseless shootings, but both sides disagree on what will be effect
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I do not know if this is a good example. I have occasionally wondered if the abortion problem is mostly a manufactured problem used by the parties to divide people into groups. It appears to me that the majority supports a compromise of sorts. Late term abortions not OK, very early term abortions OK. There are people on the fringes, and they are loud but they are in minority.
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The problem is that the GOP has no proposed solution to the end of the secondary effect.c That is, they have no visible willingness to make sure those extra babies don't starve.
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These days it seems more like they have a set of goals andc We the people have an entirely different set. The difference in the major parties is what set of lies they tell to convince We the People that they are working on our goals while they actually work on their goals.
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Ted Kennedy already had his health care reform heyday back in the 70s. The dreaded HMOs were supposed to be the answer to healthcare back then, so Ted Kennedy introduced and pushed through the Health Maintenance Organization Act.
By the 2000s his main push for "healthcare reform" consisted of condemning the very creature he created.