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Why Obama did not stop NSA domestic surveillance

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Re: Why Obama did not stop NSA domestic surveillance

#81

Post by tsunamifury »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #17
mjevans wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A more reasonable explanation is that irrespective of what he might /want/ to do, he doesn't actually have sufficient power to do anything about the actions, assuming he's actually being accurately briefed on the matter. It's probably more a symptom of how absolutely useless and ineffective at doing anything than consuming money to be elected for corporate interests the US congress has become. I think at this point I…

Don't knock that approach - it's known as Sortition ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition ) and I'm personally convinced that it's a much better way of achieving democracy than any other.

A better thing to do is to randomize 2-3% of votes, which takes away the leverage swing voters have, pushing politicians to make bad deals for the final votes they need to edge out their opponent. This way when a candidate has to sew together segments to get a majority, he worries about larger minority groups and leverage of a tiny-minority doesn't overpower the rest. e.g. the NRA

Re: Why Obama did not stop NSA domestic surveillance

#82

Post by coldtea »

fweespeech wrote: post #80
coldtea wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My guess is, if we implemented sortition, a few unsavory things would happen:(1) The Republican and Democrat parties would just switch their efforts to getting people excluded from the random drawing, much as they currently aim to include or exclude people from voting. Well, abolish the parties too then. It's just citizens.

The problem is you can't really "abolish" the parties. Social cliques will form regardless.

If you pass a law forbidding them to have formal legal presence as an organization, you can. Social cliques are OK, it's the formalizing that makes it worse.

I'd abolish lobbies as official entities if it was up to me too.

Re: Why Obama did not stop NSA domestic surveillance

#83

Post by Retra »

rdancer wrote: post #71
morley wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to fall in love with a political system that's never been tested at the United State's scale. My guess is, if we implemented sortition, a few unsavory things would happen: (1) The Republican and Democrat parties would just switch their efforts to getting people excluded from the random drawing, much as they currently aim to include or exclude people from voting. (2) After selections, the losing party would…

Two-party systems are the inevitable product of a First-Past-The-Post voting in a democracy[1]. There would be no Democratic and Republican party under a sortition system. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo

Are you trying to say that people's political affiliations are a consequence of how their votes are counted?

Re: Why Obama did not stop NSA domestic surveillance

#84

Post by tsunamifury »

steve19 wrote: post #3

The charitable explanation, which this article seems to imply, is that he suddenly discovers how important these programs are and how much is at stake. The less charitable explanation, since it's hard to believe he fundamentally agrees deep down with these programs, is that he is just another politicians and the guaranteed political fallout from surveillance and drones was far less than the catastrophic career-ending…

There seems to be a massive flaw in this logic in that it could be used to justify almost anything.

For example, it would be more important for President Obama to forcibly make a large portion of private industry to work on a super laser to defend against alien invasions, because alien invasions would cause more political fallout than not defending against them.

This is the mental problem with forecasting black-swan events, then basing your strategy on the outsized risk of those events. You can end up justifying insane behavior due to an event you have convinced yourself will happen, even if the odds are infinitesimal.

Re: Why Obama did not stop NSA domestic surveillance

#85

Post by hellbanner »

bwindels wrote: post #23
cubancigar11 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a very absurd argument, one I have heard several times in liberal circles. President of United States of America is the most powerful man in the world. He doesn't owe anyone anything. We elect him thinking he will do what he promised and the only retribution for him is that he will either be impeached or not get re-elected. That's it. That is democracy. Unless he had 'an offer he could not refuse', he is guil…

> He doesn't owe anyone anything Candidates can and almost all do take an unlimited amount of money from private donors to fund their campaigns, likely in exchange for favourable legislation. Obama gathered $1072.6m like this in 2012. Obama owes his donors big time I would say.

If he's selling a service to them, yes.

Re: Why Obama did not stop NSA domestic surveillance

#86

Post by finnh »

Retra wrote: post #83
rdancer wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two-party systems are the inevitable product of a First-Past-The-Post voting in a democracy[1]. There would be no Democratic and Republican party under a sortition system. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo

Are you trying to say that people's political affiliations are a consequence of how their votes are counted?

Not quite. rdancer's saying that the options people have to choose amongst/between are a consequence of how their votes are counted. Proportional representation tends toward a larger number of parties; first-past-the-post tends toward two. And "tends toward" can be read as "definitely leads to" in the case of fpp.

Re: Why Obama did not stop NSA domestic surveillance

#87

Post by CWuestefeld »

Frondo wrote: post #77
randcraw wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any popular uprising that gets large enough, or loud enough, has the capacity to demand change. True. The German people voted for change and got Hitler. America voted for change and got Nixon and Carter and Reagan and Bush Jr and Obama. Wait. Was change supposed to be GOOD?

Well, realistically, the whole "You suckers voted for CHANGE hur hur" thing is a strawman anyway. A little over half of the country voted for the guy who wasn't promising to bomb Iran and put Sarah Palin in line for the presidency. And four years later, a little over half of the country voted for the guy who wasn't calling 47% of us leeches and takers. I knew what I was getting when I voted for Obama, twice, because…

(Don't take this as the beginning of a political debate, that's not what I intend. Just at face value...)

I knew what I was getting when I voted for Obama

I've been wondering about people who felt this way. From my perspective, it appears that people in this situation should be very disappointed, because (it appears to me that) many of the promises weren't delivered. In particular, Obama was quite specific in his criticism of GWB for wars without Congressional approval, yet he himself has done this multiple times now. And one of the themes of his candidacy was to be open and transparent, yet promises like "all legislation will be posted for X days online before I'll sign any bill" didn't even survive a week into his presidency. (these are just two obvious examples, not a complete list)

I can understand why you'd be hopeful going into that. But today, seeing how that's all played out, what are your feelings?

Re: Why Obama did not stop NSA domestic surveillance

#88

Post by ant6n »

forgetsusername wrote: post #61
ant6n wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole electoral process is so flawed and corrupt that a politician wanting to save their job has little to do with voting, and thus little to do with popular demand.

> The whole electoral process is so flawed and corrupt Again, I don't believe it. It is flawed? Sure. Can it be improved? Most certainly. But you can't point to a few glaring problems (which I agree, there are) and compare to some hypothetical ideal without acknowledging the many things the political system gets right, as evidenced by America being the richest, most powerful nation in world history. In any democratic…

"...as evidenced by America being the richest, most powerful nation in world history"

That does not follow. First, if you actually allow that America is the 'richest' and 'most powerful nation', it doesn't prove it's somehow the best democracy, or even a good democracy, or even a democracy at all. It doesn't even prove that it's good at capitalism or corporatism, it just doesn't follow. It's like saying god exists, the prove is in his creation.

The 'glaring problems' are utter failures of democracy; the representatives simply don't represent the will or the interest of the people. Of course the will of the people is bent via media, lack of education, religion, anti-intellectualism and American-History-folklore against their own interests.

But note, some of the systemic issues of the electoral process are, just as examples, the FPTP voting system, the ludicrous campaign financing system, pervasive and completely legal corruption that allows gerry mandering.

The 'hypothetical ideals', i.e. actual democracies, exist in other countries.

America is a great place, with many smart people, and many, many interesting and important contributions to science, technology and culture. But it's governance is a plutocracy at best, and proto-fascism at worst (the original meaning of that word, not the one referring to Nazis). But as long as most rara about the best nation on earth, they'll be happily exploited and nothing changes.

Re: Why Obama did not stop NSA domestic surveillance

#89

Post by cubancigar11 »

bwindels wrote: post #23
cubancigar11 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a very absurd argument, one I have heard several times in liberal circles. President of United States of America is the most powerful man in the world. He doesn't owe anyone anything. We elect him thinking he will do what he promised and the only retribution for him is that he will either be impeached or not get re-elected. That's it. That is democracy. Unless he had 'an offer he could not refuse', he is guil…

> He doesn't owe anyone anything Candidates can and almost all do take an unlimited amount of money from private donors to fund their campaigns, likely in exchange for favourable legislation. Obama gathered $1072.6m like this in 2012. Obama owes his donors big time I would say.

See, I get that. He got a lot of money. But still he doesn't owe them anything. What is going to happen to him if he doesn't deliver to people who paid him that much money? Is he going to get assassinated? Is he going to have legal troubles? As a president he has the option to bypass large chunks of constitution, which in fact is the actual problem here. He is literally above the law.

Re: Why Obama did not stop NSA domestic surveillance

#90

Post by AnimalMuppet »

forgetsusername wrote: post #62
randcraw wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any popular uprising that gets large enough, or loud enough, has the capacity to demand change. True. The German people voted for change and got Hitler. America voted for change and got Nixon and Carter and Reagan and Bush Jr and Obama. Wait. Was change supposed to be GOOD?

> America voted for change What does that even mean?

It means that the candidate who won was wearing a label that said "change". The label may be unrelated to the contents (or the policies) of the candidate - it may well be more marketing artifact than reality.
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