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White House Refuses To Comment On Petition To Investigate Chris Dodd

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Re: White House Refuses To Comment On Petition To Investigate Chris Dodd

#41

Post by Osiris »

mjwalshe wrote: post #38
Osiris wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd really like to hear ideas of how we can stop this racket I can think of a way to get money out of congress: remove elections. Think of it: serving in Congress could be like Jury Duty. Everyone's in the pool and every election cycle random people are selected from the pool and asked to serve. With no elections, there are no campaigns to donate to. It would be illegal for any Congressperson to accept any gifts or m…

Well Athens had that system and made some bad kneejerk descisons - for example The Mytilenian Debate. And you would be handing much more power to unelected civil servants. I think both parties going to OMOV and doing away with primary's go back to state delegates deciding who the presidential candidates are - Oh and I would ban mandating of delegations.

That's part of the point I'm trying to get across. Every political system has it's pros and cons. I studied Comparative Politics in University and we studied various forms of government and election law, each trying to solve a specific problem but introducing their own different problems.

Re: White House Refuses To Comment On Petition To Investigate Chris Dodd

#42

Post by srl »

crikli wrote: post #9
maerek wrote: post #4

Hate to say it, but that WH petition site is just bread and circuses. Has any petition there led to an actionable response from the WH? Curious.

Depends on how you're defining "actionable." I signed a petition against the White House's plan to put airport usage fees in place for general aviation, effectively charging pilots to talk to air traffic control. This is a Really Bad Idea (I'm happy to delineiate why in future comments if there is interest but for now I'll play the "I'm a pilot, trust me" card). The response was just a politely verbose version of "f*…

> I signed a petition against the White House's plan to put airport usage fees in place for general aviation, effectively charging pilots to talk to air traffic control. This is a Really Bad Idea (I'm happy to delineiate why in future comments if there is interest but for now I'll play the "I'm a pilot, trust me" card).

Well, I'm interested.

The obvious guess that comes to mind is that pilots are now incentivized to avoid communication with ATC, consequentially reducing ATC's effectiveness. Is there something more subtle going on?

More interesting question is why the WH thought it was a good idea. Who was lobbying for it? I was under the impression that whatever union or union-like organization is built around ATC folks is pretty adamant about promoting safety stuff, and would never tolerate something like this.

Re: White House Refuses To Comment On Petition To Investigate Chris Dodd

#43

Post by knowtheory »

invisible wrote: post #35
knowtheory wrote: post #15

The reaction to this frustrates me immensely, because Obama is doing the right thing. The Obama White House is attempting to regrow the wall between political and constituent concerns and law enforcement concerns. The Department of Justice should operate with the most minimal of political interferences (since I don't think it's possible to avoid them all together) with the goal of maintaining its independence. That s…

Then, don't you think the White House would send a letter to the DoJ pointing them to this if they really cared? They may not need to investigate it themselves, but helping the message get sternly to the right people should be appropriate.

That's not what they said though. They said they don't comment on petitions that are matters of law enforcement. They may very well have done that.

Although, yes, one would think that it'd be in their best interest to communicate that if they had in fact done so.

Re: White House Refuses To Comment On Petition To Investigate Chris Dodd

#44

Post by bh42222 »

portman wrote: post #23
sequoia wrote: post #18

It seems like this whole hubub is about someone stating openly what's a well known open secret in US politics: He who pays the piper calls the tune. I mean, really, EVERYONE knows this. "Why did my industry's trade association spend 1.8 million dollars on various candidates who may be voting on legislation that makes or costs us 10 times that much? Oh, no reason... we just think they are very nice ladies and gentleme…

Larry Lessig (the same guy who single-handedly designed Creative Commons) has spent the last 4 years investigating how to "stop this racket", and summarizes his thoughts in this book: http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress/... If you want to know what to do, a nice first step would be to buy and read Republic, Lost.

The fact that it's a whole book makes me nervous.

A strategy which requires a whole book to be explained sounds like giving up on anything simple and claiming we can go through 1001 non-radical steps to eventually get to a happy place.

This to me is a form of denial. You realize simple solutions can not be practically implemented and you convince yourself a marathon of tiny changes is the way to go.

(Disclaimer: I have not read that book.)

Re: White House Refuses To Comment On Petition To Investigate Chris Dodd

#45

Post by functionoid »

dwiel wrote: post #27
pavel_lishin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, that's why it's naive. One possible patch for this issue is to forbid spending money on elections, but again, that just opens up new cans of worms.

As long as we have an uneven distribution of wealth, we will have an uneven distribution of power. It doesn't matter what laws you try to pass or what government you try to have. The entities who those laws threaten will fight against them.

Down voting is not going to help, have you heard his any speech in last year? in most of his speeches he has talked about distribution of wealth.

What motivation does the smart people have if that happens? Entrepreneurs work hard and give up their social and personal lives to become successful and at the end of it if distribution of wealth happens who would want to do that?

So my comment was not just a remark but is a fact and he talks about wealth distribution any chance he gets.

Re: White House Refuses To Comment On Petition To Investigate Chris Dodd

#46

Post by snowwrestler »

joshuahedlund wrote: post #16
anamax wrote: post #7

While I don't much like Chris Dodd, what, exactly has he done wrong? Yes, he's said that MPAA members are going to be less likely to make campaign contributions to folks who don't vote the way the MPAA . So what? Do any of you contribute to candidates who do things that you don't like? Or, do you contribute only to those who do things that you do like? Why should MPAA members be any different? I note that candidates…

I note that candidates make promises like "if elected, I'll work to repeal DADT" and organizations do fundraisers for candidates based on said promises. How is this any different? Cause and effect. Fundraising based on a promise goes like this: Candidate says they support this -> I want them to do this -> I give them money so they can get elected and do this. (The plan causes the money.) MPAA lobbying goes like this.…

In this case Congress killed the bills first, then Dodd said his members were unhappy and might not give any money to politicians who jumped off the SOPA ship. That seems more like your first chain than your second.

Re: White House Refuses To Comment On Petition To Investigate Chris Dodd

#47

Post by [deleted] »

realschool wrote: post #26
lhnz wrote: post #22

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Just a simple question. Can somebody tell me how this gratifies their inte…

As for as intellectual discourse goes, politics seems to be one standard deviation above celebrity gossip.

[deleted]

Re: White House Refuses To Comment On Petition To Investigate Chris Dodd

#48

Post by raganwald »

lhnz wrote: post #22

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Just a simple question. Can somebody tell me how this gratifies their inte…

In all fairness, discussing political reform is in the spirit of hackery. There’s a big, complicated machine we think is malfunctioning, and we’re trying to reprogram it for better outcomes.

Re: White House Refuses To Comment On Petition To Investigate Chris Dodd

#49

Post by snowwrestler »

thebrokencube wrote: post #17
kmfrk wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing illegal about it. That's why it's annoying as hell that people waste time on pointless crusades instead of focusing on real solutions.

I think most of us realize that the petitions are pointless (though then again, it takes like 3 seconds to sign it so enough people do it), but how would you suggest we fix this problem? Because although this is legal, pretty much everyone can sense that there's something fishy about it and needs to be changed.

I would respectfully ask: what problem? The tech community got exactly the outcome it wanted, didn't it?

Re: White House Refuses To Comment On Petition To Investigate Chris Dodd

#50

Post by yequalsx »

philwelch wrote: post #40
Osiris wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd really like to hear ideas of how we can stop this racket I can think of a way to get money out of congress: remove elections. Think of it: serving in Congress could be like Jury Duty. Everyone's in the pool and every election cycle random people are selected from the pool and asked to serve. With no elections, there are no campaigns to donate to. It would be illegal for any Congressperson to accept any gifts or m…

> Until mankind becomes entirely focused on building social welfare (what's good for all) instead of personal welfare (what's good for me), these problems will always be here. Until we start building social and political systems for humanity as it is rather than humanity as we might idealistically want it to be, we're going to have these problems -- not that I'm convinced that self-interest is really something we wan…

If everyone voted selfishly then majority rule would benefit the majority? I don't think so. This definitely doesn't scale in the way you seem to think it does.

An extreme example. Suppose a country consists of three tribes. Each tribe hates the other. Tribe A hates tribe B less than C. A & B vote to combine their interests in liquidating C. After C is gone the majority tribe then votes to kill off the smaller remaining tribe.

Given the grand scale of environmental destruction going on in the world I don't think its fair to say that markets (nominally free ones) have done such a good job of translating self-interest into the greater good.

What's good for each of us does not necessarily translate into what is good.

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