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Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

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Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#181

Post by andyjohnson0 »

malvosenior wrote: post #82
astine wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

George Carlin is (was) a right fool. The whole problem is that people don't have enough control over the government. Not voting only allows those who would have control over you to have more power. Even a protest vote or a third party vote is worth more than no vote.

A large non-voting would-be constituency means that there is little mandate for politicians to drive policy. If say 90% of the population didn't vote, plus there were public demonstrations of discontent, officials would be so afraid of a revolution (or other radical action) it would in theory temper their ambitions. Tocqueville touches on this in Democracy in America.

Politics is how complex societies make decisions at the largest scale. Despite the wet dreams of the tea party contingent, politics and government-by-mandate aren't optional in the 21st century and haven't been for a long time. Tocqueville died in 1859, back when things were simpler.

If 90% of the population refuse to vote then you would end-up with one of two outcomes:

1. A minority government governing with a mandate from votes cast'. Expect: extreme social unrest, dictatorship by minority, authoritarianism.

2. No government. Not as great as some might think. Expect: nothing-gets-done, social collapse, power vacuum, enemy nations sharpen their knives.

First-world politicians in this century won't have their ambitions "tempered" by large scale withdrawal from voting - all this would do is remove the main mechanism that restrains them. Even in a society that has backed itself into this kind of local minima, politics and politicians would still exist.

Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#182

Post by SEMW »

codex wrote: post #138
notdrunkatall wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not, you're apparently just not fully aware of what's going on. They don't only have access to phone records ; they also have access to our communications, and they have had that access for at least the last 6 years without a warrant, not even one from a FISA court.

Source? The only records taken from Internet companies pertain to non-citizens living outside the U.S. Even then, a secret court order is needed.

> The only records taken from Internet companies pertain to non-citizens living outside the U.S

As a 'non-[US]-citizen living outside the US', I'm a bit disturbed by the implication that it's somehow less bad for the US government to demand any data they like about non-US citizens (from private companies based in the US) than data about US citizens. Non-US citizens do make up 95% of the world's population, and they use Google etc. too.

Most European governments seem to recognise that the contents of 'human rights' documents, if they're to mean anything, should apply to, well, humans, not just the citizens of those countries. (Hence e.g. the ECHR blocking the deportation of illegal immigrants if they might be tortured in their home countries). It seems to be mostly just the US that has this strange idea that, despite one of its founding documents talking about 'all men being created equal' and 'inalienable rights', those rights shouldn't apply to non-US citizens.

Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#183

Post by astine »

ihsw wrote: post #72
astine wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

George Carlin is (was) a right fool. The whole problem is that people don't have enough control over the government. Not voting only allows those who would have control over you to have more power. Even a protest vote or a third party vote is worth more than no vote.

> Even a protest vote or a third party vote is worth more than no vote. Actually, it's not. The US election process operates under the Electoral College[1], so a state majority vote changes all votes to that majority vote (eg: Democrats win majority in Illinois, so all votes in that state end up voting for Democrats in the presidential election). The disparity between the electoral vote and the popular vote is usuall…

Do you know how often an Electoral College delegate changes his vote? It's extremely rare. Most of them are bound and even the unbound ones nearly always vote as directed. Personally, I've always like the idea of the Electoral College because voting for a president is a complex issue that usually comes down to the talking points on television. Electing a delegate from my own community to take on the challenge researching the candidates for me is a much more manageable task, like electing a representative to vote on laws.

But your missing broader picture. This is not just about the presidential election. You also have a senator, a representative, a state representative, at state governor, a mayor, a sheriff, a town council leader, a school board leader, (maybe not all at once,) for whom you can vote. Too much power is concentrated in the presidency and this is a result people neglecting the importance of other elected offices, most of which have more of a direct influence on your life anyway.

Even beyond that, if you believe that your vote is so worthless that you may as well not cast it, that's a sign that you should get more involved in politics, not less. It's not hard to join your local party chapter and to start making changes as an 'insider.'

Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#184

Post by josephlord »

rayiner wrote: post #151
josephlord wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could still be a failure of the constitution even if not of democracy.

See: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/rightof... ("The U. S. Constitution contains no express right to privacy. The Bill of Rights, however, reflects the concern of James Madison and other framers for protecting specific aspects of privacy , such as the privacy of beliefs (1st Amendment), privacy of the home against demands that it be used to house soldiers (3rd Amendment), privacy of the person a…

It could still be regarded as a failure even if it is not a breach (and I hold no position on whether it is or isn't a breach).

Electronic communications were clearly not considered by the authors of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (understandably) but they were clearly trying trying to impose limits on the power of the state and I think the idea that the government should be allowed to track all of everyone's associations would have been abhorrent but that is the practical effect of the monitoring that has been revealed.

Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#186

Post by znowi »

edw519 wrote: post #36

"I have solved this political dilemma in a very direct way: I don't vote. On Election Day, I stay home. I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. Now, some people like to twist that around. They say, 'If you don't vote, you have no right to complain,' but where's the logic in that? If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and they get into office and screw everything up,…

Not to vote is a free choice, but with this you exclude yourself from the democratic process. You become a bystander and then indeed have no right to complain.

Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#187

Post by twistedpair »

malandrew wrote: post #144

Why is it not possible to prosecute politicians for fraud or at least sue them in a court of law for making fraudulent claims, possibly via a class action suit? If an advertiser promised that their product does X when it obviously does not, then that is essentially fraud, and I have the right to sue on those grounds because I paid for their services with my money. In the case of politicians, I give them votes based o…

Sue them? Did they sign a legally binding contract with terms guaranteeing the closure of Gitmo and a moratorium on domestic spying? Did this contract provide for immediate impeachment on breach of terms?

Sorry pal, but "promises" are worth the paper they're written on. It's simply your fault for being credulous. This game's been going on for hundreds of years.

Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#188

Post by rayiner »

john_b wrote: post #178
rayiner wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they have an obligation to respect the views of those ideological minorities when their main agenda is defending their rights Ideological minorities don't get to make up "rights" and then demand the government defend them. The government has the obligation to defend free speech rights, even against the wishes of the majority, because there is ancient recognition of that right along with explicit adoption of a broad…

The right to privacy falls under the "human rights" part of my comment. You are free to disagree that privacy in some meaningful sense is not a human right, but the very fact that so many other rights (both legal and human) are easily compromised when it is not present is a strong hurdle to overcome, should you wish to make that argument. As an example, you have the right to criticize your employer (freedom of speech…

> You are free to disagree that privacy in some meaningful sense is not a human right

I don't disagree that privacy in some meaningful sense is a human right. I disagree that a "privacy" right that is broad enough to encompass information about me collected by a private company based on my voluntary use of its service (i.e. phone call records) rises to the level of human right. To me, that's instead a matter of balancing of competing interests to be handled through the democratic process. When I think of privacy being a "human right" I'm thinking more of the government not invading the sanctity of your home, not how it can access information you already freely share with others.

Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#189

Post by cabalamat »

malvosenior wrote: post #82
astine wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

George Carlin is (was) a right fool. The whole problem is that people don't have enough control over the government. Not voting only allows those who would have control over you to have more power. Even a protest vote or a third party vote is worth more than no vote.

A large non-voting would-be constituency means that there is little mandate for politicians to drive policy. If say 90% of the population didn't vote, plus there were public demonstrations of discontent, officials would be so afraid of a revolution (or other radical action) it would in theory temper their ambitions. Tocqueville touches on this in Democracy in America.

> officials would be so afraid of a revolution

... that they would set up a security apparatus to prevent one from ever happening.

Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#190

Post by suredo »

bpatrianakos wrote: post #103
edw519 wrote: post #36

"I have solved this political dilemma in a very direct way: I don't vote. On Election Day, I stay home. I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. Now, some people like to twist that around. They say, 'If you don't vote, you have no right to complain,' but where's the logic in that? If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and they get into office and screw everything up,…

Carlin was a great comedian and I'm a big fan but I'm not about to agree with this simply because the late great George Carlin said it. This is totally backwards and you have to do some mental gymnastics to believe it. In the end, this is what it is, a joke. If you don't vote you have done nothing to even try to elect someone who you, in good faith, believe will do what you deem the right thing. Yeah, politicians are…

One way to see that a democracy doesn't work is to look at the rate of voters.... if it is really low, I would say that it fails.
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