Senators skip classified briefing on NSA snooping to catch flights home • Hacker News Board

Re: Senators skip classified briefing on NSA snooping to catch flights home

#31

Post by amirmc » Sat, Jun 15, 2013, 4:29 PM UTC

mpyne wrote: post #26

linuxhansl wrote: post #23

It seems that rather than attracting the best of the best to lead this country we managed to arrive at a process that reliably picks the most self serving crooks this country has to offer and allow them to run this country. With a few exceptions nobody in congress seems to actually care even a bit about the people, but only how to drive the personal agenda forward. It's the same in Europe. Apparently representatives…

Has no one ever noticed how poorly the leadership of our democracies are treated? It's understood in the commercial sector that you have to pay (both on benefits, quality of work/life balance, pay, etc.) to attract and retain the best and brightest talent. How can we all take that very important lesson and completely throw it away when considering the leadership of an entire nation? I'm not sure I'd take Pres. Obama…

"Has no one ever noticed how poorly the leadership of our democracies are treated?"

No, I haven't noticed this (because it's not true). What I do notice are many stories about politicians abusing their positions, almost systematically [1,2]. I see no reason why a higher rate of pay would curb such behaviour (it's not like they're broke in the first place). I don't see why leaders of the commercial sector should be considered the "best of the best" either (think back to banking and other corporate scandals of the last decade).

In addition, the gap between CEO pay and 'normal' people has been the subject of debate before. When you realise that some of these folks sit on each-other's compensation committees it's easy to see how such arrangements can be abused -- and conveniently justified in hindsight as 'necessary' to "attract and retain the best of best".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_parliamentary_e...

[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jun/02/lobbying-mini...

Re: Senators skip classified briefing on NSA snooping to catch flights home

#32

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 15, 2013, 4:30 PM UTC

mpyne wrote: post #26

linuxhansl wrote: post #23

It seems that rather than attracting the best of the best to lead this country we managed to arrive at a process that reliably picks the most self serving crooks this country has to offer and allow them to run this country. With a few exceptions nobody in congress seems to actually care even a bit about the people, but only how to drive the personal agenda forward. It's the same in Europe. Apparently representatives…

Has no one ever noticed how poorly the leadership of our democracies are treated? It's understood in the commercial sector that you have to pay (both on benefits, quality of work/life balance, pay, etc.) to attract and retain the best and brightest talent. How can we all take that very important lesson and completely throw it away when considering the leadership of an entire nation? I'm not sure I'd take Pres. Obama…

[deleted]

Re: Senators skip classified briefing on NSA snooping to catch flights home

#33

Post by speeder » Sat, Jun 15, 2013, 4:32 PM UTC

mpyne wrote: post #26

linuxhansl wrote: post #23

It seems that rather than attracting the best of the best to lead this country we managed to arrive at a process that reliably picks the most self serving crooks this country has to offer and allow them to run this country. With a few exceptions nobody in congress seems to actually care even a bit about the people, but only how to drive the personal agenda forward. It's the same in Europe. Apparently representatives…

Has no one ever noticed how poorly the leadership of our democracies are treated? It's understood in the commercial sector that you have to pay (both on benefits, quality of work/life balance, pay, etc.) to attract and retain the best and brightest talent. How can we all take that very important lesson and completely throw it away when considering the leadership of an entire nation? I'm not sure I'd take Pres. Obama…

What you wrote is so misguided that I got up from bed and turned on the computer just to reply it (I was reading HN on mobile).

Brazil (where I am from) has one of the biggest politician salaries of the world, also politicians here get many secondary ways to get money, for example our last president, Lula, when he became president he owned a single apartment and two more or less nice cars (Chevrolet Omega).

When he left the presidency he owned 53 apartments. And noone could prove that was from stolen money...

Our congress also can vote on its own salary, and they frequently do, a recent scandal was when they refused to increase the police salary and then increased their own by 70%, later smaller chambers from around the country went into more outrageous mode (one city for example, gave their lawmakers a 100% salary increase, while reducing the salary of teachers and medics to compensate the budget).

No, giving politicians money, won't make them less self-serving, if anything it gives a very clear incentive to self-serving people end there.

I am very sure if there was ways to ensure political power could not translate so directly to money, people would abuse it less.

Re: Senators skip classified briefing on NSA snooping to catch flights home

#34

Post by dnautics » Sat, Jun 15, 2013, 4:33 PM UTC

they're not attending because it's theatre. the NSA briefers are going to read from the script, no difficult questions are going to be asked, and even if they were, since it's secret, the public wouldn't get to see it so it doesn't matter.

Re: Senators skip classified briefing on NSA snooping to catch flights home

#35

Post by smackfu » Sat, Jun 15, 2013, 4:40 PM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #8

Not an excuse at all but part of the problem of our system, why they run home so fast, is they are constantly fundraising for their next election. They spend a massive amount of time in office just fundraising. Not sure how this can ever be fixed.

More of a problem for Representatives than Senators.

Re: Senators skip classified briefing on NSA snooping to catch flights home

#36

Post by mpyne » Sat, Jun 15, 2013, 4:43 PM UTC

temp9251 wrote: post #30

mpyne wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then how do we know that Clapper is lying? We're not on the Intel Committee either, are we? At least Sen. Paul gets invited to these things, we have no access at all, so Sen. Paul is still in a much better situation to call out Clapper on what we are all so convinced are a constant stream of lies.

Sen. Wyden is on said Committee, and asked Clapper a question that, in Clapper's own words, he answered with a "least untruth" statement that was "too cute by half". This can be roughly translated as "a baldfaced lie". Apart from that, I am personally unaware of any instances where DNI Clapper has publicly lied. Additionally, DNI Clapper appears to only answer prepared questions (i.e. forwarded to his office prior to…

Certainly you'd send a list of prepared questions if you were holding a hearing to get answers. Otherwise the guy might be able to plausibly claim that he doesn't have the details and would have to get back to them.

If you're holding a hearing just to ask a trap question on camera then you might deliberately not send prepared questions, but I would like to think my elected representatives have more respect for people than that.

Re: Senators skip classified briefing on NSA snooping to catch flights home

#37

Post by wil421 » Sat, Jun 15, 2013, 4:45 PM UTC

Glad to see at least one of my senators attended those meetings and doesn't remember being briefed about phone metadata collection (Johnny Isakson R-Ga).

But then again the Director of National Intel James Clapper said that he understands that "collect data" would mean they take a book off the shelf and read it. Not that they have a giant bookshelf of data that is possibly yours and mine.

Just another politician type doing some CYA. We will see more to come.

[1] http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/intel-dir-james-clapper-lie-c...

Re: Senators skip classified briefing on NSA snooping to catch flights home

#38

Post by Deinos » Sat, Jun 15, 2013, 4:52 PM UTC

startupfounder wrote: post #12

Our government is broken. It is no longer by the people for the people. Politicians are skipping out of their responsibilities. Politicians spend much of their time in office fundraising for re-election. Politicians raise much of their election financing from corporate interests, not the people, and thus have a diminishing obligation to the people.[1] A vast minority of people elect our politicians because 50% of eli…

Couldn't agree more, and "we the people" have aided and abetted these scum by accepting the status quo and voting them into office.

Also, thank you for posting that Ted talk!

Re: Senators skip classified briefing on NSA snooping to catch flights home

#39

Post by ldng » Sat, Jun 15, 2013, 4:53 PM UTC

huhtenberg wrote: post #3

Given the Father's Day weekend, it wasn't hard to guess that the attendance will be low, so the question is why the briefing was still scheduled for that particular spot. I bet they are trying to tell us something...

It's the usual trick for any hot or controversial matter. They hope nobody will see and/or complain. This trick is outrageous and used way too often.

Re: Senators skip classified briefing on NSA snooping to catch flights home

#40

Post by russell » Sat, Jun 15, 2013, 4:53 PM UTC

forgotAgain wrote: post #27

gjm11 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Our government is broken. It is no longer by the people for the people. Are there good grounds for thinking it was ever much more "by the people for the people" than it is now?

Are there good grounds for thinking it was ever much more "by the people for the people" than it is now? Teddy Roosevelt's national parks.

Teddy Roosevelt's trust busting.