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Senators skip classified briefing on NSA snooping to catch flights home

thehill.com

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

#51

Post by MisterWebz »

siphor wrote: post #43
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #29

In a normal scandal story, the appropriate committee would grant immunity to Snowden, have him testify, then bring up Clapper, have him testify, and compare notes. Preferably publicly. Here they bring in one side of the story for a secret Powerpoint presentation, no doubt with a high degree of spin to it, and publicly call Snowden a traitor. Then they complain that nobody shows up. This isn't a bake sale or a dog and…

I honestly think it's time to take action more than just normal protests.. Which are useless.. We need to find a way to get more than just the minority to revolt. Think about how many straight up stupid things are happening.. We make jokes about politicians and theyre decisions (see daily show) but i dont think its funny anymore. We need to change. I'm thinking about making some sort of political website, I can't dec…

Create a list of representatives and mine all their data that is available on the internet and put it on your website. I think that would allow us to easily form a picture of who that person is and what he stands for, whether he's being influenced by certain corporations etc...

EDIT: http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1geg2t/senators_skip_c...

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

#52

Post by JonnieCache »

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.

In the UK there are spending limits. £30k per year per parliamentary seat. £18.96m per party per election.

http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/elections/election-spe...

It keeps our campaigns pleasingly short, and the advertising deliciously mundane and cheap-looking. Also it preserves a nice equilibrium, it's in nobody's interests to try and break or change the limits.

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

#54

Post by alan_cx »

woodhull wrote: post #20
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.

It's actually really easy to fix with publicly funded elections, or other campaign finance reform.

No, just cap the spending and maximum donation.

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

#55

Post by rorrr2 »

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…

US government is not broken, it got sold. It works really well for the people who pay.

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

#56

Post by cboppert »

siphor wrote: post #43
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #29

In a normal scandal story, the appropriate committee would grant immunity to Snowden, have him testify, then bring up Clapper, have him testify, and compare notes. Preferably publicly. Here they bring in one side of the story for a secret Powerpoint presentation, no doubt with a high degree of spin to it, and publicly call Snowden a traitor. Then they complain that nobody shows up. This isn't a bake sale or a dog and…

I honestly think it's time to take action more than just normal protests.. Which are useless.. We need to find a way to get more than just the minority to revolt. Think about how many straight up stupid things are happening.. We make jokes about politicians and theyre decisions (see daily show) but i dont think its funny anymore. We need to change. I'm thinking about making some sort of political website, I can't dec…

How do I contact you? Perhaps I have not earned enough karma to private message.

I was thinking about creating a "Rational Party" website. Which would focus of evidence based positions, rational discourse, and getting the word out.

I believe in socialism for essentials (health care, education, infrastructure), social libertarianism, and capitalism for the rest (junk food, fashion, games, etc).

Can I put an e-mail here? Try cobope@gmail.com, since I don't care if anyone spams it. I will check tonight, and tomorrow. I don't check it often though but I will try for the next few days.

Either way, I agree, and I'm down to work on an idea you have as well.

I've been working through the Ruby on Rails Tutorial as well as through Matasano's crypto challenges lately, albeit slowly since I just graduated and have been enjoying not doing much at all. So hopefully those will help eventually.

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

#58

Post by cinquemb »

MisterWebz wrote: post #51
siphor wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly think it's time to take action more than just normal protests.. Which are useless.. We need to find a way to get more than just the minority to revolt. Think about how many straight up stupid things are happening.. We make jokes about politicians and theyre decisions (see daily show) but i dont think its funny anymore. We need to change. I'm thinking about making some sort of political website, I can't dec…

Create a list of representatives and mine all their data that is available on the internet and put it on your website. I think that would allow us to easily form a picture of who that person is and what he stands for, whether he's being influenced by certain corporations etc... EDIT: http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1geg2t/senators_skip_c...

Saw this there: http://www.govtrack.us/about, but it just seems like gov data. Maybe instead of just mining, one could crowdsource photos/videos from people as they see them in places and get the timestamps and geotags.

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

#59

Post by MisterWebz »

cinquemb wrote: post #58
MisterWebz wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Create a list of representatives and mine all their data that is available on the internet and put it on your website. I think that would allow us to easily form a picture of who that person is and what he stands for, whether he's being influenced by certain corporations etc... EDIT: http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1geg2t/senators_skip_c...

Saw this there: http://www.govtrack.us/about , but it just seems like gov data. Maybe instead of just mining, one could crowdsource photos/videos from people as they see them in places and get the timestamps and geotags.

Agreed. And when they complain, we could tell them if they have nothing to hide, then they have nothing to fear.

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

#60

Post by fragsworth »

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…

We should elect the house (or senate, one or the other) by randomly drawing a large number of people from the population. See how easy it is to corrupt 1000-2000 randomly selected folks who, for the most part, have an ingrained set of morals. It'd be like a jury for the government and they'd easily be able to roadblock the vast majority of bullshit that goes on.

We could even let them decide who the president is.

Alternatively, we could have it set up so our representatives give up most of their rights to privacy. Their whereabouts, communications/conversations (of all kinds) should be monitored and made public after a short period of time. It could be considered a price they have to pay to be in public office, and we could pay them a lot more so that good people would be willing to do this.

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