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Senators skip classified briefing on NSA snooping to catch flights home

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

#131

Post by AnthonyMouse »

abecedarius wrote: post #120
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this is that you end up trading corruption for incompetence and uncertainty. Suppose we pick elected officials at random. OK, in the first round we get a bunch of reasonable people and they do a bunch of reasonable stuff. In the second round, maybe the same thing, except that they have different ideas from their predecessors so they end up repealing all the programs and replacing them with still reas…

There is real historical experience with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition -- and AFAIK Athens wasn't worse-governed than the U.S. over its period of democracy. (It's true the scale is different.) Thinking we could just swap it in for elections seems silly, yes, but it could serve as part of a package of real reform.

Athens also had a much different population than we do and not everyone was eligible to be chosen. And I don't think it would go over well today to limit the pool of candidates to exclude those who are nominally unqualified for statecraft.

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

#132

Post by niels_olson »

I think the senators who did this decided it would play better now that they skipped it, than what they suspected would come out in the briefing, which they would then be demonstrably complicit in by having knowledge of. Accomplices after the fact. They decided this very thin veneer of plausible deniability was the better option.

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

#133

Post by throwaway10001 »

tsotha wrote: post #121
throwaway10001 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Have you seen Manning lately ? White as flour. Shows how much exercise and sun he has been getting while in jail. Snowden would be insane to come without an unconditional pardon/ and full immunity, not just immunity for what he says in…

Manning's situation is totally different. For one thing, he's active military. For another, he didn't even know what he was releasing.

It is but tell that to NSA and to all those angry Senators and Congress people--and especially to those lobbyists from the military industrial complex. He will be kept "in isolation because he can leak secrets even from jail"

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

#134

Post by tsotha »

throwaway10001 wrote: post #133
tsotha wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manning's situation is totally different. For one thing, he's active military. For another, he didn't even know what he was releasing.

It is but tell that to NSA and to all those angry Senators and Congress people--and especially to those lobbyists from the military industrial complex. He will be kept "in isolation because he can leak secrets even from jail"

The NSA and Congress don't run the justice department. We've had high profile civilian criminals before.

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

#135

Post by jared314 »

lessnonymous wrote: post #128
leot wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(fyi: approval voting is simpler, comparably effective, and probably easier to accomplish)

Ooh, that's an interesting one. Thanks! I've used a system before (no idea what it's called) that gives each voter a number of points (say 10) that they can distribute among the candidates. They can give all 10 points to one person, or spread them out. Of course, your average voter would find this way too confusing. From the Wikipedia article: > FairVote [argues Approval Voting] can result in the defeat of a candidat…

There is a skeptoid episode[0] from 2011 that overviews the different types and some of the science behind it. And, it even mentions the difference between a voting system and a ranking system.

[0] http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4281

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

#136

Post by lhl »

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…

You may want to take a look at http://www.opencongress.org/ - It's an open source project by the Participatory Politics Foundation (http://www.participatorypolitics.org/) and I'm sure they'd take pull requests: https://github.com/opencongress/opencongress or would be responsive to any contributions you'd want to make.

Here for example is the view of Dianne Feinstein (CA D): http://www.opencongress.org/people/show/300043_Dianne_Feinst...

Her full voting record: http://www.opencongress.org/people/voting_history/300043_Dia...

You can also access their data directly or via API: http://www.opencongress.org/about/code

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

#137

Post by znowi »

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…

> I honestly think it's time to take action more than just normal protests

I think you're right. The amount of abuse in the government and corporate sector has gone out of control.

We already forgot the atrocities of the 2008 financial crisis, which wrecked numerous families and households, and caused real deaths. As far as I know, none of the senior management was held accountable. Same people who invaded the market with toxic assets are still invited for dinners at the White House.

The NSA scandal will be similarly toned down and forgotten, unless we change our attitude.

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

#138

Post by kimlelly »

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…

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE ?!

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

#139

Post by PavlovsCat »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #130
PavlovsCat wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elected officials have at least some accountability to the voters. If they do anything sufficiently bad then they don't get reelected If I say "pay me 50 dollars, and I will give you X", and then you pay me and I just grin at you, and the WORST you can do to me is to say "fine, then we won't do that again", that's not accountability. The only thing preventing that would be their own consciences, which may work once o…

>If I say "pay me 50 dollars, and I will give you X", and then you pay me and I just grin at you, and the WORST you can do to me is to say "fine, then we won't do that again", that's not accountability. Sure it is. You're presumably selling X to me at a profit, so if you screw me now, you're losing all of your future profits, which keeps you honest when that's worth more to you than the benefit of screwing me out of…

Yay, more FUD. But even your worst examples seem peanuts compared to something like the Iraq War.

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

#140

Post by jplewicke »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #131
abecedarius wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is real historical experience with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition -- and AFAIK Athens wasn't worse-governed than the U.S. over its period of democracy. (It's true the scale is different.) Thinking we could just swap it in for elections seems silly, yes, but it could serve as part of a package of real reform.

Athens also had a much different population than we do and not everyone was eligible to be chosen. And I don't think it would go over well today to limit the pool of candidates to exclude those who are nominally unqualified for statecraft.

One great way around this is to alternate rounds of sortition with rounds of election:

- You pick 1000 random people to serve as the House of Representatives. - They elect 100 people from among themselves to serve as the Senate. - You randomly divide them into 10 person committees.

If you have enough rounds, there are some great effects:

- The election means that only competent or representative people make it through to the next round. - The sortition makes it so that no one individual or small group is likely to make it all the way to the top.

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