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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

#81

Post by pvnick »

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'm working with some of the folks at stopwatching.us, and we've got some cool things going on. We're currently working with some of Aaron Schwartz code that he wrote when getting involved in politics to deliver citizens' emails to congress en masse. There's a bunch of really interesting projects going on that are starting to come together these days. It's an exciting time to be a politically-active developer!

If you're interested in volunteering some dev time on some creative ways of getting involved, let me know! My email is pvnick@gmail.com :)

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

#82

Post by jes »

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…

For what it's worth, I was in full agreement with you right up until the "rich old white men" comment.

Edit: Changed "fully" to "full".

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

#83

Post by TeMPOraL »

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…

> 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.

Isn't this obviously visible in the structure of the democracies?

How do politicians get selected? By votes from people. The more people like one (politician, party), the more they vote for them. Given that saying/doing the right thing is likely to offend at least some groups of people, it will always be the case that political groups trying to be popular will be selected by the system in favour of the ones trying to get things right. It's deep in the structure of this process; our democracies optimize for short-term popularity contests, not making the right calls that benefit the nation most.

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

#84

Post by mpyne »

jivatmanx wrote: post #61
mpyne wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which itself leads to a permanent issue of elected public servants with no long-term experience on the very important function of leading the nation. That leaves the expertise in the hands of unelected bureaucrats, who could easily maneuver the constantly-inexperienced politicians in the direction they wish. Pick your poison...

Absolute term limits would probably also worsen the trend of retiring congressman becoming lobbyists. But what if you only limited the number of consecutive terms? This is a solution more directly targeting the actual problem: the advantage of incumbency. This also creates more positive feedback between their lives in the public and private sector, congressmen hoping to be reelected will need to do something positive…

That might work indeed. At least no obvious problems come to mind, which is usually a good start.

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

#85

Post by genwin »

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…

We can't do better within our current system; it's optimized. Congress must agree to fixing it (with instant run-off voting, to allow competition) but they certainly won't work against themselves to do it. So we're stuck. The president or a member of Congress can largely disserve you with impunity.

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

#86

Post by maxwell »

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…

So what's the solution? Get celebrities to run for office. (Seriously.)

Over 60% showed up to the gubernatorial elections won by Schwarzenegger [a] and Ventura [b]; you know, the former body builder and the former wrestler, who co-starred in Predator... Wasn't George Clooney born in Kentucky? He might be a "rich old white man" at this point, but do you think Mitch McConnell (or any incumbent, for that matter) would stand a chance against him?

If Brad Pitt, James Franco, Shaquille O'Neal, or Ashton Kutcher ran for office... they'd win. And they'd be better representatives, because they're not career politicians, and they don't know how the system works. Then watch as normal people are suddenly tuning into CSPAN to catch a speech by Sen. Pitt or Rep. Shaq. I'm surprised the major parties didn't court celebrities after 1984, when a former actor captured the highest number of electoral votes in history...

"It's Charisma, Stupid" is focused on presidential elections, but pg remarks near the end that he's "not saying that issues don't matter to voters. Of course they do." Yes, issues do matter to voters. But voters are generally a minority, at least in non-presidential elections. The majority cares more about movies and sports because celebrities are interesting. Existing politicians are boring.

I read the other day that Allen Iverson is basically broke, recently divorced, had a house foreclosed, and doesn't know what to do with his life after basketball...

a. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_gubernatorial_recall...

b. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_gubernatorial_electio...

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

#87

Post by AnthonyMouse »

fragsworth wrote: post #60
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. Alt…

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 reasonable but quite different ones. Businesses can't plan anything because they don't know what the regulatory environment will look like the year after the election. The churn strains our already-difficult ties with countries like China, Russia and Saudi Arabia when the things the Nth Congress promised get repudiated by the N+1th Congress which is comprised of entirely different people.

Then, sooner or later, random chance produces a majority coalition consisting of people who are willing to horse trade for corrupt programs that specifically benefit their own friends and family, or "libertarians" and peace activists who very suddenly disband the entire U.S. military, or nationalist religious fundamentalists who decide to declare war on "Muslims" or drop a nuclear bomb on somebody with the ability to strike back.

The thing about politics is that you actually do want professionals running the country. You want people with formal training who know what they're doing. You just have to make sure they're representing us and not somebody else.

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

#88

Post by maxwell »

weego wrote: post #48
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…

Politics hasn't been "for the people" since party politics took over. The elephant in the room has always been how can someone represent their constituents when their constituents views might be at odds with the party line, and the chief whip is on their case to make sure they vote as the party expects. These are career politicians; there are no promotions or prizes for voting for your people over your party.

"All obstructions to the execution of the Laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels, and modified by mutual interests."

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Washington's_Farewell_Address

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

#89

Post by mtgx »

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 can be fixed by putting $100 caps on donations per person. Then they'll also work that much harder to please the people, not his/her "biggest donors".
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