Larry Lessig: I'm All In • Hacker News Board

Re: Larry Lessig: I'm All In

#91

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 1:18 PM UTC

Bud wrote: post #77

Gotadime wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a single party in total control like that would be destructive to our country, no matter how you spin it. Both parties have legitimate points and interests that need to be represented in our system. I have never understood individuals that buy in 100% to a single party and just can't fathom the idea of the opposing party having any good ideas that need to be heard. Radicalism of any kind is dangerous - conserv…

And yet, I doubt you can point to any actual harm that occurred when Democrats did briefly hold both houses of Congress after Obama was elected. BTW, there never was "total control", at least not if you meant control of all three branches; the Supreme Court remained a solid conservative majority during that period. And the Republicans of course still had the filibuster, which is plenty of power to represent any "legi…

[deleted]

Re: Larry Lessig: I'm All In

#92

Post by hga » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 1:26 PM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #59

jacobolus wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Campaign finance reform is dead in the water as long as the Republicans control Congress (and as long as, per Citizens United , unlimited corporate spending on political advertising is considered protected speech). So if we agree with Lessig that campaign finance reform is the most important national political priority, then electing a Democratic majority to the House is the necessary precondition. (I’m not saying yo…

> unlimited corporate spending on political advertising is considered protected speech Probably an unpopular opinion in this thread, but... It has always been protected speech. The Supreme Court just declined to make a distinction between The New York Times and an arbitrary group of citizens (or even a single citizen) doing a one-off publication.

And people should really be thinking twice about the consequences of suppressing core political speech from those they don't like, be it a single citizen publishing a book (in oral arguments the government admitted that fell into the McCain-Feingold ban), an arbitrary group of citizens producing and distributing a video about a public figure running for office, or the eeeeevil NRA with its five million members amplifying their voices in collective action, which e.g. AlwaysBCoding in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10403569 explicitly wants to silence (note below that one of the ways to achieve such survey results is to keep gun owners in the dark about what's actually being proposed).

Is "democracy" really enhanced by silencing one very large but disfavored side of the debate, by the side that just so happens to be catastrophically losing it? Was this what our founderes were thinking about when they had the 1st Amendment to the Constitution enshrine freedom of speech and the press?

To bring this back to Hillary!, the subject of the * GOVERNMENT CENSORED * 2008 campaign Citizens United video---yes, this really happened, the FEC got the District Court for the District of Columbia to ban it, per Wikipedia it "found that the film had no purpose other than to discredit Clinton's candidacy for president", which obviously is beyond the pale---well, in the debate a few days ago, echoing Obama's recent statements, she called for outright mass confiscation of guns with a token "buyback" compensation. I could put this advertisment together in a few hours, a few minutes if I was into video editing: http://www.pagunblog.com/2015/10/16/hillary-clinton-endorses...:

The ad for the general election writes itself:

Scene 1: “In Australia, the government confiscated 1/3 of the guns in the country. In America, 1/3 would be around 120 million guns”.

Scene 2: footage from Australia of big piles of guns getting ready to be melted down (it’s on YouTube in a documentary).

Scene 3: footage of Hillary saying Australia is a good example of what we should do in America.

Note that the NRA helped demolish the 1988 Dukakis campaign for President publicizing an even more clear quote, "I do not believe in people owning guns, only police and military. I am going to do everything I can to disarm this state.", which was the sole copy on a solid black background that was the chilling, high impact cover of the November 1988 issue of the American Rifleman. They wouldn't have been able to do if McCain-Feingold had been law back then.

These people want to deny us the soap box to present these incontestable facts, effectively denying us the ballet box by keeping the vast majority of affected gun owners in the dark. They really should think about which box follows.

Re: Larry Lessig: I'm All In

#93

Post by PythonicAlpha » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 1:30 PM UTC

Larry Lessig definitively has my vote.

It is just inconvenient, that I am not an US-American. But if he would run for election in my country, I would give him my vote.

The reason: He really takes democracy seriously -- some thing, that I would not attest to most people in our government -- and definitively not to the leading politicians of most political parties in my country.

That is the reason, I fear that democracy is bound to fail -- and to be replaced by corporate ruling (in fact, we are already at this point, where corporations have much more power than politicians or voters).

Re: Larry Lessig: I'm All In

#94

Post by crdoconnor » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 1:35 PM UTC

komaromy wrote: post #89

saalweachter wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact! Contra Lessig's plan to resign after magically gaining support for campaign finance reform from the two other branches of government, Presidents can do more than one thing per term! That means it is possible for a President Sanders to take action on both climate change and campaign finance reform, assuming the other two branches of government are amenable. Amazing but true!

Obama came into office with the same idea, then expended pretty much all of his political capital on passing the ACA. Lessig's plan seems to be on the same order.

>Obama came into office with the same idea

Obama's ideas were never made very clear during his campaign. It was all "hope" and "change" and not a whole lot on policy specifics.

He then went and implemented the same neoliberal bullshit that George Bush pushed with a slightly different flavor.

Re: Larry Lessig: I'm All In

#95

Post by humanrebar » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 1:36 PM UTC

Bud wrote: post #75

humanrebar wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having a single party in total control like that would be destructive to our country, no matter how you spin it. I'd argue it has been destructive to our country. Specifically with the way healthcare reform was passed. All democrats by the slimmest margin. Absolutely no wider support for one of the biggest changes in our country in a long time, as far as domestic policy goes. The result? More fighting than before.…

Huh? 60% support in Congress plus the support of the President plus the support of the Supreme Court (when the ACA was tested there) plus the overwhelming support of the American people wasn't good enough for you? Under what circumstances, then, WOULD you be able to accept that health care reform was a good idea and a good thing to pass? The constant infighting caused by Republicans is a result of their corporate mas…

60% is too low of a bar. 40% of a country vehemently disagreeing with a big change is a big deal. That's why the amendment process exists and is supposed to be used.

Re: Larry Lessig: I'm All In

#96

Post by tptacek » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 1:41 PM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #55

SwellJoe wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I haven’t tried to engage with the political system before" Now that's just inaccurate, unless you mean merely that he's never run for office. He has engaged with the political system on numerous fronts over the span of a couple of decades, sometimes effectively, sometimes not. He's made real positive change in the world (possibly as much as anyone else running, if we're being honest), occasionally through political…

He’s been a lawyer arguing cases and filing amicus briefs w/r/t copyright law and net neutrality, and he’s been an issue-specific activist/lobbyist on those two issues plus, more recently, campaign finance reform. He’s also given a TED talk and written a book outlining zany, politically impossible proposals for tackling the latter issue, and he ran a failed single-issue PAC in 2014. But that’s a very limited kind of…

Worse still, to the extent that a well-run Presidential campaign is an audition for the office itself, the one significant managerial task he's taken on so far (organizing and running the PAC) he failed at, and had to hand the reins to someone else.

Re: Larry Lessig: I'm All In

#97

Post by tptacek » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 1:43 PM UTC

zeckalpha wrote: post #80

Bud wrote: post #79

Lessig should do something useful and realistic, instead of this grandstanding and pretending that he can go from zero-to-President in 2.4 seconds as if politics were some sort of Tesla. It's embarrassing. To wit: he should run for the House, or Senate, or he should support candidates who are in favor of overturning Citizens United (i.e., Democrats).

Uh, the PAC he started does the candidate support, but he can't be associated with it while running as president.

Zephyr Teachout took over the PAC because Lessig's management of the PAC --- and the PAC itself --- was widely regarded as a total failure. That's not my opinion; it's the reporting on Mayday PAC.

Re: Larry Lessig: I'm All In

#98

Post by tptacek » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 1:44 PM UTC

Gotadime wrote: post #15

jacobolus wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, but so what? Lessig has no chance of winning the Democratic Party nomination, so his campaign basically amounts to hijacking the primary to promote his message. Even if that message is “completely right”, so what? You think if Lessig gets a seat at the Democratic primary debates, he’ll be able to convince the Republicans in Congress to reverse course on campaign finance? Fat chance. The most likely way to impro…

Having a single party in total control like that would be destructive to our country, no matter how you spin it. Both parties have legitimate points and interests that need to be represented in our system. I have never understood individuals that buy in 100% to a single party and just can't fathom the idea of the opposing party having any good ideas that need to be heard. Radicalism of any kind is dangerous - conserv…

That's fine, but as a positive-only, non-normative argument, 'jacobolus is right: the GOP opposes campaign finance reform. The issue here is the most effective way for Lessig to accomplish what Lessig wants to accomplish, not the best way to represent both parties.

Re: Larry Lessig: I'm All In

#99

Post by Chathamization » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 1:48 PM UTC

throwaway13337 wrote: post #44

jensen123 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Members of Congress spend 70% of their time raising money. Why do they do this? Because the politicians who spend the most money on advertising generally win the elections, right? I'm wondering if what we're seeing here is the failure of democracy with universal suffrage. Most of the voters don't seem to be independent thinkers. They could have voted for politicians who haven't been "bought". But they don't. For ex…

This is more a problem with vote distribution. The parties outside the main two cannot win because they're always going to be a minority. If a minority could still hold a minority of the seats for getting a minority of the votes, the landscape would be vastly different. Instead, we have an average vote system based on geographic region that can only allow for major parties to hold seats. This is not the case in all d…

But we have primaries, where we get to choose who those candidates will be. It makes sense to winnow down choices from a larger group until you get to the top 2, and then choose between the top two. You still have lots of choices if you look at the process from the beginning, not just from the very last part of the selection process.

Re: Larry Lessig: I'm All In

#100

Post by vezzy-fnord » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 1:50 PM UTC

techdragon wrote: post #81

throwaway13337 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more a problem with vote distribution. The parties outside the main two cannot win because they're always going to be a minority. If a minority could still hold a minority of the seats for getting a minority of the votes, the landscape would be vastly different. Instead, we have an average vote system based on geographic region that can only allow for major parties to hold seats. This is not the case in all d…

A big part of the problem is voter turnout. If you make voting a requirement, like paying your taxes. It changes the environment around an election. You spend less time and money trying to convince apathetic voters to take time out of their work day to vote.

You have the right to vote, not the obligation to vote. The latter is a clear coercive practice and free speech violation. It forces the uninformed to cast votes on issues they have no background in. It also criminalizes the legitimate protest activity of abstention.