Well this is kinda fucking disgusting. I had previously thought lawmakers may simply not understand the issue they're ruling on - which is too common. I don't understand why this needs to remove the ability for the FCC to do it's job. To curtail it's ability to enact similar privacy protections in the future.
How could anyone in good conscience think this is good for the people?
Dear god fuck it all.
(let's not even consider how an ISP analyzing traffic to sell would have an unfair advantage to other advertising agents like Facebook)
>How could anyone in good conscience think this is good for the people?
They don't. The politicians who voted for this only represent the interests of the lobbyists and financial backers who 'donated/bribed' them during their campaign. Politicians don't care about the will of the people at all, several studies have shown this.
Before America can accomplish much of anything--we need real and substantial campaign finance reform. Too many corporations are able to influence elections and it's not good for democracy. I would think after this last election, democrats could run on this as a national security issue, if they were smart but no one has ever accused them of that.
I'm not sure campaign finance reform would do much. Look what we saw in this last election; regular everyday people (generally the non-urban ones) have poor education and don't understand the issues. All they care about is the "Mexicans", abortion, guns, which bathroom a tiny number of people use, etc., and they'll vote for politicians who tell them what they want to hear on these issues. These pols can easily convince their constituents that things like this new law are good, because it'll reduce "unnecessary regulation" that "strangles companies" and "reduces competition" and "drives prices up". The voters are too short-sighted and stupid to remember all this and notice when, in fact, prices just go up and privacy protections disappear as a result of laws like this, so the pols won't be held accountable.
Campaign finance reform won't help this kind of thing. Just look at Dave Brat in Virginia; he won over Mark Cantor, despite Cantor being a long-time incumbent with a huge war chest and lobbyist backing and Brat being a little-known Tea Party candidate. Or just look at Trump: how much did he spend on campaigning? Virtually nothing. Hillary was the one spending obscene amounts of money on campaigning, and she was horribly unpopular and lost.
Its voters for sure, but it is also the money, and the media. 24 hour cables news need content! And dog bless Trump if he does not provide a sh*tload of it. It has been reported that received over 2 billion USD in free press coverage.
Given enough money you can convince enough people of things like trickle down economics work, or climate change is a Chinese hoax. So indeed voters need to wise up( not going to happen IMHO ), we need to have less money in politics ( right ), or pigs could fly out my ass. I am just hoping that our AI overlords will be kind.
But without the huge donations and constant lobbying, wouldn't the politicians be more inclined to enact legislation that favored their voters over corporate interests.
Much of the funding behind the tea party movement, right wing media, “think tanks”, the armies of pundits on every cable news channel, “grassroots” conservative issue-advocacy organizations (including Citizens United, for instance), anti-Democrat conspiracy books, and so on comes from completely unaccountable and often anonymous billionaires.
Campaign finance laws actually have significant influence on how much money can be spent, how transparent the funding must be, what money can be used for, etc. Media regulations also have a large impact.
A particular fringe world-view doesn’t just pop into significant numbers of voters’ minds out of nothing. It is deliberately tended and promoted by folks with large amounts of money with specific policy goals.
Hillary was horribly unpopular; saying otherwise is blatantly denying reality. She only won the popular vote (barely) because Trump was so unpopular. She lost because she was so unpopular, causing so many people to either stay home, vote 3rd party, or vote for the also-unpopular Trump, and because of the way the Electoral College works (giving rural states more power per vote).
How many people bothered showing up for Hillary's rallies? That's how you measure popularity and enthusiasm. Hillary didn't have any. People only voted for her because the alternative was viewed as worse.
In the (generally liberal) DC area that I live near, I saw almost no bumper stickers for Hillary. I actually saw far more bumper stickers for Obama than Hillary! Why would I see far more 4 or 8-year-old bumper stickers for Obama than for the current Dem candidate? Because she's unpopular, that's why.
Hillary ran against one of the most unpopular candidates in presidential election history, and she lost. Any other candidate would have easily won. Trump was an outsider, and deeply unpopular even among Republican voters. This should have been an easy election for the Dems to win, but they insisted on running the most unpopular, unpalatable candidate they possibly could have, and that's why they lost.
Oh please. The game is rigged, but it's not that rigged. At the end of the day, tens of millions of people voted not just for Trump, but for GOP candidates down the line. Millions of people voted for Hillary in the primaries. We got the people we voted for. We could have voted for other people at all stages of the election (esp. the primaries where it makes the most difference) and we didn't.
1) it's not one person/group who's choosing who you can vote for. It's a product of the system as a whole, which has competing actors. The GOP does not decide who runs in the Dem races, and vice versa, for instance.
2) you're not as limited in who you vote for as you allege. There are always 3rd-party options. The only reason they never win is because no one votes for them because "they'll never win", a self-fulfilling prophecy, just like believing you'll never succeed and then never trying. If nothing else, voting 3rd-party shows that you cared enough to vote, and didn't like the 2 mainstream choices. If enough people vote that way, one of the 3rd parties will then get more recognition, matching funds, a place at the debates, etc. We've had FPTP voting since the very beginning, but we do NOT have the same political parties that we started out with.
Not parent but here you go:
"Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence."
tl;dr: In a pilot, 99% of people preferred the auto-filled returns, but the bill to make it law failed by one vote, because of Intuit and Grover Norquist.
you really don't need studies. look at the polling data of things that get passed. The AHCA is being rushed through despite being wanted by only 17% of the public [0].
But the health care C level execs are getting big tax cuts, and they are repealing the 3.8% tax on some kind of investment income. So its good for everyone!
There was a study a read (that I can't find now), I think by MIT, that showed there was no correlation between what bills passed in the house/senate and the 'will of the voter' (what people wanted).
Until you took into account money. Then there was a correlation between what was passed and the 'will of the lobbyist'.
Americans love Congress. The approval ratings are very, very high. The ratings you cite are wrong, because they show the wrong thing: they show what people think of other peoples' Congress members. American voters are very happy with their Congresspeople; that's why they keep re-electing them. They just don't like everyone else's Congress picks (esp. ones in the "other" party).
I don't know if Americans "love" congress, as much as we are just ignorant to who are what congress is. See someone from the other side, hate em, see familiar name on the ballot, vote for em.
I can't believe Democrats are beating the campaign finance reform angle after Trump. Hello: the candidate with far greater corporate funding lost. Now, big corporations (the New York Times, etc.) are what stand between Trump and his agenda.
You can't think about this like Democrats vs Republicans, They are both bought out by lobbyists. This is people vs corporation.
In the case of Trump, he IS one part of corporate America. He is benefiting himself and his slice of corporate America.
"Now, big corporations (the New York Times, etc.) are what stand between Trump and his agenda."
There are shades here, not as easy a statement to make as you have made.
While trump would definitely scare the American corps because of his protectionist, destabilising economic policy,
the republican establishment is still behind a metric ton of the laws/bills etc that are bandied about, and they are corporate owned.
They still have the pockets of the politicians, they just don't like some of the other stuff. The weapons industry as a softball example would be jumping for joy at Trump.
So the corps are not standing between Trump and his agenda, but they definitely would have preferred a normal republican candidate.
This was a straight party-line vote. There's a single party here working very hard to centralize and corporatize the internet. There's another party working against that.
I have to say I find it a bit hilarious when something like this happens and it's the result of a select, easily identifiable group and Americans then throw their hands up and declare, "The whole system is corrupt!"
Campaign finance reform is treating the symptom, and you'll never be able to stuff that genie back in the bottle. Like it or not, money and free speech are interfungible (I'm sure that's not a word), you can't control one without harming the other.
Before America can accomplish much of anything, we need a populace that will invest more into choosing a candidate than deciding who has the pithiest attack ad.
So before America can accomplish anything, we need to get a highly educated population that is rich enough to be able to afford the time to research complex local, statewide, and national politics.
There's a hell of a lot of symptoms between us and the goal, and the current system seems to be doing everything it can to prevent us from reaching it (defunding education, defunding healthcare, preventing efforts to get out the vote, gerrymandering).
> So before America can accomplish anything, we need to get a highly educated population that is rich enough to be able to afford the time to research complex local, statewide, and national politics.
Believe it or not, it's not a full-time job. Given that we've seen poll after poll showing that the average voter couldn't pass a 6th grade civics class, but I don't see how cutting education spending is the real problem. We spend plenty on education. If that were the root of the problem then the districts which spend the most money would have the best grades, but there's not a strong correlation there.
We spend money poorly, but we spend plenty. There are a lot of things that could improve the American education system, but one thing has been shown conclusively to not do any good on its own and that's spending more money.
Well, my point is, they might be trying to vote otherwise, but gerrymandering and voter suppression prevents them. For example, the American people didn't elect Donald Trump, but he became president.
Let me correct you there: the American people did elect Donald Trump and he became president. Electoral College is the way to get elected, and popular vote has zero impact. That's why nobody who wants to win runs for the popular vote.
The poster you responded to referenced gerrymandering. I believe in that person's view, the gerrymandering is a form of corruption. Surely you believe corruption would result in an unfair election result. Though I would understand if you did not believe that gerrymandering is corruption.
The electoral college is basically not gerrymandered. In all but two states, everyone in the state is voting in the same electoral college "district" - i.e., the state - and the boundaries of the states were established sufficiently long ago (1912 []) that we can assume they were not deliberately designed to produce a certain electoral outcome today.
[] Two states have been admitted since 1912 - Alaska and Hawaii - but their borders match preexisting borders (the Alaska-Canada border was last altered in 1903).
The college itself is gerrymandering. It was set up to roughly represent population but to have an educated stop gap against a populist winning. With urbanization and different population growth it is now a system of disproportionate representation.
The people who drew state lines hundreds of years ago had no idea what things were going to look like in 2017; that's just stupid. Gerrymandering is drawing district lines to get a certain outcome. The state borders were not drawn to get a certain electoral outcome, they were drawn because of various political and geographic factors that existed in the 1700s. They didn't even have political parties at the time, nor did they even have a country in the eastern seaboard "states", since those were just independent colonies of England and there was no unification whatsoever. The whole "states" thing and unified federal country didn't come around until much later (the colonies were established in the 1600s, the revolution was in 1776).
First of all, I don't understand how the removal of the electoral college would cause an individual within a certain county to have more voting power, rather than less (wouldn't this be the case? Their "vote" would be equal to any of the other millions of Americans anywhere ? )
Second, I don't understand how in a "no electoral college" universe, the concept of a "county" is even relevant. With every vote being perfectly equal, one would think the balance of power would perfectly equalize across all voters.
The college produces different outcomes than a popular vote - that's true. I also don't think it's a good thing. But gerrymandering is something specific: drawing electoral districts to deliberately produce certain electoral outcomes. It presupposes a system with districts, but is not the same thing.
I will also note that the poster you're replying to references gerrymandering as one of the causes of the election results not matching the votes; neither of your statements directly refute that.
For some reason I really thought I saw figures that 5M fewer people voted than in '08. Maybe I'm comparing to '12? I'm too lazy to research this at the moment. However, your own page shows that the voter turnout was 2-3% lower between '08-'16.
As for gerrymandering, that only affects the House races, nothing else. The President isn't affected by that, only by the archaic and undemocratic Electoral College and the way state borders are drawn. The Senate is similar. The GOP swept all three.
Thank you for the reminder about the limitations of gerrymandering!
Senate is 52-48 which doesn't seem like a sweep. This includes two independents which caucus with the Democrats. I think the Democrats actually picked up two seats, which doesn't seem like a sweep either. Also, in your previous comment, you said the GOP won some seats. Which seats were these?
> Like it or not, money and free speech are interfungible
I know what you mean (interchangeable?), and the problem is that it only goes one way. With money, you can purchase "free speech," e.g. in CA, you can pay signature gatherers a few million to put a proposition on the ballot, because signatures cost a couple bucks apiece. But you can't easily turn free speech into money: 100 million people could send nasty letters to the Koch brothers, and they'd be told to pound sand.
Fair enough, but the more money you have, the more people can hear you and you can't infringe on the ability to spend money in a campaign without infringing, to some extent, on the right to Free Speech.
I do not agree at all that campaign finance reform would be detrimental to free speech. If anything, it'd be a boom for free speech, because you wouldn't have a few ultra-rich people dominating the conversation. Limit everyone to $1000 per fiscal tax year of political donations. This can be given to candidates, or to PACs. The wealthy will still get more, because they're more likely to afford $1000, but average people won't be drowned out.
>How could anyone in good conscience think this is good for the people?
You assume these people care about "what is good for the people." Like CNN and MSNBC, claiming "R's say this, D's say this, I can't tell what the truth is!"
There is the record, there is history. One party is aligned with their corporate donors more than the other. While both have issues, on issues involving corporate power and influence, R's are clearly on the side of corporations and wealthy donors who keep them in power.
EDIT: there is no need for being fair because everyone else does this, but many times, D's end up being "republican-lite" because they believe it will appeal to R's and also appeal to their (the D's) donors; but there is no question as to which side the R's lie on.
I was an elected Democratic National Committee member and I can assure you corporate influence has infiltrated the D party too. I was part of a group of a few hundred people to receive a private Dave Matthews concert in the mountains, paid for by a mountain top removal company.
I disagree. The political elites in both parties serve the interests of the capital holders. It's just that each party targets their propaganda efforts to appear as if they don't serve those interests at different audiences.
They've each done a very good job at convincing people the other team is pure evil, though.
Really? Huh. If it's all propaganda, then why did Democrats enact the legislation that protected our privacy? Why did the FCC implement Net Neutrality under Democrats? Why are the Republicans undoing that? Pretending there's no difference between the two parties may give you a way to feel superior to both sides, but it does little else.
I'm not saying both parties don't have issues, but if people consistently voted for the person or party that was less evil, we'd eventually end up with good candidates. However, people like you throw up their hands and say "Oh, well, both sides are bad." Yeah, they are. Like too much salt and too much arsenic are both bad. But there are matters of degree here.
The Republicans that want to sell us all out to multinationals, ban religious minorities, and deny science are in power right now. The Democrats aren't perfect. If that's the bar they have to meet before people like you will stop saying "Well, both sides are bad, whaa, whaa, whaa" then whatever. But don't feel like you're smart because you see yourself as above the petty fray. Quite the opposite is true.
In the real world, one party is doing the right thing and protecting our privacy and one party isn't. It's not all propaganda.
why did Democrats enact the legislation that protected our privacy?
They didn't. In fact, it was the Obama administration that reclassified broadband carriers such that they are no longer under FTC jurisdiction (see DannyBee's comment, current top comment), making a new (FCC) rule necessary.
This pending rule change is not in effect at all yet; it was only put through 3 weeks after the 2016 election and wouldn't have taken effect until next December.
Had the Obama administration cared about privacy, they could have timed the rule change and the FTC authority removal to take effect at the same time.
[EDIT]: changed "a week before the 2016 election" (a different, significant rule change) to 3 weeks after.
> Really? Huh. If it's all propaganda, then why did Democrats enact the legislation that protected our privacy?
Because it serves the interests of the tech companies that support democrats. Ask yourself why the FCC didn't make it illegal for everyone to profit off customers' private information.
* Republican prefers smaller government and prefers more conservative approach by eliminating regulations
* Democrats actually had all the major corporations' support during the 2016 election, but they try to appeal both sides, with more liberal agenda and mixing the corporation interest.
> Republican prefers smaller government and prefers more conservative approach by eliminating regulations
This is a claim, but rarely actually seen. More money is thrown at "defense", while less is put into supporting the American people.
What if we instead of building new fighter jets, we spent that money on fixing out infrastructure, getting faster internet to everyone's homes, better education for our children?
The military industrial complex in the US is structured such that every state and by extension Senator and Congressperson, wants to vote for things like new tanks and planes, because it creates/preserves jobs in their districts. But this has little long term benefit to their districts. Wouldn't it be better to invest that money into the future of their districts to improve the lives of the people there?
It's disingenuous to say the least the R's prefer smaller government. What they prefer is less regulation and redirection of tax money into corporations.
> This is a claim, but rarely actually seen. More money is thrown at "defense", while less is put into supporting the American people.
It's not even thrown well at defense. The army wanted to close certain bases and centralize others here in the U.S. It's not like the the army is entirely clueless about importance of operations. They figured they would be able to have the same capabilities, but lower staff and operation count. But you know what congressman/senator is going to allow job / industry to ship away from their district?
You get the same story in weapons and tech. They want to have fewer but more focused efforts when it comes to next-gen development. Same thing, but this time it's corp jobs in the district vs local army jobs.
What's weird to me is Republicans say regulation is bad - and don't get hurt by a _lack_ of regulation. How can people in that party be so gung-ho to make themselves vulnerable? They're not all part of the 1%. Surely they know someone who suffers by undoing regulation.
> What's weird to me is Republicans say regulation is bad
What's really weird is that Republicans love markets and hate regulation, but don't seem to realize that every market is created by regulation. There's a complete lack of nuance among vocal Republicans.
Any definition of "market" relevant to this discussion necessitates property rights, which require a functional government and a bare minimum level of regulations. We're talking about the Republican party, not prehistoric tribes, so a nebulous theoretical definition of "markets" that is easily satisfied by two people trading seashells is entirely unhelpful.
They may think most constituents don't care about privacy at all, so why protect it? Or maybe they think the free market will somehow fix it? In any case, Americans should show them that they are actually interested in their privacy:
https://act.eff.org/action/don-t-let-congress-undermine-our-...
I worked on election integrity issues for a decade. Verify the machines work correctly, protect the secret ballot, keep admins from purging the voter rolls illegally, etc.
My opponents had (effectively) infinite time and resources. They will forward their agenda relentlessly. Year after year. Non stop.
To "win", I had to show up EVERY SINGLE DAY for EVERY SINGLE BATTLE FRONT.
Well. One day I stayed home. After ten years of preventing internet voting (in my state), the legislature suspended the rules, fast-tracked the internet voting bill (no public hearings), and it passed unanimously.
I asked my representatives, who had previously committed to never passing such a bill, "WTF?"
"Well, we didn't hear any opposition."
(Fruit flies have longer attention spans.)
--
What I'm trying to say is that people do care. I traveled my entire state and had broad public support for my platform (use "citizen owned" open source software, protect voter privacy, universal voter registration). But we're outclassed, outgunned, and outmaneuvered.
You cannot expect anyone anywhere do The Right Thing.
But if you bring the heat, the powerful will see the light.
The only times I got my way is when I brought pressure. Build coaltions, fill public hearings, letters to the editors, endorsements, resolutions, orchestrate protests, etc.
This book is a very good primer.
http://www.becomingacitizenactivist.org
I also strongly recommend the Camp Wellstone training for organisers.
This is my biggest concern about various "moneyed people/orgs with agendas." If their sole job is to push their agenda, it is incredibly asymmetric. How do you win against something like that if all it takes is slipping just once when they are waiting to pounce?
It looks that only Alaska has internet voting beyond corner cases (military and citizens abroad) whose votes don't get counted anyway except in statistically tied races.
They know Americans don't care. What percentage of people use services that are roughly this invasive? Google/Bing/Yahoo search, Gmail/hotmail, android, grocery discount cards, any social network, amazon, etc. etc. Probably nearly 95% of the country.
Might as well let AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Time-Warner get in on the google and facebook anti-privacy smorgasbord.
The justification is that less regulation will create more profits which will supposedly create more jobs (aka trickle down economics). Luckily for the politicians this justification dovetails perfectly with what the lobbyists with the deepest pockets want.
The White House seems to be full of people compromised to the Russians. But the voters are happy to have defeated the real enemy, their fellow Americans.
What a terrible cure that would be. Whatever evils you believe Facebook to be doing to the internet, at least they can't inspect every packet that leaves your router.
How could anyone in good conscience think this is good for the people?
Dear god fuck it all.
(let's not even consider how an ISP analyzing traffic to sell would have an unfair advantage to other advertising agents like Facebook)