The Obama admin will generally prosecute the enemies of whoever pays them the most. We live in a representative democracy, but the representation seems to be auctioned off.
Not just the Obama admin, but any that manages to get elected. You can't even hope to win a modern election without billions in funding from corporate or wealthy private interests. Even Obama's small-donor-oriented political machine raised roughly half its campaign funding from the former.
I wonder what would happen if some super-wealthy retired philanthropist (think Bill Gates, minus the MS monopoly tarnish) donated $1B to a promising Presidential candidate, with very few strings attached. Maybe we'll just end up with another assassinated President...
I don't think we would have an assassination... but I must admit I am so cynical that one would not terribly surprise me.
However, by no means would just the president be enough. You have to keep in mind both the house and the senate are just as much in the pocket of lobbyist as the white house, in fact probably more so. And the president alone can declare war, grant pardons, and not much else.
Also, we have to remember that a lot of Obama's funding, especially early on, came from true grass roots, and was in small units which added up big time. So he's as close to a people's candidate as we've had in a LOOONG time. And yet, even he black, constitutional scholar, the most charismatic public speaker in ~ 40 years, even he is succumbing to our cynical political realities.
If he is not a transformative president who could ever be?
Oh I know he passed health care, but how is more spending radically different from the Medicare drug benefit, or any of the other ways both Republicans and Democrats have grown the size of government over the years?
I think $1B is enough to tip the scales for the right candidate, but if everyone knew one candidate was being propped up by a billionaire it would immediately backfire.
| I wonder what would happen if some super-wealthy retired philanthropist (think Bill Gates, minus the MS monopoly tarnish) donated $1B to a promising Presidential candidate, with very few strings attached.
I wonder what would happen if some super-wealthy retired philanthropic billionaire with a sense of noblesse oblige decided to donate a vast sum to one extra-special Presidential candidate and if only that billionaire had no ulterior motive.
She only proved that you can't buy an election if you're outrageously blatant about it and a terrible candidate on top of that.
Most congresspeople spend more time raising money (banging the phones, attending fundraisers, etc) than they do on policy. You need a few million in the bank to be a "credible candidate", and lobbyists can get you a chunk of the way there.
I think she would have won if Brown weren't running -- in the end, he had a proven track record doing exactly the kind of reconstruction that California needs right now, and that trumped her money.
I'm not local and didn't have a great view of it. From what I heard, she was on the air so early and so obnoxiously often that it destroyed whatever message she may have had (and the message was lousy/stale/reactive, too). I think that loses to generic dem in California, but again I'm not local and don't really have the pulse there.
If you do the 'good/bad' candidate, 'buys/doesn't buy' the election grid then a system that prevents bad candidates from buying elections would seem to be sufficient. All the other results are tolerable / unavoidable.
The Obama admin has actually been better than every other administration about disclosing lobbyist visits, etc. See my link below. Note that no congressional offices or subcommittees have followed suit (and really, if you're spending lobbyist dollars and looking for results, swaying a subcommittee chair is so much easier than swaying the president, and might accomplish more).
I'd go as far as to say the problem is more "Washington in general and Congress in particular" than Obama. I mean, last week he was a socialist and now he's a plutocrat, too? The two philosophies are diametrically opposed, pick one.
More than 40 former lobbyists work in top positions in the administration, including three cabinet secretaries and the director of Central Intelligence.
#1) Your first link makes absolutely no reference to the Bush administration. It supports my point, though, Obama created stricter guidelines instructing the agencies to fulfill more FOIA requests. And the agencies are falling short for whatever bureaucratic reason, seemingly that they can't work through the pile fast enough. Rome wasn't built in a day and all that. Thanks for the link though, I didn't know Obama had done that. I approve.
#2) Some aides met with lobbyists off of white house ground to avoid logging the meetings? You mean to avoid the policy that Obama put in place and that had never existed before he was elected? Seems like he's working in the right direction, to me. Now we just need Congress to implement a similar rule.
#3) Yeah, again, not perfect just yet. Want to compare/contrast with the number of former lobbyists who worked in the Bush white house, on the McCain campaign, or on John Boehner's staff?
If you're reasoning backwards from "I've decided I don't like Obama", you can believe whatever you want.
But the guy's history and all of his public pronouncements since taking office have been on the side of openness, and consistently against the influence of lobbyists. He's actually created a bunch of initiatives for more openness, the lobbyist visit thing and the data.gov thing being two of them.
It's just plain disingenuous to claim that Obama is less in favor of openness than Dick Cheney.
EDIT: Wow. Not usually one to whine about the voting but the guy's links actually say the opposite of what he's claiming. And he's upvoted. Just goes to show, you can believe whatever you want and vote that way too.
> It's just plain disingenuous to claim that Obama is less in favor of openness than Dick Cheney.
If you want to prosecute to Julian Assange, you are not for openness in Government. If you put Bradley Manning not in jail, but under the jail, and refuse to let even Congressmen like Denis Kucinich even visit Manning to witness first hand the conditions under which he is being held, you are not for openness in Government. http://antiwar.com/radio/2011/03/12/rep-dennis-kucinich/
If you fire State Dept Spokesman P.J. Crowley because he makes an off the record comment at MIT about the deplorable treatment of Manning, you are not for more openness in government. http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/
I voted for Obama. In many ways he is a huge improvement over Bush, but let's be realistic, and face the facts.
Well, he has a better record on openness than his predecessors and everyone else in both 2008 primaries with a couple exceptions (Kucinich and maybe Ron Paul).
I mean, he did get into office and immediately push a bunch of initiatives regarding openness. Maybe it didn't go as far as you or I would want but even slowing the descent is an improvement.
The guy has a long track record of saying he's going to do something, and not doing it. Take his proclamation, upon entering office, that the detention center at Guantanamo would be closed within a year. It's still open. Take his statements back around 2004-2006 that we needed to decriminalize marijuana. It took two years of the same issue rising to the top of polls for the guy to even address it, and he brushed it off. Take his promise to fight for better healthcare -- except during the voting, I heard more from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid than I did from Obama. Or the whole "let's talk diplomatically to Iran".
Many of those things can't be done unilaterally. The president can't force something threw that Congress isn't interested in (medical marijuana, the Gitmo closing).
I was a huge Obama supporter towards the end of the campaign, primarily because I believed -- and still believe -- that he was a much better choice than McCain/Palin, and because there wasn't enough of a margin of error to vote third-party.
That said, I naively expected Obama to do a much better job of holding to the platform that he ran on than he actually has. Aside from the Wall Street Scandal, there are regular stories of various parts of the Obama administration selling out to special interests or making decisions that are simply not in the best interests of Americans (e.g. TSA tactics & body scanners; net neutrality; etc.).
I am hugely disappointed in the President's administration in that regard. As a voter, I have no options left; I have to conclude that there is no hope of the Federal government acting in the best interests of Americans, regardless of which party is in charge.
He may not be as bad as Cheney, but that's a long way from adhering to the principles of his campaign.
One time FDR was meeting with some activists who felt really strongly about an issue, but the status quo had dug in and it didn't look easy to affect the change.
He told them: "I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it."
In the current environment, Fox News is one half of the discourse and CNN is the other half, while the pundits split the difference in the name of "balance". If you want change, get active, make him do it. We all live here.
What poll numbers are Obama and the others in government waiting for? I believe it was around 77% in favor of a public option for health care, why didn't they put that in?
How are we supposed to "make them do it" besides letting them know through poll numbers, protests, etc. what the public is feeling? They're elected to be representatives who in most cases side with a clear majority except where that would overstep their authority. If FDR wanted to have real democratic voting processes on specific issues, for which he is mandated to carry out whatever the final result is, he should have said so.
(I also don't like the false equivalency of Fox News and CNN/MSNBC/NPR/whatever-alternative-to-Fox, but that's another issue.)
A) He was waiting for 60 senators, not poll #s. 40 Republicans were guaranteed to filibuster anything he put out, even the final result which was basically the Republican counter-proposal to Hillarycare a few short years ago. So a couple of those 60 got to drag it out for ridiculous and crooked concessions.
B) Totally agree on the false equivalency, was trying to highlight that rather than propagate it.
But if you get active, assume that the media will characterize you and your picked group as being radicals and use the one-or-two whackjobs who attach themselves to every group to make everyone look like and idiot. Also, don't expect your "intelligent" friends to not believe the media in this regard.
I agree with you on getting involved, by the way. I've been getting involved in some of the local stuff, gradually working my way up. I've no interest in spending my time in politics, but I do want to be able to influence things.
...because, if I can't, I'll have to take Chile up on their offer.
Chile has been serious about recruiting startups to their country. $40,000 incentive, all the help you need to get started, they take no stake in your company, only obligation is to stay there for six months and do your best to be successful. (http://www.startupchile.org/)
Chile isn't without its own problems, but a lot of the climate is similar to California, they're enthusiastic and well-developed, great people overall, beautiful country, great food, great environment, lower cost of living. So far I haven't read any negative reviews of their program, only positive ones.
If you're not especially tied to the U.S., I'd recommend applying. Even if you go and it doesn't work out, you'd get a tremendously worthwhile experience from it.
And that's out of how many requested in each year?
Just to get this straight, you're contending that this is a matter of deliberate policy by Obama in direct contravention of all of his public statements and his official memorandums on the subject? Like, there was a "wink, nudge" in there? He met them over coffee and said, "I just published that memo to look good, I actually want you to deny more requests"? What's your allegation, exactly?
Both of your links emphasize that Obama has published regulations instructing the agencies to grant more FOIA requests than they were previously, but that the agencies are struggling with the implementation. Just going to restate that one more time.
> you're contending that this is a matter of deliberate policy by Obama
I don't see where he's saying that. Where does the buck stop, anyway? Does Obama get a pass because he's an ineffectual leader, a gold star for trying?
Creating a system that people have to actively circumvent? (the admin responded "need more conference rooms" regarding the location of the meetings across the street, which is reasonable provided that they're implementing the lobbyist transparency measures there).
Anyways, yes, creating a system that people have to actively circumvent is progress. Any meeting in the white house has toe be disclosed, and staffers have to use tricks in order to not disclose a meeting. As compared to before, where no meeting was disclosed, ever, and there was nothing wrong with that (and no gotcha articles, either!).
Oh, and #3 is basically a nonpoint what with the overly vague "40 officials" and total lack of comparisons or context. I clicked through and one of the first names was Tom Vilsack, who spent 30 years as a politician and then a couple as a lobbyist in between gigs. Another was a lobbyist from the ACLU, which really does not match up with most people's definitions of "lobbyist" as far as being paid a lot of money and having an expense account.
>last week he was a socialist and now he's a plutocrat, too? The two philosophies are diametrically opposed, pick one.
Socialists don't generally appoint lobbyists to important administration positions and bring in ex-presidents to defend tax cuts for the rich. So I'll pick plutocrat.
If lobbyists aren't visitors, then reporting their visits becomes painless. Just hire the lobbyists, as the Obama admin has done.
Obama, pre-election: "I am running to tell the lobbyists in Washington that their days of setting the agenda are over. They have not funded my campaign. They won't work in my White House."
While I don't like realtors much, I don't think it's fair to send them all to jail.
They all took a long position in housing and the market punished them soundly for it. They now need to find a new career. Sending them to jail is overkill.
Same for the millions of other people who contributed to the crisis - the real estate speculators/"homeowners" have lost lots of money. Construction workers have suffered 30% job losses.
What next, sending people to jail for buying into the pets.com IPO?
I think he was thinking of the peoeple at AIG or Lehman Bros or Goldman Sachs, who generally walked away with million dollar bonuses even if they did lose their jobs. A good number of people would be quite happy to lose their job for a million dollars.
Um, 'scapegoats' suggests people who are taking a big fall for limited involvement. Sending senior executives of major financial companies to jail may constitute a big fall, but it wouldn't be for limited involvement.
There are plenty of people involved in the financial collapse that are not "high profile". If anything, there are more mid-level people that were involved in directly damaging the economy.
Ridiculous. How can a realtor possibly be as culpable as say, the people who were bundling the mortgages and selling them off as securities that were just known time-bombs?
You just jumped on the OP's use of everyone, baited them with your realtors comment and somehow conclude that "he only wanted to punish a few high profile scapegoats" which is exactly what happens all the time anyways (remember Bernie Madoff?)
Please watch "Inside Job" it shows how no one responsible for the financial disaster has been punished or even pursued. It's ridiculous. We just had the biggest financial crisis and everyone responsible got away with it. What is truly annoying is you're more concerned with the OP's use of "everyone" instead of focusing on the more important issues.
The realtor is encouraging people to make a long bet on housing in hopes of making a few middleman dollars. A mortgage bundler is doing the exact same thing. The only real difference is that the realtor markets their products to unsophisticated speculators, while the mortgage bundler markets his products to gigantic financial institutions, hedge funds and the like.
We had a financial crisis because everyone thought housing would only go up placed huge bets on that hypothesis. Although there were bad actors involved in various places (realtors and mortgage brokers facilitating fraud, homebuyers committing fraud, bankers papering over crappy loans, etc), the bad actors didn't cause the crisis.
The crisis was caused by people at all steps of the chain believing that housing will only go up. If anyone decided not to buy into the hype, the bubble would not have occurred. The only people who are truly innocent in creating the crisis are renters and a small number of investors who shorted the market (Burry, Paulson, etc).
So you think it's the realtors job to tell people what is or isn't in their best interest? Please. You're holding realtors to a higher standard than any other profession, they're not your real estate adviser, they're realtors, the average home buyer knows the realtor's interests do not align with the buyers.
|We had a financial crisis because everyone thought housing would only go up placed huge bets on that hypothesis.
I blame regulators and financial institutions for not doing their jobs, not the average home buyer or realtor.
|The crisis was caused by people at all steps of the chain believing that housing will only go up.
And yet no one has gone to jail or been prosecuted in any meaningful way.
So you think it's the realtors job to tell people what is or isn't in their best interest?
No. Similarly, I don't think it's the job of a mortgage packager to do anything other than package mortgages and move them on.
Keep in mind, I'm not the one advocating sending assorted politically unpopular middlemen to jail.
And yet no one has gone to jail or been prosecuted in any meaningful way.
That's because the housing bubble was not the result of a crime. A few crimes were committed, sure - it's hard for trillions of dollars to move around without a few people stealing some of it. But the main culprits of the bubble didn't do anything criminally wrong. They just collectively made bad bets in the same direction.
Sorry, but there just isn't a villain behind every bad event.
[edit: added emphasis in second to last paragraph. Apparently some people are not seeing that sentence.]
Frankly, yes. Do you realize that before CDOs were made Deutche bank and friends took precautions to make sure they wouldn't be classified as gambling? They knew the danger of what they were creating and sought to make sure it wouldn't be regulated.
and why would people let banks gamble with their money unless it was guaranteed by FDIC? government being "the lender of last resort" really just means that eventually risk will be socialized.
Of course private industry seeks to avoid regulation when it can. This does not make one evil.
as I have stated before those felony laws already exist, both President and US Congress refused to enforce them and changed many of them at bankers request to avoid facing 'the music'..
I don't want people to pirate my software, but I'd rather file sharers and individuals get away free than have a felony on their record or go to prison. Civil penalties are a good idea, possibly light criminal penalties, not a felony though, much less prison time.
Commercial piracy is a different matter, and I don't have a thoroughly-considered opinion on what the punishment for it should be.
The truly disturbing thing is that the felony charge can destroy peoples lives, and destroy peoples attempts to even run a normal life.
I couldn't work my job with most felony charges, because I'm in construction and I work on other people's property my employer can't have me on payroll unless I'm bondable. If I have a criminal conviction my job is in danger, but if it's for theft I'm gone and I'm either forced to work under the radar or find a new job.
Kind of. But in spite of her fancy title, she's still just a staffer. But she reports to Biden, and as far as IP reform goes, he's as medieval as they come.
"Espinel suggests the creation of public performance rights for music on the radio, which the US already has for satellite broadcasting and webcasting. But the broadcasting lobby has opposed the move ferociously, claiming that its unique exemption from payment is because radio has such promotional force for artists."
I'm actually a fan of this portion of it. It brings radio broadcasting in line with the harsh limits put on webcasting. I'd rather it be the opposite - that the limits on webcasting were brought in line with the (lack of) limits on radio broadcasting, but this is a good second best.
The broadcasting establishment claims that radio is a huge promotional force for artists; why isn't the opposite true of webcasting (a la Pandora)? It would seem the promotion of artists is /better/ in webcasting, because the webcaster can link the listener directly to where they might purchase the artist's work - unlike in radio, where you must wait for the DJ to (maybe, once in a blue moon) announce what just played, and then have to google it yourself.
That seems to be really badly taken out of context. From the one and only quote within the page you linked:
As previous Commerce Clause cases have all involved physical activity, as opposed to mental activity, i.e. decision-making, there is little judicial guidance on whether the latter falls within Congress’s power...However, this Court finds the distinction, which Plaintiffs rely on heavily, to be of little significance. It is pure semantics to argue that an individual who makes a choice to forgo health insurance is not "acting," especially given the serious economic and health-related consequences to every individual of that choice. Making a choice is an affirmative action, whether one decides to do something or not do something. They are two sides of the same coin. To pretend otherwise is to ignore reality.
It doesn't look like he's saying that mental activity can be regulated by Congress, but rather the claim that deliberate choice not to do something is "mental activity" rather than "physical activity," and thus cannot be regulated, is a meaningless semantic game.
It appears that "streaming" infringing content is considered to be a public performance and thus exempt from felony prosecution while "reproducing" or "distributing" infringing content does. I honestly fail to see much of a difference between "streaming" and "distributing" so I am in favor of making the laws more consistent. Whether they should warrant felonies is a different discussion.
You could also make it consistent by making public performances felony charges. I feel an Emerson quote coming on very shortly involving hobgoblins...
Note, you do raise a good point, I'm just not sure that the consistency we want is in the direction that we're going in. Like you say, a separate discussion.
There was "hope" for "change" from a regime that bullied citizens into supporting the government-blessed corporations. But this article shows (again) that our new regime still serves the entertainment industry (not to mention pharma companies).
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. We won't get fooled again.
I don't think I'd be going out on a limb if I said when the founding fathers penned the Copyright Clause, their original understanding only contemplated civil action.
It can be already, under the NET ("No Electronic Theft") Act, if memory serves. But the feds usually have better things to do than to prosecute people for that sort of thing.
Or at least they used to. It's clear that prosecuting infringers has become a priority recently. I expect more is to come.
I think you'd scrape up a whole lot more guilty people in that circumstance, rather than demonizing a bunch of glorified slingboxes.