tim | Lest we forget.

Seven years ago, about 3000 people died in a terrorist attack in the United States. Ever since, at least 87,000 civilians have died in Iraq in a war that the US started as a misguided attempt at retaliation or a cleverly calculated use of pretext. The war has met with little domestic protest, and in 2004, those who thought it was at least a little bit important to stop it failed to gather enough of a majority to elect a president who cared at least a little about ending the killing.

But let us put aside our past failures. This year, we have a chance to redeem ourselves. It would be wrong to say that anyone has absolute confidence that Barack Obama can or will end the war, but he is at least unbeholden to the corporate interests that keep the war going. And thus, we have no reason to believe he won't make a good-faith effort to stop the killing.

This is an area of moral certainty. If you're American, are you going to do everything you can to elect a leader who will shift our resources away from killing foreigners and back to healing our sick, employing our unemployed, cleaning our environment? Or are you going to assume that history is something that other people make and politics is other people's problem?

This is not the year for namby-pamby platitudes about how you should support whichever candidate makes you feel the warmest and fuzziest inside. If you're American, and you're not giving your time to talk to your fellow Americans about why they should support Barack Obama, then -- in a far inferior tack, but one suitable for those with crippling social anxiety or without physical energy -- you can at least write a check. If you can't write a check, and can't talk to people, then [nondenominational-deity] bless you. I'm guessing that's not so for most people reading this.

If you were going to tell me I should leave my politics out of this day, then don't. Leaving my politics out of it means leaving my politics out of it so that there's more room for your politics to fit into it.

To those of you who are eligible to vote in the United States: Nonvoters, McCain voters, I'm not asking you to defend yourselves and so I don't need to hear your defenses. Please, just go sit in the corner for a while and think about why you hate your country so much.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I was saying that drastically limiting campaign donations would not be a "total shutdown of political speech", because donating money is not a speech act.

They have been drastically limited, and the situation already causes problems, because suddenly it's much harder for non-millionaires to challenge incumbents.

I'm serious, you simply cannot legislate away the power gap between the rich and the poor.

We could also limit how much personal income you're allowed to spend on campaigns; maybe that would force candidates to go back to, omg, convincing people they wanted to volunteer their time to do grassroots campaigning. *shrug*

We might not be able to legislate away that power gap, but that isn't an excuse for not taking every measure possible to level the playing field.

Okay, so now you're significantly worsening the power gap that incumbents have over their challengers, because the challengers can't make themselves heard over the other challengers, and they certainly can't make themselves heard over the status quo.

I suppose you're also going to limit expenses made "on behalf of" other people, i.e. stop people from engaging their personal resources in favor of candidates they like?

I don't know what you mean by "personal resources" other than time or money, but yes, I thought I said I would limit donations by people or businesses (and there are already limits on donations by people). We don't have to legislate limits on time since everyone only has 24 hours a day.

Well, there's a true "donation", meaning "here, have some of my time/money to do with as you please", and then there's a "use", meaning "I'm going to spend my time/money independently of your control but in ways that help you." The latter case is really, really difficult to regulate without basically repressing all political speech — oh right, for you that's okay as long as the speech somehow involves an expenditure, because door-to-door volunteer campaigning is the true ideal of politics.

What do you think is the true ideal of politics?

I don't presume that there is one, which is why I prefer to leave it unregulated.

Well, politics has to be regulated in some ways, unless you think dead people should be allowed to vote. So the question is not whether to regulate, but how much to regulate. To paraphrase Larry Lessig, if we stop regulating and let private interests do the regulatin' instead, it's not as if there are no biases involved or as if magical fluffy-bunny interests prevail; perhaps it's better if the regulating gets done in a way that has some measure of public accountability built in. (Except he wasn't talking about campaign reform in particular and didn't say anything about fluffy bunnies.)

Right, which is why I think campaign financing restrictions are bad, but strict disclosure laws are good. You seem to be strongly in favor of both disclosure laws and strict campaign-financing restrictions, and I'm trying to figure out why you believe that the campaign-finance laws don't cause more harm than good.

I believe campaign finance laws do more good than harm because they limit the power of people who have a lot of money to influence elections, and people who have a lot of money generally have interests that run counter to my own. If I really thought limiting expenditures meant limiting speech, of course the Constitution would come ahead of my personal interests. But I don't think that.

Well, if you really believe that the political system should be structured to your personal advantage, then I guess there's not any point in arguing with you about it.

Doesn't everybody believe that? Isn't that what politics is?

No? I do not believe that the underlying structure of the political system should be biased to implement my personal policy preferences. Intentionally-biased systems have a way of quickly leading to terrible results.

What's the alternative? Every possible structure is biased toward someone's personal policy preferences. Allowing unrestrained campaign contributions biases the political structure towards people who have a lot of money. There is no "neutral" system. Since there is no neutral system, I prefer a system that is biased towards people who start out at a disadvantage anyway (people who don't have much money), which happens to include me, and also happens to include most people. Is there a better way?

Given that, definitionally, no system can be biased in favor of the less politically powerful, and given that a one-man-one-vote republic like the U.S. does not directly grant more power to any specific person outside of the government, what's your empirical standard for deciding that a specific set of changes are too imbalanced? I mean, if I took all your proposals and implemented them, poorer people would still be less politically powerful; when do you stop?

I don't have an empirical standard and I'm not sure why you're asking for one. I will lobby (to the extent that I can) for my opinions to be implemented as policy, as will other people who might disagree with me. Whoever mobilizes the most resources towards their goal will win. I don't have an "empirical standard" for deciding who to vote for, either; it's more of a process of making the best decision possible with mind and heart, based on whatever information I can gather within reasonable limits. My approach to public policy is the same, only I don't get to make decisions about it directly.

Lest we forget.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject