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Comment Title is wrong (Score 5, Insightful) 42

The title to this article is wrong it should be:

Slashdot throws your questions in the fucking garbage and asks Lawrence Lessig a bunch of other stuff.

The trashing of any and all questions about term limits was unacceptable.

I was actually really looking forward to getting Larry's answers to OUR questions.

I couldn't be more disappointed.

Comment Re:Didn't answer anyone's questions directly, did (Score 1) 42

Exactly.

Worst. Fucking. Slashdot. Q&A. Ever.

I got a +5 rated question about whether Mayday would support term limits on congress, and you didn't even fucking ask it and Larry sure as hell didn't say anything to indicate Mayday's stance on it.

Also, in the first video he sidestepped the answer about corporations making movies and writing books about candidates. Citizens United was a fucking LLC that made a political documentary, that's what Mayday is ostensibly fighting against. So don't fucking tell me that political documentaries would be unaffected.

And what the hell are vouchers going to fix when incumbents will end up receiving most of them anyway? Voters will just give their money to the person whose name they know. Its not going to stop old fossils from getting reelected to congress until they die.

This was a fucking promotional video created by Dice for Mayday PAC.

It sure as hell wasn't Lawrence Lessig answering my (or anyone else's) questions.

Comment Citizens United (Score 3, Insightful) 308

Mr. Lessig,

Since it seems that your PAC espouses the belief that Citizens United is a horrible supreme court ruling, and noting that the key product of the Citizens United LLC was a Documentary, and also noting that almost all documentaries are backed by or produced by corporations of one form or another; aren't you explicitly calling for the total prohibition of political documentaries in our political system? Also, is the publishing by major corporations (this includes all publishing companies) of books that are about politicians or from politicians required to be banned to take money out of politics?

Comment Term Limits (Score 4, Interesting) 308

Mr. Lessig,

Have you considered the potential side effect that if you are successful in removing "money from politics"? You will likely end up enormously empowering the position of incumbency, establishing a ruling class that once elected, no one will have the capabilities to truly mount a successful campaign against.

Incumbents have huge benefits and a large number of tools to communicate to the voters (who are of course their constituents, so they can even justify it).

My great fear is that campaign finance reform will do nothing to stem the tide of permanent, lifetime, politicians dominating our system. Even in the worst election for incumbents in a half century (2010) over 80% of incumbents won.

Will you support and make your backed candidates support a constitutional amendment to create and enforce term limits on members of Congress?

If Mayday can't support term limits, then I can't support it. In fact I may feel compelled to fight against it. I don't even really want money out of politics if it leads to lifetime memberships in Congress for the lucky ones that achieve office once, and then never lose again until they die.

Comment Re:Nothing new to see here. (Score 1) 209

You think the Fairness Doctrine would have prevented incumbents from having an advantage?!!?

That's rich.

The leading factor in taking out incumbents has been, like it or not, the Tea Party. The Tea Party is largely fuled by and supported by talk radio. The same talk radio that would't exist if the "Fairness Doctrine" were still in place.

It wasn't until after the "Fairness Doctrine" was removed that we could truly see and realize how horrible and awful an impact it had on free speech and expression in this country.

Comment Re:Nothing new to see here. (Score 4, Interesting) 209

Correct. Plus if campaign finance reform is achieved and campaign speech becomes subject to severe limits, then incumbents will hold a massive and largely unassailable power to dominate campaigns over newcomers.

And with incumbency being a root cause to many of the problems in Washington, I won't support this PAC either until they make term limits a core part of the reforms they are calling for.

Comment Re:Democrats voted (Score 5, Insightful) 932

WHAT??!

Brat is actually the poster child for "getting the money out of politics." Cantor had him outspent 4 to 1. He was the little guy in this race.

From what I've heard about him, he's also very libertarian leaning. I think libertarian leaning Republicans have a bright future. I think the old guard and the social conservatives will have a hard time against them in the future as well.

Comment Re:term limits don't matter (Score 4, Insightful) 247

The elephant in the room is that the money in politics really isn't campaign money.

The reason so much is being spent on campaigns now days is because so much is being spent by government.

There is an immense amount of power involved in generating TRILLIONS of dollars in tax revenue and borrowing BILLIONS more and then determining what that should be spent on.

That power is desired mightily, which is what is driving the campaign spending.

Think of it this way. Every member in congress is voting on bills to spend ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more money each year than they have control over in their campaign funds.

The campaign funds are just the ante to get in the game of playing with the much bigger piles of money.

Comment Re:Why is everbody against it now? (Score 1) 247

It think its mostly because before the effort was very undefined.

Now they've stated their goals and they are all identical to the goals of the left.

I will not support or believe that this PAC is beneficial until they add the goal of term limits to their proposed reforms.

Its a far bigger factor in the problems of our government than campaign finance is.

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