Congressional Elections - Who's Good for IT Folks? 117
rlp asks: "Most of the articles appearing in Slashdot's new political section pertain to the U.S. Presidential election. However, most of the political issues facing American IT people are issues that are dealt with (or more often caused by) Congress. Therefore, my question is: who are the heroes and villains (for U.S. IT people) in Congress that are running for office this year? How does your local Congresscritter (or the person running against them) feel about copyrights, privacy, data security, H1-B, outsourcing, software patents, Open Source, tech education, R&D funding, anti-trust, etc?"
They all suck (Score:2)
Enjoy the land of freedom or what little of it remains. For the Inc, by the Inc, of the Inc.
Re:They all suck (Score:2)
Kerry voted for the Patriot Act, the DMCA, COPA, and every copyright extension that has come along while he's been in office.
If he's elected, is he going to continue in this direction or radically change?
Re:They haven't a clue... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:They haven't a clue... (Score:3, Informative)
Hatch will likely stay (Score:2)
Re:Hatch will likely stay (Score:1)
Re:Hatch will likely stay (Score:2)
Re:Hatch will likely stay (Score:2)
Don't laugh (Score:2, Informative)
Dancin Santa
property rights? (Score:3, Interesting)
Liberals tend to value the needs of society above those of the individual, and hence, sacrifice property rights for environmental protection. (Often this is good; sometimes it goes too far without compensation for property owners, but that's another debate.) Perhaps that's an angle that we can use in lobbying our Congressmen on the Democratic side--emphasize the societal benefit of looser IP laws.
Re:property rights? (Score:2)
I think it has more to do with greed.
You can set aside and manage natural resources for many things including making money on them. Problem comes when a small group or an individual wants to use them and exploits them to the point of destroying them.
I have no problem with mining, logging, whatever, but to do it to the point of completely destroying it for that use
Re:property rights? (Score:3, Interesting)
Apparently not when it comes to pushing legislation in exchange for campaign contributions.
It was senior Democrats like Diane Feinstein who helped pass the DMCA. During the period the DMCA was up for debate, the Democtrats actually received more financial contributions from the entertainment industry than the Republicans. Checkout open secrets [opensecrets.org] for details.
I think it mostly comes down to who contributes the gratest amount gets
No contradiction (Score:3, Informative)
There isn't a pro or anti IT party (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:There isn't a pro or anti IT party (Score:2)
Re:There isn't a pro or anti IT party (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, so much I am agreeing with you sir!
Very truly, do not be bothering yourself about your politicians' votes, sir!
IT is being a necessity, yes, indeed, as necessary as a bowl of curry when you are hungry!
Please to keep ignoring it and calling it to be a non-issue, sir, and I will be being happy to do your job for ten percent of your pay!
So much I thank you for ensuring my economic future by throwing away your heritage as a citizen of a democracy!
Soon you will not have to worry about the IT sector at all sir! And I would be glad to teach the rudiments of selling apples on the street for five cents each, or begging for alms in the hot Calcutta slums!
--Yours most sincerely,
Apu Babu Singh Mahadressi
Mumbai, India
Re:There isn't a pro or anti IT party (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:There isn't a pro or anti IT party (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you missed my point, friend.
I'm not scapegoating the Indian worker: he's making a rational decision to take a better job so he can better feed his family, and you or I would do the same in his place.
My point was to demonstrate that -- whether the issue is outsourcing of the IT sector, or John Ashcroft's cavalier (roundhead?) attitude toward civil liberties, or the DMCA, or anything else -- those who blithely ignore politics quickly sooner or later find themselves at the mercy of those who do pay attention.
Many of us in the "tech sector" pretend to disdain politics -- it's a luxury when can just barely afford to get away with as the "American Century" draws to a close.
But one way or another, the butcher's bill comes due, either at Omaha Beach or at Tarawa or Concord or Lexington, or to mix metaphors, in a bread line.
Re:There isn't a pro or anti IT party (Score:1)
Second, I wasn't addressing your (uncontroversial, if banal) point, but rather the caricature and ridicule with which it was expressed.
HTH. HAND.
Re:There isn't a pro or anti IT party (Score:2)
Re:There isn't a pro or anti IT party (Score:2)
Racist! Racist! Racist!
If everyone else can shout it for stoopid reasons, why can't I??
Re:There isn't a pro or anti IT party (Score:2)
Re:There isn't a pro or anti IT party (Score:2)
Don't they teach American history anymore? Omaha Beach and Tarawa were major WWII battles American soldiers fought and died in, in Normandy and in the Pacific, respectively.
Lexington and Concord were of course two of the earliest battles of the American Revolution.
All are examples of Americans paying the butcher's bill, either to establish our democracy or to defend our liberties.
Second, I wasn't addressing
Re:There isn't a pro or anti IT party (Score:2)
Re:There isn't a pro or anti IT party (Score:3, Interesting)
Duh.
Re:There isn't a pro or anti IT party (Score:2)
And I would be glad to teach the rudiments of selling apples on the street for five cents each, or begging for alms in the hot Calcutta slums!
Not to mention the crappy English, which is obviously saying "Indians speak funny English".
I don't hear anybody complaining when they lose their job because somebody in Alabama is willing to do it cheaper. But as soon as they leave the country, all of the racist foreigner stereotypes get trotted out.
If they were lily-w
Re:There isn't a pro or anti IT party (Score:2)
No it wouldn't. In that case, race would be a complete non-factor. It would have absolutely nothing to do with racism.
It
Re:There isn't a pro or anti IT party (Score:2)
You got dat right, massuh.
Don't you worry yoself none about these votes, massuh.
IT be needed like a bowl of gumbo when a brotha be hungry.
Some Bl
Re:There isn't a pro or anti IT party (Score:2)
Is beating up on someone because of cultural/national differences necessarily racist? You say no for the French, but you say yes for Indians.
Re:There isn't a pro or anti IT party (Score:2)
Maybe it's because people can follow their jobs to Alabama, but not India. Chew on that for a bit....
Re:There isn't a pro or anti IT party (Score:1)
"Microsoft is evil for protecting it's marketshare against cheaper and better alternatives."
"The US government is evil for NOT protecting my job from cheaper and better developers overseas."
Three things (Score:2, Offtopic)
2) While there are heroes and villains in government, routinely talking about elections in tho
Gerrymandering (Score:2, Interesting)
It would be really fun to look at some Congressional districts and find their Gerrymander-Factor=perimeter/sqrt(area).
Re:Gerrymandering (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Gerrymandering (Score:2)
This basically forces nicely shaped districts. Of course the large tracts of rural areas with a few population centers helps too.
Re:Gerrymandering (Score:1)
Considering that they only did it twice, I suspect Iowa voters took them to task on that and the legislators learned their lesson.
Re:Gerrymandering (Score:2)
Also, like I said, having vast tracts of rural areas makes it easy to draw nice districts.
Re:Three things (Score:2)
I have the honor (Score:3, Interesting)
It feels odd to have to feel "lucky" that my congressional representative's The Real Thing. Frankly, I don't like guys that run for congress because they think it's a good gig.
Re:I have the honor (Score:2)
Unfortunatly he may have some competition this year. You are aware that his opponent, I don't remember his name, used to work for NASCAR. That seems to be the only thing that what's his name seems to be promoting. I saw a commercial for his opponent the other day. He was inanely babbling something while images of NASCAR were on the screen.
I just hope that the NASCAR fans in this district aren't the mindless sheep he seems to think they are.
Rick Boucher (Score:5, Informative)
Hell, Boucher guest blogged for Larry Lessig [lessig.org] a few weeks ago, and the stuff that he wrote about is like a Slashdotter's wet dream.
He doesn't talk about these things in his campaign literature -- much of the very-rural, poor population of southwest Virginia just wouldn't care. Read over his campaign website [boucherforcongress.com] and you'll find more about the tobacco buyout, healthcare and tourism than technology.
And everybody else in the House sucks.
-Waldo Jaquith
There is one Rep (Score:1)
It doesn't matter (Score:3, Interesting)
Thanks to a combination of Gerrymandering, Entrenched incumbents, and the McCain-Feingold legislation (which prevents parties from using soft money to neutralize the advantage of entrenched incumbents) congressional races are entirely uncompetitive. Charlie Cook today says that there is virtually no chance of the house changing hands.
So who cares where the candidates stand on the issues when only a very few people actually have the oppotunity to cast a meaningful vote.
Re:It doesn't matter (Score:3, Interesting)
G*d I am so sick of people saying that.
1) we dont have a democracy, we have a Federal Republic which elects its leaders
2) Just because people dont vote the way you would like (high turnover) does not mean the power does not reside in tehir hands.
3) In 1994 The republicans shocked everyon by capturing a huge number of seats from incumbant democrats in the house, and a decent number in the senate. So yes people can and have made major changes in
Re:It doesn't matter (Score:2)
Re:It doesn't matter (Score:1)
I thought we were supposed to be against money affecting campaigns. Oh, that's right, it's Tuesday...
-BrentRuss Feingold for WI (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Russ Feingold for WI (Score:2)
Re:Russ Feingold for WI (Score:2)
Re:Russ Feingold for WI (Score:2)
Except for McCain-Feingold which somehow trumped the First Amendment without actuallly amending the Constitution...
Nah, protecting political speech isn't important anyway, right?
Past performance is no guarantee of future results (Score:4, Insightful)
www.vote-smart.org [vote-smart.org] lets you look up the voting records of Concresscritters.
Answer: Anyone Who Supports Free Markets (Score:2)
Note that when we combine a free market like the USA and a non-free market like Mexico, we damage the free market in the USA. For example, the influx of illegal aliens is created by horrible intervention by t
Re:Answer: Anyone Who Supports Free Markets (Score:4, Informative)
This [amon-hen.com] Bill O'Reilly? Why would anyone want to vote for a clown with such skewed view of reality?
Re:Answer: Anyone Who Supports Free Markets (Score:2)
cut his internet connection... [jackspace.com]
Re:Answer: Anyone Who Supports Free Markets (Score:1)
So does part of your post: terminate unfettered trade with China and India. A truly free market doesn't care who you trade with. All that matters is money.
Re:Answer: Anyone Who Supports Free Markets (Score:2)
preventing monopoly powers from interfering with normal market forces.
Dems as anti-outsourcers (Score:2)
But a vote for Kerry can't be considered a vote to stop outsourcing, can it? Can we really reverse the trend of high-paying jobs outsourced to India, etc, and will that translate to better, high-pay
Re:Dems as anti-outsourcers (Score:2)
Yes.
and will that translate to better, high-paying jobs in the US?
No.
Most respected economists believe that outsourcing has the net effect of creating jobs. You might lose your particular job, but two more opportunities will pop up. Protectionism usually has opposite the intended effect. You might save a couple of specific jobs, but at the cost of not creating more jobs. The people who already have jobs thank you, b
Re:Dems as anti-outsourcers (Score:2)
Hahaha.
Re:Dems as anti-outsourcers (Score:2)
Can any candidate deliver on a promise like that?
Sure. But remember, the promise was to stop "tax incentives", not to stop outsourcing... That part was only implied.
Will stopping these unspecified tax incentives keep jobs from being outsourced? Of course not. Let's say the tax incentives are huge. That would mean companies that outsource are now getting huge tax breaks and cheap labor. If the tax breaks go away do you think they're going t
Re:Dems as anti-outsourcers (Score:2)
Tell me, what is the new "high-tech" of today, that we are supposed to be expanding our skillset into?
Since many of the jobs being outsourced are in IT, what new skills are supposed to be aquired? Where do we go from here, and how do we do it if we don't have a job (we'll have plen
Re:Dems as anti-outsourcers (Score:2)
Since many of the jobs being outsourced are in IT, what new skills are supposed to be aquired?
Whenever you're tempted to use "IT", stop for a moment and think about what you really mean. The problem with "IT" is that if a computer is involved it's called "IT". It's just like the "Intellectual Property" problem. Once you're free from the brainwashing affect of the "IT" acronym you're free to realize that the guy
Re:Dems as anti-outsourcers (Score:2)
For instance, sa
Re:Dems as anti-outsourcers (Score:2)
if I am out of work, with a family, a house payment, a car payment, numerous bills, etc - where do I find the time
What business does anybody have getting into a situation where they have a house payment and a car payment without having a signifigant safety net of funds saved up? This debt mentality is fairly recent. It didn't used to be possible to owe so much money... Now people find themselves in debt to three or even five times their annual
Re:Dems as anti-outsourcers (Score:2)
As far as the mortgage is concerned, do you honestly think that barring some major windfall that any normal person can come up with the money in a fairly short time period to purchase a home outright for cash? If you are renting, with other bills, you probably don't have muc
Depends.... (Score:3, Insightful)
If, on the other hand, you mean people who work for a living, I can't think of a single person who supports us.
Find out who's padding their pockets... (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.opensecrets.org/ [opensecrets.org] is a great place to find out what organizations and industries are giving the most $$ to each candidate.
There's a lot more content than that there, check it out.
It would have been a lot more useful -- (Score:2)
Pork for IT (Score:3, Insightful)
I want my congressmen to be operating under the premise that government exists solely to protect the lives, liberties and properties of its citizens, that government is the servant of the people and not its master, and that honest (and genuine) free trade is the best foreign policy. I don't expect any candidate to be perfect, but one who made the previous the foundation of his platform and could demonstrate he was serious about it, would have vote.
Re:Pork for IT (Score:2)
I want someone who is going to vote against laws that legally mandate crippled products (from TV's to walkmen to computers). Someone who will vote for the DMCRA or BALANCE act. Someone who isn't going to vote for the fourth incarnations of the same fscking UNCONSTITIONAL law to sensor the internet that has already been struck down in court THREE FSCKING TIMES BEFORE. Someone who doesn't want to retroactively extend copyright yet another 20 years. Someone who realizes that
Re:Pork for IT (Score:2)
It doesn't matter if a candidate agrees with you on one or two of your pet bills, if his entire ideology is opposed to yours.
Re:Pork for IT (Score:2)
I never claimed they didn't.
Everything you said is perfectly true. My reply was just countering your original suggestion that this was about pork for IT.
It doesn't matter if a candidate agrees with you on one or two of your pet bills, if his entire ideology is opposed to yours.
True, voting based on more information is always better. However even if someone votes solely on the basis of the DMCA, that candidate is still no more likely to b
Hello?!?!? McFly??? (Score:3, Informative)
Sounds like a tech person to me!
Became a Computer Programmer in 1977 for Commonwealth Edison at their nuclear power plant in Zion, Illinois; taught control room operators about computers. Was promoted to Senior Software Engineer for their Braidwood Nuclear Simulator project, which he managed from '82-'85 (his favorite job assignment, basically a $6-million "computer game" for which he was totally responsible). Moved to Montebello, CA, and held a "secret security" clearance at Northrop to work on the Stealth Bomber simulator, '85-'87. Relocated to San Luis Obispo, CA, in 1987 as a System Administrator and computer trainer at PG&E's Diablo Canyon nuclear plant; spent 10 years as a member of the Applied Technology Services Team writing software and traveling the state installing real-time data-collection servers to their remote power stations; was an instructor for hundreds of employees teaching state-of-the-art systems being installed. Moved to Austin, TX, in 1997 where he was a programmer and a trainer for Evolutionary Technologies International. He quickly became the Senior Trainer and began traveling across the U.S., and to Canada, England and Australia, as instructor, consultant and "high-tech diplomat." Became an independent computer consultant in 2001, but began to turn his attention (and talents as an instructor and communicator) to teaching his 8-hour "Introduction to the Constitution" class.
Better Immigration (Score:2)
Re:Who to vote for? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Who to vote for? (Score:3, Funny)
I'm afraid the good paying Halliburton jobs are taken, at least until Ayman al-Zawahri creates a few new openings -- in the necks on the next two unfortunate contractors who couldn't find a safe state-side job in Bush's economy.
But the way things are going, the Republican party will ensure you a job if you GO ARMY! [goarmy.com]
Re: Troll Feeding (Score:4, Informative)
No, it isn't [forbes.com].
In fact, we're better with neither [ucsdguardian.org].
Re: Troll Feeding (Score:2)
I don't remember who said this:
If you want to live like a Republican, vote Democratic.
Re: Troll Feeding (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Who to vote for? (Score:2)
Re:Nobody to vote for (Score:2, Insightful)
WHat does this have to do with being "geek friendly"? Nothing at all.
Is there something wrong with people who have come to our country from somewhere else and found enough love for the place to go through the process and take the oath to become a citizen?
If the country and even the district is now their home, why should they
Re:Nobody to vote for (Score:2)
You may not have realized this because it hasn't touched you personally- but for the past 4 years, the high tech job market has been a depression, and at the rate things are going, it's not likely one we're going to pull out of EVER.
Is there something wrong with people who have come to our country from somewhere else and found enough love for the place to go through the process and take the oath to become a citizen?
There is when they
Naturalized Citizens are not the problem... (Score:3, Interesting)
Either way we shouldn't be robbing the world of valued labor to feed our greedy corporations. How bout we(USA) stop supporting dictators that run their countries so bad that the people flee them.
Or how bout we stop raising our National Debt so freeking high that our Dollar has more b
Re:Naturalized Citizens are not the problem... (Score:1)
The simple fact is this giuy is a citizen. He already moved here, he already became a citizen. He is just as much a citizen as anyone who has been here... this is his HOME now.
He wants to run for office, more power to him. I have lived here all my life and never got off my ass and tried to get elected to office. I imagine the same is true of you too. The litmus test is the will of the people...
if the people vote for him and put him in office, its because
Re:Naturalized Citizens are not the problem... (Score:2)
This will always be a hole for me- and it's three generations back. How can we expect *any* immigrant to this land to understand enough to be in power over us? And from the actions of Wu (and to a lesser extent Ameri- she was in state government before this race) neither of these peo
Re:Naturalized Citizens are not the problem... (Score:2)
Article I Sec. 2 Par 2
No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the age of twenty five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that state in which he shall be chosen.
Article I Sec 3 Par 2
No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the age of thirty years, and been nine years a citizen of the United States and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitan
Re:Naturalized Citizens are not the problem... (Score:2)
Wu voted for the H-1b extension, which disporportionately increased the number of Chinese and Indian non-imigrant visa holders.
Ameri voted for the Immigration Status Gag Order, which prevents state, county, and city workers in Oregon from inquiring as to citizenship status at all- in 2002, after the 9-11 attack, preventing Oregon Law Enforcement from working with The Department of Homeland Security, which worked in favor for her mosque.
If it's racism- it's on their side.
Re:Naturalized Citizens are not the problem... (Score:2)
Re:Naturalized Citizens are not the problem... (Score:2)
Re:Nobody to vote for (Score:2)
Re:shhhhhhhh (Score:2)
Now you're just being xenophobic (Score:2)
From you post it makes it sounds like you'd like some sort of caste system, where "foreig
Re:Now you're just being xenophobic (Score:2)
They have- and I have to admit, they were RIGHT! It took until I lost my job to an H-1b before I was worried about it- but that only proves that I'm human and don't worry about things until they affect me personally.
Ameri's been in this country for about 35 years, Wu about 45 - what's the difference between them and the local p