Congressional Fundraising: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

> Are most of these representatives just willfully corrupt? Yes, but they prefer the terms "lobbying" and "campaign contributions". While theoretically they are concerned with their constituency so they can keep their job, the big problem with our system is the expense of running campaigns. While serving in congress, our representatives a massive amount of time is spent "dialing for dollars". The parties even require ("encourage") spending time "fundraising". This makes lobbying easy. Constructing a compelling case isn't necessary. Just promise to free up their time by making various donations to their campaign and/or their party. This is legal as long as there isn't specific quid pro quo , thanks to McDonnell v United States. John Oliver's overview of the problem: ▶ this video

in “Senate Guts Privacy Rules. Will House Follow Suit?” · View on HN

Let's follow the money. The "thinktank" pushing criminalizing homelessness (from the article) is the Cicero Institute [1]. Here is their July 2022 update gloating about their anti-homelessness lobbying [2]. The Cicero Institute is the pet project for the predictably awful politics of billionaire Joe Lonsdale (eg [3][4][5]), co-founder of Palantir and General Partner and presumptive owner of 8VC who funds many companies [6]. My point is it's not quite accurate to say private prisons are lobbying for this. Their owners are. For those unfamiliar, lobbying firms often write the legislation they push [7][8][9]. At the Federal level, lobbyists are often former Senators and Congressmen. Why? Part of this racket is that by tradition they retain "floor privileges" to their former body (as well as their relationships with sitting members). Yes, a lobbyist former Senator is allowed on the Senate floor. It's worth noting that only about 6.5% of the US prison population [10] are in private prisons. Private prisons are still awful but they're symptomatic of a larger problem. Politicians love prisons for their districts not only because of jobs but because prisoners count for population for apportionment and redistricting but cannot vote. As an example, Alabama used $400m in Covid relief funds to build prisons [11]. The US loves to incarcerate people for long periods for minor offenses. A big part of this is creating a pool of forced labor (eg [12][13]). This is slavery economics. This is c

in “Private Prisons Are Behind the Push for Homeless Criminalization” · View on HN

We certainly need a better way to organize politically. Listing to John Oilver's episode on congressional fundraising ( ▶ this video ) leads me to believe that our representatives aren't particularly accountable to the people they represent. That said, this [link] seems a bit technical, a bit more technical than what's needed? Couldn't we just take standard democratic representation down a level? Replicate and automate a pattern is already known to work, at a more granular level, rather than reinventing a brand new structure? Let's say a house representative agreed to cast their votes reflecting the preferences of a majority of "block champions" in their district. Perhaps these block leaders having some sort of rank based upon the number of people who endorse them? Those same champions could also reflect their preferences for local and state issues as well. In this way, the representative would use the preferences of the champions to justify their vote. The nice thing about this proposal is that it could be implemented and would be compatible with our existing governmental structures.

in “What Is To Be Done? It is time to consider alternate systems of governance” · View on HN

The Russia/"hacked election" meme is amazing. With very little actual evidence , careful use of linguistic framing, and a lot of angry rhetoric on all sides, the public was successfully scared into wasting their time and energy fighting among themselves over hearsay and rumor, instead of addressing any of the numerous actual, known problems that are already known and far more likely to impact the average citizen. If there's actual evidence of an actual crime , then present it to the public and the court. In the meantime, healthcare is still a huge mess, regulatory capture is keeps getting worse (an isn't limited to the FCC), systemic corruption continues to erode the public sector as politicians - regardless of party affiliation - spend increasing amounts of time "dialing for dollars"[1], wealth inequality continues to get worse, and the military-industrial complex is still a money pump that starts the occasional war. There is a lot of important work to do, but this denial of service attack against everyone's political time and energy has been a very successful distraction. [1] ▶ this video

in “Florida GOP consultant admits he worked with Guccifer 2.0, analyzing hacked data” · View on HN

Lovely list. I'd add ways to address problems with "congressional fund raising" as discussed by John Oliver ( ▶ this video ), so congress members can focus on the needs of their constituents rather than those who pay for their re-election run.

in “Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy” · View on HN

Had to login for this one. I've seen something remarkable this year and I can't shake it. We have a core fault line between those of means and those of little or no real means. Money has a grip on our politics too. Many, and I submit a majority, are not OK with that. However, we have the system we have, and reforming it takes working with that system to improve it. It's not like we can just reset. This year, a lot of us pooled our money and dropped just south of a quarter billion large on the idea of better politics. And it almost worked! For sure, it gave us a lot of data on what ideas resonate, where they win, etc... Over 60 percent of that funding came from people who are on a fixed income or who currently are living at poverty level income too. This is notable. From where I stand, the answer to the two party system may well be to bind along money lines. Say we do that again, and another roughly quarter billion is made available for the mid-term elections. In rough terms, that is enough money to fund up to a few hundred races for Congress! If those races are run, those who fund them may well win half! A third is very plausible at a minimum. Perhaps the right answer here is to just compete full on. Post up the dollars, build out infrastructure, organizations ( some in progress now), advocacy / think tank type resources, and centralize things like production, copy, ADS, and other tools. If it were me, I would definitely point some of that money at a voter contact system that

in “Howard Dean: How to Move Beyond the Two-Party System” · View on HN