“Building a new stadium down the street does not work unless (Ron) Lancaster spilled some DNA in the lot where they’re going to build the new stadium,” he added. “You have to refurbish (Mosaic Stadium). You’ve got to can all new ideas you might have and use the sacred ground. Fenway did that and that is why Fenway is loved. The new Yankee Stadium isn’t the same as it used to be.”
The former Boston Red Sox and Montreal Expos pitcher will not be running for the vacant mayor’s position in Regina later this year. With his opinion on the new stadium, he wasn’t sure he would garner many votes anyway. But that is nothing new to the former member of the Rhinoceros Party. Lee ran on the Rhino ticket in 1988 for president of the United States. Not surprisingly, he didn’t make the ballot in a single state. He said one of the high-ranking members within the party gave him a six-pack of Molson Canadian and asked him to run for president.
“I adhered to their funny philosophy,” Lee said. “My campaign slogan was ‘No guns, no butter. They’ll both kill you.’ And I only campaigned in federal prisons where I knew they couldn’t vote, and I only accepted a quarter in campaign contributions.”
With it being an election year in the U.S., Lee said he is all in for the re-election of Barack Obama.
“The only time (Mitt) Romney opens his mouth is when he needs to change feet,” Lee said of the Republican nominee. “If Obama does lose this, which I can’t see happening, then it’s because of a lady in Florida who works for Jeb Bush and Diebold, the voting-machine company. If Obama even comes close to losing this election, it’ll be fraud.”
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I am less worried about individual plutocrats than I am corporations, but YMMV.
Fair point. Make mine plutocrats and/or corporations.
I don't think we are talking about campaign contributions, where some restrictions have been upheld. It's the attempt to restrict independent expenditures that has the far higher Constitutional limitation.
So Obama shouldn't have been allowed to outspend McCain in 2008?
BTW, the Framers were very familiar with the concept that you needed to spend money to get elected.
The free speech of people is very important. The free speech of corporations does not worry me nearly so much.How do you separate that from the speech of the people making the decisions for the those corporations? Ultimately the message of the corporations comes from people: shareholders, the board, executives, marketing team, whoever. If you limit rights of the corporation's speech aren't you limiting the right of the people who make up the corporations? It's not like the corporations have robots that make all the decisions to say these things or some sort of detached independent consciousness.
Regulation of over air the television speech is an interesting issue, as it is already heavily regulated and the stations that still broadcast over the air typically run the commercials that reach the largest audiences. From a practical standpoint, I don't think adding regulation related to disclosure, to able to use already heavily regulated broadcasting is unreasonable, as long as you can still take your message to cable or radio or print of whatever if you want to remain anonymous, even if doesn't allow truly free speech.
There has been misleading media and press forever. Someone posted a link to an article about the Romney's in late 1800's Arizona a while back and which contained excerpts from newspapers of the time and the accusations where completely crazy compared to what you see in attack ads today, so progress has been made, even if has been a little slow.
It is a tricky subject. Free speech is very important and a critical part of the USA and "what makes us free". But how to balance that with the clear danger of extremely wealthy corporations gaining even more influence than they currently have is tricky. There are always unintended consequences and I (for one) am not comfortable doing a whole lot of banning this and that, but elections are also an important part of what keeps us free.
People talking about things like Obama's desire to repeal the First Amendment really trivialize the issue. It biols down to what sort of controls for elections (and the campaigns around them) are OK? Are any? Worldwide nations deal with this a whole variety of ways.
I agree that it's compelling. I don't agree that it's compelling ENOUGH. The money WILL find a way. Parrying the output medium by medium and flavor by flavor will just lead to ever increasing restrictions, and in the end won't stop influence peddling (which is, of course, already "illegal" for what that's worth). You are just generating loop holes (which I suppose our representatives from the legal industry should support). It's got to be stopped at the source.
As for government leased airwaves - yes they control access. They should not, should never, have control over content. I extend this to obscenity and pornography, even. Which means they can tax the bejesus out of it - but not based on content as that allows control/chilling of speech and press.
Speaking of which, the 'Speech' vs. 'Press' is a giant red herring. Neither should be restricted at all and it doesn't bother me if they are lumped in to the same amendment or 30 amendments. Next you will argue that they only literally mean 18th Century printing presses and Monologuing Speeches from a Lecturn or Podium.
Finally campaign CONTRIBUTIONS are actually not protected under the 1st amendment. At least, their are certainly plenty of (ineffectual) laws restricting money given to a candidate. Oh, but shock, surprise there's a loop hole if you give to his fund or Party or Nephew or favorite charity or whatever.
Laws are not ALWAYS the answer. This is the primary failure of the Democrats and US Liberals.
Again with the AHA ORLY's. Yes, absolutely yes. For ####'s sake.
BTW, the Framers were very familiar with the concept that you needed to spend money to get elected.
The idea that the framers could envision where we are now is ridiculous.
Those shareholders, board members, executives, etc., have the same freedom of speech as anyone else. Now, they also have the power of the corporation to speak on their behalf. I don't have that. I don't know too many people who do.
Nothing is stopping those individual people from saying what they want. I am not limiting their right to speech, because I am not limiting their right to speech - I want to limit the corporations right to speech (or rather it doesn't have such a right, since it is in fact not a person).
Coporations don't have the right to vote. However, I am not limiting their right to vote, they just don't have any such right. I am also not limiting the various the right to vote of the people who are part of that corporation. They still get to vote.
Again; studied by whom? Supported by what data? You keep making these windy proclamations, but there's never anything of substance behind them. You're asking us to accept your opinion as dispositive, but your opinion is almost as worthless as you are. It's not supported by anything, which is a step up from being supported by the taxpayers I guess.
All claims are not equal. The best way to distinguish between competing claims is to use data and evidence to see which is more likely to be correct, or at least less wrong. Right now, all the evidence and data is on the side of the people alleging Democratic/liberal bias. As far as proof, you won't even address what you would accept as proof.
I never said they were. But more to the point, where are all these studies? Where is the data they're basing it on?
I dug up the issue online, and while your cite doesn't include the article, I was able to find the following:
That's it? THAT's what you're hanging your hat on? No additional information about their "polling" whatsoever. I sincerely hope that I missed something in my haste, for the thought that you were basing your arguments about how conservative editors and publishers are on such a slim reed deeply saddens me.
Objectivity may be a goal, but it is not realistic, let alone attainable. Of course, I question whether it's even a goal, but even accepting that it is does nothing to diminish the reality of liberal bias in the mainstream media.
High five!
"Sometimes it feels to me as if this campaign - with its entrenched support for both sides so dominant and the space for actual persuasion so minimal - is less a campaign than a cold civil war. Almost exactly along the same regional and racial lines as the real one."
Yep.
Except they're voting with their share ownership or with the derived votes themselves. I'm not sure what the big deal is here - any group of people will tend to pick someone to speak for the group. I don't get to speak for the United States, either - that shouldn't mean that the United States is not allowed to have foreign policy.
Liberals have so many primary failures it is bewildering.
Money will always have more influence than not-money. That does not mean you stop trying to limit its influence any more than you stop mowing your lawn because it is going to keep on growing, so why bother mowing it. You legislate not because it is completely effective, but to keep things under control, because it is better if you do than if you don't.
Expecting perfect success or something is a complete failure is the primary failure of ... oh never mind.
The offer to bribe someone is. Every other part of the bribe isn't.
Framers can can suck it. But furthermore, are you implying that people of enormous RELATIVE wealth and influence did not exist in the 18th century? Or simply that they chose not to wield such influence?
So are hurricanes. How do you beat a hurricane? You build your house/city such that the damage is minimized, or you move.
Speaking of hurricanes, clearly God Almighty wishes to bestow his bountiful blessings of air and water on his most beloved GOP.
Groups of people have an inherent right to free speech, as groups of people. A society in which the NAACP can be limited from discussing civil rights in Alabama in 1956 or the ACLU can be prevented from advocating for politicians that support free speech is a fundamentally unjust society and what you're advocating directly leads to this; no slippery slope, but a single line between two dots.
Yes. And it would be foolish to say, there's nothing we can do, the hurricane's going to blow me away anyway, so I'll just meekly allow it to.
Like ZB, I'm not a Founding Father Fetishist. Where freedom and the Founders part ways, I choose the former.
That's because it isn't.
Except in this case, the anti-speechers have done the impossible - to make the hurricane worse. Campaign contribution limits simply reward special access rather than money, which even fewer people have, and large government with the ability to give out unlimited, lucrative, powerless favors, just raises the stakes of buying government or buying access. Big government and campaign finance reform doesn't drain the swamp, it increases the jackpot.
Like ZB, I'm not a Founding Father Fetishist. Where freedom and the Founders part ways, I choose the former.
Talk to Clapper, I was only answering him.
I find the turning of the NAACP and the ACLU into corporations for the point of equalization to be a little weird.
By the exact same token, it's not "fair" that Barack Obama gets to speak for the majority shareholders of the United States. I can sell my Microsoft shares or leave Microsoft a lot easier than a new country.
They are, in fact, corporations. Just like how groups of people engage each other in sexual intercourse, whether a group of people wants to advocate for gay rights, wants to advocate for free speech, or wants to sell orange juice is absolutely none of my business unless I'm a part of that group. Treating corporations differently based on arbitrary standards is the liberal version of conservatives banning sodomy.
(And Barack Obama doesn't get to speak for the majority shareholders of the United States. His office as limits to its power, and there are other branches of government he has to deal with. And other stuff. The analogy is so inapplicable, I'm sure how to answer it.)
Man, you're bad at this. DP keeps going on and on about how his viewpoint is correct because, "They've done studies man! Studies!!!" Well, that's fine; let's see these studies. If there are no studies, then it's just his opinion. That's fine too, so long as all parties involved understand that it's just an opinion.
And companies have rules to limit powers of people speaking for the companies, as well. The checks and balances on corporations are different in name, but not in function, from the government.
Well, no.
Although, the free speech of corporations isn't really my argument, mine was more the "campaign finance reform is not repealing the first amendment" argument.
I am definitely not as good at calling people worthless as you are, point conceded.
Nope, exactly the same. You're butting into the private affairs of freely consenting adults. It's Bible-Beating for Liberal Atheists.
Fine, limit influence. Counter corporate power. Do it without violating the 1st amendment KTHXBYE (and please spare me the work-arounds regarding groups/corporations vs. individuals). Will suspending Habeus corpus lower crime rates? What about jury trials? Is it OK to detain people semi-permanently who MAY be terrorists? Does it matter if they are citizens of the US or not? Does their professed religion matter? Skin color?
It's just a trade off. It costs me X in time, energy, money to keep a tidy lawn (full disclosure: I have no lawn). But someones lawn is a private entity. Let's take a public park. It takes PUBLIC time, energy, money to keep the lawn tidy and the plants trimmed. Why not just pave over it? Or perhaps more apt - people who use public parks tend to throw garbage around. Garbage is bad, and has to be cleaned up: Solution: Build a barbed wire fence around the park! What, you can still SEE the green from the sidewalk! Not good enough for you?
Why not just get rid of elections altogether? People make bad decisions! How is the argument that "augh, money on political ads influences the weak minded and they make bad decisions" any different from "augh, porno on TV, my kids will never get married and raise a proper family"
Corporations are born that way?
How is the argument that "augh, money on political ads influences the weak minded and they make bad decisions" any different from "augh, porno on TV, my kids will never get married and raise a proper family"
You are aware that advertising is an actual thing, right?
Beverly Perdue is a step ahead of you.
Ah, so what you're saying is that we can only ban acts by consenting adults if those acts were not determined by genetic makeup?
That's an...uh...interesting...argument.
The easiest way to do it is repeal all the laws that make corporations legal. Is that really a better solution than minimizing corporate campaign contributions?
Depends on the context. For example, I don't believe in land-ownership, so you do need to have a government structure for things that involve physical resources.
The best friend of a monopoly, on the other hand, is government - the most lucrative monopoly is a coercive monopoly, which government loves to give out. And the more mobile, the more open, and the more global society becomes, the less argument there is for government to be involved.
The easiest way to do it is repeal all the laws that make corporations legal. Is that really a better solution than minimizing corporate campaign contributions?
That's like arguing that gasoline's a good option to put out a fire because rocket fuel is an even worse option.
Not the whole 1st Amendment, just the part that interferes with the current policy preferences of some, but isn't that always the case? Other than Prohibition, when did anyone seriously argue for getting rid of an entire Amendment? Restricting the speech of some in order to make it easier for others to be heard is a major departure from free speech doctrine, and those advocating for that should go through the Constitutional Amendment process if they want to change that doctrine.
If I'd made that argument it might have been.
As you are so committed to beqeathing human rights onto legal constructs, I'm trying to figure out what other human parallels you are drawing.
Paine needed to be anonymous because he was proposing treason to the standing government in 1776.
I will reiterate that I consider the current anonymous advertisements and contributions to be campaign contributions. They are done with quid pro quo expectations. I spend this money to help you get elected, attack your opponent, and drown out other voices, and you reward me with tax breaks and special loopholes that only I or others like me can take advantage of. Those that want government to represent property owners only will like this arrangement. Those that expect government to represent the interests of all its citizens will not.
I googled around a bit and while it's clear that the "biggest single expenditure" in (Federal) campaigns is TV ad spots... I could not find a breakdown by how money was spent.
Maybe there should be a break on TV ad time by forcing the providers to include equal time for combined appearances/debates. So for every 1 minute of bought air time, you have to have 2 minutes of both candidates talking live in a town hall or debate format.
Of course, this will just drive the price of 1 minute of air time UP.
Does it change YOUR mind personally, or only the sheeple? Are you asking the government to restrict what YOU see or what everyone else sees?
If you are asking me if I rather have corporations or free speech, I'd say free speech. I don't see how this solves the problem though. The groups of people that have the money that used to be a corporation can still buy ads with it.
I have no idea what you are asking or what point you are making. My reSPonse you quoted was simply to point out that advertising concepts are grounded in (at least what we know so far of) basic brain chemistry.
Have you started counting yet? It's not that hard.
The "liberal" media cheered us all the way into the war with Iraq. The "liberal" ran Jeremiah Wright stories constantly in response to Obama's candidacy. The "liberal" media wasted thousands of hours detailing every development in the Lewinsky scandal. The "liberal" media insisted on giving equal airtime to pro-war demonstrations attended by 30 people and antiwar demonstrations with 50,000 people marching. It's a figment of your imagination.
The problems you're articulating (the media in this case focusing on a sensational story about outrageous comments by a senate candidate, instead of talking about static unemployment figures) have more to do with the fact that media content is driven by the need to sell ads, and the ability to sell ads is driven by the ability to attract middle-class and upper middle-class viewers, and the ability to attract these viewers is driven by their desire for sensational and dramatic narratives. C-Span is as unbiased a source as you can get, but no one watches it, because it doesn't filter and frame.
If you're actually interested in the quality of journalism in this country, you should be far more concerned with the declining revenues of news organizations-- this means less money to spend sending reporters to places where they can cover stores themselves, and more of a reliance on second- or third-hand information, or, worse yet, an even greater reliance on "official sources" for information about a given story.
Isn't this the same with any group of people though? Labor unions, non-profits, political party committees, think tanks, or whatever? Those groups likely never come to a 100% consensus either. Should all groups also be similarly limited in their speech or what ads they run?
Wait, what? A whole bunch of stuff shoved in here (Habeus Corpus? Really?). And it is not a work around differentiating between corporations and people, it is fundemental to my argument. Corporations and people are different. One gets to vote the other doesn't. One has a right to free speech, the other has weirdly been granted that same right for no reason at all.
So corporations should be allowed to vote in elections? Since the group of people has the same right to vote as the individuals? I am saying that there is no inherent right to free speech that a corporation should have. That does not mean they can not have influence. I don't think the NAACP formed a super-pac and did million dollar TV buys in the south during the '60s.
I just think it silly to give corporations the absolute right of free speech. That is NOT the same as saying they get no speech, merely that legislative limits on corporations speech is MUCH less problematic than trying to limit real peoples free speech.
It's against the rules of MLB to intentionally throw at a batter. But only if you actually hit them. This is just "intent policing". You cannot a priori tell the difference between me as a private citizen making a TV spot that says that Ryan's Budget Plan is a disaster and me paying the DNC/Obama campaign to say it for me. So by banning one you ban the other. So, what should be illegal about the first part? Is that I can buy advertising on TV? Is it that it's political commentary (speech?). Is it that I can do this more than you?
I don't like White Supremacy websites or Reality TV or Chick-fil-a ads, but I acknowledge their right to exist.
It's like people who have a problem with Monsanto or Fast Food Restaurants or Big Gulps. It's *capitalism* that is the problem. Not excessive freedom. The problem with money having too much influence is not the INFLUENCE - I mean, that's just the Law of Gravity. It's that the wealth is not distributed evenly (enough).
? Really that's one of Dan's better arguments...
I'm pretty sure that neither are "corporations" in the legal sense, but since Dan has already shown that he uses his own [erroneous and ahistorical] definition of "corporation" that he doesn't care about that little technicality...
Which brings me to my big problem with both SCOTUS and Dan's insistence that "corporations" are "people" for purpose of 1st amendment free speech rights- doing so ignores what corporations ARE (legally speaking) they are not just a group of people as Dan would have it, they are not even just a group of people engaged in a common venture or enterprise
a "corporation" is a very specific legal construct which people enter into to engage in business by way of creating an artificial third party entity that assumes all liabilities away from those individuals-
Dan says he disagrees with that "limited liability" principle- to which I say, fine, do away with it and I'm fine with giving "corporations" the free speech and other rights of individuals. Of course corporations would no longer exist, and the groups of people united in a joint venture would simply consist of a partnership or joint venture, or more crudely a "company"...
But refusing to acknowledge what a corporation actually IS, is essential to Dan's and the Citizen United's argument- Dan by openly insisting on redefining "corporation" at least seems aware of the issue, Citizen's United is aware in a different way- they just lie about it.
communist
This is the discussion we should probably should be having, rather than dickering over stuff we'll never agree on (whether corporations have rights, whether the unequal political power of wealth is a justifiable restriction on political speech, whether money is speech).
As a non-ludicrously wealthy individual, I possess practically no political power. If I manage to get a whole bunch of like-minded people together and we all agree to pool our resources, we can end up having a say. We can refuse to do business with companies that support causes we find repulsive. We are not powerless if we are motivated and permitted to act in concert. A lot of people spoke out against SOPA, against some very wealthy and very powerful interest groups, and those people won.
The other piece of the puzzle is the incentives that our system creates for wealth to enter politics. We cannot ever completely eliminate that, but we can drastically reduce the likelihood that one politician will be remarkable more friendly to a particular special interest by limiting what sorts of things the government can spend taxpayer dollars on in the first place.
Individuals have the right to free speech. I am OK with limiting the speech of collectives. I am OK with making those limits much looser for some organizations (explicit political organizations, non-profits, and so on as some examples) and harder for others (commercial enterprises). I am even OK with allowing the corporations what they have today, so long as we all admit they are corporations and not people and don't have the rights of people.
People live and die. Corporations form, grow, mutate, but they are not sentient; they are collections of people, customs and and laws which neither live nor die. I like corporations and think they provide a huge amount of value to society, but they are not people. And yes I am fine with wealthy people using their money to have "loud" free speech.
All human experience is basic brain chemistry. If we banned every possible thing that could possibly cause someone to do something wrong or bad or against our own personal interest, what would we have left?
Not even that, when the Corporation "speaks" it speaks for the Corporation, NOT "for" any shareholder... and in fact it is not all that unusual for a Corporation to speak something contrary to what the majority of shareholders want- of course in that case it is conceivable that said majority can take control of the board and re-direct the corporation...
I think that TV ads (and really more than anything this comes down to TV ads, as those cost the big money and have the biggest influence) can be regulated without being a significant of infringement on speech, under the premise that if you are using government regulated and protected broadcast bandwidth, you have responsibility to air responsible programming (which is a pretty arbitrary standard), pretty much how Fred Flinstone can't go around telling people about the cool refreshing taste of Winston cigarettes anymore. However, with this sort of regulation there still needs to be an outlet for less regulated programming, just like there is now for porn or shows full or swear words or whatever, in order for it work.
The "liberal" media cheered us all the way into the war with Iraq. The "liberal" ran Jeremiah Wright stories constantly in response to Obama's candidacy. The "liberal" media wasted thousands of hours detailing every development in the Lewinsky scandal. The "liberal" media insisted on giving equal airtime to pro-war demonstrations attended by 30 people and antiwar demonstrations with 50,000 people marching. It's a figment of your imagination.
Again, you might as well be speaking to the wall. These folks have no interest in anything other than regurgitating their talking points. I doubt if any of them other than Nieporent or possibly Szym even skims the Times website on an ongoing basis, let alone reads the daily and Sunday print editions.
If you're actually interested in the quality of journalism in this country, you should be far more concerned with the declining revenues of news organizations-- this means less money to spend sending reporters to places where they can cover stores themselves, and more of a reliance on second- or third-hand information, or, worse yet, an even greater reliance on "official sources" for information about a given story.
All obvious points, and yet every time we read about the declining revenues of news organizations, the only response from the resident right wing is a big, fat gloat. They've never demonstrated one shred of evidence that they'd ever support any sort of news organization that offered any sort of comprehensive news coverage.
This is why I said it was tricky, because it is. The easy part would be to allow anything, I just think that would be a bad idea, but I do acknowledge you have to be very careful. It is dangerous to have people able to spend huge amounts of money anonymously which can influence an election. It is dangerous to have the government deciding what is OK to say and not say (whether people or corporations say it).
Forcing disclosure is one way to try to square this circle. I would be OK with allowing individuals to remain anonymous while not allowing non-people the same right.
Unfortunately what we have is a bunch of people refusing to acknowledge the problem and/or claiming that any attempt to address the problem is "The Horror" and evil.
You started this thing off by inventing the argument that somehow poeple want campaign finance reform because other people are idiots. I made an initial error by responding to that argument that no one made in the form of simply trying to point out that advertising does not affect the weak-minded, it affects absolutely everyone. Whatever you are going for with your initial statement is moot, as that's not anything anyone is saying.
Since this is the off-topic post, I'm just going to use it to throw out there that I really hate phone interviews.
Had one yesterday. Thought it went great, call-back was supposed to be yesterday or today, and nothing at all. Am pretty depressed about the whole thing.
Not I. And it makes no difference to be whether they are "people".
Can of worms. Who decides? Collectives can spawn other sub-collectives and co-collectives. So Monsanto just forms "People for Superfoods", a non-profit political organization, and funds it.
But CrosbyBird has it right. The way to fight injustice is at the source.
You would be wrong. There are many corporations that are organized for "unlimited life, limited liability" purposes, rather than making money. An awful lot of speech and media activity is done through corporate entities, and it would be frightening for those activities to lose 1st Amendment protection just because of their method of organization.
Give everyone access to the airwaves, free, and it becomes less of an issue whether some people can purchase more with their own money.
As for phone interviews. You are not suggesting I bring in 20 people in person? Because in my experience, resumes are mostly worthless. 45 minutes on the phone, and I will decide if you are worth lunch and a FTF.
I think this is simplistic. Government spending is not the only, or arguably the biggest issue. Limiting what the government can spend on limits the effectiveness of government far more than it limits the "corrution potential" of government. Social Security has a ton of government spending associated with it, but not all that much corruption. The government spends much much less on regulating the SEC and banking in general, but there is much more opportunity for corruption there (just to pull a couple examples out).
But yes, if you want to limit government inspired corruption one way to do that is limit government. But I would argue you want to figure out the right level of government based on what you want government to be able to do, and then you work to limit the corruption, you don't set the size of government based on fear of corruption. I guess you could limit fleas by only owning hairless pets, but I would rather have a dog with fur and deal with fleas another way.
AND although no one cares, or should, while I was writing that, I was left a voicemail for the in-person interview on Monday.
It is a good day.
Again, I am admitting it is tricky. There are a couple points:
1) People have rights, collections of people do not (which doesn't mean they are banned, just they don't have a right to do everything people do - like for example vote).
2) Unlimited, unregulated, anonymous money is bad for Democracy.
3) I think laws can be passed to at least limit #2 for non-people while keeping #2 for actual people. These laws represent a compromise between the rights of people and the desire for "good & fair" elections.
4) #3 above is tricky, but steps can be taken, like mandated disclosure and others. I am not calling for jack booted thugs or anything, just some possible limits on non-people influencing elections with money.
and you would be right, the ACLU and NAACP are both and have always been legally organized as a not for profit corporations.
My bad.
My sympathies - I know how you feel. I've found that the correlation between how I think I did in an interview and whether I get an offer or second interview or whatnot is very low. I had an interview two weeks ago that I felt very good about - still have not heard anything back. I thought I laid a turd in a phone interview on Monday, but got the follow up for today's technical phone interview, which I don't feel good about either. On the bright side, I had an interview yesterday (and the one for my #1 choice job), and think it went great, but I'm trying not to set myself up for disappointment there.
And literally just now, I got a call back regarding the phone interview that I felt bad about, and I get to go to the next step in the process. So I give up trying to assess how I did in interviews.
Hope you get a call back today, there's still time.
Congrats. For some jobs phone interviews can be very helpful. For example I better phone interview well, since in my job I often have to communicate with developers halfway around the world by phone and email. But they are hard, real hard, because you are missing all the normal cues you can use in a FTF interview. Good luck btw.
EDIT: For some bizarre reason my brain decided "Cues" was really "Queues". Go figure.
(conservative lurker in thread, but still happy for you)
I care! Congratulations and good luck!
I have an subscription to NYTimes, even, I don't just delete the gwh portion of the URL.
My daily read is generally:
NY Times
Reason
New Republic
The Nation
Anything Glenn Greenwald or Walter Russell Mead writes
Volokh Conspiracy
Anything on RCP that looks interesting.
Anyone who focuses their reading solely on writers with a similar worldview to themself is frankly, a moron.
I do tend to avoid Dionne and Krugman, mainly because Dionne is an insufferable read and knowing Krugman through his serious work, reading too much of him in partisan hack mode is just depressing.
I am not making corruption trivial by the way. In graduate school I specialized in Developmental Economics, and a major differentiator in how well an economy will grow is how corrupt the government in general is. Corruption is a huge issue in many less developed countries and truly limits their economic growth and their freedom and quality of life. These economies often have good laws, but a culture of corruption can render any laws useless. So I am sympathetic to fears of corruption, but fortunately the US has a pretty good track record (relativley).
One of the reasons I am somewhat bearish on China long term is they have a real corruption problem which will only get worse and continue to eat at their growth.
End of aside.
QFT and seconded.
I read the NYT every day. Just because a media source carries an ideological bias doesn't make it worthless. Also their restaurant reviews are typically quite good.
It's fun to watch the old faux "objective" news organizations take dirt naps, sure. Who cares about comprehensive coverage? Smart people will gather news from a variety of sources to better understand the world and events. Dumb people will keep on watching reality TV.
You haven't provided evidence of anything, except of the beliefs of journalists. You can't wrap your head around the fact that these workers do not have the ultimate say over the content of what they produce.
You're claiming the existence of something, without being able to prove its existence. And the reason you can't prove it exists is that no one has found it.
Here's a story comparing positive and negative reporting on presidential candidates
[url="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/08/infographic-of-the-day-do-the-mainstream-media-have-a-conservative-bias/260772/"ref="http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4514">This one discusses the tilt toward conservative guests on Sunday morning talk shows</a>
<a ]Here's another about the negative coverage of Obama vs negative coverage of Romeny.[/url]
You're claiming "systemic liberal media bias", and then demanding that we accept your selective perception as true, because journalists give money to Democrats, and that's all you need to confirm your worldview. My claim is simple, and supported by scholarship. The authors in this study looked for gatekeeping, coverage, and statement bias. The conclusion offered: "in short, there is no evidence whatsoever pf a monolithic liberal bias in the newspaper industry, at least as manifest in presidential campaign coverage. The same can be said of a conservative bias: There is no significant evidence of it." But they indulged your wish to treat the competing companies constituting "the" media as a monolithic block, and engaged in a "gross-level examination", looking for precisely what you claim exists. Wasn't there. <a ref="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15506878jobem4901_4">Here's another</a>, this one with a lit review at the start. You and Joe both fall into line with the "hostile media perception" Lee describes: the belief that "the" media is biased against your side, because it's your side.
Thanks for your opinion, it's so interesting! It's an ideal-- ideals are, by definition, not obtainable. But they still matter, because they inform and structure the habits of people working within that field. We have an ideal of political equality in the US, even though political equality is unobtainable. People appeal to this ideal constantly. So in spite of the fact that it will never be reachable, striving to reach it still matters. Now, you can think that we should go back to 19th C. partisan journalism, and maybe you're right. But that's not the way that news organizations are run. They aim for objectivity, and, on a systemic level, the evidence suggests, at least from a Republican/Democrat perspective, that they're achieving it.
Hear, hear.
Corporate influence would be restricted -- unless they happen to own a newspaper (or in Murdoch's case a broadcasting empire)
I don't think it's an accident that Murdoch's influence was greater in Great Britain (which has tight campaign spending laws) than in the US.
That is a problem, but to be fair GB is much smaller than the US, making it easier.
It's not about how much is spent, but what it is spent on. I'm in favor of universal health care, for example.
A huge portion of the money that flows into politics attempts to influence two things: granting of subsidy, and crafting of regulation. That's what I want to limit (not eliminate, mind you, but strongly limit) government's ability to do: to regulate and to subsidize.
Social programs are not subsidy; they are redistribution of wealth from haves to have-nots. I'm fine with quite a bit of redistribution because I firmly believe that poverty is a societal problem with hidden costs that we all pay far more for in the long run. Specifically, no person should be without adequate food, shelter, health care, and education in a country with the resources that we possess. We are too rich to legitimately claim that we can't afford to provide basic services for everyone.
I like to think of this in some sense as "domestic defense spending"; we're protecting ourselves from social unrest and general conditions of society that harm all of us. In the grand scheme of things, our losses in productivity and intellectual capital and in our massive incarceration costs are far more expensive than what we'd need to spend to solve a huge part of the problem.
No, in this case I'm talking about the actual sense - they're legally corporations. The ACLU, I believe, is incorporated in DC. Citizens United is, in fact, a non-profit organization, incorporated under 501(c)(3) in the same manner the ACLU is. The same rules used to censor Citizens United speech censored the ACLU's speech as well.
What I reject is the distinction between profit and non-profit, which I believe to be just as arbitrary as saying men can enter into a domestic partnership contract with women but not men. All people in a group are doing it for some kind of profit - whether the proceeds are money, producing a product they believe in, or advocating for specific political goals, they're all essentially seeking to advanced their own desired ends. On a very real level, profit being expressed solely as a function of cumulative currency is fundamentally inaccurate.
Even if we accepted, for the sake of argument, that the desire to profit is objectively worse morally, I don't believe I have the right to enforce that view on others. This view is the same underlining reason I support gay marriage - even if it could be demonstrated that homosexuality was objectively bad (let's make it clear, I disagree with this), I would *still* support gay marriage and the rights for gays to engage in consenting conduct to the exact same degree as a matter of justice.
If someone wants to watch negative political ads, knock yourself out. You want to watch positive stuff, Obamathon or the Romney Manifesto, knock yourself out. But why should I have to? Currently it's packaged with unrelated content, and thank God for TiVo, but even fast-forwarding through them gives me a case of the yucks.
In 10-20 years maybe this problem goes away because of tech. I watch stuff on Hulu, I get to choose which ads I want. Who is going to want to watch a negative political ad? My optimistic hat says the the ability to push the ads on the viewer gets mitigated by tech.
Now, I'm against the death penalty, but this is ridiculous. That's less than 4 months per victim max, maybe as little as 2. I guess if you have to go on a shooting spree, do it in Norway.
I wouldn't bet against Breivik's dying in jail.
It all depends on what prison time is for. Punishment? Making society safe by removing the perp? Justice or Paying ones debt to society (neither of which is 100% clear what exactly is meant)? A chance for the perp to reflect, retrain, and possibly reenter society? As a deterrent to others? A combination, and if so how weighted?
EDIT: I can't believe I forgot revenge as a motive for locking someone up. Silly me. Please insert. And the comment that 21 years seems light for a revenge sentence.
It seems light as a punishment. Seems OK in making society safe (He likely is done with killing sprees, especially at the age he will be)? Justice and Paying Debt are too nebulous for me to evaluate. No idea how long (if ever) he will need to understand what he did and make peace with himself. Not sure if longer time periods make for better deterrents, I suspect not but really don't know.
Overall as a member of the (or one of) most imprisoned nations on earth I am not sure attitudes in the US on prison time are really the best (glass house, throwing stones) for judging the right amount of prison time. I guess I will default to respecting their justice system. In the US (and many other nations) obviously the sentence would be much harsher.
I'm glad there are journalists brave enough to go to Libya. I appreciate that journalists braved climates hostile to westerners when we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan (as problematic and jingoistic as the coverage was in the early stages), so that we didn't have to rely on "official sources" for all of our information about the wars. I appreciate the journalists who, after bin Laden was killed, went into Pakistan to independently verify the Obama administrations claims about how the raid was executed.
The training in j-schools really just intentionally apes the scientific method-- observe, report, verify, publish. The scientific method, as an innovation, was an attempt to intentionally factor out the biases of individual perception through a combination of aggregating and multiplying witnesses and destabilizing the previously uncontested monopoly on truth claimed by religious and political authorities.
Look you reject the entirety of corporate law, we get that, you refuse to acknowledge what corporations are and how they were created and why. You have arbitrarily decided that all voluntary associations are the same thing, and as a result you keep this debate alive be using terms and words to mean one thing when everyone else is using it another way.
Seriously, you really need to take a course or two ion corporations, trusts, partnerships, etc., you are a smart guy, but you are not being radical or revolutionary in your conception of "corporation" just willfully ignorant.
As I muse on it, the answer is "probably not" as it happened in the city. Although it could show up in a debate, seems like such a question could only hurt Obama, probably.
I am actually very interested in the debates this year. Romney is pretty good but fragile - he can get flustered and off his game. Obama is solid but is much better at speeches than debates. Both men are crazy smart and will be really well coached. Both have a ton to defend and attack the other on, but what will they trumpet as their successes?
If I were advising either I would suggest going for likable guy versus "winning" when answering. The last few true independents probably don't care about the details. Of course they also care about who the media says "won" the debate, so I could be wrong.
Nonsense, I've done no such thing here. The law, as it exists, considers "profit" and "non-profit" voluntary corporate relationships differently. The law, as it exists, treats voluntary relationships between men and women differently than voluntarily relationships between men and men and between women and women. I'm arguing that both are wrong to the exact same degree for the exact same reason.
And as a result, I consider someone who is against gay marriage or for laws against sodomy to be in the exact same boat and given the exact same regard to people who are against free speech for corporations that profit in currency but for free speech for corporations that profit in non-currency. The distinction in the latter obviously exists in law, but it's completely unjustified.
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