This is incredibly gracious of Lessig, to defend someone who treated him poorly.
I donated to both his ill-fated Mayday PAC and his ill-fated presidential campaign last year. He is a selfless guy who is trying to address the root cause of US political dysfunction.
I wish him the best of luck in his future projects.
Donald Trump has spent far less money than any presidential candidate in recent history.
I am hopeful that this election will finally illustrate to people like Larry Lessig that there are worse things in politics than money. Money is just a tool.
Just because you found an example of a politician making it fairly far (but probably not even getting elected) without the support of the rich does not mean that money in politics isn't a problem.
In America, there are two kinds of politicians who can get by without wealthy donors:
1. grassroots candidates who go viral, who can get big social media followings and lots of organic non-ad media
2. independently rich people, who can simply bankroll their own campaigns
Bernie Sanders is an example of #1. Ross Perot is an example of #2. Donald Trump is, to an extent, both #1 and #2!
Most politicians in the US, both in Congress and at the state level, are neither #1 nor #2. They depend on donors who typically write $1000+ checks, every single election cycle. As a result, they spend a shocking amount of their time talking to rich people.
When people like Lawrence Lessig or Bernie talk about "getting money out of politics", they are not referring to third-world style quid pro quo corruption. They are not talking about an envelope of cash passed under a restaurant table.
They are talking about something more subtle that's absolutely pervasive in modern US politics: career politicians whose continued employment depends on their ability to raise money, who every day meet and hear from the wealthiest crust of their constituency.
When you spend four hours every day on the phone with the kind of people who might write a $2700 max-allowable-donation check for some representative's re-election campaign, it affects your thinking. Donor issues are always top of mind. How you vote on that pipeline bill today is going to make it either a lot easier or a lot harder to talk to those twenty or thirty guys you have to call next week, asking for money.
Congress is not uniquely problematic because members of Congress have to raise money. Everyone has to raise money. Larry Lessig has had to raise money many times in his career.
There are two reasons that members of Congress have to spend so much time raising money.
First, there are strict limits on federal campaign contributions. Candidates can only get up to $2,700 from each person per cycle, and no money from organizations at all. Nonprofit guys like Bill McKibben or Grover Norquist can land $100,000 in one meeting. It will take a federal candidate at least 37 individual donors to get the same amount.
I'm not saying the limits are bad. I think they are good. But they have side effects.
Second, people don't want to give money to politicians, so it takes a ton of time and energy to get even small donations.
And here is where Lessig and others have been so counter-productive. They think they're making the sort of subtle argument that you describe. They think they're firing people up for action. But what they've actually done is promulgate 2 simple messages: 1) Money In Politics Is Bad, and 2) The System Is So Broken You Can't Win.
Both these messages discourage their fans from engaging effectively in political and civic institutions--thereby making things even worse for themselves. Lessig told all his fans that money is bad and politics is unwinnable... of course he's having trouble creating a political movement!
> Congress is not uniquely problematic because members of Congress have to raise money. Everyone has to raise money. Larry Lessig has had to raise money many times in his career.
I bet Lessig has never spent four hours cold-calling wealthy potential donors even once, let alone every single weekday for years at a time.
An academic like Lessig may have to write grant applications every few months.
Legislators, both state and Congressional, are uniquely problematic. Few jobs are so constantly dependent on the favor of wealthy donors, and none are in as good a position to repay their generosity, usually in subtle and indirect ways, once in office.
>I donated to both his ill-fated Mayday PAC and his ill-fated presidential campaign last year.
I'm sorry to hear that. He ran an incredibly irresponsible and dishonest platform, even for this election.
>He is a selfless guy who is trying to address the root cause of US political dysfunction.
In politics, as in engineering, programming, development and creative works in general, good intentions are not enough. Granting him the benefit of the doubt that he really was genuinely "trying to address the root cause of US political dysfunction" (and I do in fact doubt that he was) it was a crazy incompetent and blindered effort, exactly the kind of ivory tower BS that he displayed in Eldred v. Ashcroft. Back a year or so ago, September 2015, he gave an interview with Ars Technica [1] (where I also vented now that I look at it) with a bunch of doozies, but the fundamental one was this:
>Lessig-on-ars-article: "Reform can still win. The part of the system that is most broken is Congress. We still have the ability to elect a president. And if we elect a president with a super-mandate to demand Congress fix itself, I will do everything possible to make sure Congress does fix itself."
Uh, lol? "Demand Congress fix itself"? That's not how it fucking works. Congress is Constitutionally by far the most powerful body, and it does not answer in election terms to the Executive or even the nation as a whole, it answers to individual states or (often extremely heavily gerrymandered) districts, and even more so to the people who actually bother to reliably vote every time. The most powerful and critical Constitutional role of the Presidency is foreign affairs, and while expansion of the executive in the 20th century has increased the domestic role that still is an utterly key part, along with control of and ability to negotiate with (ie., dirty ugly sausage making) Congress. Lessig, Sanders, and Trump all basically were/are running to be King, not President, and a king that didn't particularly care about the rest of the world either and just wanted to pursue their own interests at that. But we do not have kings in the USA, we have Presidents.
For a political movement, frankly the Presidency should probably be the FINAL goal, not the first. Bottom-up, in classic American fashion, rather then top-down. It's getting power in towns, in cities, then in states, slowly working up, and then in Congress, that really allows for long lasting change, and that will have the most direct impact on people. It's the way to deal with inevitable setbacks, resistance and failure, and also represents a basic humbleness and self-reflection, as it allows testing the practical application of ideals in limited areas before moving to the national and international stage. It's a long, grueling and unpleasant, un-flashy slog, one that can take years to decades, with no guarantee of success. But that's what it takes. I have very minimal respect for people who try to take shortcuts, who demand instant change in one year and then don't bother to show up to the polls 2 years later because they're just so let down that it all didn't go their way right off, and anyway getting an early ballot or spending a few minutes to a few hours voting in person every few years is just WAY too much to ask a citizen for the preservation and enrichment of their entire society and democratic government!!/extreme sarcasm. This is why I doubt people like him are really "trying to address root causes", because I suspect they find the actual methods it would take to do so too much work or too unpleasant. They want better sausage, but they don't actually like the whole real sausage-making thing, so instead they pursue abstract platforms about idealized Sausage Theory of Utopianism.
Incidentally, while I disagree with basically every single thing they stand for, this is an area where movements like the Tea Party and such got it right (unfortunately). Despite being a tiny fraction of voters, and despite probably never ever seeing one of their own in the Presidency, they've had a massive impact by getting control in local areas and through gaining a strong minority within a major party. At the national level, the "House Freedom Caucus for example with just 42/435 seats has exercised significant influence of the course of the country the last few years despite engaging in rampant obstructionism. If they'd been even somewhat flexible they could have done far more. There are big money backers sure, but they still worked bottom-up and often in the face of hostile party leadership. A tech/governance movement could pursue the same strategy and have a much better base and effects then leaping right for the Presidency, failing, and giving up. Or for that matter succeeding, then failing (because the President can't fix it all themselves), then getting disillusioned even more, and giving up.
>Lessig-on-ars-article: If he gets elected and the CEA is passed, he'll resign the presidency and the vice president will take over.
And what if the rest of the planet didn't cooperate? What if there was a financial melt down February 1st 2017? What if Russia invaded the Baltics? What about North Korea? What if China moved military forces towards Taiwan? What if some new plague broke out? What if a reactor melted down in the USA, or there was a massive industrial accident? And that's just big ticket possibilities, the POTUS must also deal with a million smaller things, starting Day 1, that are more mundane but nevertheless vitally important. They have to deal with getting the top of the Executive branch staffed up. They have to start getting people approve by Congress right away. There will be affairs of our allies and adversaries both to work on, particularly because in many cases mere perception can affect reality. Really, even potential presidents should be considering and planning this before they're even elected, all of them, no matter how low the odds, just to ensure continuity and hit the ground running as much as possible (as Clinton is doing right now for example [2]). Again, his candidacy wasn't just a bad joke, it was flagrantly irresponsible by every measure.
>I wish him the best of luck in his future projects.
I do too, so long as they're actually good projects whose failure won't screw over hundreds of millions to billions of people.
Who would expect such a classy response to a threat of violence against a "smug" and "pompous" professor. Or maybe Tanden is wrong and it is actually she who needs an adjusting.
I agree that the email is mean-spirited and unpleasant, but "I'd like to kick the shit out of him on twitter" is clearly not an actual threat of violence.
Fair enough. As the comment below points out, more likely she had in mind the idea of personally ruining him, as she has tried to do (and partially succeeded) to at least one other person in the past.
Tanden may have used her high position to get a left-wing labor blogger fired for calling her "scumbag neera" over her alleged role in 'reforming' welfare in the '90s, ultimately harming those in extreme poverty.
Twitter. Unfortunately, I don't have a link handy. You can also go to the blogger's personal site and find his resume showing an end of full-time employment.
There were a number of people who did not like his combative style in disproving liberals' claims, who banded together to complain to his full time employer.
I agree its very gracious of Lessig and completely agree that individuals deserve privacy. But lets be honest, even in this case the forgiveness originates in fact that all individuals involved are on the same side in this election. Further the justification about her being engaged with public / public-sector is hollow. Had it been Karl Rove saying the same thing, would the anger be justified?
If we are at all going to judge people by the private communication then lets at least be consistent.
E.g. Here is the the women who had a left-wing blogger fired:
"Progressive blogger fired for calling Hillary Clinton ally a 'scumbag'"
I would not say that Lessig is on the same side as these folks. Tanden is a party loyalist, which basically means, policy opinions aside, she supports taking any and all money from anyone in order to score party victories. Lessig wants to break the system of money in politics. Therefore their vision of America is fundamentally opposed.
There is no public proof; at this point it is a he-said she-said over what happened behind the scenes. I acknowledge the benefit of the doubt in this situation goes to Tanden. Though I do not have good experiences with her truthfulness and tend to disbelieve her on this point, I acknowledge others don't share the background and will likely (fairly) conclude otherwise.
I am hopeful that future Wikileaks releases shed some light on this affair.
If you want to assign responsibility for these leaks, assign it on the people who have taken action: the hackers who obtained them and the organization that published them.
Neither the writers nor recipients in this exchange bear responsibility for their exchange being published without their consent.
A sender of an email should not bear responsibility for an underlying email system's poor information security (expect in specific cases in which they are highly-technical and are transferring highly confidential information).
It is the administrator(s) of the email server's responsibility to ensure that both their users and the people they interact with are given basic protections against hackers.
There is no point in blaming a hacker for attacking an email server as they will not listen to you.
The only sane solution is for the administrator of the email system and those that hired them to be responsible for how secure their systems are and to act accordingly.
It's unlikely the victim made a conscious decision to have deliberately poor security. Perhaps it was an oversight.
The decision to publish the emails publicly, however, was very much not an accident. Do you think Assange's cat happened to step on his mouse at an inopportune time?
I used to respect what Assanage is doing. But recently its clear his actions aren't some noble crusade to speak truth to power and promote freedom of speech and otherwise promote civil liberties. If that were the point then he would leak whatever he has whenever he gets it instead of trying to time it to affect the election. If he really believed in the causes he claims to believe in then he wouldn't be trying to get Donald-lets-silence-my-critics-Trump into office.
I guess in light of new evidence I changed my opinion. Why can't other people be rational like me.
Please just stop. Have we really become so blindly partisan as a nation that we complain about uneven distribution of evidence of corruption rather than the corruption itself? Ponder that for a moment, please.
While I am certain there are some troubling revelations in there, I fail to see how Neera Tanden shit-talking about Lawrence Lessig is in any way relevant to the public interest. It's simply an unethical violation of privacy. Had he filtered it to just the important stuff and released it right away, journalists and the public could be having real conversations about said material right now instead.
Of course, being fair, they didn't do that great a job with the release of cables in the past either. Being fair, my political bias probably swayed me into overlooking that back then more than I should have.
Transparency should be where it matters. People should have a right to privacy for personal comments such as this.
I think Julian being trapped in a room for the past several years has not been kind to his health. It's been a shame to see him reduced to a shill for one political party.
I'll go ahead and defend wikileaks on this count (despite my statements about Julian in the parent comment).
The entire point of wikileaks is that they publish information as is under the belief that the public is smart enough to reach their own conclusions without editorializing. This means publishing everything they got with its full mundane nature on display (if for no other reason than as proof that they are not hiding things).
The policy of wikileaks is that they will black out only information which could put people's lives at risk. Merely being embarrassing is not sufficient criteria to get blacked out. Agree or disagree with their philosophy, at least they have been consistent about it. Releasing the Tanden-Lessig e-mail is totally in line with what I'd expect from them.
How many of us would want to have everything we've ever said or done in private aired out in public, under the guise that "the public is smart enough to not editorialize anything"?
I'm quite certain that would have disastrous consequences on my life, as well as just about anyone else's. How about yours?
That said, when it comes to something affecting the public interest (eg government corruption), then yes, I am all for airing such matters. Transparent government is good. Transparent "what kind of porn does Joe Public watch at home?" is not.
The standard for world leaders should be different than for ordinary folks
>I'm quite certain that would have disastrous consequences on my life, as well as just about anyone else's. How about yours?
What did you do that you are so concerned about? I have done plenty of things embarrassing, as has everyone; however I'm not so sure I have done anything that would be life-ruining if it made it to the public. I don't understand why you would feel so differently unless you were engaging in things that people would strongly disapprove of - in which case you probably shouldn't be doing them don't you think? Well, even if you are I think you have a right to your privacy. A generation ago homosexuality could be life ruining, and I think what you choose to do with your personal life is up to you, not your government or other people's personal belief system. That is why unless you decide to become a world leader you should be entitled to your own privacy. As a world leader, though, your personal character has consequences for everyone else.
I agree in principal but in practice how do you decide what to include and what not to include. I respect that wikileaks has a rigorous criteria despite having the flaws you point out. If you can think of a well defined way to incorporate the common sense concept of respecting Joe Public's personal space I'd be all for it.
This pattern seems to come up a lot; I just had the same discussion around the Citizens United ruling here.
There is always going to be an uncomfortable point where you draw a line that isn't quite fair, where up to that line is fine and doesn't really do much harm, but crossing that line would be a detriment to the public interest, and so the liberties of the one end up curtailed in the best interest of the whole.
Legally defining that line will always be a challenge. And there will always be people that question exactly where the line is drawn and want it moved further. And in some cases, some people won't want any line whatsoever.
Let's take free speech. I support this 100%. Even if it means defending the KKK's hate rallies, the WBC's protesting of military funerals, etc. I even take it further and don't support obscenity laws. It's not free speech if you can't say something just because someone else thinks it's 'obscene'. I go as far as supporting eg Handley in US v Handley on the importation of loli material. Yet even I will draw the line at real pictures of victims (I believe your freedoms end at the point they harm someone else's freedoms), so some might even say I'm not a true supporter of free speech.
Let's take capital punishment. If you are for executing terrorists or serial killers, then why be against murder in general? I mean, where do you draw the line? What about self-defense in the case of home invasion? That's okay too? What about self-defense against a brutal assault (that wouldn't kill you)? Is that okay? What about to stop someone from stealing your car? You can keep whittling this back and eventually say, "well we shouldn't make any laws against murder, because it's too hard to draw the line!", which is silly.
If you're against the death penalty, then how about drugs? Why do we allow alcohol when it causes more harm than weed? Okay, let's legalize weed (which I support.) Now what about LSD and mushrooms? Let's legalize those too (I also support that.) How about crack cocaine, heroin, crystal meth and krokodil? (I don't support that.) But wait! How do we draw a line here? We should just legalize everything, right? Well ... no. When a heroin addict can't get their fix, they'll start breaking into cars and houses to get money for their habit. They'll end up in the ERs and racking up bills that you and I end up paying in the form of increased insurance fees to pay for them. Whereas someone eating mushrooms is just going to feel great for six hours, throw up, then feel bad for two hours, then go back to their everyday lives.
There are cases where no matter what we decide, there will be consequences. You can be pro-choice, and that's to the detriment of all the children that won't ever be born as a result. You can be pro-life, and that's to the detriment of women who are forced to act as breeders against their will and be saddled with huge amounts of child rearing pain, a child, possible medical complications, huge amounts of debt, and very little to no real support for it.
Real progress in society requires us to say, "damn, yes, this is a really hard problem! How do we improve things?", not throw our hands up in defeat and effectively embrace full-on anarchy.
It's hard to draw the line though: "needy Latinos", that environmentalists should "get a life", the sneering comments about Catholics, the constant chummy relations with the media and a reporter leaking info "because I have become a hack"? The insults towards various specific activists and groups, a D-list "journalist" like Budowsky openly saying he'd trojan horse the Bernie supporters?
Could this have been done better? Perhaps. We don't know the details of when Assange got this information, what opportunities he might have had to filter it through MSM outlets with the resources to handle it and release it before voting (which has already begun).
The fact is, quite a lot in there is in the public interest to know, and especially for someone like Tanden I have little sympathy for her shit-talking being made public, after she's attacked others for less.
That's not what I'm doing at all. I wouldn't mind if Assanage had simply gotten a leak and released it in a timely manner like he usually does. My opinion changed when he blatantly started timing his leaks to meddle in the election (AKA October surprise). He's not even meddling in favor of someone who is pro-civil liberties. His "October surprise" stunt isn't advancing the mission statement of wikileaks in any way. If his stunt does change the course of the election it will do absolutely nothing to help accountability or journalistic freedom. If anything a Trump presidency may actively hurt these freedoms. So let me beg the question. WTF is Assanage trying to accomplish here?
STEWART: No, no, no, please.
CARLSON: No, no, hold on. We've got commercials.
(CROSSTALK)
STEWART: Please. Please stop.
CARLSON: Next, Jon Stewart in the "Rapid Fire."
STEWART: Please stop.
Wow, that was really hard on the Crossfire guys! They couldn't engage with him at all due to, I suspect, either a lack of self-reflection or because doing so would be admitting that they are harmful to public discourse.
It appears the popular perception of the two candidates is that one of them is a "tin pot" dictator who will silence all his critics and act outside the law
What is even more disturbing is that a presidential candidate has asked, in what appears to be an off-the-cuff suggestion, about murdering one of her critics through the use of drone strikes:
I find it even more disturbing western media has nearly successfully buried this story.
I don't support Trump, but Clinton should not be immune to the laws of this country, or of criticism, as Glenn Greenwald and other respectable journalists are saying.
The major media outlets generally have not been figures worthy of ethical praise this election cycle. Meanwhile respectable journalists fighting for civil rights are being arrested and charged with felony crimes for reporting, so I don't buy into that argument in which corporate media, which a small number of corporations own over 95% of what people see and hear, is over- and under-reporting stories entirely out of ethical and professional consideration: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/17/amy-goodman-...
You and I both are incredibly lucky to live in a country where those charges against Amy Goodman have been thrown out, but would that have happened to a journalist who was not famous? Or what if there was no video evidence, and it was the police and the DA against a citizen?
This story on Hillary is unproven, but so are the allegations against Trump as a sexual assault perpetrator and look at how much media attention that has garnered. I hate Trump but that disparity in and of itself bothers me and in fact lends even more credence to the claim of growing corruption in government. Just also keep in mind, that if this particular claim against Hillary is forged, which is still entirely possible, remember that yet no one has been able to point to any inconsistencies or untruths which would prove that is true.
And your comment of "making things up" is a bit inflammatory.
Unfortunately, we don't live in a world where we can say, "you got live in a world with that government, I'll go live in this one," we all have to live with each other's choices.
Allow me to save anyone reading this thread some time: the assertion about Clinton wanting to drone strike Assange remains unsubstantiated, as the parent comment acknowledges.
I didn't assert anything about any of the other random stuff you're mentioning.
Instead of being incredibly rude and insulting, next time if you don't follow somebody's argument, try to read it again and try to make sense of it. It does make sense in this case.
I did write that out quickly though, and it is a bit disjointed and quickly-written. Still, I think you should be able to follow along and grasp the points. I think you're being disingenuous that you can't, maybe because you don't want to continue a civil discussion for whatever reason you have.
No, you didn't even take the time to criticize my argument, you dismissed it entirely. If you had actually read it you would understand what I was trying to say.
As opposed to Hillary-lets-coopt-the-media-and-bribe-my-potential-critics-Clinton? I hate Donald Trump, but dismissing evidence because of the source is clearly misguided.
I didn't say anything about dismissing evidence. I simply said I've lost respect for Julian Assanage. The entire point of wikileaks is to inform the public without any filter because we are smart enough to judge things for ourselves. But now clearly Assanage is acting as a filter with the explicit goal of stopping a Clinton presidency. His support of Trump doesn't even promote the goals of his organization vis-a-vis journalistic freedoms. At some point one has to question why is Julian doing these things?
If Julian has lost track of the original goals of his organization then why should I care about his de facto incarceration? Why would I or anybody else donate to wikileaks? Why should the Ecuadorians keep him?
"trying to get Donald-lets-silence-my-critics-Trump into office" is a massive assumption and one without much evidence. But yeah anything embarrassing to one's own team tends to get that kind of response.
Why wouldn't you suppress evidence of corruption in the next US president, one who evidently hates him. "Why can't we just drone him? hahaha" Or whatever that quote is. He should subvert is principles to support her? Really?
Trump is likely (imho) more dangerous than Hilary, that doesn't make Hilary good. Exposing her corruption is a good thing. Making her sweat as much as possible about her corruption is a good thing, as it is for any corrupt and powerful person.
And yeah, "publish whatever he gets whenever he gets leaked it immediately" Without vetting it to see if it will get anyone killed. Interesting idea and one that Assange, while having rejected it, may well be more sympathetic to than I am. You're something of a radical there.
He gets the leaks and he publishes. Nobody seems to have faulted him on doing that which is exactly what he says he does and always has. His opinions about other stuff don't really affect what he does, which is publish. But I do have sympathy especially for him hating Hilary - if indeed he does. I can imagine not caring for someone who (were they joking?) wants to kill me. I wonder if your support of Trump's opposition would make that different for you in his shoes? Maybe it would.
Do you know about something that Wikileaks did not publish even if they got it? They cannot leak what they do not get.
It is clear that their sources use Wikileaks to influence politics. Wikileaks could perhaps withold the information until after the elections - but then they would be accused by the other side.
Assange said himself that they have material on Trump, but he wouldn't release it, because it is supposedly no worse than the stuff Trump openly says.
Fine, I can understand that. Sounds like a lot of noise, no signal.
But it's not "releasing everything". It's "deciding what is newsworthy" and "trust me".
So it's laughable that in all other regards (mails of regular Turkish citizens, DNC stuff) he and his supporters claim that Wikileaks simply releases everything without any internal motivation or thematic selection.
Are you sure it's not just the fact that you didn't like the groups he was dumping information on in the past, but now you do like the group he is dumping information on?
> But recently its clear his actions aren't some noble crusade to speak truth to power and promote freedom of speech and otherwise promote civil liberties.
How could WikiLeaks be interpreted as anything other than promoting civil liberties? Its sole purpose is to expose the corrupt behind-the-curtain dealings of leaders and political elite---to give power to the people and remove it from the corrupt.
> How could WikiLeaks be interpreted as anything other than promoting civil liberties? Its sole purpose ...
Perhaps taken at face value that's true, but I judge them by their actions:
* They consistently advocate for one political point of view, an anti-US government one. Where are leaks about Putin? Bernie Sanders? Jill Stein? For comparison, the NY Times is hard on both candidates: For example, they both broke the Clinton email server story and Trump's tax return.
* They are cooperating in what appears to be a Russian intelligence disinformation campaign to disrupt U.S. democracy. Assange seems too smart to be an unwitting participant.
* There are reports it's due to a vendetta Assange has against Clinton.
Based on the above and other actions, I question whether their mission really is to promote civil liberties.
Context for the remainder so you can know they aren't cherry-picked and your reading of whatever you get out of any of them is through your own bias alone and not Assange's, the NYT editorial team's or whoever else. You only need to trust that Assange will publish you don't have to care what he thinks about anything else.
This would be more convincing if Assange wasn't always talking up the next batch, the contingency files, etc. Not only is he withholding publication, but he's bragging about it, which really does make it hard to believe he's just passing everything along.
ok so your problem is as a publisher he shouldn't promote his publication. And he by doing so he's withholding publication of something unspecified that we can't know about.
While Lessig is gracious here, I don't have to be.
Tanden and Podesta are representative of what will become the Clinton white house. This sort of rhetoric indicates where they, and Clinton, stand on a variety of interconnected issues, from money in politics to lobbying and outright corruption.
Lessig has done more than almost anyone to champion the idea of separating money from politics. To many, he is a hero. To Tanden and Podesta, two of the current (and future) policy leaders of the Clinton administration, he is a smug professor who needs to have the shit kicked out of him. This should tell you all you need to know about the outlook and direction of a future Clinton administration.
Never in American history has money had such a stranglehold on our elected officials. The winners in this system, such as Hillary Clinton, are perfectly happy with the status quo. People like Lessig want to blow it up. Take note.
>While Lessig is gracious here, I don't have to be.
You don't have to be, but it might have been a good idea to do so given there's always the chance one is missing a bit of history, like you (and some of the other comments in this thread) are demonstrating here. The post-hoc heroification of Lessig is somewhat sickening on a technical forum given how badly he blew it Eldred vs. Ashcroft with exactly the sort of Mr. Smug Constitutionalist Professor attitude that the Podesta email called out. The result of that case was a huge blow, maybe the only best chance there was to at least prevent flagrant, retroactive infinite extensions of copyright, to help in some way protect Public Domain, and despite direct hints from the justices he just refused to engage in practical core economic arguments in favor of academic scholarship. This was obvious to everyone with a smidgen of legal knowledge following along at the time, and for that it was obvious to him too in retrospect. Read his own analysis from Legal Affairs, "How I Lost the Big One" [1]. His summary sentence says it all really: "When Eric Eldred's crusade to save the public domain reached the Supreme Court, it needed the help of a lawyer, not a scholar."
It's directly apropos here because yeah, Lessig is a good writer. And he can definitely do the whole humble/gracious thing alright. But that's cold god damned comfort to the hundreds of millions who lost out due to his total fuck up. I have not forgotten nor forgiven it. I'm glad he's gone on to try to do other good things, and people like him have a valuable role in debate. But the real world of politics and power is not a classroom debate, and people like him do not belong anywhere near a position of importance that requires direct interaction, understanding, and manipulation of the filthy realities upon which good must build.
The email might have been "rude" (and I use scare quotes because I don't consider privately using strong language in a bit of venting that you have the self-control not to make public rude), but it was also strongly rooted in fact. His presidential campaign was flat out disgusting, built on an utter lie (I cannot believe Lessig of all people doesn't understand the separation of powers) and flagrant irresponsibility over the lives of billions of people, because that responsibility is part of what it means to be President of the United States of America. He said he was running for real back then, he raised money, and I think anyone who does that should be serious about going all the way in case their super long shot somehow manages to catch a wave of cultural zeitgeist and work against all odds. I would have been delighted if he or anyone else had made a true comprehensive technology cored platform and ran with it, treating the entire thing with the seriousness and practicality it deserves, but he did not.
I will always admire many of his ideas and how he's helped a generation of minds think in new ways. But when it comes to politics his approach can get stuffed, and he clearly did not learn from one of the great blunder in technological law precedent of the last few decades.
Thanks for the history lesson. It was valuable, though from what I understand, it's separate from the motivation for the Tanden/Podesta conversation on display here.
And thank you in turn for replying. You and I both received a number of downvotes, and outside of obvious spam and low effort posting it's disappointing to not receive at least a quick reply as to why. FWIW, I disagree with certain more specific parts of your post and that it's
>separate from the motivation for the Tanden/Podesta conversation on display here
as I think they're basically linked. If there's one thing Clinton embodies at this point as much as any politician in modern history, it's an extreme wonky attention to detail and pragmatism. Even more then disciplines like engineering, I think it'd be fair to describe applied politics as "the art of the possible". Lessig represents pretty much the polar opposite perspective, beyond any of the boring modern mush polarization of "left" vs "right". He's the Ivory Tower theorist/idealist, and that is a philosophical divide that has inspired fierce arguments and feelings for probably millennia. Unfortunately he's done some real damage with that attitude and his presidential campaign attempt indicates to me that whatever lesson he learned from his last major work in national level applied politics hasn't stuck very well (or that he learned the wrong lesson).
So assuming they encountered that sort of approach of his elsewhere, I think it is a legitimate thing to be frustrated over. And internal private venting in an organization using blunter and more colorful language then would be appropriate in public is not something I consider to represent a problem in and of itself. A lot of us have had times where we've cussed out some contractor or partner company or for that matter government bureaucrats inside our organizations out of feelings of immense frustration, sometimes fully justified, sometimes not, and sometimes in the heat of a moment more due to overall stress beyond any individual actor. I've encouraged team mates to do that in fact, because I wanted them venting to me, never ever ever to an external party. It's human to get furious sometimes, but it's professional to then put a lid on it. Often we've had response discussions and had an initial meeting where angry stuff gets said and written, and then the rule is that everyone sleeps on it. Re-reading the next day always results in major toning down, sometimes seeing that in the wider scheme it's really not that big a deal. But you wouldn't see that if you just grabbed the angry emails themselves.
I guess, just, be careful about getting too absolutist in your reading of modern times, where the public objectively has more access to information, secure communications, and lower barriers to entry and participation then any point in human history. I find naked assertions like "never in American history has money had such a stranglehold on our elected officials" dubious given "American history" includes times when merely traveling to the capital might take months and represented significant outlay. Money has always played a role. Are you really sure about the relative levels of power behemoths of power like Standard Oil had vs now? Have you considered how much of an issue "money" is vs the sorts of political favors and horse trading that happened even 50-100 years ago? Is it really right to blame "money" as if voters themselves are somehow getting out decided given their level of participation? I'm very suspicious of talk of "blowing up the system" because historically the result of blowing up systems tends to be uniformly bad, not good. Building something good takes immense intelligence, work, consistent engagement, and also a shitload of luck. A lot less, I'll note, then, say, actually just getting voter turnout high, every two years, for decades in favor of a focused positive agenda. In other words, if you can't pull that off in a democratic system with very strong speech protections and rule of law, what exactly makes you think you'd do better having "blown it up"? Populist appeals to quick fixes should always be met with suspicion.
I donated to both his ill-fated Mayday PAC and his ill-fated presidential campaign last year. He is a selfless guy who is trying to address the root cause of US political dysfunction.
I wish him the best of luck in his future projects.