Its nice to see the GOP getting behind this rather than the Dems. I dont mean to bring up politics, but this article invokes the discussion. I would have expected this kind of support from the Dems but not the GOP. Biggest reason I say that is because the online community has mostly always swung to the left rather than to the right.
I think this is a case of Democratic politicians being afraid to criticize one of their own, as Ortiz is a Democrat with significant political ambitions.
The GOP has plenty of tech-friendly elected representatives despite the GOP's low share of the tech vote (Issa, Moran, Paul, Amash, etc). Tech freedom issues have a natural home in the GOP's free market wing. One of my hobbies (along with many other folks) is getting together the GOP with the tech industry.
I still can't over the fact that both of California's Democratic senators cosponsored PIPA and we haven't done anything about it. If we had elected Fiorina, maybe we would have had one less cosponsor from our state. That shows me that the tech industry still sucks at politics.
Silicon Valley's Democratic representatives in the House (Lofgren) are great on tech issues. But we get our asses kicked by Hollywood and unions at the state level.
Given the choice between recognition of basic civil rights (same sex marriage, reproductive rights) and a not-insane view of copyright law, I think I'd choose basic civil rights. The Right needs to get their social positions into the 20th century, or preferably the 21st century, before they can expect any kind of youth (read: techie) vote[1].
>Given the choice between recognition of basic civil rights (same sex marriage, reproductive rights) and a not-insane view of copyright law, I think I'd choose basic civil rights.
What makes you think you have to choose between them? Marriage is a state issue. The federal government has no business in it, and when try (e.g. DOMA) the courts can strike it down. Which means you can vote for Republicans federally and Democrats at the state level and get both of the things you want.
>"Given the choice between recognition of basic civil rights (same sex marriage, reproductive rights)"
It's funny that you lump those two together. Public opinion has been moving quickly in favor of gay marriage, but the trench warfare over abortion is the same as it always was. One NRO writer claims the country has gotten more more pro-life and more pro-gay over the last 30 years, and that sounds correct given my memory of the last time I found raw stats. More female voters identify as pro-life than pro-choice last time I checked, though you wouldn't know it in blue states.
Personally, I have too much libertarian in me to call myself pro-life. But I find that the left lacks intellectual honesty and serious engagement with the stance of the other side whenever I hear their rhetoric. They seem to convince through loud shouting and calling their opponents names, or labeling their own positions "basic civil rights".
Killing a human fetus may not be "murder" but it surely carries some moral weight. And no middle ground position will be stable without recognition of that.
My opinion is that nobody with knowledge of what a disaster Fiorina was as CEO could vote for her as senator. Even if they did agree with her political positions (which few in California do).
If it were Meg Whitman running for senator, I'd have voted for her in a heartbeat. I respect her. But Fiorina? No way!
I'm not knowledgable on her time at HP and your concerns sound legitimate. But Fiorina couldn't have been worse than Boxer/Feinstein on tech issues. They just voted for the internet tax in the Senate for chrissakes.
Fiorina's and Whitman's double defeat in 2010 was a big setback for those of us trying to convince the GOP that courting the tech vote is worth their trouble.
> I'm not knowledgable on her time at HP and your concerns sound legitimate.
Really, and you read hackernews? Florina was close to a sociopath.
It's about time we started paying our taxes, we were supposed to anyways, nothing new here.
> Fiorina's and Whitman's double defeat in 2010 was a big setback for those of us trying to convince the GOP that courting the tech vote is worth their trouble.
It wasn't a setback, they were running a sociopath and a soso ex eBay exec in a year when obama was running for reelection. The GOP just put out some sacrificial bodies out there and forgot about it.
There is no "close to" when it comes to Fiorina's sociopathy. And she doesn't even have the saving grace of competency.
Also 2010 was not actually an Obama re-election year. But the Republicans have a fundamental demographic problem in California, and I think that the national party understands this.
According to national trends, in 10-15 years, the problems that they are having in California are likely to become national problems until they can change their political identity. (Why do you think that the Republican leadership is trying to be soft on immigration reform?)
>According to national trends, in 10-15 years, the problems that they are having in California are likely to become national problems until they can change their political identity. (Why do you think that the Republican leadership is trying to be soft on immigration reform?)
The fundamental problem the Republicans have is that they have kind of an unstable coalition. The Democrats have a lock on the urban working class. That's close to half the country by itself, so the Republicans need a majority of everyone else in order to win. But "everyone else" is not a homogenous group. It's libertarians, religious conservatives, Wall St., rural blue collar workers, small business owners, etc. And it's shrinking as a percentage of the country, largely because "urban working class" is growing.
So the problem they have is that to get more voters, they have to gore somebody's ox. There are a huge ton of libertarian-leaning Democrats who would switch parties if the Republicans would stop pandering to religious extremists on social issues, but then they risk losing the huge voting block of religious conservatives. I personally think that could be a good strategy: Just say "screw it" and go to the left of the Democrats on social issues. If the Democrats stick with liberal social positions then the religious conservatives don't have any religious conservative candidate anymore, and they're still largely pro-free market people who may continue to vote Republican. Meanwhile if you can push the Democrats to the right on social issues then all the better, because now the Republicans can claim the growing demographic of urban voters who want liberal social positions, to say nothing of what it would do for women voters. But that's a pretty radical change.
Changing their position on immigration instead makes a lot of sense, because the growing Hispanic demographic leans pro-market and religious and is mostly disgusted with Republicans for their immigration policies. The problem is the result will be to increase polarization, because it allows the Republicans to double down on "monopolies are good + gays are bad" while making all the races closer, because it allows the Republicans to gain with Hispanics in urban areas, while giving the Democrats more votes among blue collar voters in rural areas who don't like the new immigration policy. And having a larger number of contentious races with more polarization is not likely to be good for the country.
The change on immigration feels to me like "too little, too late". The leadership would like to see the party's position change, and various leaders are following course.
But you have to go to elections with the party you have, not the one you want to have. Republicans voted in anti-immigration laws in Arizona and elsewhere. Those laws are very popular with the Republican base. Politicians running for office have to recognize that reality. And as they pander to that reality, they make comments that reinforce that. All of which hurts them with the Latino population.
Most companies of 30 people do not have as a major logistical problem, "Open envelopes filled with cash fast enough." eBay did.
I personally respect her. But eBay was on a path to success even before she showed up. And the eBay culture that developed has some notable imperfections.
More recently her tenure at HP has been disappointing. I personally am sympathetic to the theory that the depth of HPs problems were not fully understood by the stock market, and a period of severe disappointment was inevitable before they got back on track. But I can understand someone blaming that on her. (And indeed, unless something positive happens with the stock price, I'm not sure how much more time she'll get to right that ship.)
I see two reasons for that. First, the GOP candidates are all further from the political mainstream than the Democratic candidates. I'm not criticizing any of them or their politics, but they're very unlikely to get elected -- Scott Brown was the Republican with a chance and he opted out. This provides a certain degree of freedom to be bold.
Second, the prosecutor who pushed the Swartz case was a Democrat, so you'd expect Republicans to be pushing back. When a Republican Attorney General infringes on civil rights, the Democrats push back.
I wanted to mention why I downvoted. I am worried someone will misunderstand if I follow usual protocol and skip commenting.
The reason I downvoted your comment is because I think it crosses the "interesting to hackers" and "politics" greyline. As you know politics permeates society and avoiding all politics is just not possible. I understand that your comment was in good faith and not in the least bit antagonizing. I am conservative as well and it is always nice to see politicians doing the right thing. Double so if a group has often ignored their founding principles.
The core reason for my objection is that we must be active in the fight against conversation degradation. To this end I hope we will avoid politics even if the article itself is political.
> To this end I hope we will avoid politics even if the article itself is political.
So if the article is about politics, specifically, and how that involves tech, what's to be done? A comment thread about kung pao chicken? That's not useful.
Considering someone got thrown in the federal pokey for creating a script that increments the number in a URL, and then saved that output to a file.....
Yeah, I think we DO need to have that discussion on politics with regards to Hacker News.
No, this is new-school GOP: attack the Obama-appointed U.S. Attorney. It was the "old-school GOP" that pushed, for decades, for ever-escalating prosecutorial powers and tougher laws to put away the "bad guys." In the 1970's, it wasn't the "old-school GOP" pushing for accused criminals to be afforded their 5th, 6th, and 7th amendment rights.
There are a few voices in the new GOP that are better at civil liberties (Rand-effing-Paul). But you're right that the GOP has traditionally focused too much on law and order and too little for the rights of the accused. I have voted Democrat for prosecutor/DA type positions for this reason. It wouldn't have helped in MA though.
>There are a few voices in the new GOP that are better at civil liberties (Rand-effing-Paul).
Wake me when he gets bills passed. As far as I can tell he and his father are master grandstanders who don't really caucus with anyone or work to get bills through. They make pithy speeches to make young people feel good about voting straight-line GOP and guarantee their reelection. Unfortunately, voters seem more swayed by speeches than results.
He's sponsoring a bill repealing mandatory minimum sentences for marijuana crimes. You might want to send me your number so I can call and wake you up when it passes.
Please do. The Pauls always put up propaganda bills that never pass. I'd love to see it pass, although something tells me the right rank and file and the theocracts will lose their shit if this actually gets traction. If drug reform happens it'll happen via the left. Its not the GOP in Washington and California and other states making this stuff a reality. Its a mix of moderates and liberals that lean much towards the Democrats than the GOP.
Except when it comes to legislating religion, fighting the war on drugs, increasing defence spending/budget, etc...
The "small government" idea is almost just a talking point now for the Republicans (Note: I realize that some Republicans are truer to those values tha nothers).
Yup, I used to believe it until the Bush administration drove up the deficit more than any Dem administration ever had and all but the Tea Party gave him a pass. The GOP pays lip service to the idea, but they are anything but small government.
I have a hard time believing that accurately describes the evolution of your viewpoint.
For one, there was no Tea Party during the Bush administration. That term and the associated movement, such as it is, didn't come into broad use until early 2009.
For another, the final Federal deficit pre-debt crisis in 2007 was a mere $158B and had been steadily trending downward since the height of the previous recession five years earlier. Now we're four years past the peak of the last recession and deficits are routinely $1T+.
At least the GOP occasionally cares about spending discipline: Even Bush took his second term pledge to halve the deficit seriously. All the while Democrats were chiding the GOP for not spending enough, and today they describe a small cut in spending growth in apocalyptic terms.
> For another, the final Federal deficit pre-debt crisis in 2007 was a mere $158B and had been steadily trending downward since the height of the previous recession five years earlier. Now we're four years past the peak of the last recession and deficits are routinely $1T+.
I'm tired of these freaking lies. Debt per GDP shot way up under Bush and didn't stop shooting up at basically the same slope until after 2009. The intellectual dishonesty on the right is absolutely amazing.
Where does the name "Obama" appear in my comment? I certainly don't hate the president, but I wish he would take a few pages from Bill Clinton's playbook. There's a guy who made divided government work.
Bush spent like a drunken sailor. War isn't cheap and the decision to go to Iraq was rightfully criticized by the left at the time and we were proven right that, no, there aren't any WMDs in Iraq. Certainly Saddam was no threat to the US.
I hate how HN has become such a GOP/libertarian hangout. Now you guys just make up your own reality.
Which part of the giant spike in the deficit and spending graphs in 2008 did President Obama not support? Why did he argue to maintain spending at those levels for four years?
If 2007 was "drunken sailor" level spending, surely you'd agree to a budget with that level of spending + population growth/inflation? That's way below where we are now.
I agree that Bush spent more than was prudent. But it's nuts to think that's an argument that President Obama hasn't demonstrated much worse spending discipline. Stimulus levels were sold as a way to jumpstart the economy, not as a permanent level hundreds of billions higher than what Bush ever dreamed of spending. You can argue that we still need that level of spending, but you shouldn't argue that somehow it's not historically high.
Who's arguing for lower spending now? Who was arguing for it in 1995 (and got it!)? Do you really think if the GOP could snap its fingers and pass something like the Ryan budget they wouldn't? Where's the comparable low-spending Democratic budget?
Maybe high spending and/or high taxes are great things, but when it comes to spending discipline, right now, there is a difference in the parties' agendas.
So wait, one guy walked into office with a budget surplus, started 2 foolish wars, did tax cuts without proper service cuts, and threw us deep into the debt and you're criticizing the guy who tried to get us out of it via a stimulus which probably saved our economy from a depression? Oh ok.
In addition to what Sean pointed out, the Tea Party effectively started in 2007, as a small group of right-leaning folks on a couple of investing forums equally disgusted with both political parties. They had the idea to mail tea bags to Congress then as a form of protest, but it wasn't until two years later that that movement culminated in the official Tea Party. Some of these early people were later alienated as it quickly became more partisan.
So if the Tea Party started in 2007 as a small group disgusted with both parties, how does your original comment (not your later meaning-reversing edit!) make sense?
The establishment GOP gave Bush a pass on his deficit spending at the time. Only the nascent Tea Party criticized him for it then.
Hence I don't believe the establishment GOP anymore when they complain about Obama's deficit spending. One, it's self-serving not principled, and two, odds are if they win back power they'll deficit spend just like Bush and Obama, albeit while attempting to obfuscate it with artful accounting tricks (like spinning cutting ~$100B from the deficit over 10 years as a win).
They're crying crocodile tears for Aaron, I'm sure. :P
You say that as if politicians haven't taken positions in the past just to win elections (with no intention of following through, or without changing their beliefs on the larger issues raised).
And I'm sure the tears of Democrats are genuine :p
Politicians certainly fail to follow through on their promises. But by publicly supporting an issue they give opponents a way to attack them if they don't follow through. So there is some worth to making a public commitment, especially if it is frequent and loud.
The republicans would have all hackers in jail and on sex-crime registries because you know...they are tough on crime. Not saying democrats are better, but I give republicans no cred on these issues based on their history alone.
