
On the wikileak-ed emails from Tanden on Lessig - dankohn1
http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/151983995587/on-the-wikileak-ed-emails-between-tanden-and
======
dcposch
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.

~~~
snowwrestler
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.

~~~
dcposch
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.

It's called Call Time, and for the average congressperson, it's about four
hours _per day_ :
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/01/14/the-m...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/01/14/the-
most-depressing-graphic-for-members-of-congress/)

\--

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.

~~~
snowwrestler
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!

~~~
dcposch
> 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.

------
slantedview
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.

~~~
teraflop
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.

~~~
slantedview
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.

------
aub3bhat
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'"

Read more: [http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/matt-bruenig-neera-
tan...](http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/matt-bruenig-neera-tanden-joan-
walsh-hillary-clinton-223439#ixzz4NVay494i)

~~~
aaron695
> Journalist Glenn Greenwald also jumped into the conversation to suggest that
> Tanden had influenced Demos' decision to part ways with Bruenig

I see no real proof here?

~~~
tanderson92
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.

------
doe88
TLDR; _When they go low, you go high._

------
lhnz
You can't just blame the attacker, it's poor information security practice
which enabled the leaks.

~~~
Frondo
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.

~~~
lhnz
I am _not_ blaming the victim.

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.

------
IIAOPSW
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.

~~~
cjdkcnsnd
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.

~~~
byuu
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.

~~~
IIAOPSW
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.

~~~
byuu
I understand that, I just don't agree with it.

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.

~~~
IIAOPSW
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.

~~~
DasIch
Journalists do this all the time.

------
slantedview
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.

~~~
xoa
>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.

1\. [http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/March-
April-2004/story_le...](http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/March-
April-2004/story_lessig_marapr04.msp)

~~~
slantedview
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.

~~~
xoa
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.

