
Lamar Smith: Campaign Finance/Money - llambda
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=2012&type=I&cid=N00001811&newMem=N&recs=20
======
bane
So it's clear to me that congress is essentially corrupt. What's not clear is
what this kind of data is supposed to do outside of waiting patiently for the
next election cycle and voting the incumbent out -- ending up with somebody
who is probably just as corrupt.

\- Who do we report this to who can prosecute this?

\- What laws make this illegal? (or similarly, how do we make this kind of
behavior illegal if the gatekeepers to the law are the people who are taking
part in this?)

\- If we can't make it it illegal, how do we make it unethical?

\- How do we, as the citizenry, punish this?

I'm convinced at this point that the kind of people who make it into Congress,
incumbent or not, are just going to be more of the same kind of quasi-criminal
we have there now, so fighting with the vote is simply not enough.

Is there a way to use the courts? The DoJ?

Or are we simply going to have to wait for critical mass to develop behind
some political movement that will stamp this out?

In other words, with Congress in single digit approval ratings, what seems to
be the road block that we as the citizenry can grind into dust to affect the
change we want to see but haven't yet done so?

~~~
cynicalkane
Campaign finance isn't illegal, nor is it a sign of evil. It's a sign of a
broken system, but we have to distinguish between an evil system, and a good
system filled with evil people.

American activists would be better served if they had a good notion of a
theory of government. The dominant attitude in activism, on any side, these
last three or four years, has been one of making the government do X, where X
is some extraordinary ill-defined goal.

So people are offended when X doesn't happen, and begin to suspect Congressmen
are evil. The truth is probably more like this--Congressmen are good people in
general, but selected by their appeal to moneyed interests and influential
political causes. Then they are thrust into an environment where everyone
wants them to do their bidding, and so condition themselves to ignore most
sources of information, particularly sources outside their own interest, or
sources they don't understand. This appears to an outsider to be like cronyism
and willful ignorance. The reality is they haven't a clue about certain
things, and in fact that's part of the reason why they got elected...

TL;DR: don't fix the people. You won't get anywhere making unrealistic demands
on anyone forced to conform to a bad process. Instead, fix the process.

~~~
bane
_Campaign finance isn't illegal, nor is it a sign of evil._

I agree with the first part, but not the second. Otherwise there simply
wouldn't be a reason to push these numbers out as if they were a sign of
_some_ kind of badness.

In a representational democracy such as ours, Congress is hired to represent
the interests of their constituents not the interests of who pays the most
money. That the voice of the constituents appears to not be heard or
represented at all is the thing that's wrong.

Simply buying your a vote for your interests is not how this is supposed to be
working. And the people who can actually change it are the ones who are being
bought -- virtually guaranteeing no opportunity for change to occur, despite
immense desire from the electorate for exactly that change to occur.

------
tzs
I think the point the submitter is trying to make is that Smith has high
contributions ($87k) form the tv/movies/music industry (followed by $64k from
computers/internet).

At first that looks bad. For comparison, look at Senator Wyden, who has been
prominent as a SOPA opponent. He doesn't have any tv/movies/music industry
donations in his top 20!

However, if you look deeper, the reason he doesn't have any in his top 20 is
that he has such big contributions from others that it pushes the
tv/movies/music industry out of the top 20. If you expand the list to show his
top 50, you find tv/movies/music at $75k, not far behind the amount they gave
to Smith.

------
semisight
Try checking our biggest ally Zoe Lofgren (of reddit fame
[http://www.reddit.com/r/SOPA/comments/nfhhy/member_of_house_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/SOPA/comments/nfhhy/member_of_house_judiciary_committee_ama_on_sopa/)).

She's taking money from tech and VCs. She's really no better than he is, she
just happens to be right this time.

~~~
CamperBob
She has to take money from _somebody_ , or she doesn't get elected.

Hence the problem.

------
md1515
I'm not so sure we even need a congress anymore. Honestly...hear me out.

The purpose of congress is to provide representation for American citizens who
could not travel to Washington D.C. to vote on the bills and amendments that
congressmen take part in.

These days reporters in D.C. can blog about all bills or report them in news
stories instantly. So U.S. citizens are always in the know. More importantly,
American citizens can easily vote with the current technology we have. Youth
can use the internet, elders the telephone etc.

What do you guys think? I doubt it would happen...congress is too ingrained in
our constitution and 'murica in general...

~~~
JimmyL
I think your core assumption - that "US citizens are always in the know - is
optimistic (here's a survey to whet your thinking -
<http://pewresearch.org/politicalquiz/>). I think most Americans reading this
site are, but we're not exactly a majority. There's a whole lot of people who
don't live in the top-thirty cities in the country and don't have the time to
spend a few hours a day reading up on politics. And even those who do,
certainly don't have the background to have an informed opinion on
_everything_ that Government deals with. To pick an example at random, could
you deliver informed comments and votes on issues relating to the work of the
Bureau of Land Management in southern Utah, and how their grazing policies
affect farmers? I know I couldn't.

The bottom line is that governing is hard, and doing is adequately requires a
lot of knowledge about a lot of different things. Pick the Senate committee
with the least-interesting sounding name - for me, that'd be the Subcommittee
on Jobs, Rural Economic Growth and Energy Innovation or the Joint Committee on
Printing - and try and watch a video feed of it in session for a few
hours...the amount of things they have to deal with is amazingly broad, and
way beyond the ability of any one person to capture (hence the importance of
having a class of professional political staffers).

It's a similar reason why I'm in favor - generally - of lobbying. Is the way
it's done now right? Not at all. But is there room in a well-run government
for external subject matter experts with agendas? Certainly.

Lastly, I just don't think direct democracy works especially well. Check out
California for the canonical example of what happens when you let people vote
on complex issues in isolation of one another, with the information dumbed-
down to target people who are willing to only budget an hour of their time per
week on thinking about politics. Complex issues with national and
international repercussions should be debated and decided by people who can
study them in-depth and who represent a cross-section of the population, as
opposed to those with the economic freedom to pick one or two to become
involved with - I'm not saying that we have this now, but it's more what we
need than a platform where OWS/Tea Party crowds can overwhelm a web vote on
something.

~~~
FD3SA
Directy democracy fails for exactly the reasons you have stated, yet those
reasons all have one source: complexity.

The system of law was designed not by engineers, but by law makers who had no
concept of system architecture and runaway complexity. They employed an
imprecise language to construct an unstable structure which requires
continuous patching and propping, resulting in a quagmire of legislation, open
to manipulation due to its inherently contradictory and subjective foundation.

This problem can only be solved by proper system design, but it requires a
hard reset of extant legislation. Once the law is written such that every
literate citizen can understand it, we will have arrived at direct democracy.

~~~
JimmyL
I'm not even sure that clear, literate laws would do it. They'd help a huge
degree, for certain, but I think the breadth of issues that Congress has to
consider would still overwhelm pretty much anyone who wants to deal with it,
save those who can afford a professional staff to help them out.

Consider an issue like water-use rights on the Colorado River. Even if you
codified all the regulations relating to it into a well-organized and clear
format, there's still the difficulty of figuring out what the right answer is.
How would an average literate and interested citizen consult with farmers,
environmental groups, conservationists, power companies, land-use
stakeholders, first-nations groups, agricultural companies, municipalities,
individuals who have been on the river for decades, bureaucrats, etc. and then
link all those consultations to what's going on with other affiliated
riversheds, general environmental and developmental polities, fish stocks,
etc.

Even if the law is super-easy to understand, I think it would still be
difficult for an average unsupported person to understand the subtitles and
implications of something like a water-use bill, let alone one that regulates
complex financial and regulatory transactions.

~~~
nitrogen
Use interactive infographics to visualize the effects of various legal
algorithms. Let people drag allocation around, tweak parameters, etc. Combine
all the data, including expected satisfaction of the various interested
parties, with expert statements from all perspectives. Display the results of
regression tests (e.g. display how this change in the algorithmic law would
affect reality now if it had been made 5, 10, or 20 years ago). Thus, you
allow non-experts to make informed decisions (exactly how congresspeople are
supposed to work now).

In the resource allocation example, each interested party would state the
amount of the resource they currently receive, the minimum amount they need to
survive, and the maximum amount they could use efficiently, and their expected
revenue in all cases (if they are a commercial resource user). They could also
indicate their relative satisfaction with the various allocation algorithms
proposed by engineers and others. Independent audits could determine how
essential a given resource or resource user's product is to the economy, and
how efficient the various resource users are.

I'd expect this would require less supporting staff than our current
legislative system. Right now, each representative has his or her own complete
advisory staff. If the same data is shared by everyone, you'd only need enough
people to audit the data, algorithms, and visualization systems to avoid
manipulation of outcomes, freeing up current staffers to contribute directly
to the economy.

~~~
FD3SA
This method would have the immense benefit of turning a subjective "policy"
into an objective algorithm, whereupon its direct impact could be measured
numerically via simulations. As it stands, policy submissions are vague tomes
of legal jargon with no measurable effects, coupled with a grandiose vision of
implementation which is designed to elicit a positive emotional response from
the electorate.

------
sehugg
That's nothing. Senator Leahy, the other major supporter of SOPA, and who
equates the internet to a "warehouse" besieged by criminals, has had quite the
payday over his career:
[http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=...](http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=Career&cid=N00009918&type=I)

------
cyrus_
Is it just me or are those amounts really low? Surely the tech industry can
pony up another $50,000 and get this guy on their side?

~~~
nextparadigms
They seem low to me, too. Perhaps OpenSecrets doesn't have all the data.

------
gyardley
We might disagree with his policies, but this isn't evidence of corruption in
the slightest.

These not-particularly-large donations could very well be a _consequence_ of
his political opinions, not (as everyone seems so eager to assume) their
cause.

That's how most political donations work, after all - you give to people you
already agree with.

