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SOPA is not dead. This is an election year. One incumbent President, 33 Senators, and 435 Representatives all desperately need money. The President needs to
by jellicle 15y ago
SOPA is not dead. This is an election year. One incumbent President, 33 Senators, and 435 Representatives all desperately need money. The President needs to raise upwards of $1,000,000,000. The Senators need to raise upwards of $10,000,000 each. The Representatives need to raise upwards of $2,000,000 each.
The media industry is awash in money.
This is how your government works: a bill that is either good or bad for a wealthy industry is proposed, and then the backers go to that industry and hold out their hands. If sufficient money is forthcoming, the good bill is passed or the bad bill is not passed. If sufficient money is not forthcoming, the reverse happens.
The bill will be redrafted, with some mitigating clauses added here and there. Implementation will be delayed a year or two, to make sure that you'll have forgotten who voted for it by the time any consequences occur. All of the Congresspeople who expressed reservations about it will be visited with large checks. And it will be resubmitted within a few months. A couple of folks who have been greased especially well will stand up and say, "My concerns about the bill have been addressed." The new bill will pass. Obama will not comment on the new bill and will sign it privately, without press coverage.
Your objections raised the cost of this bill for the media industry. Congratulations, you cost them some money. You in no way affected the final outcome. To affect the final outcome, you would need to signal that you represent a large enough sum of campaign money to counterbalance the money-weight of the media industry. You have not even come close to doing so.
- rcfox 15y ago> The President needs to raise upwards of $1,000,000,000. The Senators need to raise upwards of $10,000,000 each. The Representatives need to raise upwards of $2,000,000 each. Why?
- maeon3 15y agoTalking points on news stations are not free. Elections are popularity contests, the more money you have to buy airtime the more chances you get to get citizens to vote for you.
- redthrowaway 15y agoMedia blitzes in battleground states don't pay for themselves. Since records have been kept, the presidential candidate who raises the most cash has won 94% of the time.
- endtime 15y ago>Since records have been kept, the presidential candidate who raises the most cash has won 94% of the time. Correlation is not causation...I'd expect the candidate best at winning elections also to be the candidate best at raising money almost all the time.
- rcfox 15y agoTo be fair, he didn't imply a causation.
- endtime 15y agoI think he did, given that he was answering the "Why?" which referred to a claim of logical necessity: "The President needs to raise upwards of $1,000,000,000."
- redthrowaway 15y agoBoth are true. The candidate most likely to win will raise the most money, and the candidate who raises the most money will be most likely to win. Positive feedback loops are not a logical fallacy.
- wisty 15y agoMore cynically, companies donate hoping to recoup the favor. They don't donate to a candidate unless they think there's a good chance the candidate will be in a position to pay back the favor.
- jellicle 15y agoBecause they like their job and want to continue to have it next January?
- trafficlight 15y agoHe's talking about campaign funds. $1 Billion is a little high though. According to Wikipedia for the 2008 presidential election, Obama raised $779 million and McCain did $383 million. There were 148 canidates and all total the 2008 election raised $1.64 billion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_for_the_2008_United_States_presidential_election http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_for_the_2008_United...
- despite2 15y agoSaying Obama "needs" to raise $1B was probably wrong, but the predictions I've heard are that he will raise $1B.
- Vivtek 15y agoAnd honestly, I don't think the media industry accounted for more than a few hundred thou. He can afford to stiff them - and thus he did so. By doing that, he simulated having a spine on an issue that has clear bipartisan public support and is guaranteed not to piss off the _real_ power - banks. Obvious calculus. Obama's a shitty President, but man is he a fantastic campaigner.
- bff 15y agoCampaign money also comes from people though, so if enough people care about an issue then even politicians who only care about raising money will respond. A quick google search shows that a large amount of Obama's money comes from individual donors (http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/10/grassroots-donors-swell-war-chests.html http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/10/grassroots-donors-sw...) so he has a strong incentive to do popular things. Someone else posted that people who raise more money tend to win elections, but this could also be caused by the more popular candidate raising more money. People might also be more willing to send money to a candidate if they think that candidate will win since no one wants to waste money on a losing candidate.
- logn 15y agoExcept companies can't vote... not yet at least. The one thing more important than campaign contribs is votes. Granted money equates to a certain number of votes. But as long as money-votes < protest-votes we win.
- bh42222 15y agoBut as long as money-votes < protest-votes we win. Your math is flawless. Your perception of actual reality is deeply flawed. I envy your idealism.
- asnyder 15y agoYeah, but thanks to Citizens United they can form Super PACs and spend as much money as they want influencing the uninformed, which is just as good as having the ability to vote, if note more as you have the votes of all the people you've relentlessly fooled.
- andrewpi 15y agoThe problem is uninformed people then. We should do a better job informing people. No 30-second Super PAC ad can be as effective at sitting down with your friends and colleagues and explaining the issue to them.
- angrycoder 15y agoWhat a load of defeatist, pessimistic bullshit. The bill was defeated once, what makes you think it wouldn't be defeated again? If anything, this weeks SOPA protest finally provided the missing link for slacktivism: when faced a titanic force with enormous amounts of money that seems unbeatable, make friends with another titanic force who's interests are not served by the original monster.
- TruthElixirX 15y ago"The bill was defeated once, what makes you think it wouldn't be defeated again?" Because each time those in opposition much launch a larger more costly campaign and take time out of their normal productive jobs. Proposing bullshit legislation does not cost the Congressmen/women anything extra, and at times can actually be profitable for them. They can just bring it up next week and we all have to drop everything again and try to defeat it. Eventually people get fatigued or decide the continued fight is no longer worth it.
- jellicle 15y agoLet's take a look at Obama's statement, which the popular press described as opposition to SOPA: "That is why the Administration calls on all sides to work together to pass sound legislation this year that provides prosecutors and rights holders new legal tools to combat online piracy originating beyond U.S. borders" This isn't rocket surgery. And no, Reddit blacking out their site does not qualify as a "titanic force". The total campaign contributions for every single Reddit reader for a year are what, $10,000? Chris Dodd has more than that in his freezer right now.
- yuhong 15y agoOf course, note that Reddit is not the only site that participated. But ultimately I think it is the press coverage resulting from it that ended up being the major force.
- angrycoder 15y agoYou keep talking about money. If your strategy for beating a guy who has 1 billion dollars is to make sure you have 1 billion and one dollars, you are doing it wrong.
- fufulabs 15y agoNo, the efficiency of communicating and organizing a mass protest online is very primitive right now and YET we managed to defeat this bill. 5 to 10 months from now tools will get more efficient, more people will be online, TV and other media will be faster to report Internet happenings thus making us more powerful in pulling out a 'rock' (voter influence) to the lobbyist's 'scissors' (money)
- Iv 15y agoBillions lost in advertisement and aimed at corrupting politics... What a waste for the economy.