patrick.net

msilenus says

Obama won't back SOPA.

The qualifier in the first paragraph is important: "if it encourages censorship, undermines cybersecurity or disrupts the structure of the Internet..."

Censorship, means the act of an official(s) deciding what speech is permissible.

That's not the issue with SOPA. It creates no government censors whose job it is to discover, investigate, and remove websites that violate some kind of official guidelines on speech.

There was a great cartoon on the front page that showed the connection between Censorship and overzealous enforcement of IP rights, a few days ago.

What SOPA does entail is establishing a system that is so biased towards IP "rights" owners, that it is almost as bad - maybe worse - for free speech than "real" Censorship.

An IP Rights Holder files a complaint, and a US based website is nixed from the internet without a hearing, or even a warning. The entire Onus in the process is on the website owner, who has to fight to get his site back up, the same way the Drug War forfeiture laws work.

I don't think I go out on a limb when I say that Disney probably has a lot more money than Patrick.

*DING*, on the "Censorship" issue, Obama will sign, as it is about IP enforcement, not "real" censorship.

A great friend of SOPA, Lamar Smith, was also quoted in the same article. He seems confident that it will be signed into law:

U.S. Representative Lamar Smith, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said his Stop Online Piracy Act meets the administration’s tests. Smith announced on Jan. 13 that he would remove a provision that would require Internet service providers, when ordered by a court, to block access to non-U.S. websites offering pirated content or counterfeit goods. The bill’s opponents say this could hurt the domain-name system.

In a statement yesterday, Smith said that censorship doesn’t include enforcing laws against “foreign thieves” who steal content.

The domain name issue was a problem (and also, it opens a can of worms about which nation - or nations - can exercise "control" of the internet "backbone", a fight I suppose the US does not want to start right now) Now it's not.

It also means that the biggest offenders, the sites that *DO* abuse US copyrights, mostly located in China, Russia, etc. are immune.

*DING* Structure issue solved, Obama will sign.

I leave the cybersecurity issues for somebody more technologically astute than I to explain. I don't know much about that aspect of the bill, though I dimly remember reading something about how implementation of SOPA may create security issues.

After writing the above, I went and read the WH Blog:

Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small.

The qualifies are different here than the apparent paraphrase in the BW article:

While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.

Freedom of Expression in the United States is not unlimited, of course. Is the government giving more tools to assist IP holders in going after "IP rights violators" a reduction of freedom of expression?

My earlier assertion that aggressive IP Enforcement processes are not being considered a form of Censorship is still reasonable, I think. The freedom of expression generally doesn't exclude the idea that you are "violating IP rights", which is not a "Lawful Activity".

This statement I think encapsulates the WH's position:

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 while staying true to the principles outlined above in this response. We should never let criminals hide behind a hollow embrace of legitimate American values.

Here's what's going to happen. Obama needs to please two industries that are at loggerheads over SOPA: Internet Companies like Google and Facebook on one hand, and the Entertainment Industry on the other. Both big sources of money for his 2012 Campaign as well as the Democratic Party.

The best case scenario for him is that the bill is pushed back past the Elections, and he will use all his charm to convince the voters, the Internet Companies, and the Entertainment Industry he's going to only sign a bill that has the best of what they all respectively (don't) want if he is relected.

It's also the worst case scenario for the public, since a second term Obama won't have to pander to the Techie Voters and Liberal Base and can sign an Entertainment Industry friendly bill without any consequences for himself.

Failing that, he's going to push to water down the provisions that penalize or require onerous compliance for Online Advertisers, Search Engines, etc. At the same time, he's going to let the current SOPA process more or less continue as it is when it comes to websites, to satisfy the members of the MPAA and RIAA --- and DLC Piper.

Oh please. You have to see that someone else could just as easily invert your formatting to get:

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 while staying true to the principles outlined above in this response. We should never let criminals hide behind a hollow embrace of legitimate American values.

Yours is, of course, the typical liberal reaction to victory: scrambling desperately to find defeat in it. From my second link:

Clinton did enjoy one major triumph in his first year, when he passed a budget bill that raised the top tax rate, expanded the earned-income tax credit, created a new national-service program for graduates, and reformed other parts of the budget. This was the progressive apogee of the Clinton administration. Liberals at the time viewed it as a sad half-measure. The focus was on deficit reduction, not public investment, and each iteration of the legislation that worked its way through the congressional machinery emerged less inspiring than the last. “The Senate’s machinations on President Clinton’s budget plan have left many Democratic House members feeling angry and betrayed,” noted a New York Times editorial.

...

Harry Truman has become the patron saint of dispirited Democrats, the fighting populist whose example is invariably cited in glum contrast to whatever bumbling congenital compromiser happens to hold office at any given time. In fact, liberals spent the entire Truman presidency in a state of near-constant despair. ... Liberal columnist Max Lerner decried Truman’s mania for “cooperation” and his eagerness “to blink [past] the real social cleavage and struggles,” attributing this pathological eagerness to avoid conflict to his “middle-class mentality.” (Some contemporary critics have reached the same psychoanalysis of Obama, substituting his bi-racial background as the cause.) The New Republic’s Richard Strout lamented how “little evidence he has shown of being able to lift up and inspire the masses.” The historian Richard Pells has written that in the eyes of liberals at the time, “the president remained an incorrigible mediocrity.”

...

For almost all of the past 60 years, liberals have been in a near-constant emotional state of despair, punctuated only by brief moments of euphoria and occasional rage. When they’re not in charge, things are so bleak they threaten to move to Canada; it’s almost more excruciating when they do win elections, and their presidents fail in essentially the same ways: He is too accommodating, too timid, too unwilling or unable to inspire the populace. (Except for Johnson, who was a bloodthirsty warmonger.)

Rupert Murdoch, on this issue, has his head on straight. He understands that he lost, and has the good sense to be livid about it:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/15/murdoch_twitter_rant_sopa/

msilenus says

The focus was on deficit reduction, not public investment, and each iteration of the legislation that worked its way through the congressional machinery emerged less inspiring than the last.

Interesting times we live in, when tax increases for the purpose of debt reduction is seen by some as a MAJOR liberal/progressive victory. From my view it was a victory in the sense that a President was permitted to do good, but I don't know about "progressive apogee."

I guess when a democratic President is allowed to be successful, which risks the possibility of his one day pursuing progressive policies, or even worse, being reelected, it is a progressive victory of sorts.

In the context of today's Congress, it looks like a coup. To the GOP of 2012, admitting that raising taxes can shrink the deficit is grounds for being drummed out of the party, and any proposal that raises taxes by even one penny is worth filibustering forever. They're men of their word, and they signed their oaths.

I read that passage and was overcome by nostalgia for a saner day.

If you want to understand why attacking the deficit with tax increases is a liberal victory, I recommend reading this piece on tax cuts:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/what-we-miss-when-we-talk-about-tax-cuts/2011/08/25/gIQAwAiftP_blog.html#pagebreak

An obvious corrolary is that closing a deficit with tax increases protects progressive programs.

See also some of these graphs:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/we-read-so-you-dont-have-to-cea-chair-alan-kruegers-inequality-speech/2011/08/25/gIQAlma9tP_blog.html

Government is inherently redistributive when it's funded progressively. Clinton achieved that with his budget.

msilenus says

An obvious corrolary is that closing a deficit with tax increases protects progressive programs.

True. IT's stunning how far to the right we are now. Basically on a trajectory for either outright fascist dictatorship, or a major political backlash swing in the other direction, after they start denying basic government services to the masses.

But then the PTB would do anything to prevent that.

marcus says

Basically on a trajectory for either outright fascist dictatorship, or a major political backlash swing in the other direction...

Marcus, you seem like a generally level-headed fellow. I honestly don't understand how you fall prey to hyperbole of this sort.

The U.S. is allergic to authoritarianism. It's deeply ingrained in the culture. America simply doesn't produce many men like Hitler, Stalin, Mossolini, and we're too suspicious to elect them when we do. The worst we've done in recent memory was Bush. Say what you will about him, he wasn't interested in internal suppression. He wasn't interested in subverting Democracy. He expanded executive power to be sure, but he worked within the system to do it. When courts ruled against him, he abided.

Buck up, chap. We're doing alright.

Nomograph says

Go spend years of your life and millions of dollars creating something of value, give it away for free, and then come talk to me.

Was it invented from scratch, or did one stand on the shoulders of giants?

If somebody invents a chip, did they share theur royalties with all the physicists, chemists, and metallurgists who came before them and made their invention possible with their discoveries - much of which was thanks to public research funding and/or was never copyrighted or patented to begin with?

How about their high school science teachers, Comp Sci 101 professor? Do they get a share of the royalties? How about the office gal who made sure their paychecks arrived each month? Or their mommas who fed them and sent them to college so they could learn to teach them? They couldn't have done what they did without 'em.

There is no such thing as intellectual property. Let me know what the metes and bounds are of the intellectual property, or how much it weighs and how wide it is. Restricting information retards progress.

That god modern IP rights didn't exist in the 19th Century, or we'd still be working on the combustion engine.

Even so, I'm not opposed to moderate, 7-14 years of exclusive rights as a reward. But not eternal privileges to immortal fictional persons.

Democratic Moderates don't want to win. That's why they keep pissing on their liberal base.

You know, the people who pound the pavement, man the phones, register voters, bus in the poor and homeless voters to the polls. Screw them! We need to triangulate. Funny that the Republicans do the exact opposite, and make their own (insane) case without apologies, yet attract enough independents to win much of the time.

It's amazing to me that we live in times where:

1. The previous democratic president and his third way pals supported a massive push for deregulation, from the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act to the Commodity Futures "Modernization" Act.
2. Liberals from deep blue sections of the country who warned against deregulation in the mid to late 90s had their concerns dismissed by their own party leadership.
3. Congress passes bills to eliminate 4th Amendment Protections and empowers the President to determine who gets them and who doesn't
4. Torture was widespread and systemic (not a few rotten apples)
5. America is actively bombing four countries over a one year period (Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, and Libya). And that's just what we know about.
6. Despite a Financial Industry failure exponentially worse than the S&L Crisis of the 80s, not a single major executive has seen the inside of a prison. Reversion to the prior regulatory regime that had a fantastic track record, has not occurred.
7. Gitmo, America's biggest black hole of prestige since My Lai, remains open.
8. America reserves to itself the right to capture or assassinate civilians outside of the United States at the whim of the President without any judicial review or oversight.

... But we live in the most progressive times ever.

msilenus says

Rupert Murdoch, on this issue, has his head on straight. He understands that he lost, and has the good sense to be livid about it:

Didn't his organizations hack into people's phones? Yeah, that's the guy to talk about "stealing" information with.

marcus says

Basically on a trajectory for either outright fascist dictatorship, or a major political backlash swing in the other direction, after they start denying basic government services to the masses.

I think the latter is in the cards, but it may not even take further attempts to steal our pre-paid benefits ("Entitlements") to keep the status quo functional, Pax Americana in particular. The Demographics and the timing of cyclical attitude changes are with us, and underemployed, overeducated adults can be quite ornery. Negative trends are not reversed by doing the same things more slowly.

I'd like to think we're at the tail end of about 40 years of a conservative cycle. 1930-1970 saw a liberal period, with victory over fascism, widespread agreement on developmental and Keynesian economics, and expanding social justice in civil rights and union membership.

1970-2010 has been the Counter-Reaction; an emphasis on rugged individualism and freedom, expressed in neoliberal economic policies, while various attempts were made to impose harsh punishments of personal behavior. Even in religion, we saw the decline of traditionally communitarian mainline Christianity and the increase in membership of individualistic (even Greedy: "Jesus wants you to be Rich!" "Name it and Claim it!) and fundamentalist Evangelical and Pentecostal churches: obscurantism. Self-help and self-empowerment was the name of the game.

Like in the stock market, political fortunes seem the most hopeless the moment they about to improve drastically.

At least, this is how I feel in my more optimistic moments. We could also get the reverse, a double-down on stupidity. However, I don't think Weimar is a good fit for the US: Germany had less experience not only as a democracy (1918), but also as a unified Country (1871).

thunderlips11 says

Democratic Moderates don't want to win. That's why they keep pissing on their liberal base.

http://nymag.com/news/politics/liberals-jonathan-chait-2011-11/index4.html

Activists measure progress against the standard of perfection, or at least the most perfect possible choice. Historians gauge progress against what came before it.

By that standard, Obama’s first term would indeed seem to qualify as gangsta shit. His single largest policy accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act, combines two sweeping goals—providing coverage to the uninsured and taming runaway medical-cost inflation—that Democrats have tried and failed to achieve for decades. Likewise, the Recovery Act contained both short-term stimulative measures and increased public investment in infrastructure, green energy, and the like. The Dodd-Frank financial reform, while failing to end the financial industry as we know it, is certainly far from toothless, as measured by the almost fanatical determination of Wall Street and Republicans in Congress to roll it back.

Beneath these headline measures is a second tier of accomplishments carrying considerable historic weight. A bailout and deep restructuring of the auto industry that is rapidly being repaid, leaving behind a reinvigorated sector in the place of a devastated Midwest. Race to the Top, which leveraged a small amount of federal seed money into a sweeping national wave of education experiments, arguably the most significant reform of public schooling in the history of the United States. A reform of college loans, saving hundreds of billions of dollars by cutting out private middlemen and redirecting some of the savings toward expanded Pell Grants. Historically large new investments in green energy and the beginning of regulation of greenhouse gases. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act for women. Elimination of several wasteful defense programs, equality for gays in the military, and consumer-friendly regulation of food safety, tobacco, and credit cards.

Of the postwar presidents, only Johnson exceeds Obama’s domestic record, and Johnson’s successes must be measured against a crushing defeat in Vietnam. Obama, by contrast, has enjoyed a string of foreign-policy successes—expanding targeted strikes against Al Qaeda (including one that killed Osama bin Laden), ending the war in Iraq, and helping to orchestrate an apparently successful international campaign to rescue Libyan dissidents and then topple a brutal kleptocratic regime. So, if Obama is the most successful liberal president since Roosevelt, that would make him a pretty great president, right?

If this is what getting pissed on feels like, then it would behoove the base to learn to enjoy a good golden shower. They don't come along very often.

msilenus says

http://nymag.com/news/politics/liberals-jonathan-chait-2011-11/index4.html

Excellent article msilenus. Patrick, you should post it.

Chait is doing what Limbaugh did when the Republicans passed Medicare Part D without providing a lick of additional revenue to support it.

Limbaugh was fielding calls left and right from outraged Conservative Base members and explaining to them that passing it would enable the Republicans to collect the Senior Votes.

Republicans passed Medicare Part D as a handout to the RX industry in hopes of getting campaign contributions for 2004. Moderate democrats want to pass SOPA as a handout for their Entertainment donors. U
msilenus says

His single largest policy accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act, combines two sweeping goals—providing coverage to the uninsured and taming runaway medical-cost inflation—that Democrats have tried and failed to achieve for decades.

The most important provisions have yet to become active. The pre-existing conditions stuff doesn't come into effect until 2014.

Other parts of the bill have already been repealed before they even went into effect.

It also has nothing to do with single payer. It is merely an attempt to salvage a rotting plant by trimming back some branches. It's a modified version of the Romney inspired Massachusetts laws.
msilenus says

Likewise, the Recovery Act contained both short-term stimulative measures and increased public investment in infrastructure, green energy, and the like.

Handouts for Democratic Party contributors.

msilenus says

The Dodd-Frank financial reform, while failing to end the financial industry as we know it, is certainly far from toothless, as measured by the almost fanatical determination of Wall Street and Republicans in Congress to roll it back.

It creates a bunch of toothless agencies and adds reporting requirements. Big Deal.

Brooksley Born was supposed to have had the power to regulate derivatives trading, but Greenspan and Rubin got Clinton to nix that in the bud. Just like Geithner, Summers, et al. will get Obama to nix any new alphabet soup agency's recommendations. The same will happen to any these new agencies that tries to regulate.

I remember when I saw Obama's advisers on the campaign and said "This looks good". Then we he got elected, they were all shunted to powerless panels while Wall Street veterans got the positions of power in the administration.

It'll be just as effective as Sarbanes-Oxley, which did nothing to prevent the Financial Crisis.

Why not re-enact Glass-Steagal instead? Because Wall Street gave 3x the money to Obama they gave to McCain.

Creating more alphabet soup agencies is less important than bringing back a set of regulations we know from experience worked to prevent the kinds of outrageous stuff we see today, and did so for almost 60 years.

msilenus says

Of the postwar presidents, only Johnson exceeds Obama’s domestic record, and Johnson’s successes must be measured against a crushing defeat in Vietnam. Obama, by contrast, has enjoyed a string of foreign-policy successes—expanding targeted strikes against Al Qaeda (including one that killed Osama bin Laden), ending the war in Iraq, and helping to orchestrate an apparently successful international campaign to rescue Libyan dissidents and then topple a brutal kleptocratic regime. So, if Obama is the most successful liberal president since Roosevelt, that would make him a pretty great president, right?

How about Nixon? Expanded Food Stamps, EPA, Clean Air Act, OSHA, etc.

All of which have far more oomph than the token reforms of our utterly broken and unreformable health insurance system or financial regulatory system. Our last liberal President was a Republican.

You just dismissed more than two hundred billion dollars in direct spending with the statement "Handouts for Democratic Party contributors."

Don't feel the need to substantiate that claim. It's only two hundred billion dollars. Surely you've read a few reports of corruption in distributing the money, and that's representative of the whole picture. The direct spending we're talking about is only about a quarter of the budget for the whole Iraq war, or about four Gulf Wars.

Your cynicism is breathtaking.

Did liberals really expect more? I didn’t. But when you dig deeper, liberal melancholy hangs not so much on substantive objections but on something more inchoate and emotional: a general feeling that Obama is not Ronald Reagan. Obama invited the contrast with Reagan himself when he noted during the campaign, “Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not.” And yet so far at least, this country does not feel fundamentally, systemically changed by Obama in the way that it is remembered to have been by Reagan.

But here again, memory is problematic. Reagan, you’ll recall, spent most of his administration raising taxes, signing arms-control treaties, and otherwise betraying right-wing dogma. Yes, his accomplishments were more substantive than Nixon’s or Clinton’s, but they were not quite the sweeping, nation-transforming stuff liberals enjoy recalling in horror. In terms of lasting change, Obama probably has matched Reagan—or, at least, he will if he can win reelection and consolidate health-care reform and financial regulation and tilt the Supreme Court further left than he already has.

And yet Obama will never match among Democrats Reagan’s place in the psyche of his own party, as reflected in the endless propaganda campaign to give him full credit for the end of stagflation and communism, the dogmatic insistence that everything the great hero said offers the One True Path for all time, and the project to name every possible piece of American property after him. Republican Reagan-worship is a product of a pro-authority mind-set that liberals, who inflate past heroes only to criticize their contemporaries, cannot match. If recent history is any guide, they are simply not capable of having that kind of relationship with a president. They are going to question their leader, not deify him, and search for signs of betrayal in any act of compromise he or she may commit. This exhausting psychological torment is no way to live. Then again, the current state of the Republican Party suggests it may be healthier than the alternative.

msilenus says

You just dismissed more than two hundred billion dollars in direct spending with the statement "Handouts for Democratic Party contributors."

The job creation from the stimulus was greatly overstated. Another "Green Business" and stimulus recipient just laid off 40 people:

http://www.toledoblade.com/Energy/2012/01/17/Solar-panel-company-lays-off-40-employees.html

Unemployment is not so much declining from job creation so much as large numbers of people are dropping out of the work force entirely.

I'm not a liberal, I'm a broad left-wing libertarian. But I've noticed the democratic party has not attempted to expand the welfare state in decades. In fact, they've been complicit in letting it atrophy.

In 1986, the poverty line was $11,000 for a family of four. Today, it's barely over $22k. The Democratic Party allowed this to happen. There's absolutely no way in hell the cost of living merely doubled in the past 25 years.

Chait is blaming a segment of the Democratic Party that has had little power within the party, or in the American consciousness, since the 80s.