[grandalf]

The government is chosen through a political process and so everything it does is political.

The DOJ's actions were heavy-handed in a way that has freaked out a lot of people who evidently never realized that the government was like this.

Anyone who has ever gotten a letter from the IRS or has been pulled over by a surly police officer knows well that even though there are laws which apply to everyone fairly, the way those laws are enforced is mostly left up to the discretion of whoever is enforcing them.

Try being an immigrant and dealing with INS officers or a traveler dealing with TSA. Our government has created all kinds of thugs whose job it is to put on a big show of force to intimidate people.

Why are government buildings so big and grand? To create a show of force and make our government seem formidable. Why are there so many ceremonies involving soldiers, government officials, marching, etc. Simply to put on a show and create the impression of solemnity, gravity, and importance.

Governments must continually act to keep the power they have achieved. They do this mostly through propaganda and PR efforts. Every white gloved soldier in a ceremony is a PR stunt. Every wood paneled room, dramatic monument, motorcade, marble building, podium, flag and seal are part of the PR show.

The world is full of greedy people who seek power over others. Whether it's an ambitious Carmen Ortiz or an up-and-coming young congressman or a mild mannered traffic cop. Each seeks to control others as a very significant portion of his/her motivation and life's goal.

Most people who do startups just want to build something and work with interesting technology and so we often forget just what government is. We must wake up and realize that it's about control and force, and now and then the victim of this control and excess is a fellow hacker and we start to take it seriously for a few minutes before we forget about it again. Don't assume that you won't be the target, don't adopt that conservative worldview.

[kristenlee]

I find it overreaching to conclude that every individual who is employed by the government in a law enforcement capacity chose their job out of a need to control other people. The world is not black and white and there are shades of gray. The police officers you despise hunt down the murderers, rapists, and child molesters that harm society, the soldiers fight against genocidal sociopaths like Adolf Hitler & Sadaam Hussein, and the congressmen you despise fight for things like universal healthcare. With regards to startups the primary motivation for most entrepreneurs, but not all, is to make money, not some noble goal of making the world a better place. Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and the like do little or nothing to solve the world's most serious problems, they're just toys for upper middle class people with money and time to burn. Finally no reputable news source has reported on this story because everything is based on hearsay on what a "DOJ representative" allegedly said which fails to pass the credibility test for reputable news outfits such as the NY Times, Reuters, Washington Post, CNN, with reporting standards. Before you act on the word, consider the source.

[Wintamute]

But he didn't conclude that "every individual who is employed by the government ... chose their job out of a need to control other people", you put those words in his mouth. Neither did he say he "despised" anybody, you put that word in his mouth too. He didn't claim that startups weren't in it for the money, and neither were any of his statements predicated on any new information in the "unreputable" linked article.

I'm not sure why you've chosen to attack his comment on these spurious grounds. It'd be more interesting to discuss why it engendered an emotional response from you, or perhaps if you disagree with it then make a coherent criticism of his main point: that there exists a formidable power structure in our society and many of us chose to remain unaware of it.

[antoko]

He said this:

The world is full of greedy people who seek power over others. Whether it's an ambitious Carmen Ortiz or an up-and-coming young congressman or a mild mannered traffic cop. Each seeks to control others as a very significant portion of his/her motivation and life's goal.

That does imply that everyone who ends up in a position of government power does so in order to control other people. That's the problem when someone uses such strident language and paints with such a broad brush - its very easy to just call them out on their lack of nuance and over-generalization

[tammer]

"The world is full of..." is not a totalizing phrase. "Each," refers back to this clause.

The semantics leave space for people in power to work against that power. It does not imply what you believe it does.

You seem to take issue with questioning power at all.

[antoko]

I read the "Each" to refer to the prior sentence. Which is <example list of objectionable and non-objectionable government roles> which I interpret to mean, all government roles. While you may read it differently - I don't believe my reading is inaccurate or unfair.

[Wintamute]

Your interpretation of the sentence is arguably valid, but its derailing the discussion.

[binxbolling]

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt since I don't know if English is your first language, but I assure you that paragraph implies no such thing.

[king_jester]

It doesn't imply that every person in those jobs or roles does so for power, but rather that those that do seek out that kind of power end up in those jobs and roles.

[jerf]

"The police officers you despise hunt down the murderers, rapists, and child molesters that harm society, the soldiers fight against genocidal sociopaths like Adolf Hitler & Sadaam Hussein, and the congressmen you despise fight for things like universal healthcare."

And which of those things was Carmen Ortiz doing?

One of government's very effective dodges is to point at the truly good things it is doing and playing the hell out of them like they are the bulk of the work. But go look at a budget; how much of the budget of the federal government is actually spent on those things? Even just the discretionary budget? And when you see umpty billion dollars going to the "Justice Department", don't forget that nowhere near all of those umpty billion dollars are actually going to things like that. Only a fraction.

Yes, I acknowledge that I want a police force that adequately protects me. But after decades and decades of bloated growth, that is now no more than a mere sideline of government, not its core task.

[downandout]

> Finally no reputable news source has reported on this story because everything is based on hearsay

One could easily argue that none of the "reputable" news sources you mentioned would report on this because it would be damaging to the administration that they feverishly backed and helped get elected. Regardless of your political views, if mainstream media reported a factual account of what happened to Aaron Swartz, the "warm and fuzzy" image of the Obama administration would go right out the window.

This case is truly disturbing, and it shows prima facie evidence of an extremely dark and hypocritical underbelly to the current administration that I don't think most people believe could possibly exist. Some of the what has gone on in this particular case can only be described as evil, and I'm not sure that even the best PR spinners would be able to spin this in any other way.

[graycat]

With your "the 'warm and fuzzy' image of the Obama administration" you may have some answers I don't have to some questions I do have.

In simple terms, I didn't and don't 'get it', why Obama was elected in 2008 and even more why he was elected in 2012. And I don't 'get it' why so much of the MSM seemed to be part of the Obama campaign.

And in the 2012 election, looking at the map and the states and the counties and the voting in those places, Obama won big on the two coasts and the upper Midwest, that is, heavily in the more wealthy parts of the country. Just why the wealthier people liked him more is beyond me.

If you have some good explanations, maybe start with the MSM and their bias, e.g., pictures of Obama wearing a halo. Then continue with the TARP program: Remember there was TARP I that Paulson did and then TARP II which was very different. For TARP I, that apparently was designed to make a statement to the world that the banks were too strong for a 'run'. So, Paulson stopped massive runs on the banks. And TARP I was paid back in full, or nearly so, ASAP. Wells Fargo didn't want or need the money, but the high interest rate cost their stockholders $2.5 billion. TARP II was very different, a big give away to many small parts of our economy. Yet the MSM never made an issue of the give away and kept talking about TARP I as a Wall Street 'bailout' -- Wells Fargo and others might say that they were ripped off, not 'bailed out'. Besides, everyone who paid back the money can object to 'bail out'. Then there was the $92 billion or so for 'clean, green, pure, pristine' energy, that was almost entirely wasted. $92 billion here and there, and after awhile it adds up to real money. Then there was the real cause of The Great Recession, that is, the housing bubble. The real cause was Congress trying to please the CBC with the CRA and Fannie, Freddie, and FHA backing junk paper and ignoring the bubble and trying to 'spread the home ownership around', and Obama was one of the main leaders in that effort. Then there's the Obama AG .... And there's more. So, the NYT, Time, WaPo, ABC, CBS, NBC, SAI, and more were totally in the tank for Obama. Why?

I'm not trolling or joking or playing politics. Instead, I know I don't understand what happened, e.g., why the MSM and the two coasts and the upper Midwest went for Obama, and want to know why. If I had bet, then I would have lost. I read it wrong, all wrong. You have an explanation?

[AnthonyMouse]

>You have an explanation?

I can explain it. Obama is no saint but the Republicans are ten times worse. They go on TV and pander to religious extremists, deny evolution and climate change, take absolutist positions on taxes while decrying deficit spending but refusing to touch social security or military spending, adopt comprehensively anti-liberty positions on social issues while paying lip service to small government, use the filibuster and confirmation hearings as bargaining chips against totally unrelated policies, start a bunch of unnecessary wars and promote a police state where the federal government is listening to everyone's conversations without a warrant and I can't even get on a plane without taking off my shoes.

Obama was supposed to have done something about all that. That's why people voted for him. The fact that he hasn't has been sorely disappointing to a great many people -- and the tragedy is, now what do we do to stop it?

[graycat]

Thanks for your response. Maybe we are close to a boundary of what HN will tolerate. So, I shouldn't try to comment on all you mentioned.

In effect, commenting on the Republicans, what is crucial is simpler than your list -- they lost!

For a politically neutral response, all I wanted was good gumment. I'm registered as a D but try to vote just for good gumment. I like my Congressman, and he's R.

But as you will see below, I learned a lot from the two links from antoko.

At times I was shaking my head or screaming or both at some of the Rs talking about 'abortion': Why? Because Roe has been the law for 40 years, and no matter what anyone wants about Roe, there's zip, zilch, zero chance Roe will be changed. So, talking about it is just to get some people up on their hind legs for nothing.

Then the political strategy question is, what were the R gains from the people up on their hind legs? My guess was, negative: The Rs had those people anyway, and talking about abortion just cost the Rs a lot of votes otherwise. E.g., a lot of single women were scared. Then look at the two links and see how the women voted, scared. Maybe talking about abortion got some Rs some $ donations, but I have a tough time believing that that was an issue. Net, I just didn't 'get it' why so many Rs talked so much about abortion. Sure, maybe Rove helped W win an election in Texas that way, but in national politics? Gads.

Places where I wanted better gumment: Fighting two foreign wars for 10 years each. Gumment backing junk housing paper and, thus, blowing the housing bubble that crashed, wiped out financial assets and bank reserves, much as in The Great Depression. Our gumment did it to us. Gumment should have seen it coming and executed a soft landing. Supposedly both Clinton and W saw the problem but concluded that politically they couldn't do anything about it and, then, just hoped for the best. Bummer. What will gumment do next? See a big flu epidemic coming and not tell anyone because gumment leaders don't want to be blamed for the sting of a flu shot needle? I believe that we should be doing more with fission nuke power, but apparently we're not. I just don't think we have gumment nearly as good as we should.

Your question of what to do about it is on target. Of course the short answer is, have people demonstrate, have some politicians take up the positions, and have the voters vote them in. I thought that somewhere between 2008 and 2012 we would have had a few million people on the Mall in DC screaming for better gumment, but we didn't.

On Obama, if take some of his positions, e.g., his SFC interview of his intention to shut down all the coal fired electric generating plants, then 49% of our electric power and 23% of all of our energy (in a DoE report), then I was outraged. But he hasn't done it. To me there is a pattern: He says a lot of things; some of the things please some people, outrage some others, and get ignored by others. Then when that issue is out of the news, he says more things. Next to none of what he says actually leads to corresponding action. So, net his actions have not been nearly as bad as I feared. I still believe that he is a poor president. Then I have to conclude: I'm in the minority or nearly so -- he is still relatively popular. I don't see just why, but he is. Then this comes back to your issue of how to get better gumment: As long as Obama is as popular as he is, I don't see much hope for big demonstrations for something better. If nothing else really bad happens, then he will be able to have served for 8 years and leave often regarded as at least an okay president. So, our chances for something a lot better don't look good.

Then for the Rs, from the noise I hear from them on how to do better next time, I don't hear much that looks like it will win elections. Instead, the Rs are still talking to themselves about what their right wing dreams of and ignoring everyone else. I don't think that what they are saying is really good gumment, and I think it will lose in elections.

For the biased MSM, I don't have a clue what they will do.

To me, the saving grace is our founding fathers and our Constitution and, in particular, that the Rs have the House and the Ds have the Senate so that there is 'grid lock' and not much gets through and there's lots of talk that doesn't mean anything. In particular, Obama can ask Congress for anything he wants, but he will have a tough time getting back even a resolution in favor of apple pie. So, such grid lock is not good gumment but not the worst thing that could happen.

[antoko]

wow lots to address here and I generally have a policy of avoiding political discussion on HN, so I'll refrain.

However I'd just say rather than looking at maps and guessing about wealth distribution you can just look at the exit poll data.

http://imgur.com/tzToXpv

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2012-exit-poll

Google gave me fox news, but exit polls are exit polls so I'm willing to go along with it. :)

[graycat]

Thanks.

http://imgur.com/tzToXpv

Nice data. Basically Obama won only among people with less than $50 K a year.

Wow! The exit poll data is amazing -- the poor, the non-whites, the women, the less educated except Obama also won the postgraduate crowd! Amazing.

Partly you are correct about my error in geography. But there is still an issue: Romney won in a lot of the less wealthy geography -- as I recall, Kentucky, Tennessee.

Maybe the Romney 49% comment was a more serious torpedo below his waterline than I estimated.

In simple terms, the Republicans were too happy with themselves and 'conservative principles' and just seriously failed to 'please enough of the real customers'.

But I still don't quite get the MSM bias: The MSM, especially the 'good demographics' the advertisers want, and from the data in your two links, should have an audience that voted for Romney. My only guess about the MSM is that it is populated by people who are totally interested in gumment and, thus, want to see more gumment and gumment do more and, thus, are for the Democrats. But at least for much of the campaign, Fox News had ratings that no doubt meant that the biased MSM outlets lost a lot of money, and I'm surprised that the biased MSM 'suits' upstairs would put up with that.

Looks like the Republicans have to get out of conservative country clubs and get with more of the real people, and some investors can do some MSM takeovers and make some big bucks.

Thanks.

[downandout]

Sorry guys, I wasn't trying to start a political debate on HN. I was just stating the fact that most of the media sources mentioned in the comment I was responding to are very much pro-Obama administration. That could conceivably affect their decision not to report on cases like this that simply can't be spun in a positive light. Regardless of what party is in power, if they are committing acts against US citizens that are wrong, they need to be publicly called on the carpet for it.

[rhizome]

They aren't pro-Obama, they're just pro-whoever's-in-power. It's called "access journalism," and is both inherently political and super lame.

http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/december/cynicismAmongRep...

[Tyrant505]

"I find it overreaching to conclude that every individual who is employed by the government in a law enforcement capacity chose their job out of a need to control other people."

Honestly, I look at all my childhood friends who became cops and such and I do see a correlation to their social statuses.

[grandalf]

Think about it this way. Suppose an activist decides that he/she wants to run for office to make a difference on some issue that matters to him/her and gets elected.

The activist does not strive to get 100% of the vote, only the requisite majority to pass a law, thus forcing the minority to abide by a law it does not support. Consider pre-Brown-v-Board black students who had to follow the law and attend segregated schools. They were in the minority subjected to the will of the majority. The same goes for poor students today who are unable to obtain a school voucher b/c they are in the political minority and so must attend vastly inferior schools.

So my statement is trivially true for all efforts to create legislation that is not unanimously supported, regardless if history decides the majority view is enlightened or backward.

[anoncow]

Individual goals will vary. GP's points still hold.

Some people want to start a business so that they can positively change the world. Many people who work for corporations and the govt may have similar aims in life. After all, this may be the only chance at life that you get.

[rquantz]

The congressmen I despise aren't the ones fighting for universal healthcare.

[sampsonjs]

"the soldiers fight against .... Sadaam Hussein". Before arming the next group of sociopaths nominally running the country, and leaving in disgrace from the smoking ruins of said country. Kristen, baby, I didn't ask "the soldiers" to invade Iraq, so they will get no thanks from me for that war. By the way, when's your next vacation to Baghdad?

[rayiner]

You've hit the nail on the head, but come to the wrong conclusion. Signals of the authority of government are good things, within reason. We are merely tribes of monkeys--without authority we'd do whatever the hell we wanted and that's not how civilization happens. The alternative to living under government authority isn't just peacefully building things and working with interesting technology. It's living under the authority of different thugs. Thugs we don't vote for, thugs we don't pay the salaries of, thugs we don't have any influence over.

My family comes from a country where the government has little authority (Bangladesh). It's not a good thing. People don't respect the law, and it's a deep moral failing of the country. It's a contemptible characteristic of the people. It's a hindrance to collective prosperity. I note with some amusement that tons of people like my father got the hell out of Bangladesh and moved to a country where he paid much more taxes, where there was much more regulation, much more oversight of society by government. Yet, not very many people seem to want to do the opposite.

[grandalf]

While I agree with your overarching point that it's a good thing when institutions gain legitimacy and authority, I think it's also important to appreciate the corrupting influences that exist within organizations. In the corporate world we have watchdog groups, regulatory agencies, etc. But for governments there are few checks and balances. The US Government has conducted a war on whistleblowers and watchdog groups.

In my view, the government is just the gang that drove out all the rival gangs and got rich enough to start laundering its reputation, rewriting history, etc.

Even in 2013, the atrocities committed by the US government are worse than those of nearly any criminal gang in the world. Consider rendition. Consider drone attacks on children.

[wtracy]

"Even in 2013, the atrocities committed by the US government are worse than those of nearly any criminal gang in the world."

I think you are greatly underestimating the criminal organizations of this world. Look into the Zetas cartel in Mexico, for example. Sure, American military strikes kill civilians, but we don't have a policy of targeting innocent civilians.

[grandalf]

Our rendition and torture programs are not governed by the rule of law and are known to take into custody many innocent people. The decision to carry on with these programs even though they are quite flawed is essentially the decision to carry out collateral damage on civilians... on purpose.

Also, don't be deceived and think that "smart" bombs and missles are smart enough to avoid lots of civilian casualties. They may be better than the previous technology was, but they are far from perfect, and considering that they are used outside of an actual war (targeted strikes in mostly civilian areas) there is definitely the deliberate tradeoff being made to commit some very horrible atrocities in the hope that the actual (though still extralegal) target is the one who gets killed.

And, when you consider the horrible regimes we support and fund (yet also turn on when their atrocities are exposed) it becomes clear that the US Government is the largest sponsor of human suffering in the world.

This is too bad, and it's escalated under Obama. Our militarism is out of control to the point where a massive propaganda effort must be used to keep the public supporting it. Smart bombs are actually propaganda bombs, b/c the footage can occasionally be used as part of the "good guy" narrative that is fed to the public.

I'm quite ashamed of this as an American citizen !

[graycat]

I took the statements by grandalf as meaning 'some' or 'many' and not literally 'all'.

But notice

http://www.businessinsider.com/a-third-of-people-manipulate-...

with

About A Third Of People Have A Fundamental Desire To Manipulate Others Max Nisen | Dec. 4, 2012, 7:07 PM

So if there is 1/3rd in the general population, the fraction in 'fitting' parts of gumment might be much higher, still not 100% but high enough to underline the grandalf theme.

[jen_h]

I don't disagree wholly on substance here, but will point out that, according to the WBUR investigation, many of the issues coming out of Ortiz' office were not because she sought to control others, but that she didn't wield enough and let others control her:

http://www.wbur.org/2013/02/20/carmen-ortiz-investigation

(Seriously worth a read; even if you skim, be sure to read the case descriptions in full. They're pretty shocking.)

[Shivetya]

the thuggery starts at the top and because of that it becomes accepted behavior by those within. Look at the mindset these people have, what we see playing out with the budget games in Washington I have seen the same at the local level.

They play the thug, always threatening their own constituents with less services, longer lines, less safety, and if all that doesn't work they go after your freedoms. The insinuate, they investigate, they intimidate.

To use a favorite term of the political class but in a different way, we have a government too big to fail.

[dyno12345]

One of mankind's greatest insights in the past few thousand years was the idea of not seeing all phenomena as caused by human motives, jealousies of gods, etc.

[redm]

It's a good thing that Aaron wasn't around to 'unlock' his phone from his cell carrier; they would have really gotten him then. :D