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.

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.

Larry Lessig has some interesting ideas about how campaign funding should work:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111214/17245817090/lessig...

I'm not attacking you personally, but the post you made.

It is the Federal Government's responsibility to regulate interstate commerce. The Internet is not limited to 1 state; it falls right in the purview of interstate commerce.

I get the "small government", "low taxes", etc. arguments. But there's a place to make them; discussing how the Congress is trying to kneecap the Internet is not one of those places.

Are you corrupt? Are there people in your circle of friends who aren't corruptible? Do you know anyone with integrity? Why not vote that person in instead?

Yes its an emotional response to the defeatism. Congress people are people not some select pool of corrupt toadies. There is no requirement that you be a person of low character to be a member of congress, rather its that folks who have adopted this defeatist attitude that there is nothing they can do to change it gives people of moral turpitude an advantage, they are willing to run for office.

How about a kickstarter for public service? People sign up and say what office they are running for and changes they want to make and we crowd source them? How about creating a youtube channel for people who want to change the world can speak easily to the folks who might elect them without having to pay extortionate television fees? How about we kick out the corrupt congress people by applying technology to the problem of surfacing the better candidates?

Who? Nobody I know personally who isn't corrupt is running. I'd vote for them.

But sadly the way things are setup to work guarantees I pretty much get two equally bad choices.

Even when some group gets lots of support and gets themselves stealth elected -- the recent tea party elections are a fantastic example (despite my personal disagreements with their political philosophy), they find their ability to change the broken system reduced to almost nothing.

"Who? Nobody I know personally who isn't corrupt is running. I'd vote for them."

Get to know the people who are running. By law they are contactable (Election Commission rules) and by design they care about you voting for them. So take a moment this round of elections and personally talk to everyone you can who is running. Really, its not that hard. If you put the sweetener in that you've got your $100 donation to the campaign of the person you find acceptable, its even easier.

It is very important to note that "almost nothing" is not "nothing." The tea party has had a disproportionate effect on the republican party votes because they are enough to swing votes one way or the other. The 'career' politicians give every impression of hating them (from both parties).

Personally I find the tea party 'line' way more conservative than I like but I massively respect that they chose to volunteer for serving the public.

"But sadly the way things are setup to work guarantees I pretty much get two equally bad choices."

This misplaces the blame and that is why it doesn't get 'fixed'. It is not 'the way things are setup', it is the participation of the electorate (or lack thereof) which currently creates the situation you dislike so strongly. A majority of elections for Congress in 2010 were decided by significantly less than half the number of people who didn't vote. Think about that for a minute. The people not voting are screwing up the country. They have been 'trained' to not vote by stories and folks who would rather they not realize that their not voting gives folks who want to run the system power.

Talk to people running for office.

Vote for the one that isn't corrupt.

Get at least two and as many as you can of your non-voting neighbors and friends to vote.

You will help change the world, I guarantee it.