Feinstein is just the worst.
She is the equivalent of Mitch McConnell for the Democrats.
She fully understands exactly what she's proposing and she's the biggest hypocrite for it.
She is the equivalent of Mitch McConnell for the Democrats.
She fully understands exactly what she's proposing and she's the biggest hypocrite for it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscone%E2%80%93Milk_assassina...
(Edit: What I'm trying to say is that she was the person that found Harvey Milk shot and was one of the people that police asked to identify the bodies of both Milk and Moscone. Certainly being that close to the aftermath of violence changes a person.)
If the 60s counterculture and the rest of America had been geographically segregated like the South and the North in the 1860s, you'd have had secession and civil war.
* There are a lot of Republican voters in California who are happy to vote for Democrats, so even better if they're more towards the right
* I'm not old enough to have voted in too many elections, but her opponent in 2012 was a joke
* She doesn't really have an anti-Silicon Valley reputation (yet)
* California is more than just Silicon Valley
* Likelihood of voting correlates directly with age, and Silicon Valley is dominated by young people
* Her family is just so established in California politics, so the money's rolling in. Her husband is chairman of the University of California Board of Regents.
I'm not a fan either.
California is a conservative state outside of SF and LA, although because of their populations, the state is owned by the Democractic party.
Feinstein is a party machine candidate who can appeal across the aisle to those conservatives. Sure, she'll lose some Democrats, but the base will stick to voting with the party, and enough conservatives will crossover that it all works out.
Note that if SV goes to war over this, and it should, it could change the balance in the state. The problem with this from the SV point of view is that if you sabotage Feinstein, you don't get another Democrat. You get a Republican. And I imagine the Republicans are looking for a little payback if they can ever get the levers of power back.
So what do you do? Do you get rid of Feinstein over this one-issue, idiotic and harmful security state nonsense, then end up with a bunch of folks in power that might hurt you on a bunch of things, or do you grit your teeth and bear it?
Looks like the compromise is to let her posture a bit for the conservatives, then fund the opposition to make sure that nothing she proposes gets through. That's a tricky game to play, though.
Well, not necessarily. California abolished partisan primaries a few years ago. The way it works now is that all candidates for a position run in the same primary, and the top two advance to the general election, regardless of affiliation.
I'm not sure if there have been any races so far that involved two Democrats (it's only been two or so election cycles since the change) but the 2016 Senate race seems likely to be between two Democrats.
Of course there's still the problem of finding a Democrat with enough clout and balls to challenge Feinstein in 2018.
Things have dramatically changed since then, unfortunately. It'd be fascinating to uncover what caused this marked phase change.
Incidentally, my testimony in the second session that day is at http://www.csl.sri.com/neumann/judiciary.html, along with my answers to subsequent written questions from Senators Thurmond, Grassley, Leahy, and Feinstein. At the end of the first session. Senator Feinstein excused herself to go to another hearing, but remarked that if FBI Director Freeh said he needed access to essentially everything, we'd better give it to him.
Find Feinstein's comments. Doesn't look like anything changed.
Fetch my geritol before you gear up, sonny.
She also has access to oodles of money from her husband (TPG Capital).
She's not opposed to being a hippocrite. She rails against guns but has a concealed gun permit. Her secret service detail carries automatic weapons and that's OK with her. It's not OK with most of her neighbors, but again, apathetic voters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpartisan_blanket_primary#Ca...
But I'm sure that's just a coincidence, and Feinstein is just that loved in California. After all, US is a democracy, not some banana republic!
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/2012/1026/Could-e-vot...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/03/21...
I really think this country would be better off if CA and TX were not allowed representation in the Senate (and I say this as a Texan).
Removing national government representation would be more antithetical to democracy than anything that's going on now. A better solution, in my opinion, would probably be new state redistricting. Voters are apathetic because they feel their votes don't count due to overwhelming concentrations of opposing viewpoints, which probably should be split off into their own states (Bay Area, New York City, so on).
If it's just Feinstein and Burr, they can keep dreaming, but I imagine there are a few more.
My point being, the anti-encryption side has the support of nearly everyone who isn't informed about encryption and computing, which is a whole lot of people.
That just means there is more of a chance for technologists to take a leading role in this discussion through activism. It's an easy win if you can keep a cool head while explaining the issues.
Ultimately you shouldn't feel pressured by what other people ask of you. The choice of what to do and how to feel about it is always yours. When other people say it's your responsibility, like even if I had said that, that would just be me trying to convince you. That means nothing when you choose how to feel about it.