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Comment by grej | Hacker News Reader

I wonder much campaign money intelligence sector crony corporations have donated to the dear congressman.

EDIT: To whomever downvoted me for this comment, I looked this up on opensecrets.org. The answer is that the congressmen received a total of $20,500 in his last election cycle from defense/aerospace companies, another $10,500 from defense electronics companies, and yet another $6,000 from miscellaneous defense companies (total $37k). While those are not dominant contributions for him, they are significant. And that is a real problem when you have to ask yourself, would this person be making this statement and taking this position if they weren't receiving that money? We simply don't know the answer. Their financial support means he has a vested interest in keeping the funding flowing to these companies, which means not curtailing intel budgets.

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Couldn't it be the case that the senator is actually a human being who honestly believes that Snowden is a traitor? I don't personally believe that Snowden is any such thing, but I can understand people who do. I also find it a bit hard to accept that all politicians are purely financially driven automatons.

There may also be a selection principle at work, where those politicians who honestly hold positions that benefit the defense industry get defense industry dollars.

But the congressman is supposed to uphold the Constitution, which includes free speech. That's what rubs me the wrong way. Because he (apparently, please correct me if I am wrong) signed this statement as a member of Congress, and not as a private citizen, it makes a difference.

He's not enacting a law to prohibit anyone's speech. He's simply requesting that SXSW use "discretion" in its own speech. Although this isn't the best analogy, it's like a concerned parent writing a letter to a magazine asking them to refrain from publishing borderline obscene content. When TV/radio personalities get their shows cancelled over inappropriate comments, that's not a violation of free speech. In fact, it's an affirmation of free speech--the network doesn't want to tarnish its brand.

My point is that to do it as a private citizen is one thing; to do it as a Congressman is quite another. It's all in how he signed his name.

The fact that he may be honest in his beliefs does not make him less of a terrible person, quite the contrary. At the very least a duplicitous person can change their position.

He might sincerely believe that.

Of course you're right, he's a human being. Human beings tend to get embarrassed and angry when it is revealed they didn't even try to do their job well. He's a member of the intelligence committee. He is responsible for oversight. As a result, I think pretty clearly there's an element of "Don't listen to this guy who made me look bad. Maybe I'm lazy, but that guy is a traitor."

> I also find it a bit hard to accept that all politicians are purely financially driven automatons.

They're not "purely financially driven automatons" - but it does require a lot of money to get elected/re-elected, and like most humans they want to keep their job.

POliticians don't only say things for money. There are plenty of voters out there who like to be pandered to, and with a sense of crisis in the air over Ukraine this is an easy way for a Republican politician to appear tough in contrast to the President.

It really scares me that $37k is the cost of something like that.

$37k is just an expression of interest, and does not constitute anticipated future payments.

aka speaking gigs, consultant's fees, a board seat, or a job as a lobbyist.

Politicians in the West are astonishingly cheap compared to the budgets that they control. It's a sign that it's fairly hard to directly steal money and they have to be subtle about steering contracts.

We're almost at the point of someone Kickstartering a politician, but not quite yet. Howard Dean came close to this.

I thought about this idea a few years back when kickstarter was really starting to get going. I even made a note of it in evernote somewhere, for future reference/consideration.

Campaign donations poison the political pool by acting as a filter to remove candidate of strong conviction, in favour of those whose policy is easily bought for donations. With campaign budget being a factor in probability of election success [1], there needs to be a way for politicians to get funding without donors expecting an influence on policy so as to even the playing fields.

Could the masses fund politicians via something like kickstarter? I don't know enough about the laws, whether it would be viable, or even if it was, whether it would be enough to break the status quo. Regardless, it's definitely an interesting thought.

[1] http://www.press.umich.edu/pdf/0472099213-ch8.pdf

I wouldn't read too much into five-figure bribes, those are probably for tax purposes. This particular congressman's position more likely comes from his personal opinions and the types of people he golfs with.

In general donations (bribes) don't dictate political support for defense contractors. That support is a given, for two reasons. First, defense contractors are also large civilian employers. Second, contracts are a form of subsidy, to maintain what they call the "defense industrial base."

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