{"id":908,"date":"2002-08-27T09:56:31","date_gmt":"2002-08-27T16:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mossback.org\/archives\/2002\/08\/whining-and-wasting-money\/"},"modified":"2002-08-27T09:56:31","modified_gmt":"2002-08-27T16:56:31","slug":"whining-and-wasting-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2002\/08\/27\/whining-and-wasting-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Whining and wasting money"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tGreg Knauss<\/a> isn’t impressed with Dave Winer’s blog campaign to elect Libertarian Party candidate Tara Sue Grubb to Congress:<\/p>\n

\n

All this means that Tara Sue Grubb really is the “weblog candidate.” She’s an empty page, capable of being filled in with whatever people like Dave Winer and his philosophical bedmates want to see. He can think that supporting a losing cause is action against the disappearance of his rights, he can think that dismissing Lessig and the EFF strikes a blow for consumers and artists, he can think that the calcified institutions of the US political system will crumble to dust in the face of a few thousand people posting messages on the Internet. He can think whatever he wants, but it all ends up meaningless, pointless, useless talk. And very little action. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Knauss’ larger point is that tech people don’t understand politics, aren’t active in it, and are seemingly incapable of doing the things you have to do in order to be effective in politics. He’s right, of course. I personally spent five years lobbying my state legislature on a regular basis, so I know something about how the game is played: you show up in person at the Capitol, get meetings with lawmakers, press your case, and then work it in the media. <\/p>\n

You show up at hearings and testify on bills, and then you plead with every member for their vote. When the other side has the votes, you seek amendments that will blunt the effect of their victory. And you put your own bills together to protect your position and to repeal any gains made by the other side. Playing the game like this for years, you begin getting invited to testify at special hearings, and you’re invited to serve on panels, boards, and commissions. More important, your name gets around the Capitol, so that media folks interview you when they’re spilling major ink, deep-pockets donors seek your advice about where to spend their money, and you get connected to people with real access who operate behind the scenes. In time, you win some victories, many of them unnoticed by the media but important in the aggregate.<\/p>\n

Almost invariably, the tech people who wanted to get involved in my cause thought they could accomplish the task by writing e-mail to lawmakers and to each other, mainly the latter. So they spent their time creating web sites, model laws and mailing lists instead of doing real work. Promoting a Libertarian Party member for Congress does exactly what Knauss says it does — drains off resources of time and money that could be spent doing something real. It’s a sad way to go. (via Matt Welch<\/a>)\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Greg Knauss isn’t impressed with Dave Winer’s blog campaign to elect Libertarian Party candidate Tara Sue Grubb to Congress: All this means that Tara Sue Grubb really is the “weblog candidate.” She’s an empty page, capable of being filled in with whatever people like Dave Winer and his philosophical bedmates want to see. He can … Continue reading “Whining and wasting money”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbifyw-eE","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}