Samantha
Samantha's JournalIt was a complex evolution over a long period of time
I previously read some time ago a military historian's statement about Gore's involvement with the creation of what we call today the Internet. I could not find that this evening, but I did start reading another interesting article that I will quote from here:
Gore's 1986 bill called for a study of the possibility of creating fiber optic links to supercomputer centers, requiring the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to issue a report on the subject. Though references differ on whether Gore's 1986 bill was ever actually passed, the report it called for was issued in November of 1987. It expressed concern that the U.S. was falling behind Europe and Japan in the development of supercomputers and high speed networks, and recommended creation of a program to advance research in those areas.
Gore's 1988, 1989, and 1991 bills were attempts to create such a program. During this period the White House was reluctant to do so, but in early 1991, just before the Gore Bill finally passed, the White House proposed in its budget to fund a High Performance Computing and Communications Program. Gore's 1991 bill defined that program and authorized spending more than a billion dollars over the next five years on supercomputing and network projects. This funding was mostly under the control of the NSF, but also parts also went to DARPA and NIST.
These efforts contributed substantially to allowing NSFNET to grow into the modern Internet. Interesting discussions of their significance can be found in a 1992 paper advocating further expansion of the net, 1993 testimony from the head of OSTP, and Vinton Cerf's description of the evolution of the Internet. All give Gore primary credit for this legislation, and stress it's importance in the development of the Internet. (emphasis added)
from: http://greatgreenroom.org/cgi-bin/bt/backtalk/wasabi/begin?item=11
The point I was trying to make, but which I seemed to have done clumsily, was that when this shall I say communication tool was no longer needed at the end of the Cold War, when the question was asked "what shall we do with this?" - the answer was "give it to the people." We the people were able to accept it and to build it from what it was then to what it is now because one person had a keen interest in this area and agreed to write the legislation creating what eventually came to be referred to as "the Internet."
This is a very long article about Gore which might interest many DU'ers.
Sam
After the cold war ended, the military and intelligence groups had no need for the Arpanet
Someone in charge suggested it be given to the people. When presented with the opportunity to take charge of this amazing creation, not one legislator was interested in working on the project. Had it not been for Al Gore, who actually was fascinated by the project, that legislation might not have ever been written. And in 1992, he spoke to the American people about the concept of an internet super-highway. I heard that speech.
Al Gore was ridiculed for a number of things by GE (Jack Welch) who despised both Clinton and Gore. Under the Clinton administration, GE had been fined millions of dollars for violating the Clean Water Act. There was no way Welch was going to remain silent while Gore campaigned for the Presidency, and he took the avenue of simply ridiculing Gore for every possible thing he could, with Tim Russert, et al., backing him up.
Sam
The Man in the Middle
Take a look at the man in the middle:
His name is Mark Penn. When Hillary lost her bid in 2008, some privately said she should have never utilized Mark Penn in her campaign. Some say his specialty is smear campaigns: throwing dirt, employing seedy tactics, dirty tricks -- whatever it takes to win. He goes where other dirty political tricksters are reluctant to go.
I recently read he has started working with her campaign once again. Whenever I see a thread accusing Bernie Sanders of being sexist, exaggerating his civil rights record, lying about this, exaggerating that, I immediately think of Mark Penn. Could his fingerprints possibly be on this, I wonder.
Here is the point. Bernie Sanders is a dignified, intelligent, hard working public servant currently working in the United States Senate. Everyone has the right to disagree with him on the issues, but someone like him who publicly reiterates he doesn't run negative campaign ads and doesn't want to indulge in the soap opera deserves to be treated with more respect.
Seldom do we have the opportunity to conduct an election and side-step all of the unhealthy ingredients we traditionally abhor. Just discuss the issues and debate them openly and honestly. What a dream!
So just remember the next time some slime hits the fan against one of our Democratic Presidential candidates, whether it is Sanders, Clinton or O'Malley, ask yourself this question: is there a Mark Penn or a Mark Penn clone behind this smear?
Sam
I have a couple of comments about your post
Gore did not carry Tennessee because Rove especially targeted Tennessee for a win simply to embarrass Gore. The margin by which Bush* carried Tennessee was not all that great, I think it was about 40,000 (just something like that). But what a lot of people never really realized was that Tennessee was riddled with the same type of voting "irregularities" that waffled through Florida. It was in fact for voter suppression "a little Florida." I only am aware of this because my family is from Tennessee and I read about a number of the shyster tricks Republicans played down there. Eventually, some of these complaints were investigated by the government and settled, just as those in Florida were. Long, long voting lines at polling places where African-Americans were in the majority, reduced number of places to cast ballots, people turned away because they didn't have required id, polls closing while long lines where still in place and subsequent court complaints -- you name it, and it happened.
Gore did not push for a full recount because that was not an option presented in the State constitution. The only way to obtain a full state recount was by court order (which eventually came down the Florida Supreme Court) or by permission of the Governor (and we remember who the Governor of Florida was at that time). The Florida Supreme Court should have had the last word on this election dispute as the rules for conducting Presidential elections are defined in our U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court had no, I repeat no, Constitutional authority to intervene as long as the State of Florida conducted the election according to election laws previously written into the Constitution (which Gore was following and the Republicans were not).
And once the U.S. Supreme Court usurped the matter, the two laws it used to justify stopping the recount were nothing but bullsh*t. That Safe Harbor law (the one setting the deadline for when the slate of electors had to be submitted to the Elector College) was originally written when states forwarded their slates to the electors BY PONY EXPRESS. So the law was written to mandate the couriers be dispatched in a timely manner by the riders on horseback. There was plenty of time for that recount to have been conducted and the slate sent to the Electoral College. Secondly, that equal protection law stating that the voters whose votes might be recaptured in a recount would carry more weight than the votes of the original voters that were counted, and thus the original voters would be discriminated against should a recount change the result of the election. And in that latter statement, the Supreme Court negated the 5 million popular vote advantage Al Gore had over Bush* nationwide. So if one is to give any nod of agreement to the Supreme Court's falling back on that asinine equal protection plank, how does that same person justify the nullification of the 5 million votes on a national basis that rationale generated.
Sorry for the length of this post, but this is one subject that always pushes my buttons....
Sam
We Democrats are a very fortunate party right now
In this Presidential 2016 contest, the Republicans got nobody -- and I do mean nobody. We have 3 killer candidates. Any of the three could be accomplished Presidents.
In all seriousness, it is amazing that so many Republicans running are an embarrassment to this Country. All three Democrats are a credit.
In tonight's debate, I watched and thought O'Malley did in fact knock it out of the park. I thought when his segment ended, he just might win the debate. He ticked off all of his accomplishments as Governor of Maryland, and the list was impressive. He was energetic, focused and truly on his game. And the charm display did not hurt.
Then Sanders came on and he turned in a stellar performance. I think he barely edged it over O'Malley because he did make comments on foreign affairs and took the conversation to a higher level. But it is his passion for the income inequality issue, our need for a political revolution (to stoke a massive voter turnout in order to win) and his obvious outrage over "fixing" of elections and depriving people of their right to vote that made him a standout. Bernie's serious passion is totally sincere not borrowed.
Bernie also asked the audience why they voted against their own best interests. I thought the funniest moment of the whole evening was when Bernie was saying words to the effect to the people of South Carolina -- the gays are not your enemy, the immigrants are not your enemy, the Republicans are your problem (words to that effect). A gray-haired granny sitting in the audience was nodding her head as Sanders spoke, but mouthed the words "at a boy" to Sanders.
It occurred to me Sanders/O'Malley would make an incredible team. O'Malley was my governor for 8 years and I loved him. I was so proud to live in the State of Maryland under his leadership, proud of all that was accomplished.
I have watched Sanders for years and really admired him. I always thought I wish he would run for President, but I assumed it was out of the question because of his age. Not that I practice ageism, it just seems to me anyone that age would have to be crazy to ask for that job at this time. It is like asking for a premature death. But if the two of them teamed up, they could share that stress. Clinton offered Gore essentially a co-presidency to run with him, and Sanders could do the same. That would be great.
I had a difficult time being riveted by Hillary's contribution. It seemed to me like she was tired. I don't think she made any egregious mistakes. I do think she was not too truthful in saying she was not any more hawkish than Barack Obama. I believe she is. But I believe she served her supporters well, and the audience seemed thrilled with her.
So just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the winner of a political debate is perceived in the ear of the listener -- or so it seems.
No interruptions for soap opera. The very best thing about it to me was the collegiality.
In a way, one might say and the winner is all of us! - but especially Rachel Maddow.
Sam
Yes, the legislature determines the slate, but the Florida state constitution stipulated that the
makeup of that slate would be determined by the outcome of the popular vote. So if the recount had in fact been allowed to be completed as the Florida Supreme Court had ordered, whatever the result of that recount turned out to be as far as Republican votes and Democratic votes, the Florida legislature had by its own law to assemble the composition of Electoral College Votes to reflect the results of the popular vote.
So the Legislature has you say the ultimate authority, but it was required to determine the law by inserting the rules in the state Constitution prior to the election (which it had done). It is not allowed after the election if one did not like the results to ab-lib in the moment and verbally make new laws. That is Unconstitutional. Florida is among the 48 states that is "winner take all." So if a Democrat were determined to have been the winner of the election after the recount, all of the slate would have been Democratic. Same if the recount reflected a Republican winner. The Legislature at that critical point had no legal backing to step in and change the rules.
The winner does not have to reach 270. The winner must win a majority. If the Florida slate were thrown out (discounted), the winner of the majority would have been Gore. I know there are those that say what your words reflect above, but experts at the time said 270 was the number needed only if Florida's votes were counted (electoral college votes). If they were excluded, that number would have been reduced by 25 and Gore would have held the majority. The election would have gone to the House of Representatives had there been a tie.
http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2012/10/31/163950264/presidential-race-what-if-there-are-two-winners
There's a small chance that the Electoral College could wind up in a tie, throwing the election decision to the House of Representatives. And there's a greater chance that one of the candidates (likely Obama) could carry the Electoral College — and with it, victory — even while losing the popular vote nationwide.
All of this being said, I am not an election law expert nor an attorney, and I do not play one on DU. For every fact you and I have both written, the other can refute it with examples in our electoral college history which ended up in an unorthodox manner.
But the best thing is, I believe, it is very healthy to hammer some of these questions out and what the basic law is because we might need a lot of sudden familiarity with this issue in 2016, and it is guaranteed that all the "experts" we hear commenting will be saying different things. This is what happened in 2000, so we need to know the laws ourselves.
Sam
Yes, the Florida legislature did threaten to send a Republican slate to the Electoral College
regardless of the outcome of the recount. People believed it would live up to that threat. However, it would have been a violation of the U.S. Constitution to do so and the Electoral College could have refused to count Florida's votes. David Bois made this point about two years after the election, but no one publicly said this in court and the press seemed ignorant of the fact.
If election law is changed, it cannot be done so and applied right after an election -- it can only have impact at the time of THE NEXT election. A state cannot change the rules that close in order to change the result of the election.
Additionally, the Constitution delegates the conduct of Presidential elections to the states provided the state has its election laws defined in its state constitution and abides by those rules. Florida did have its election laws outlined in its State constitution, it just was not going to abide by them. That too would have made it possible for the Electoral College to throw out Florida's slate.
But if that is not bad enough, there was a Constitution lawyer who during the election volunteered his time to assist Jeb Bush with election problems. One might rationally assume the expert knew these threats being made were illegal, but obviously that did not matter. "Win at all costs" was indeed the rule of the day. That expert's name is John Roberts, the same John Roberts who George W. Bush* eventually gave a Supreme Court seat and made the Chief Judge. To the victor does indeed belong the spoils.
Although 15 years have passed since this truly damaging election theft occurred, it appears the Bush family assumed that was a long enough time for people to have forgotten and 2016 would be a good year to run Jeb. This will never be forgotten, and it will never be a good year to run Jeb.
Sam
Profile Information
Member since: 2001Number of posts: 9,314