Imaging the contents of my vehicle without a warrant or even without probable cause?
No thank you.
I have nothing to hide, but I fear what others might want to look for and why.
I'll come right out and say it – the balance of power between the common citizen and the government has shifted way too far in favor of the government. More and more we accept invasive search/oversight from powers who continue to deny the public the same sort of transparency and insight.
I also wonder if a group of people could get together and purchase their own x-ray vans and position them at the homes and offices of the politicians who support these vehicles. The vans are safe, right? And it is OK to use them on citizens, right? It'll be a fun experiment!
I think the easiest route is for anyone who cares about these sorts of things is to fund groups like the EFF and the ACLU. I'm just finishing graduate school (and am thus kind of broke) but still have an automatic payment to the EFF setup every month and will probably start the same sort of donations to the ACLU as well.
The fact that your joke wasn't glaringly obvious (and I had seriously contemplated how much it'd cost to hire lobbyists), says much more about the shitty system.
Yeah, nope, not glaringly obvious, to me at least. Thanks for the clarification.
I guess I can see your point, but I think, in general, lobbyists are thought of as external to the congressional establishment, despite the similarity in possible roles, such as you point out... well, at least that's the way it works in my head, fwiw.
Are they really? I suspect a lot of representatives are successful largely due to their ability to get federal funds directed toward their districts. The point I would want to make isn't that representatives should be better at shuffling money around, but rather that the whole game shouldn't be about shuffling money around.
As far as I understand the American system, this is a false analogy: your Congressman 'lobbies' for interests within their core voting block. i.e. why your mid-west Congressman lobbies hard for corn subsidies, if a large percentage of her voting base are corn farmers. Given the "first past the post" nature of American politics, this can exclude up to 49% of your voting base before said Congressman has even been sworn in.
To make this clearer: the way the system is set up, your Congressman isn't lobbying for any individual, they're lobbying for a percentage of the voting block that is sufficient to return them to Congress next vote. This is why campaigning on single issues is so common, and so successful for power-blocs such as the Christian Right.
(This isn't to go into gerrymandering, which further skews the 'democratic' input of your system. If you didn't already know that only ~8-12 seats in Congress are actually contested in terms of party fealty, you really, really, really should do).
"your Congressman 'lobbies' for interests within their core voting block. "
This is where I think current "politics" is lagging many decades behind modern society.
Politicians are fundamentally geographically defined. They get voted in (or out) by groups of people with no relationship with each other beyond happening to live nearby. That idea worked out fine when your village was your whole life, and it works OK for "big issues" that affect everyone (like taxation, education, military), but there are a lot of issues where there is more than enough public support to deserve representation but that support is not geographically localized enough for the current system to give the people concerned a voice.
So many of the things I end up shouting at the television or newspapers about are in this category.
What _I'd_ love to be able to vote for:
A Congressman for The Internet
A Congressman for Copyright and Patents
A Congressman for Motorcyclists
A Congressman for Citizens Rights WRT Government & Law Enforcement
I'd like the opportunity to choose to vote for someone aligned with issues that concern _me_ instead of being assumed to be a "constituent" of an aspirant politician just because of where they and I happen to choose to live.
Instead, the issues that concern _me_ are debated and voted on by people who don't give a damn because they know there's not enough geeks/musicians/inventors/entrepreneurs/motorcyclists/libertarians geographically clustered enough to make any difference at the polling booth, and so the only issues that ever get addressed are ones with a local enough aspect to risk having a likely effect on a city/state/federal elections outcome.
Society has spread beyond having my circle of friends and acquaintances being "other people in my village" - and in the last 20 years the internet has magnified that change enormously, political and legal structures haven't changed to reflect that. (and may never - my circle of friends crosses national boundaries in ways that probably make my desires of how I'm personally politically represented impossible)
No thank you.
I have nothing to hide, but I fear what others might want to look for and why.
I'll come right out and say it – the balance of power between the common citizen and the government has shifted way too far in favor of the government. More and more we accept invasive search/oversight from powers who continue to deny the public the same sort of transparency and insight.
"Who watches the watchmen?", indeed.