*Updated: Mr. Guillot AKA yankprintster (4225) responded and is interested in answering some questions. Ask him your questions below in the comments*
B.J. Guillot is one of three candidates currently seeking to represent Washington's 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Mr. Guillot is also a reader of SoylentNews. In a recent interview with CoinTelegraph about his enthusiastic support of cryptocurrency, Mr. Guillot was asked "When did you first hear about Bitcoin, and when did you get into it?" He explains that he got turned on to Bitcoin while reading a certain news for nerds site, and then mentions:
Since I have the floor, let me just state for the record, the new Slashdot web design and user experience is really poor. I've since moved on to SoylentNews.org for my daily science and tech news.
Perhaps Mr. Guillot would be kind enough to answer a few questions about his positions on topics of particular concern to the SN community. I invite him to answer directly in the comments below, or if he would prefer, I will collect and forward the highest-modded comments to Mr. Guillot, and then submit a new story with his responses.
According to his campaign website, Mr. Guillot holds a B.S. in Computer Science and Mathematics, and has software development experience.
The Crypto Crimson reports that while many politicians are "quick to jump on the bitcoin bandwagon" following the U.S. Federal Election Commission's recent opinon declaring that political committes may accept contributions in the form of Bitcoin, unlike these other politicians, Mr. Guillot is an active miner who "currently achiev[es] a hashrate of five Terahash per Second - certainly the fastest bitcoin mining politician".
The top item to appear in the "Issues" section of Mr. Guillot's campaign website is "NSA Spying". Mr. Guillot's stated positon on this issue is: "The Federal Government needs to immediately stop its spying and metadata collection of its citizen's phone calls and emails. It's also time to discontinue the Patriot Act. No more extensions!".
On his campaign website, Mr. Guillot also states his positions on: "Internet Freedom", "Patent Reform", "Bitcoin", "National Debt", "FairTax", "Military", "Second Amendment", "Energy", and "Education".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by crAckZ on Monday July 07 2014, @12:44PM
I am sure the directors here have to feel very proud. It is always nice when someone more publicly known mentions something you made or you get mentioned in the media. I wonder if there is a way to gauge how much traffic that would create if any.
(Score: 3) by Nerdfest on Monday July 07 2014, @04:03PM
I've noticed the comment counts getting higher recently. I'm hoping the trend continues as the quality of discussion is quite good.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Wednesday July 09 2014, @02:07AM
Only as long as we get the right people. It tend to go bad when the number of people increases. Think "Eternal September" and it didn't end..
There's no point in high amount of commenters in itself. It's what comes out of it that matters. Unless it's a setup where numbers really matters. Like when searching or matching.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Monday July 07 2014, @01:20PM
I wouldn't expect a huge spike in the viewing stats but a gentle increase might be noted. I don't know how big a circulation the primary source receives (CoinTelegraph) but the only others to see it will already be here. Still, it is very welcome and I agree that it is heartening to all of the community when the site gets public recognition such as this. Coupled with our successful Incorporation last Friday, it has been a good few days for SN. Now the long slog of hard work continues...
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tibman on Monday July 07 2014, @01:27PM
It also makes you curious how many SN people would be considered important or slightly famous. Where there's one, i suspect quite a few more.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Monday July 07 2014, @02:06PM
I am famous in my household only, does that count.? :)
(Score: 4, Funny) by present_arms on Monday July 07 2014, @02:11PM
I'm famous for other things, I'm waiting for Google to de-list me
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday July 07 2014, @03:00PM
It does in your household...
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 07 2014, @03:47PM
I'm famous for making dickish comments all over the internet.
(Score: 1) by N3Roaster on Monday July 07 2014, @06:32PM
I'm apparently a minor celebrity within the coffee industry if that counts for anything.
Typica - Free software for coffee roasting professionals. [typica.us]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Nerdfest on Tuesday July 08 2014, @02:03AM
Perhaps something of a "Has Bean"?
(Score: 1) by N3Roaster on Tuesday July 08 2014, @02:09AM
No, he's across the pond.
Typica - Free software for coffee roasting professionals. [typica.us]
(Score: 3, Informative) by NCommander on Monday July 07 2014, @07:33PM
Our traffic stats have more or less been stable for the last month (since we started running piwik), I'll have to check after the daily report runs to see if our averages go up.
Still always moving
(Score: 3, Interesting) by redneckmother on Monday July 07 2014, @03:02PM
I am impressed with the candidate's statements. While I am not a resident of Washington State, I am curious about his stance on campaign finance reform.
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday July 07 2014, @08:01PM
His chances are slim on any issue, because Seattle (and suburbs) are hopelessly democratic.
http://ballotpedia.org/Washington's_2nd_Congressional_District_elections,_2014 [ballotpedia.org]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 07 2014, @09:57PM
The Seattle suburbs stop around Everett, and things get generally prettier as you go north (less sprawl more farms and forests). It also happens to get odder -- I live in Whatcom County which since the late 60s / early 70s has been one of those places with large populations of tree huggers and tree rapers. Really ... lots of hippy types, lots of logger types, and they don't always mix well, though there were activist commie loggers in the 1900-30s -- they were different than the woolly headed hippy types though -- unionists. The northern part of the county is different still -- centered around Lynden and the Dutch farmers who took it over, it is like a mini bible belt that always votes for industry, jesus, no zoning, and more slaughter houses. Then there is Bellingham with plenty of the aforementioned woolly headed hippies, even the longest running peace protest in the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellingham,_Washington#Activism [wikipedia.org] (48 years running).
http://www.vote4bj.com/districtmap.html [vote4bj.com] (1)
Lynden is outside his district though, which is good. Those evangelicals are nuts. Of course, there are a lot of old hippies who still think of the DNC as "their" party somehow failing to notice that its been like Nixon on steroids these last 8 years (expanding afghanistan, Libya without even lip service to the War Powers Act, the NSA, Nixon's health care plan, codling banksters, etc. etc.). So yeah, he probably won't see much support from (Belling)Hamsters either. Which is sad. I'm attracted to candidates who are social liberals and fiscal conservatives. But of course, I'm about 5 miles outside his district.
(1) Vote for BJs. heh..... heh......... heheh. heh.
----------------
My questions, not that it matters (I'm outside the voting district and the state house won't be considering this stuff, at least not directly):
What type of foreign policy do you support?
Would you support removing Federal Military bases from WA state?
If you were President, what would you do about the USSR and Ukraine?
What kind of relationship should we have with Cuba?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @04:13AM
Office: Seattle city council member
Candidate: Kshama Sawant, professor of Economics
Party: Socialist Alternative
Platform issue: $15/hr minimum wage
Results of November 2014 election: She won (beating the incumbent Democrat)
Changes since then: Minimum wage in Seattle has been raised to $15/hr, effective January 1, 2017 ($11 on April 1, 2015; $13 on January 1, 2016).
-- gewg_
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by frojack on Tuesday July 08 2014, @04:51AM
Oh, great, out of the democratic frying pan into the full-fledged communist fire.
(You say socialist, I say communist: Her first demand was to seize Boeing plants and force them to make mass-transit vehicles.
If that's your idea of constructive change we are in deep shit. Rents are already rising in Seattle in response to 15 dollars an hour for burger flippers.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @06:17AM
Rents are already rising in Seattle in response to 15 dollars an hour for burger flippers
Sounds like "the market" at work.
...but I'm not buying the Neofeudal bullshit about exploding prices as a result of paying people a fair wage.
A $10.10 minimum wage would add 1c to a $16 item [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [thinkprogress.org]
The last items on that page mention companies that ALREADY pay better wages and are doing great.
It also sounds like you think that more money in the hands of working people is a bad idea.
I'm betting that you have to work for a living, yet it appears you think that 1 Percenters should be allowed to continue to abuse|cheat the working class.
I, OTOH, think that there is honor in ALL labor and that EVERY worker should be paid a living wage.
Professor Sawant thinks so too.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @08:25AM
"A $10.10 minimum wage would add 1c to a $16 item"
yeah, maybe if everything else stayed the same. the problem is prices adjust everywhere, which adds a compounding effect. same as when money loses value (not that democrats would know anything about that either).
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday July 08 2014, @02:48PM
No chance that's going to get repealed in the next 2.5 years.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday July 07 2014, @03:07PM
I'm in Brooklyn, not in Washington, but the most important question I have for anyone running for Congress is, where do you stand on the NSA's mass-surveillance of the American citizenry?
That question is followed very closely by these two:
1) Should we prosecute financial companies and their officers when they break our laws, or are they too important to jail or offend?
2) Is climate change a real concern and, if so, should we do anything about it?
My final question for those running for office now is, wouldn't you rather run for Congress after the imminent Second American Revolution rather than before it?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 07 2014, @05:10PM
> 1) Should we prosecute financial companies and their officers when they break our laws, or are they too important to jail or offend?
Unless your goal is simply to express your own viewpoint (in which case just declare it, don't passively hide it as a question), you should re-word that. When you make one choice obviously wrong, no one will bite and you'll get either a non-answer (where they just go off on their own talking points) or an answer that is too shallow. Word it more subtly and you have a chance of hooking someone into admitting something stupid. It won't be full-blown stupid, but it's the best chance you have of getting someone to tell you why you should not vote for them.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday July 07 2014, @07:13PM
Yeah, that's really gonna make a potential congressman want to hang out here. I can almost picture you looking like this [rawstory.com], from the interviewee's perspective.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday July 12 2014, @05:31PM
You mean like this? [soylentnews.org] Or maybe like this? [theguardian.com] Perhaps this billboard [manhattanministorage.com] from that bastion of socialism, Manhattan.
There are very large social forces converging now that denial and wishful thinking won't turn back. That's what the first two links were citing, so I refer you to them for a list of what those trends are rather than reproducing it here in this post. I would sum it up by observing that systems of centralized control, production, finance, currency, energy, transportation, communication, etc that have obtained for 200 years or more throughout the Industrial Revolution are breaking down, and the total collapse of that centralized system is imminent. It has already begun in other parts of the world, it will reach here too. We are waiting for the trigger.
There are many decentralized systems waiting in the wings, of course, and once the transition period is over it will be a new Renaissance. But history tells us people who hold power in an established system never give it up peacefully. The process of breaking their power and replacing it with new structures is called "revolution." We are ripe for one in America.
The current system is broken, inefficient, short-sighted, and unjust. It must be scrapped and reconstituted, preserving those things which are laudable like Freedom of Speech, etc., and jettisoning absurdities like corporate personhood. So as much as I fear the short-term consequences of revolution, I relish freedom more.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @04:29AM
Always LOL at you armchair generals who've been proclaiming this every year for nearly a My final question for those running for office now is, wouldn't you rather run for Congress after the imminent Second American Revolution rather than before it decade. There won't be any revolution since you libertards do nothing but make empty threats from the basement.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jackb_guppy on Monday July 07 2014, @05:07PM
If corporations are "persons", why are corporations not prosecuted and jailed when found guiltily? Instead of the current method of buying their way out and still doing business in the same area, they could not do without cheating before. If not the corporation, then the board and senior management be the ones held for the corporation's misdeeds. Examples of current issues: Home Loan "Fraud" and High-Speed "Insider" Trading.
On that same vain:
Per resent court ruling, a corporation can have religious views, who actually has to have those views, if a corporation is deemed has them? I have yet to see a corporation in church. :) All the shareholders? Just the board? CEO only? Should then public be blocked taking a job in that corporation, if they do not hold the same views? Or should the public be a second class citizen not getting what they believe in because they live in area where all/major of corporations have the same view?
When does a corporation "talk"? As in the 1st Amendment or is all speech by a corporation always advertising (marketing), so truth in advertising laws kick in?
When is the CEO speech (or any top management), NOT corporation speech? When the CEO is not announced as the CEO. Can Bill Gates ever have free speech again since he is tied so tightly to Microsoft and Bill and Melisa Gates Foundation?
Why does the government (for the people and by people - both cases humans) not step in and control boil-plate and click-though agreements? Since these agreements are now "ALL" made out to prevent the public from helping reform the corporations, by blocking the use of the courts and class-actions, let alone the ability to change the agreement at will without input from the other party (us, humans). Voting with your dollars do not help when all telco/cable do the same time. So, no choice but to accept.
Are the wires (last mile) owned by the people or telco/cable corporations, which seem to be also content provider? Should the last mile or actually all wires, be owned by not-of-profit companies that do not provide any content, but working for the public to insure we have good, if not better, service? In this way, we can choice who want to interconnect to different ISP and/or content providers.
Should the providing company also be liable for false or misleading things, if they are verifying that they work and user is forced to download from the company's "wall garden" for their devices. Example here is could be a blood pressure app that is not reviewed by the FDA but if they fail or give wrong readings can affect the costumer badly.
Sorry... getting off soap-box now.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheLink on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:57AM
If a corporation misbehaves badly you should jail the people responsible for the decisions. Then only will you see people in corporations start making decisions differently. Otherwise it just becomes "cost of doing business" and "Government taking its cut via fines".
People often say it's unclear who is responsible, but in many cases once people realize they might go to jail they start providing hard evidence that someone else is really responsible. Because ultimately someone is responsible for making the corporation do X. Where X could be laundering _billions_ of USD for drug lords, or illegally transferring customer $$$ to other accounts, or publicly saying something is fine when the engineers don't think it is.
If you fine or jail a billionaire's _company_, it may hurt, but he is likely to have other sources of income.
In contrast jail time is a huge opportunity cost for a billionaire - he can't be partying on his yacht, he can't fly to the Bahamas, he can't be working on his latest exciting project, he's stuck in prison.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @11:51AM
The problem with this is that the legal fiction of corporation is specifically intended to obscure individual responsibility.
Example, imagine it's company policy to amputate the left hand of everyone entering one of their stores. In that (ridiculous) case, it's pretty clear that a security guard who actually performs such amputation is criminal, because Nuremberg established that "just following orders" is not a defense. But what about the committee that drafted the policy? Members of the committee who voted against that specific line? The CEO and board of directors, who are nominally responsible for all company actions? Middle management who failed to question the policy?
If there's no written policy supporting the illegal behavior, then it's very hard to prove that bad actions are not the result of one malicious or fraudulent individual, thus absolving the company of any culpability at all.
Financial penalties are about all you can meaningfully impose on a company, but the penalties imposed so fare are generally trivial in magnitude. Example, BP has paid about $4B for the Macondo oil spill and may face further payments of $4-24B. Their profit last year was $45B on revenue of $350B. In contrast, fines for drug trafficking, criminal negligence, and other "personal" crimes frequently exceed individual annual revenue, leaving them in debt for years. Impose criminal fines on companies that are more than a small fraction of their profits, more that a trivial percentage of their revenue, and restrict their freedom to pay bonuses, and you will see companies pay more attention to internal ethics and policing.
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Tuesday July 08 2014, @02:28PM
The committee may get away with it, the boss might get away but once word gets around that the "corporate veil" is being pierced and bosses, employees and guards risk going to prison rather than only the company getting fined; people would be more likely to refuse to do stuff that might cause them to end up in prison AND/OR get lots of stuff in writing. If I'm part of a committee I might even start making sure that my dissension to dubious/illegal stuff is recorded just in case. Even if committees still issued illegal orders and got away with them, more employees would disobey so companies would be doing less bad stuff (or it costs them more to do so) - I'm not going to go to prison for your illegal order, if you sack me, I might give an anonymous tip somewhere. In contrast if there's little/zero chance of me going to prison, I might be tempted to go along with it and reap the benefits along with everyone else. If the company gets a big fine later on, it's unlikely to affect me as much as going to prison would.
So I still disagree with your reasoning and conclusion that financial penalties are all you can impose. Once people start going to prison you'll see a change. Till then why the heck should anyone care that much? Companies make losses and go bust every now and then. The people responsible usually get to keep their bonuses from the "good years" where they were doing risky, bad or even illegal stuff.
If you want to make it fair and maybe more effective you make a big announcement that you're going to start doing this, maybe even require companies to inform employees of these new laws. So when you start putting people in prison, you can say everyone's been warned.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday July 08 2014, @12:01PM
You are absolutely right that it is the threat of going to jail that will actually change things.
Think about this: You're some underling in HSBC, and you're told to take part in their multi-billion dollar money laundering scheme for drug lords. And this went on for years. Why would you not tell the appropriate authorities? Almost definitely because to do so would be to lose your job, that's why. And once your name got in the paper, you would probably also be unable to work in the banking industry again as well. I mean, losing your career is a big deal, and I wouldn't be surprised to see ordinary people avoiding that fate.
That is, unless you threaten them with something more serious. You have to make it more risky to not say anything, to protect bosses, etc than it is to rat them out.
Fines will never work: Even if you fine the corporation more than the profits they made from the criminal activity (which has not been happening), the managers who made the choice to commit the crime are not directly affected by it and thus have no disincentive to repeat the behavior.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Tuesday July 08 2014, @02:46PM
Things change once people start going to prison.
If you're going to put small fry in prison for money laundering, then when HSBC is caught doing it, someone should go to prison too (it's bullshit that billions of dollars can be transferred so easily without anyone knowing about it - so I'm pretty sure you can get enough names if you really bothered to look). If some individual would go to prison for doing X, then when Large Corp does X the people/person responsible should go to prison too.
As I said, this is just "The Government taking its cut". And it's more evidence that the War on Drugs is bullshit. The billions of laundered dollars is blood money. Without those billions, the drug lords would find it much harder to fund their wars and armies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @02:15PM
And if you jail a natural person, you also affect a lot of people who may not be responsible for what that person did. This might include
Note that this is not an exhaustive list.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:00PM
a) Jailing one person - X people affected
b) Jailing a corporation - X * number of employees in corporation affected.
Why jail an entire corporation when you can get similar or better results by jailing only the ones responsible and thus affect far fewer people?
Now do you see why it's stupid to do b) when you could and should do a)?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @08:27AM
The only reason why corporations are considered 'people' is to enable the IRS to slog hardworking Americans even more in taxes.
(Score: 1) by richtopia on Monday July 07 2014, @05:33PM
He is a fan of the site; it would be cool if we could do one of the "ask your own questions" interviews with B.J. Guillot.
(Score: 1) by koreanbabykilla on Monday July 07 2014, @05:37PM
I hope he doesn't reply directly in the comments because he is EtOH fueled. LOL.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 07 2014, @07:05PM
The candidate added 'Fuck beta'
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @02:23AM
lol!
It's like the 1 time out of 100 that was actually funny! (I'm not trying to be sarcastic either).
(Score: 2) by EvilJim on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:41AM
Well played Anon, well played :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @08:30AM
...and he closed with "I like frosty piss! First post ftw!"
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 07 2014, @09:50PM
This is B.J. Guillot, the candidate mentioned. I will review the various questions here and start replying in a few hours. I have to finish working at my day job before I dig in further. So stay tuned.
And before you ask: YankPrintster is the handle I used to use on some BBS's back in the late 80's and I just kept using it for some websites. It doesn't really mean anything.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Tuesday July 08 2014, @01:10AM
Mr. Guillot:
Thank you for offering to answer our community's questions. I sent an email a few minutes ago to your campaign email address "info at vote4bj.com", asking that you confirm your identity. If you are able to do so, we would be happy to bump this story to the top of the page, to give the community the chance to ask any additional questions they may have.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by mrcoolbp on Tuesday July 08 2014, @02:07AM
He responded = )
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 1) by BlackHole on Monday July 07 2014, @10:39PM
1. What is your position on the NSA's activities abroad? Specifically, if elected, would you support legislation to limit the NSA's surveillance of the citizens and government officials of other countries, including those of America's allies? To be as concrete as possible, in your opinion, what should be required to authorize such surveillance, and, if authorized, what should be the scope of the surveillance.
2. Given the grave impact recent disclosures will likely have on American business interests (e.g., pictures of U.S. government employees intercepting Cisco hardware for the purpose of implanting surveillance equipment/software), would you support legislation to end these practices?
3. Would you support legislation to reform the FISA court, and if so, in what way do you think it should be reformed?
4. What is your position regarding letters that include a gag order (e.g., National Security Letters (NSLs) or equivalent)? When, if ever, should these be used? What do you think of the disappearance of Lavabit, Groklaw, etc.?
5. Would you support a clemency agreement for Edward Snowden?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:01AM
And does Mr. Guillot support changing the US national motto to "live free or die"?
(Score: 1) by lonestar on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:22AM
Yes or No?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @04:29AM
Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas? Yes.
I can't think of a US President since Carter that didn't deserve to get tossed for serving only the rich minority.
Carter was also the only one in my memory who didn't get us into|keep us in one of those stupid military aggressions.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by lonestar on Tuesday July 08 2014, @10:26PM
Please list your reasons for wanting to impeach Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Then if you want me to, I will list a litany of reasons for wanting to impeach the our poor excuse for a president.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 09 2014, @01:16AM
Time and again, Scalia and Thomas have had conflicts of interest.
They don't act the way judges are supposed to. [google.com]
People who call for Obama's impeachment and did NOT call for Dubya's have one reason: Obama's a nigger.
They won't come right out and say it in so few words (except in their white-hooded meetings), but when all's said and done, it's clear that's their reason.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by lonestar on Wednesday July 09 2014, @02:07PM
Thanks for the intellectually devastating counterargument, douchebag.
(Score: 3) by gringer on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:33AM
Okay, I might as well ask some questions as a complete outsider (NZ) based on what you've got on your about [vote4bj.com] page:
Do you still use Fortran? What sorts of applications have you written or modified [either in Fortran, or the other languages if you would prefer to answer that]?
Would you sell your Leaf and Prius if you could get a Tesla (i.e. replace two cars with one)?
What is the oldest computer that you own?
Ask me about Sequencing DNA in front of Linus Torvalds [youtube.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by yankprintster on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:44AM
I typed up these responses as quickly as I could, as I have other events I need to prepare for, so please excuse any typos. I thank everyone for being civil and asking a lot of really great questions. You guys don't throw any softballs! We will not always agree on everything, but a nice, civil debate is always a good thing.
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Q: redneckmother (3597) - I am curious about his stance on campaign finance reform.
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A: In General, I think the system in place now is OK with one exception: SuperPAC's should be required to release donation records within days of receipt, rather than keeping them anonymous for long periods of time.
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Q: A.C. who lives in Whatcom County 5 miles outside of my district -
What type of foreign policy do you support?
Would you support removing Federal Military bases from WA state?
If you were President, what would you do about the USSR and Ukraine?
What kind of relationship should we have with Cuba?
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A: Regarding foreign policy, I believe we need to have a major change of attitude. I don't support engaging in military conflicts unless the homeland or our military bases are attacked. So, the only legitimate wars in recent history would have been World War II (Pearl Harbor attacked) and, initially, the conflicts in Afghanistan (due to 9/11); however, all the troops should have been pulled out of Afghanistan once Bid Laden was eliminated. (I know he was found in Pakistan.) Keeping troops deployed in war zones for long periods of time hurts morale and is bad for families. We do need to maintain a strong military, but it should be a rare event that we need to use it. I don't support sending money to other countries (no foreign aid) at this time. If we ever pay off the National Debt, then it could be re-considered, but in my opinion, with a $17.5 trillion debt, it doesn't make sense to be giving away money in foreign aid to other countries, or to be spending money on unnecessary wars. I do not support removing Federal Military bases from WA State. The bases are a big part of the local economy and it would be have a devastating impact to families here. The Ukraine situation is troublesome, but there's no need for us to get involved militarily. Pressuring with diplomacy and sanctions is the correct approach. It also serves as a wakeup call to the military and NASA that we shouldn't be relying on Russian hardware (RD-180 engines) to get our space assets launched, nor relying on Russian spacecraft (Soyuz) to get our personnel launched to the International Space Station. I think it's time to bury the hatchet with Cuba, and we should open it up so that American companies can start trading with them and that American tourists can more easily travel there.
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Q: Phoenix666 - I'm in Brooklyn, not in Washington, but the most important question I have for anyone running for Congress is, where do you stand on the NSA's mass-surveillance of the American citizenry?
That question is followed very closely by these two:
1) Should we prosecute financial companies and their officers when they break our laws, or are they too important to jail or offend?
2) Is climate change a real concern and, if so, should we do anything about it?
My final question for those running for office now is, wouldn't you rather run for Congress after the imminent Second American Revolution rather than before it?
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A: I hate the fact that the NSA has been conducting mass-surveillance on Americans. It needs to stop immediately--and that includes stopping collection of metadata, too. If someone breaks the law, then yes, people need to be held accountable and prosecuted. That applies to the officers, too, if they are found to be involved (either in terms of issuing the orders, approving the orders, or knowing about it and looking the other way). Yes, climate change is a real concern. I love science, and the scientific evidence is overwhelming. I personally believe the only realistic way to combat it is a comprehensive energy plan involving both renewables and nuclear power. Renewables are nice, but they have their limits. If I did the math right, you could theoretically replace all coal power plants in the US with just 170 Generation 3 new 1.1 Gigawatt nuclear reactors like the Westinghouse AP1000. The US currently has about 100 nuclear reactors (in use at about 66 different plants). You could reduce the 170 number by adding in wind farms, solar farms, geothermal, etc. To do it without adding nuclear power capacity I think it just not realistic in any timeframe that would help. I think the odds of another American revolution happening anytime soon are very slim.
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Q: jackb_guppy (3560) - If corporations are "persons", why are corporations not prosecuted and jailed when found guiltily? Instead of the current method of buying their way out and still doing business in the same area, they could not do without cheating before. If not the corporation, then the board and senior management be the ones held for the corporation's misdeeds. Examples of current issues: Home Loan "Fraud" and High-Speed "Insider" Trading.
Per resent court ruling, a corporation can have religious views, who actually has to have those views, if a corporation is deemed has them? I have yet to see a corporation in church. :) All the shareholders? Just the board? CEO only? Should then public be blocked taking a job in that corporation, if they do not hold the same views? Or should the public be a second class citizen not getting what they believe in because they live in area where all/major of corporations have the same view?
When does a corporation "talk"? As in the 1st Amendment or is all speech by a corporation always advertising (marketing), so truth in advertising laws kick in?
When is the CEO speech (or any top management), NOT corporation speech? When the CEO is not announced as the CEO. Can Bill Gates ever have free speech again since he is tied so tightly to Microsoft and Bill and Melisa Gates Foundation?
Why does the government (for the people and by people - both cases humans) not step in and control boil-plate and click-though agreements? Since these agreements are now "ALL" made out to prevent the public from helping reform the corporations, by blocking the use of the courts and class-actions, let alone the ability to change the agreement at will without input from the other party (us, humans). Voting with your dollars do not help when all telco/cable do the same time. So, no choice but to accept.
Are the wires (last mile) owned by the people or telco/cable corporations, which seem to be also content provider? Should the last mile or actually all wires, be owned by not-of-profit companies that do not provide any content, but working for the public to insure we have good, if not better, service? In this way, we can choice who want to interconnect to different ISP and/or content providers.
Should the providing company also be liable for false or misleading things, if they are verifying that they work and user is forced to download from the company's "wall garden" for their devices. Example here is could be a blood pressure app that is not reviewed by the FDA but if they fail or give wrong readings can affect the costumer badly.
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A: If corporations commit crimes, then those people responsible in the corporation should be tried criminally. Regarding the recent court ruling, my understanding is that it only applies to privately held companies, and not public companies. A company can't refuse to hire someone based on their religious beliefs; however, a person can certainly choose not to work at a company if they disagree with the companies official positions on such issues. I'm not really sure where you are trying to go with your questions about free speech. Interesting idea about the click-through agreements. I generally oppose government regulation, but that might be something worth looking into. However, I'm not aware of click-through agreements really being able to prevent court or class-action lawsuits if you have a good attorney. For the ownership of the last-mile, that's probably more a matter for your local city or county to take up with whatever franchise agreements they have in place with the telco providers. In the future, the last mile stuff probably won't really even be as relevant, as we continue to transition to faster wireless services. Depending upon where you live, you may have multiple choices in Internet: local telco provider (DSL), local cable provider (cable modem), local microwave provider (though don't see too many of these companies), satellite provider (with less than ideal ping times), or pay to get commercial grade wired service (T1, MetroE, etc.). Regarding walled gardens, the providers of the stores are providing a service to the application developers in testing that their applications to meet minimum usability standards to comply with the store's guidelines. I don't think they do testing of arithmetic algorithms, or claim that they do. If you have an app cause you harm, and you want to go after someone, I think it makes much more sense to go talk to the developer. The people running the store probably only spent a few minutes testing the application.
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Q: BlackHole (530) -
1. What is your position on the NSA's activities abroad? Specifically, if elected, would you support legislation to limit the NSA's surveillance of the citizens and government officials of other countries, including those of America's allies? To be as concrete as possible, in your opinion, what should be required to authorize such surveillance, and, if authorized, what should be the scope of the surveillance.
2. Given the grave impact recent disclosures will likely have on American business interests (e.g., pictures of U.S. government employees intercepting Cisco hardware for the purpose of implanting surveillance equipment/software), would you support legislation to end these practices?
3. Would you support legislation to reform the FISA court, and if so, in what way do you think it should be reformed?
4. What is your position regarding letters that include a gag order (e.g., National Security Letters (NSLs) or equivalent)? When, if ever, should these be used? What do you think of the disappearance of Lavabit, Groklaw, etc.?
5. Would you support a clemency agreement for Edward Snowden?
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A: Once you aren't spying on Americans inside the US, it's fair game for the NSA to spy on people outside the US. That's what they are supposed to do. And other countries are supposed to try to do the same to us. It's the spy game. The NSA should try to help Americans protect their privacy to prevent other countries from snooping on us. They used to do that that, helping improve encryption algorithms. But then they started going down a dark path, allegedly adding potential backdoors into the newer encryption algorithms. I don't support the NSA putting backdoors into American products because those products could easily end up back in the US to spy on us. Also, it hurts the American companies' reputations (whether they knew about what was happening or not) and can lead to lower revenues. People should be able to buy a Cisco product without having to worry about whether it's been tampered with. Yes, the FISA courts need to be reformed. Some of the ideas in the FISA Court Reform Act of 2013 could have been useful had it had advanced. NSL gag orders violate the 1st Amendment. I can't think of a legitimate use for it. When sites like Lavabit go away, it just means other sites in other parts of the world where the US government has no jurisdiction will go up to pick up the slack. It doesn't really do anything to protect national security--it's just security theater. Compelling someone to give up their private keys is just plain wrong. Yes, I'd support a clemency agreement for Edward Snowden. Before his relegations, people just joked about the government spying on us, but we never knew for sure. Because of Mr. Snowden, we now know the truth turned out to be even worse than we ever imagined.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday July 08 2014, @04:36AM
Then I suppose you will accept as fair the following consequences:
* creation of regional specific IT services, in which US companies will be forbidden to participate (starting with networks which avoid US soil/jurisdiction, to regional clouds)
* any relation involving US interest will be "distrusted by default, unless controlling mechanisms are defined"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @06:16AM
Outside the United States, the NSA would essentially be under rules like those that bind the CIA. They can spy on people like Angela Merkel if the information they gain is more valuable to the national interest than the fallout from the international incident that would result if they were caught. She would ask herself and her ministers the same questions before directing the Bundesnachrichtendienst to conduct a similar operation against Barack Obama. Doing such a thing should thus be subject to a cost-benefit analysis.
(Score: 3) by jasassin on Tuesday July 08 2014, @05:25AM
I'm not sure if you really are a plotician. You answered all the questions asked, and intelligently nonetheless. I liked every answer. If I lived in your jurisdiction you'd have my vote. I'm sad to say you might be overqualified.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Tuesday July 08 2014, @10:25AM
I agree - I live in the UK and I'd vote for you if I could, mainly because you were asked a direct question and gave a direct answer, and that just never happens! A truly blog-worthy incident if I ever saw one!
(Score: 2) by No.Limit on Tuesday July 08 2014, @12:19PM
Yea, if you're ever going to run for election in Switzerland, you got my vote!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @04:32PM
Really? Most of it was alright, be he opened up with
If this is the only problem he sees, we have issues. I see the system as it stands as inherently corrupt, and I couldn't vote for any politician who is "OK" with it.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/461/take-the-money-and-run-for-office [thisamericanlife.org]
(Score: 2) by jackb_guppy on Tuesday July 08 2014, @11:08PM
May want to read up about the Supreme Court:
Supreme Court: AT&T can force arbitration, block class-action suits
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/04/scotus-rules-att-can-force-arbitration-block-class-action-suits/ [arstechnica.com]
In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court disagreed with the lower court's decision. In his majority opinion, Justice Scalia argued that the purpose of the FAA was designed to promote arbitration over more costly and lengthy litigation. Quoting an earlier ruling by the court, Scalia explained that "[a] prime objective of an agreement to arbitrate is to achieve ‘streamlined proceedings and expeditious results,'" and that requiring the class-action litigation to proceed would be at odds with the intent of the FAA and the benefits that arbitration agreements ostensibly provide.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:55AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Tuesday July 08 2014, @10:06AM
It may have something to do with his website being "vote4bj.com" How could you vote against that?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday July 08 2014, @04:26AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Interesting) by BlackHole on Tuesday July 08 2014, @04:51AM
I would like to sincerely thank Mr. Guillot for taking the time to answer our questions.
This has certainly been a bold experiment for our site. We directly engaged with a political candidate in a free-form discussion about a wide range of topics, including a number of hot-button issues.
In many ways, I think it was a successful experiment: We helped this candidate understand the issues that we care about, and we learned what he thinks about those issues.
In some ways, we could have done better. For example, one commenter mentioned: "[...] it would be cool if we could do one of the "ask your own questions" interviews with B.J. Guillot." In other words, perhaps it wasn't as clear as it could have been that that is exactly what this was intended to be.
What do you think? What went right? What went wrong?
What should we do now?
A) Let's try a few more interview-style posts and see what happens.
B) I don't live in the northwest corner of Washington state, so this was irrelevant to me. Please only post stories from my neighborhood.
C) Other (please specify).
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday July 08 2014, @05:32AM
Wake up early for your place in the queue [seattletimes.com].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by clone141166 on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:48PM
This was/is a pretty exciting story; it's not often that the subject of the story responds within the comments, and a political candidate to boot. Thank you very much to Mr. Guillot for taking the time to respond!
(Score: 1) by No.Limit on Tuesday July 08 2014, @12:31PM
Dear Mr. Guillot,
Firstly, thank you for taking the time to answer the questions and I hope I'm not too late with mine:
Currently I'm quite interested in the theory that the US (and possibly many more countries) is an oligarchy. As I'm trying to form an educated opinion about this matter I've come across the difficulty that it's hard to find reliable information. I hope you can help me with your insights:
- What do you think about this theory and what's your opinion on it?
- Have you ever experienced someone with enough power/influence to be considered an oligarch?, if yes, how was it, in particular how was that person?, did they realize that they're in a position with much more influence than others?
- Do you think there are changes necessary to the system to avoid this situation and what would you suggest if so?
Thanks again and all the best with the elections!
Ben
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday July 08 2014, @02:53PM
It strikes me that oligarchy vs. republic is just a question of numbers. With a strict approach, one could argue that the U.S. is an oligarchy anyway without even addressing the question by calling the president, vice president, leaders of each house of legislature, and the Supreme Court justices "in charge." That's just 13 people.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by number6 on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:37PM
Mr. Guillot, can you please offer a few personal tips about the SoylentNews business model.
The community has been debating the pros and cons of various methods to maintain this site's long-term health. A key issue has been to avoid the same fate that Slashdot suffered. Given the various suggestions offered by the community so far, what would you like to see?
(Score: 1) by yankprintster on Wednesday July 09 2014, @12:56AM
Hello guys. This is B.J. Guillot, the candidate again. Responding to the second round of new questions I saw today after work:
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Q: A.C. - And does Mr. Guillot support changing the US national motto to "live free or die"?
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A: I love the New Hampshire Motto, but it's probably best to leave the national motto alone and not use something that another State already has dibs on.
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Q: lonestar (4437) - Impeach? Yes or No?
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A: I assume you are talking about President Obama. I personally feel impeachment talk is just political theater. If you don't like him, you only have to put up with him for two more years. I am concerned about his more and more frequent use of executive orders, but if you were successful at kicking him out of office, do you really want Joe Biden to be President?
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Q: gringer (962) - Do you still use Fortran? What sorts of applications have you written or modified [either in Fortran, or the other languages if you would prefer to answer that]?
Would you sell your Leaf and Prius if you could get a Tesla (i.e. replace two cars with one)?
What is the oldest computer that you own?
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A: It's been a long time since I've used Fortran. Most recently was probably back in 2004 when I installed Linux on a cluster of four Microsoft Xboxes for a school project and did some timing tests for various MPI routines. See the website: http://www.bgfax.com/xbox/ [bgfax.com] that talks about that project. My wife actually still uses Fortran for a project she is working on at her employer (big aerospace company in the Pacific Northwest that I probably shouldn't name).
The language I've written most of my "real" software in was Turbo Pascal back in the day (wrote a lot of BBS-related shareware) and more recently Java. The Java application handles all aspects of ambulance medical billing and data collection (mailing patient bills, sending electronic medical claims, finding and matching previously encountered patient records, etc.) That application is still in use at my employer, but there are other programmers that are now supporting it as I've moved on to a management role there.
I'd love a Tesla, but they are just too expensive for me right now. My wife and I each drive, so it'd be cumbersome to try to consolidate to a single car.
The oldest computer I own is a TI 99/4A (have several of them in working condition). Before I jumped into this Congressional campaign, I was teaching myself TMS-9900 assembly language for the TI 99/4A and wrote a subroutine that would encrypt a block with AES-256 and hash a block with SHA-256. It took me a while to get it working in 16-bit assembly (as the AES algorithm was designed for either 8-bit or 32-bit and the SHA algorithm was 32-bit). My goal was to make a PGP compatible encryption/decryption program for the TI so that I could have a NSA-proof means of communications--no keyloggers should work on the old hardware, no spyware, no viruses, not connected to the Internet--but the speed of the SHA algorithm in particular turned out to be a lot slower than I expected and I never got around to writing code to do the RSA algorithms needed to finish the project.
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Q: c0lo (156) -
"A: Once you aren't spying on Americans inside the US, it's fair game for the NSA to spy on people outside the US."
Then I suppose you will accept as fair the following consequences:
* creation of regional specific IT services, in which US companies will be forbidden to participate (starting with networks which avoid US soil/jurisdiction, to regional clouds)
* any relation involving US interest will be "distrusted by default, unless controlling mechanisms are defined"
-----
A: That's unfortunately already started to happen to some degree. Because of the USA PATRIOT Act, the Canadian government won't let us use a SaaS/web-based product if it is hosted on US servers. You have to deploy to infrastructure at a Canadian data center in that case. That's what I've been told anyway. If my information is wrong on that, I'm sure someone will correct me.
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Q: A.C. - Q: redneckmother (3597) - I am curious about his stance on campaign finance reform.
"A: In General, I think the system in place now is OK with one exception: SuperPAC's should be required to release donation records within days of receipt, rather than keeping them anonymous for long periods of time."
If this is the only problem he sees, we have issues. I see the system as it stands as inherently corrupt, and I couldn't vote for any politician who is "OK" with it.
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A: Let's hear your idea. A Congressional campaign costs around $1-2 million. 435 members of Congress run for election every 2 years. Assume 2 major candidates in each Congressional race at $2M/each, that's about $1.7 billion every 2 years just to fund the Congressional races. And then you have local State Representatives and State Senators, and U.S. Senators, State-level folks (Governor, Lt. Gov, etc.) on various schedules. If the government were to simply give this money to candidates to go run their campaign (versus having to fundraise), do you really think it would end up going to candidates that aren't already part of "the system"? The other idea I've heard is that you force television stations to do a set amount of free adverting for candidates, but campaign advertising is a significant piece of revenue for many TV networks and local cable companies. I don't really like the idea of the government forcing people or companies to do things. But I'm open to hear your ideas. Maybe you have an idea I've not considered and it could spark some new thoughts about the process.
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Q: Tork (3914) - Mr. Guillot, your campaign seems to have the momentum of a runaway freight train. Can you tell us what makes you so popular?
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A: I'm just trying my best to get the word out to as many places as will listen. I try to be open-minded about things, and I'll listen to people with opinions I don't agree with to try to better understand their point of view. While I'm running as a Republican, one thing I tell myself is that if I win, my constituents aren't just Republican--they are Democratic, Libertarians, Greens, Independents, etc.
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Q: c0lo (156) - In a time when the US export are less and less driven by manufactured products, how well is the education prepared [insidehighered.com] to keep US on the competitive edge?
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A: Education is a big problem now, and I can identify with some of the items specified in the article you mentioned. It took me 7 years to get my BS degrees instead of 4. I changed majors a few times. I started out as a Chemical Engineering major, then switched to Electrical Engineering, and finally ended switching to Computer Science. Programming came naturally to me, but I thought it'd be better career wise to be an engineer (plus I had a scholarship for the engineering department, but not for CS). But in the end, I didn't like engineering as much as I had hoped and switched to CS because it was easy for me. And then eventually decided to double major in math since I only needed another 4 or 5 math classes to make that happen. And after being there for 6 years, it didn't feel like a big deal to stay one more to do that. I don't think our public schools are doing enough to keep young people interested in STEM subjects, and promoting classes. But it's not just STEM. A lot of people graduate high school and have never had a money management class and don't really grasp the concept of trying to save money for retirement, or how the stock market works, or how fast credit card debt adds up, etc. And some States don't seem to require students to learn about the US Constitution anymore. There have been lots of ideas proposed on how to fix these problems, but I'm not sure I've seen a good answer yet.
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Q: No.Limit (1965) -Currently I'm quite interested in the theory that the US (and possibly many more countries) is an oligarchy. As I'm trying to form an educated opinion about this matter I've come across the difficulty that it's hard to find reliable information. I hope you can help me with your insights:
- What do you think about this theory and what's your opinion on it?
- Have you ever experienced someone with enough power/influence to be considered an oligarch?, if yes, how was it, in particular how was that person?, did they realize that they're in a position with much more influence than others?
- Do you think there are changes necessary to the system to avoid this situation and what would you suggest if so?
-----
A: I don't think we've passed the threshold into an oligarchy. People ultimately still hold the power. They could vote every incumbent out that's up for election in November if they wanted to. But it just doesn't seem to happen. People say they hate the current people in power, but then they never exercise their power to reboot the government by voting them all out. I'm not sure why people seem to stick with the status quo. Maybe it's the "stick with the devil you know" mindset, or just voter apathy in general. I've never personally met anyone I'd considered to be an oligarch, but I read about people in the paper every now and then that could be potential candidates (enough money to lawyer themselves out of any crime). It's not a crime to be successful and have money. Nor is it a crime to be able to pay for the best possible legal defense. Maybe we need more educated jurors that don't get swayed by silly arguments?
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Q: number6 (1831) -
Mr. Guillot, can you please offer a few personal tips about the SoylentNews business model.
The community has been debating the pros and cons of various methods to maintain this site's long-term health. A key issue has been to avoid the same fate that Slashdot suffered. Given the various suggestions offered by the community so far, what would you like to see?
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A: The best advice I'd have is that the SoylentNews folks just need to listen to their visitors. Slashdot screwed up by totally ignoring all the negative feedback they were getting about their new layout. As long as the SN team are able to take constructive criticism and react to it in a constructive manner, then things should all work out in the end.
-----
Regards,
B.J. Guillot
Republican Candidate for US Congress
Washington State 2nd Congressional District
Website: http://www.vote4bj.com/ [vote4bj.com]
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vote4bj [facebook.com]
(Score: 2) by jackb_guppy on Wednesday July 09 2014, @03:51AM
Thank you continuing to post and answer questions.
Those license agreements to click through... Just on Linksys site to get an update for my router. http://support.linksys.com/en-us/support/routers/WRT1900AC [linksys.com]
The freaking agreement is a 138 page PDF. 138 pages and multiple languages to boot! And there is simple check box "I accept the terms & conditions" and "accept" or "do not accept" button. How do I know what I am agreeing to? This needs to be stopped. Feds should spell out the terms and conditions, not each company's whim, since these licenses are driven out by copyright, patent and trademark laws.
Another in that area, giving a copyright for 95 years is very bad, when the company abandons the product decades, before copyright runs out. Many years ago to sell software the company I worked for had to place in escrow the source code, increase the company failed the clients needed the code to continue. Why does copyright law not protect the customers as well? Say, "stop supporting a product (no more patches for bugs), the full source becomes public domain (hence open source?) immediately, instead 95 years, because that is the escrow agreement built into copyright law. If you are going to give up the work, then give up the rights.
Oh well, have a fun run for office!
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Wednesday July 09 2014, @05:50AM
Wow, first off, major props to you for coming and answering our questions. My guess is you had a meta-moment when SoylentNews ran an article about you liking SoylentNews; the staff consider this our first official interview (as I've learned running the site, you can never expect what's going to come out of the community :-)). We actually had a small traffic spike which broke the "unique visitors" record for the site.
Secondly, since the question train keeps going, would you mind if I took all the responses thus far, and turned them into an article and ran it? I can understand it can be tiring fielding questions all day. If there's one thing I learned from this site, it's always important to keep a discussion going, and this is a pretty good place to get various bits of insight; with your approval, I'll stick it in the queue for Wednesday or Thursday.
Anyway, having gone through the pain of incorporating a business as of late, I'm curious on your opinions with respect the internet and small businesses. The fact is, business law in the United States is still firmly stepped in the concept that a business is a location in one state that buys or sells goods from a physical location, and is (generally) for profit. While I realize this falls under the realm of state law more than federal, the fact is, forming a business that (more or less) exists solely on the internet is shockingly difficult, especially if one is not operating on the basis of profit. Due to the strict limitations on non-for-profit, without the public benefit corporation laws in Delaware (and other states), it was quite possible we'd still be floundering figuring out how to do it. Even now, we still are unable to directly fundraise due to state laws requiring that the corporation be licensed in each individual state (something that I would think would fall under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, and thus within Congresses authority). Put simply, do you feel, as they exist today, the rules and regulations are sufficient for businesses (especially those related to PBCs, not for profit, and 501(c)(3)) that primarily exist in digital form, and if not, where do you feel that reform is necessary?
My next question is about dealing a follow up to your comments on impeachment. As you stated "I personally feel impeachment talk is just political theater.", and I can understand the sentiment, given how rarely impeachment happens in the United States (twice with presidents, with Nixon likely to have been impeached had he not resigned), do you feel that there is sufficient means for Congress (and the general public in large) to provide oversight and take corrective actions when necessary? While the House and Senate do have means to deal with issues internally (such as censure of McCarthy), they are very rarely used. Furthermore, given the opportunity to reform impeachment and other similar measures, what type of changes would you make to make it less of a political theatre, and more as a reasonable tool to reign in elected or appointed officials.
Finally, and this is with my site admin hat on, how would you recommend us structuring future interviews on the site. Slashdot traditionally went with "Ask a bunch of questions, we'll pick the best, and post the answers", while Reddit has its "Ask Me Anything" and "I Am A" sections which serve much the same purpose. This has managed to be a fusion of both, but in a very ad-hoc way. This discussion has prompted us (the staff) to work out an actual policy and format for doing interviews which are both interesting for the reader, and engaging for the writer; as you said, the right thing to do is to read feedback and respond, and we want to be an excellent forum to do so. Since you are our pilot test case, I'd love to get feedback on how we can improve it.
Anyway, thanks for your time on behalf of the SoylentNews Staff and myself, and I hope you keep enjoying the site for many more years to come :-). I might ask more questions later, but I think these are probably difficult enough for now.
Still always moving
(Score: 1) by yankprintster on Thursday July 10 2014, @12:58AM
Yeah, an article would be cool. There were only a few new questions I saw today, and I've running short on time today, so I might have to come back tomorrow to address them, or if you'd rather try to do it differently for the follow-up that's fine too. We can do whatever works best with your newly drafted interview policies.