Obdicut posted:

How is this supposed to work. I've read the stuff and I don't get how it's supposed to actually function as a way to get money out of politics.

It kind of seems like the people proposing it don't really understand why and how money is involved in politics.

Willa Rogers posted:

The last time I donated to the guy who said he'd get the dirty money out of politics he turned around and became the first major-party presidential candidate in modern political history to reject public financing.

Sheng-ji Yang posted:

move this thread to lf

Sheng-ji Yang posted:

move this thread to lf

Sheng-ji Yang posted:

the aboutus is the best, theyre all terrible tech people and a Bush Republican

https://mayone.us/about-us/

on the board: the founder of flash game website Kongregate

quote:

He has a tattoo on his right arm of the number “40” in remembrance of the NFL football player and US soldier Pat Tillman who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan.[9]

CheesyDog posted:

it's happening
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GANFn8IoqYs
Thread over

Sheng-ji Yang posted:

the aboutus is the best, theyre all terrible tech people and a Bush Republican

https://mayone.us/about-us/

on the board: the founder of flash game website Kongregate

Jagchosis posted:

is it kosher to post OP's Alcoholics Anonymous style confession that he's addicted to a vampire sex RP game?

A Rambling Vagrant posted:

At this point it would be unethical not to.

quote:

My name is Brian Boyko. I’ve had some time to think.

I have an addictive personality. And I became addicted to Immortal Vigilance.

For the past week, I have been wondering about how I would be able to keep up with the demands of IV when starting up my new job. I had been thinking about this when the big clusterfuck scene happened (we’ll not talk about that), except that I think the straw that broke the camel’s back was not anything IC or OOC but when DavidS said that he needed to stop because he had work in the morning, and the scene was going on forever....

And I realized not that the game wasn’t fun, but I was seriously worried about how my playing of IV would impact my real life. And I didn’t like what I was seeing.

I’m an addict. Right now, I feel angry, scared, have headaches and nausea - over the idea that I won’t get to play now that I’ve quit. I am near tears; and this is not a rational response, and it is not indicative of healthy behavior.

The very fact that I’m seriously considering going back and taking my characters off the deletion list is... actually the most powerful evidence to show why I shouldn’t.

I joined Immortal Vigilance when I hit a nadir in my life. I had tried to make a life for myself in New Zealand, only to find that I missed my friends terribly and was unhappy there. So, I decided to come back to Austin to be with my friends. But I came back without a job. I thought with my track record, I could get one quickly.

I was mistaken.

So, not only did I have an abundance of free time, but the fact was that without steady income, I couldn’t go out to see my friends. I couldn’t meet them at restaurants or movies, and even the gas money was too expensive to drive out and see them. (My car was used pretty much for trips to the supermarket and to job interviews, pretty much exclusively.) I remember actually backing out of going to see Harry Potter with my friends on Thanksgiving, claiming I was tired, but in actuality, I didn’t have any money for the ticket... and was too embarrassed to ask them to spot me.

I spent Christmas on Immortal Vigilance. I could very well have asked around to see if any of my friends would invite me over to have dinner with them... but I was both embarrassed to ask, and... I wanted to play the game. I had - no, I have a problem.

IV was very addictive for a number of reasons. It was free, it allowed me to burn up the massive surplus of free time I had, and it provided me with stimulating characters and conversations. And it was fantasy fulfillment - a coping mechanism for not having to think about the real world by involving myself in dreams. All of my characters represent some unrealised dream that I’ve had - Sue represented my dream of being a great thinker, Calvin, my dream of becoming a great entertainer, Mike, a great artist, and Starbutt, a great scientist. I lived, vicariously, through them, when living my real life was very hard.

I got too attached to this fake fantasy and became detached from the real world. Which was kind of okay, I think, because the real world for me for the past five months, kind of sucked. I really wasn’t missing anything. Not really. And so, I would often play 12-14 hours in a single day. Sometimes more, sometimes less.

But now, I have a job. And I have to consider the trade-offs between staying up late nights and arriving to work without falling asleep - and even if I say I won’t - I know that there will be a night where I stay up and play instead of heading to sleep to get up next morning. One hour turns into two, turns into three, turns into an all-nighter.

And I can see my friends. And now that I’m forced to start making decisions between hanging around with my real life friends at the improv theatre in real life, or making that scene where Calvin will take on the bad guys, or Sue will make a rousing speech... well...

It is very tempting - incredibly tempting, even now, as I write this - to blow off evenings out with my friends in exchange for another couple of hours playing a fictional character who hangs out with his fictional friends. (Not that you guys aren’t real, but you get what I mean.)

And so, if I gave into those urges, it would seriously affect the quality of my real life; it would interfere to such a degree that I would be worse off for it.

And the worst part is - I knew this. The moment I got a job should have filled me with joy. Instead, I thought: gently caress, how am I going to find time to narrate Long Beach now? And so I knew - not just in the back of my mind, but in the front of my mind as well - that I had to quit. I had to stop, somehow. (I don’t think I would have been successful “cutting down” because addicts just can’t -do- that.)

But I didn’t. Because I couldn’t. I kept playing. It still felt so warm and inviting to slip on Calvin’s skin, to be loved by ladies, envied by peers, clever and handsome. It felt great to have a life of fantasy and adventure.

And so, I kept playing.

The fact that my experiences were so drat good was one of the reasons that I kept playing... and in truth, your honest friendship and camraderie helped solidify my addiction. This is -not- your fault - you really are a great bunch of guys to play with. I mean that. But it did make it that much harder to tear myself away. I wasn’t just abandoning Calvin, I was also abandoning Tess’s schemes, I was abandoning Clive’s friendship, I was abandoning the responsibilities given to me by Cornwall and Caleb... as well as Estaban, and Leah, and Jack, and Helen, and the Baron and... I feel honest to god -guilt- over this. I feel like I murdered a friend; not just my friend, but many people’s friends.

The post in the room about deciding to quit the game at that moment wasn’t just because of the scene being a clusterfuck. Oh, sure, if the clusterfuck hadn’t have happened, I might not have done it -- but not for that reason.

What the clusterfuck did was give me an opportunity to re-evaluate what I was doing and why I was doing it. To take a step back and say: Wait, this is absurd. This was an oppertunity - an out, if you will - just enough slack to break the stranglehold my addiction had on me. And if I didn’t take it right then and there - take the drastic step to cut myself off... I don’t know if I ever would.

So I did. I ragequit, and now I feel horrible and lovely and massively going through withdrawal symptoms. I’m writing this to get my thoughts down on paper, to work through them.

I can’t play the game with you guys anymore. If I do, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop until I’ve really, really, let my addiction for this game mess up my real life.

I’m more than willing, of course, to be your friend - and you can reach me at brianboyko on AIM or Skype - and I hope you do. David S is actually local to me, I hope maybe he’ll take me up on my offer to go out and have a beer sometime.

But honestly, I have a serious problem, one that I can’t solve by continuing to bury myself in this fantasy world. If I could play in moderation, I most certainly would. I don’t think I can, really. And I’m very sorry about that. I’m sorry that my departure is sudden, but I do not think I could do it otherwise. And I’m very glad for the time I have spent with you all.

-- Brian Boyko

AstheWorldWorlds posted:

Boyko what is your yearly income? What are the odds this fucker is making a good amount on his grift?

Badera posted:

A Rambling Vagrant posted:

Jagchosis posted:

btw his campaign spent $1700 dollars on accomplishing nothing according to election filings.

rscott posted:

lmao

A Rambling Vagrant posted:

Mo_Steel posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-xFypjUqTM

I think he could pull off Chris Farley no problem. We need a straight-man to pair him up with though.

Ray and Shirley posted:

Mo_Steel posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-xFypjUqTM

I think he could pull off Chris Farley no problem. We need a straight-man to pair him up with though.

Kiwi Ghost Chips posted:

You can probably do it as long as the public system establishes a floor instead of a ceiling, like giving challengers franking privileges and equal financing for everyone on the ballot. But that might actually unseat incumbents

quote:

The Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Act created a public financing system to fund the primary and general election campaigns of candidates for state office. Candidates who opt to participate, and who accept certain campaign restrictions and obligations, are granted an initial outlay of public funds to conduct their campaign. They are also granted additional matching funds if a privately financed candidate’s expenditures, combined with the expenditures of independent groups made in support of the privately financed candidate or in opposition to a publicly financed candidate, exceed the publicly financed candidate’s initial state allotment. Once matching funds are triggered, a publicly financed candidate receives roughly one dollar for every dollar raised or spent by the privately financed candidate—including any money of his own that a privately financed candidate spends on his campaign—and for every dollar spent by independent groups that support the privately financed candidate. When there are multiple publicly financed candidates in a race, each one receives matching funds as a result of the spending of privately financed candidates and independent expenditure groups. Matching funds top out at two times the initial grant to the publicly financed candidate.

...

The logic of Davis largely controls here. Once a privately financed candidate has raised or spent more than the State’s initial grant to a publicly financed candidate, each personal dollar the privately financed candidate spends results in an award of almost one additional dollar to his opponent. The privately financed candidate must “shoulder a special and potentially significant burden” when choosing to exercise his First Amendment right to spend funds on his own candidacy. 554 U. S., at 739. If the law at issue in Davis imposed a burden on candidate speech, the Arizona law unquestionably does so as well.

The differences between the matching funds provision and the law struck down in Davis make the Arizona law more constitutionally problematic, not less. First, the penalty in Davis consisted of raising the contribution limits for one candidate, who would still have to raise the additional funds. Here, the direct and automatic release of public money to a publicly financed candidate imposes a far heavier burden. Second, in elections where there are multiple publicly financed candidates—a frequent occurrence in Arizona—the matching funds provision can create a multiplier effect. Each dollar spent by the privately funded candidate results in an additional dollar of funding to each of that candidate’s publicly financed opponents. Third, unlike the law in Davis, all of this is to some extent out of the privately financed candidate’s hands. Spending by independent expenditure groups to promote a privately financed candidate’s election triggers matching funds, regardless whether such support is welcome or helpful. Those funds go directly to the publicly funded candidate to use as he sees fit. That disparity in control—giving money directly to a publicly financed candidate, in response to independent expenditures that cannot be coordinated with the privately funded candidate—is a substantial advantage for the publicly funded candidate.

Sheng-ji Yang posted:

https://soundcloud.com/brian-boyko/chainsaw-hands

CheesyDog posted:

it's happening
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GANFn8IoqYs
Thread over

Elotana posted:

Nope. From the syllabus of McComish:

SCOTUS doesn't like matching funds whether it's done via a floor or a ceiling, and the catch-22 created by the combination of the third rationale here (can't match funds because the rich candidate doesn't control PACs) and the rationale in Citizens United (can't restrict the free speech rights of PACs) essentially means clean elections proposals have to be either toothless or unconstitutional.

Elotana posted:

Nope. From the syllabus of McComish:

SCOTUS doesn't like matching funds whether it's done via a floor or a ceiling, and the catch-22 created by the combination of the third rationale here (can't match funds because the rich candidate doesn't control PACs) and the rationale in Citizens United (can't restrict the free speech rights of PACs) essentially means clean elections proposals have to be either toothless or unconstitutional.