Ask the Presidential Candidates

This is your usual Slashdot reader-generated interview, except we're only going to pick five questions, not 10, and we're going to send the same five questions to all the major-party presidential candidates and publish each one's answers (in our Politics section) as soon as we get them. Please try to come up with questions the candidates have not been asked in the many interviews and debates to which they've already been subjected, all of which have been notably light on Slashdot-popular topics such as software patents, Internet regulations, and computer file formats. Note, too, that we have no idea how many candidates (if any) will actually answer, and that whether their campaign staffs do or do not think you are worth a few moments of their time is telling in and of itself.

Special request: if you have better "inside" contact info for any candidate than what's shown on their public Web sites, please email it to [e-mail]. We're also interested in original articles and essays from people who have inside knowledge of the election and polling process, so if you or anyone you know would like to write one for Slashdot, please email the same address.

Universal Health Care

Why not universal health care?

I know it's likely not popular among the more conservative of voters in the States, and an idea that most immediately connect with that of higher taxes. But as a Canadian with many American friends and an American significant other, it concerns me that the United States doesn't allow all its people access to the decent health care, and that the gates of the system in the US is dictated by private insurance companies for whom profit is the underlying goal, not the health and wellbeing of their "end users". It is therefore the case that any such measures to regulate and push these companies into providing affordable health care and insurance will ultimately push them into a battle with the government, as it is in their best interests to stall and delay such a system for as long as is possible.

I've seen health care initiatives from some of the candidates (democrats, mostly) that attempt to make health care affordable to all. But these ideas do not solve the problem detailed in the previous paragraph.

Please detail why you are or are not willing to support a plan that would give guaranteed health care to your residents and citizens, and if you are, what form that plan would take.

Net Neutrality

What is your stance on Net Neutrality and why.

Issue #1

What are your proposals to return copyright terms to their more sensible shorter limits of a few years ago?

How do you propose to reform the broken patent system in this country?

Personal Liberty

There will be many questions about the war, taxes, healthcare, etc, but these are merely symptomatic.

What is your definition of Personal Liberty?
What will you do during your tenure as President to preserve it?
What do you see as the biggest threat to Personal Liberty now?

How often?

How often do you (not your staffers, interns, etc.) use modern technology aside from some of the (possibly) more obvious items such as cell phones and e-mail? Do you read and/or contribute to blogs? Do you listen to an iPod or other digital media player? Do you play the occasional computer game that isn't Solitaire?

The important questions!

BSD or Linux? Emacs or vi? Plaintext or RTF? When do you think the Hurd will be released?

Global high tech

In the last year, India and China have both announced and made progress towards implementing their own space programs. How should America respond to such growing technological boldness in such countries? Is it a threat or an opportunity?

Dealing with illegal actions of your predecessor

There has been a great deal of secrecy about supposed domestic wiretapping programs and other domestic spying programs. If you were to be elected president and were given information about actions by your predecessor that you found to be of questionable legality, what would you do?

My five questions

Do you know what Free Software is and do you plan on promoting it as President?
What is your position on software patents and noncommercial downloading of copyrighted material?
Do you support atheists as full citizens with full rights?
Do you plan on making decisions as president that go FAR above and beyond the standards required for energy efficiency?
Would you do anything to encourage third party candidates?

Views on the DMCA, Copyright, Fair Use, P2P

Please share your views on the DMCA and related issues such as Fair Use, our out of control Copyright System, the fact that big media (RIAA/MPAA/et al) would love to kill our right to fair use (or even that fair use has yet to be truly codified into law), and the P2P file sharing situation.

Energy Efficiency

Would you abandon the thermodynamically ridiculous use of corn based ethanol?

-and/or-

Will you stand up to the environmental lobby and push replacing coal plants with nuclear?

Consumer rights and fair use

What are the candidates' positions of the rights of consumers to exercise their fair use rights on media that has been legally purchased? Or to modify the hardware they already own to their personal preferences?

What is their take on the aggressive litigation by RIAA against small time file sharers over a handful of MP3s?

Duke Nukem Forever.

As a presidential candidate, what do you think about the ongoing situation regarding "Duke Nukem Forever." If elected, what will you do to ensure that this game is released?

Why Can't I Get a Straight Answer?

I've noticed that a number of candidates (I'm not naming names) and a number of administration officials will not answer a question in a clear and concise fashion. The subject could be anything from "Do you think waterboarding is torture?" to "What will be your stance toward the war in Iraq if you are elected?"

So my question to you is, "Do you think that I want someone in that office (Whichever one it is) who is deliberately attempting to deceive me?"

Even if you don't answer this question, I hope you think about it the next time someone asks you a question.

American Technology

The United States has fallen increasing behind in many areas of technological adoption:

• locale based commodities like broadband
• number of tech jobs available in the country
• number of people being trained for software engineering and other tech related fields

Do you think this is a problem, do you plan to fix it, and how so?

Historical Perspective from the GOP

Dear Presidential Candidates (GOP in particular),

I know you are all intelligent men, or you would not be where you are today. It is because of this I ask you how you reconcile the fact that, throughout the history of civilization, all great and powerful states have eventually fallen when their militaries became overstretched and their currencies depreciated. This is true for the USSR, the former British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Roman Empire, to just name a few. How is it then, with this historical trend, that we continue to pursue a foreign policy that stretches our military throughout the globe and further depletes our fiscal assets (not to mention the tremendous debt that we are taking on). It would seem that in order to bypass the trend of history, that we, as a nation, may want to consider withdrawing our troops from abroad and focus on restoring integrity to our currency. Interestingly, the speeches that I hear from you come as close as possible to the exact opposite of this hypothesis and instead continue down the path that may lead to the ultimate collapse of our nation as we know at (at least from a historical perspective).

Blast from the past...

Just as Bill Clinton was asked in '92, ask Hillary:

"Boxers or briefs?"

Surveilance

What is your opinion of electronic surveilance (wiretaps, cameras, expanded ID cards)? Do you plan to continue such surveilance?

Final Frontier

There's been some rumblings about NASA moving forward in the 21st Century, and given the new budget will be available soon, what role do you see space exploration, research, and education taking during your presidency and the following 15 years? How best do you think those goals can be met?

Federal dollars toward science&engineering R&a

While there is a clear mandate for the federal government to provide for the national defense, there is no clear constitutional authority for it to directly pay for research and development for non-defense projects. However, lots of great things have come from Federally-funded R&D, for example the space program, the Internet, nuclear power, etc. Historically, the government has not done well in picking winners (i.e. subsidizing corn for ethanol, largely because Iowa is an early primary state, or providing specific tax breaks to coal and oil companies). While the firms that are direct recipients of federal dollars are winners, the rest are essentially losers, subsidizing their efforts. There are certainly advantages to federal funding: simply that the costs can be spread over the entire taxpayer population, but there are disadvantages too.

Should the government be involved in the funding of basic scientific or engineering research? Should the people trust the government to make such allocations in a better way than in some alternative private system? And what moral and legal issues are involved in such funding?
--
Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation. [nerdkits.com]

Natural Law vs. Positivism

Which do you support - Natural Law or Positivism - as the basis for our Constitutional framework?

My question

What will you do to ensure that our security does not eliminate the personal freedoms it is designed to secure?

Re:What do you think about technology?

I was actually somewhat surprised to find that Barack Obama has made comments on network neutrality. From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:

In a June 2006 podcast, Obama expressed support for telecommunications legislation to protect network neutrality on the Internet, saying: "It is because the Internet is a neutral platform that I can put out this podcast and transmit it over the Internet without having to go through any corporate media middleman. I can say what I want without censorship or without having to pay a special charge. But the big telephone and cable companies want to change the Internet as we know it."

He doesn't seem to be making promises, but it's something. Any other candidates that have already weighed in on this?

Re:What do you think about technology?

Can you clarify your beliefs about, and policy intents toward fair use of digital media and content. More specifically, can you explain how, and if, you will stop corporate greed from eroding the rights of average citizens to use digital content in 'fair use' ways, including backups, time-shifting, and fair use of copyrighted material that is subject to DMCA take-down notices, such as parody, news reporting (blogging) and other fair use issues.

Re:Here you go

To add onto this (because I don't really care who the token "science advisor" is):

"What is your philosophy on executive decisions in highly technical areas- how do you find a compromise between academic work, political influence and your personal moral views. Provide examples of how you came to various conclusions regarding economic, technological or environmental issues."