No, Inglewood Cannot Claim Copyright On City Council Meetings And Sue A Critic For Commenting On Them

from the copyfraud dept

You may remember the bizarre story we had a couple of months ago of how the city of Inglewood, California was suing a critic for copyright infringement. The critic, Joseph Teixeira, does not like Inglewood mayor James Butts. So he takes video (that the city posted online itself) of city council meetings, and adds commentary mocking the mayor. And that, the city claims, is copyright infringement. Not only that, but Inglewood spent $50,000 on a big time lawyer to try to silence Teixeira by abusing copyright law.

As we explained, the whole thing was bullshit on multiple levels. First, it's the government trying to silence a critic. That's a pretty big First Amendment no-no. Second, there's no legitimate copyright claim in the videos. Third, even if there were a copyright claim in the videos (and there's not), this would easily be fair use. And, of course, then the city made it even worse -- claiming that Teixeira had altered the videos after the lawsuit to protect himself. The court asked the city to prove it, and not surprisingly the city could not. Because it wasn't true.

Adam Steinbaugh, now the "new guy" at Popehat, has all the details of the beatdown the court gave the city, which you can also read directly here. Let's start with the copyright issue. Turns out, as pretty much everyone knew, you can't claim copyright over your city council meetings:

The only published authority on the question of the ability of California public entities to assert copyright over works they produce holds that the City may not assert a copyright interest in the City Council Videos. In County of Santa Clara v. Superior Court, 170 Cal. App. 4th 1301, 89 Cal. Rptr. 3d 374 (2009), the California Court of Appeal addressed the county’s denial of a request for a geographic information system base map it had created. The court carefully considered California law, including the CPRA and the state’s policies towards openness and accessibility of the writing of public officials and agencies. Id. at 1320 (citing Cal. Const. art. 1 § 3(b)(1) (the state constitution explicitly recognizes the “right of access to information concerning the conduct of the people's business” and to provide that “the writings of public officials and agencies shall be open to public scrutiny.”) The court evaluated the statutory language of the CPRA and held in part that in the absence of “an affirmative grant of authority to obtain and hold copyrights” a California public entity may not do so.

The court is so unimpressed with Inglewood's attempt to get around all of this that it's not even worth discussing what their reasons were. They were bad, and the city should feel bad (that it's wasting taxpayer dollars on this kind of crap).

The court then notes that, even if the copyright was valid, it still would be fair use. The court doesn't even need to go this far, having correctly determined the lack of copyright, but decides to do so anyway, just in case the city is thinking of appealing.

A review of the videos is sufficient for the Court to rule that the Teixeira Videos are protected by the fair use doctrine as a matter of law. The Teixeira Videos use brief portions of the larger works in order to comment on, and criticize the political activities of the City Council and its members. He uses carefully chosen portions specifically for the purposes of exercising his First Amendment rights, and in doing so, substantially transforms the purpose and content of the City Council Videos.

The city's response is laughable. It's almost as if whoever wrote the argument for the city has never come across fair use before or, you know, being honest in court.

The City’s contention that Teixeira is “simply republishing untransformed, copies of the Copyrighted works, and free-riding on the City’s expenses” is plainly incorrect on even the most cursory review of the Teixeira videos. The City’s claim that “[t]he facts alleged a complete lack of transformativeness” is also irrelevant given the reference by the Complaint to the videos themselves.

Or how about this time, where they claim he's using too much of the videos (even though it's clear he only uses a small portion of them):

The City argues that Teixeira fails to meet his supposed burden of showing that it is “essential” to make the copies for his purpose of commenting on it. The City contends that each topic area of the City Council meetings is “an independent and entire work” and Teixeira cannot show why it is necessary to copy these “entire” works. However, a review of the videos makes it clear that Teixeira has copied only the parts of the City Council Videos that serve his purpose of making comment on them, or criticizing very particular statements by Butts. This use of another’s material has been frequently recognized as protected fair use.... The City’s exceptionally narrow view of an “entire” work is without merit and contrary to the purpose of the fair use doctrine, which permits the use of reasonable quantities of a work for the purpose of criticism and comment.

Oh, and then there's the bit where the city claims that Teixeira's video will harm "the market" for its videos. The court sees right through that. Not only is that a ridiculous argument (I mean, really, what's "the market" for the city of Inglewood's city council meetings?), it's also true that the city is barred by law from making money off of those videos.

The City argues that the factor favors its position because Teixeira’s copying denies the City of the opportunity to “recoup its expenses” and “deprives [the City] of potential revenue.” This argument is without merit and flatly contradicted by the California law that governs the City’s creation and use of the City Council Videos.

California law prevents public agencies from charging the public anything more than the “direct costs of duplication” when providing public records. Cal. Gov. Code § 6253(b)... the Legislature “specified . . . that the sole charge should be that for duplication” and specifically for “the direct cost of duplication” and not for “indirect” costs of duplication).

The City therefore may only collect fees to reimburse for the direct costs of providing copies of any record it creates, including the City Council Videos. It is specifically barred by law from charging any fee to recoup the costs of original production. And it is certainly not permitted to use the City Council Videos to generate any form of revenue. There can therefore be no commercial market for the City Council Videos and no activity by Teixeira can deprive the City of any revenue.

And thus, the City of Inglewood has no legal leg to stand on, not that it ever did:

Having reviewed the accused videos, the Court determines that – even assuming the City has any copyright interest to assert – they are clearly protected by the fair use doctrine. Indeed, the Court can scarcely conceive of works that are more appropriately protected by the fair use doctrine and § 107 than the Teixeira Videos. He is engaged in core First Amendment speech commenting on political affairs and matters of public concern. To do so, he has taken carefully selected and short portions of significantly longer works, and embellished them with commentary and political criticism through music, his voice, and written subtitles. Even if California law allowed the City to assert a copyright claim, Teixeira’s activities plainly fall within the protections of fair use.

The City accuses Teixeira of wanting “to criticize the City without doing his own work” by “posting substantially all of the full [City Council Videos] with [his] comments posted on top of them.” .... Even if the City’s characterization of the Teixeira Videos were accurate, fair use would allow such use for the purpose of commentary.

All of this should make you wonder how the case got this far at all. How did the lawyer, to whom the city agreed to pay $50,000, not tell them that this would end badly? Also, what kind of city sues its critics, first of all, and then completely abuses copyright law to do so? As the LA Times noted about this case:

There's something fundamentally outrageous about using tax dollars to sue a taxpayer over the use of a public record that taxpayers paid to create.

Filed Under: censorship, copyright, criticism, fair use, free speech, inglewood, james butts, joseph teixeira, politics

Larry Lessig Goes Even Bigger: May Run For President On The Single Issue Of Money In Politics

from the go-big-or-go-home dept

Last year, Larry Lessig got plenty of attention for his MAYDAY PAC, which was an attempt to raise a bunch of money to back candidates who promised to reform campaign finance laws. The 2014 campaign was supposed to be a "test" to raise around $12 million to see what could be done, with an eventual goal of raising a lot more for the 2016 campaign. Even the 2014 campaign was somewhat audacious (and somewhat misunderstood). And after the 2014 election, many argued that MAYDAY was a failure in that it really failed to have much, if any, impact in the campaigns that it took part in. To me, it seemed a bit premature to make that argument, as the whole point of experimenting and testing is to learn, but in politics everything is a horse race, and there is little in the way of long term thinking or strategy.

Either way, just a few weeks ago Lessig announced that he was handing MAYDAY over to Zephyr Teachout, a well-known professor who used to be director of the Sunlight Foundation -- and who caused a political stir last year by doing surprisingly well in running against Andrew Cuomo for governor of NYC. Teachout taking over MAYDAY seemed like a natural fit.

But what of Lessig? His own post mortem on MAYDAY suggested he wasn't ready to give up the fight, and it appears that the results of the first round of the MAYDAY experiment didn't scare him off from taking chances on making incredibly big bets. Crazy bets. Because now he's basically running for President. Sort of. Maybe. You kind of have to watch this video to understand: In short, he wants someone to run as a "referendum candidate" -- someone who will run entirely on this issue of fixing corruption in politics, with the promise that once in office, they will focus on solving that one issue and then resigning immediately, and handing over the job to the Vice President. In this case, the way he'd pursue fixing corruption is to pass The Citizen Equality Act -- a bundle of election reforms that Lessig has been arguing would make a real difference in getting money out of politics. Lessig claims he's been looking for someone else to stand in as that candidate, and will happily focus on someone else if the right candidate emerges -- but, if no one else is able to do it, he'll be that candidate himself.

For now, Lessig is trying to raise $1 million by Labor Day to see if this is possible. If he doesn't raise that much, the plan will be shut down (and no one's money will be taken).

I'm not sure what to make of all of this, frankly. Lessig has been trying for a bunch of moonshot ideas over the past few years -- including holding a new Constitutional Convention, among other ideas like MAYDAY and campaign finance reform. You can't say he isn't being bold and trying some crazy big strategies in trying to make these things an issue. And I really appreciate and respect Lessig and his way of thinking about all of this. But... something about this latest move feels almost too gimmicky. Yes, to get people to actually take on this issue, perhaps a gimmick is needed. And maybe Lessig is right to keep trying ever more audacious gimmicks until he finds the one that clicks. I'm glad he's trying and I hope he succeeds -- and chances are I'll donate to this campaign. But it still feels like a gimmick, and it bugs me that we need gimmicks to fix our political system. I'm guessing that Lessig might actually agree with that statement, but argue that there's no way around this unfortunate fact, so he's going to play the game. I just wish it didn't need to happen that way.

Filed Under: citizen equality act, corruption, larry lessig, money in politics, politics, president, referendum, referendum candidate

After The 'Maui Meltdown', TPP Has Missed A Key Deadline That Probably Means It's Doomed Whatever Is Now Agreed

from the your-time-is-up dept

In what is being called the "Maui Meltdown" by some, the TPP ministerial talks in Hawaii last week failed to produce the agreement that some hoped for, and many more expected. That's despite the fact that it was billed as definitely the last round. The New York Times has a good summary of the key problems that need to be solved to achieve that elusive final deal:

Tokyo was ready to extend major concessions on American truck tariffs but was blocked by Mexico, which wanted less competition for its own trucks in the United States market.

Canada held firm on protecting its politically sensitive dairy market ahead of elections in October, but for New Zealand, a tiny country with huge dairy exports, that was unacceptable.

And virtually all of the parties hated American protections of pharmaceutical firms, but a compromise on that issue could cost the support of Republicans in Congress.

It's not yet clear when all the negotiators will meet for yet another definitely final round -- some reports speak of one this month, others of a November meeting -- but it's already emerged that sectoral talks are taking place in an attempt to hammer out deals in the areas where problems remain. But an analysis from Public Citizen suggests that it may not matter: it may already be too late for TPP.

Assuming the quickest timeline conceivable under the Fast Track rules, and that somehow a required International Trade Commission (ITC) report on TPP impacts could be completed faster than has ever occurred for past pacts, a TPP vote could take place about four and one half months after Congress is given notice of intent to sign a deal. Thus, negotiations must conclude at the July 28-31 TPP ministerial and a text must be ready for notice of intent to sign by August 1. That text must be publicly posted on August 31. This would allow for a vote the week of December 14. After that, Congress goes on recess and a vote would roll to 2016.

Public Citizen's analysis is detailed -- it runs to several pages -- and errs on the side of assuming the US government can push TPP through the system faster than anything comparable before it. And yet even on that generous assumption, the key deadline -- August 1 -- has not been met, which means that the TPP vote is almost certain to take place in 2016. Here's why that's important:

The political costs of an unpopular "yes" vote for the TPP will escalate if voting rolls into the 2016 presidential election year. Already Democratic and GOP presidential candidates have begun attacking the TPP and their public criticism is generating public attention on the pact’s potential threats of job loss and more. A 2016 TPP vote also would increase the risk that voters could punish those who vote "yes" on the TPP during the November 2016 congressional election.

Every passing day pushes any eventual TPP vote further into 2016, and diminishes the likelihood that it will be successful. The talks will continue, and agreement on the outstanding problematic areas may even be reached, but perhaps it no longer matters.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: politics, timing, tpp

Your Tax Dollars At Work: 1,000-Page Funding Bill Dropped On Senate Floor One Hour Before Vote

from the instant-sausage dept

The legislative sausage-making process is apparently so streamlined that many sausage-makers are barely involved in the process. It's not that they don't want to be. It's that other sausage-makers want their product to be pushed out the door with a minimum of inspection.

Senator Mike Lee posted a video to his Facebook page that contained a rather graphic depiction of expeditious sausage-making. As his printer whirred away behind him, Lee noted that a $47-billion, 1,033-page transportation funding bill was up for a vote. In less than an hour.

If I don't have time to read legislation before voting on it, my default vote is no. We received the highway bill today at 3:06 p.m., and it is over 1,000 pages long. Our first vote on this legislation is scheduled for 4:00 p.m.

The bill -- which failed to obtain the number of votes needed to open debate -- was a bipartisan effort (led by Barbara Boxer [D] and Mitch McConnell [R]). That's probably the best thing that can be said about it and the legislators behind it. Rather than prove lawmakers can occasionally put aside their differences and actually move forward with the business of legislating, this bill simply signals that both sides of the aisle are willing to resort to bullshit tactics.

The bill arrived at the last minute because the effort itself was last minute. Federal highway aid to states is up against a July 31st expiration deadline. Despite its length, the bill is still far from finished. It takes money from a variety of unrelated programs to fund federal aid for the next three years. The problem is the bill authorizes spending for the next six years. That's the other reason the bill's champions were hoping to shove this through with a minimum of debate: the bill leaves it up to the next Senate class to figure out where it's going to get the other $45-60 billion it will need to keep the federal aid flowing.

Fortunately, most senators were angered by this last-minute page dump.

Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Democratic leader, said, "I can't remember a time where I have been asked in all my years in the Congress to vote yes ahead of time on a bill we haven't seen, and there are no amendments" allowed.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., called the bill "a black hole." He said Democrats have been told changes have been made to auto, trucking and rail safety provisions that were agreed to last week on a party-line vote by the Senate commerce committee, but no details were provided before the vote. Some Democrats have described the provisions as giveaways to industry that would undermine safety.

Schumer is certainly exaggerating. While the very specific facts of this legislative effort may indeed be unique, shoving under-scrutinized bills past legislators is something of a tradition in Washington. PATRIOT Act, anyone? It took until June of 2014 before many lawmakers realized the extent of what they had authorized in 2001. The recording industry pushed through a favorable law change at literally midnight back in 1999. PoliceStateUSA points out that John Boehner dropped a gun control law on the floor when only 10 legislators (out of 435) were on hand to vote. Just recently, the aforementioned Mitch McConnell put a "no questions asked" Section 215 reauthorization bill up for a vote, using his powers as a majority leader to bypass all the hoops the USA Freedom Act was made to jump through.

Anything that might be debated heatedly often arrives at a moment when debate is least likely to occur. Thursday afternoons as legislators are all packing up to return to their homes. Late nights when few lawmakers are left in the building. Or -- like this one -- hundreds of pages of legalese released to voting members shortly before a scheduled vote.

And, in this case, the bill arrives with a bit of extortion attached. Senators who refuse to vote for something they haven't read face the prospect of dealing with angry locals whose federal aid has just expired. Far too often, legislators allow everything to reach the brink of collapse before making a move. There's not a person out there who thinks the best laws are made at the last minute. No one wants poorly-written funding programs that hobble other sectors in a short-sighted attempt to balance the books for the very immediate future. Even if this manages to make it out alive, it still only "fixes" everything for half of the time period authorized by the bill. So, in three years, there will be another last-minute attempt to secure funding, and it will be any other funding legislators feel is at least temporarily expendable that will be forced to patch up funding holes left by the last Senate session.

Sometimes, the sausage doesn't even get made. Instead, a bunch of random ingredients are shoved into a casing and passed off as a finished product. And it's the public that's forced to "eat" this sausage -- both in terms of the asking price, as well as any nasty side effects consumption of the poorly-made sausage may cause.

Filed Under: barbara boxer, chuck schumer, funding bill, highway funding, mike lee, mitch mcconnell, politics, senate, traffic, transparency

US Presidential Election Is So Corrupt Even The Person In Charge Says She Has No Power To Stop Abuse

from the pay-to-play dept

If you were holding onto the faint hope that federal election campaigns were ever going to be anything but "buy your way into office" spending sprees, you may as well kiss it goodbye. The Federal Election Committee's head has just admitted her agency is completely powerless to do the one thing it's supposed to be doing.

The leader of the Federal Election Commission, the agency charged with regulating the way political money is raised and spent, says she has largely given up hope of reining in abuses in the 2016 presidential campaign, which could generate a record $10 billion in spending.

“The likelihood of the laws being enforced is slim,” Ann M. Ravel, the chairwoman, said in an interview. “I never want to give up, but I’m not under any illusions. People think the F.E.C. is dysfunctional. It’s worse than dysfunctional.”

It's not often you hear a public official openly state that the agency under her control can't do its job. Usually, excuses are made, bucks are passed and talking points spun to give the illusion that agencies are not only capable of performing their duties, but could be oh-so-much-better if they weren't hobbled by everything but themselves. This is refreshing -- if ultimately depressing -- honesty.

Much of the problem is the system itself. Like the elections it's unsuccessfully regulating, it's subject to the whims of two diametrically-opposed political parties. There are six commissioners: three Democrats and three Republicans. What was intended to be fair has instead devolved into gridlock, with the two parties rarely reaching an agreement on anything. This is the behavior of the supposed adults in the room:

Some commissioners are barely on speaking terms, cross-aisle negotiations are infrequent, and with no consensus on which rules to enforce, the caseload against violators has plummeted.

With the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision loosening restrictions on campaign spending, it has been left up to the Commission to police campaign funding abuse. Sadly, it's not that the Commission lacks the power to do so. It's that it lacks commissioners willing to rise above the base level of partisan politics to do it.

Again, these are the people -- all supposedly mature adults -- who are supposed to be safeguarding the electoral process.

[T]he six commissioners hardly ever rule unanimously on major cases, or even on some of the most minor matters. Last month at an event commemorating the commission’s 40th anniversary, even the ceremony proved controversial. Democrats and Republicans skirmished over where to hold it, whom to include and even whether to serve bagels or doughnuts. In a rare compromise, they ended up serving both.

There's $10 billion headed into the pockets of presidential candidates, and commissioners aren't going to do much more than taxpayer-funded paychecks while muttering insults at opposing party members. And while the Oval Office goes on the auction block, the Commission will be arguing over baked goods.

Filed Under: ann ravel, corruption, federal election committee, money in politics, politics, presidential campaign

Why Don't Surveillance State Defenders Seem To Care That The Programs They Love Don't Work?

from the big-questions dept

As the pressure is finally on over renewing Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act (and the mass surveillance programs enabled by the law), there are some interesting questions being raised: such as why doesn't the intelligence community seem to care about whether or not its programs work. That link takes you to a great article by former FBI agent (and now big time defender of civil liberties) Michael German, investigating the issue in the context of cybersecurity legislation. Here's just a snippet in which he notes that basically everyone agrees that these programs won't help at all, and yet some are still pushing for them:

There is a strong argument for ending these programs on the basis of their high cost and lack of effectiveness alone. But they actually do damage to our society. TSA agents participating in the behavioral detection program have claimed the program promotes racial profiling, and at least one inspector general report confirmed it. Victims unfairly caught up in the broader suspicious activity reporting programs have sued over the violations of their privacy. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board concluded the telephone metadata program violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and raised serious constitutional concerns.

The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act passed by Senate Intelligence Committee last week is yet another example of this phenomenon. Experts agree that the bill would do little, if anything, to reduce the large data breaches we’ve seen in recent years, which have been caused by bad cyber security practices rather than a lack of information about threats. If passed by the full Congress, it would further weaken electronic privacy laws and ultimately put our data at greater risk. The bill would add another layer of government surveillance on a U.S. tech industry that is already facing financial losses estimated at $180 billion as a result of the exposure of NSA’s aggressive collection programs.

He also details some of the over-inflated claims of other surveillance programs in the past -- all of which were later shown to be false. But, the article doesn't really attempt to answer the question -- just raise it. In the past, we've noticed that the entire concept of a cost-benefit analysis seems antithetical to the way the surveillance state does business. But why is that?

There are a few theories. The most obvious one is the one put forth by the ACLU's Kade Crockford a few months ago, highlighting a statement by former FBI assistant director Thomas Fuentes in a documentary about the FBI's fake plots, The Newburgh Sting, in which he basically admits that keeping the public scared is how you get your budgets approved:

If you’re submitting budget proposals for a law enforcement agency, for an intelligence agency, you’re not going to submit the proposal that ‘We won the war on terror and everything’s great,’ cuz the first thing that’s gonna happen is your budget’s gonna be cut in half. You know, it’s my opposite of Jesse Jackson’s ‘Keep Hope Alive’—it’s ‘Keep Fear Alive.’ Keep it alive.

In other words, it's the bureaucratic momentum that leads the surveillance state to just keep pushing the "fear" story, and never wants anyone to look at whether or not that story is true or if the cost related to it makes sense. That's certainly supported by the fact that many of the earliest hypers of "cybersecurity" were those who stood to profit handsomely from it (and have done so).

In our recent podcast with Barry Eisler (himself a former CIA agent), he suggested a similar, but slightly different rationale, pointing to the "streetlight effect" based on the old joke of a drunk man searching for his lost keys under a streetlight, while admitting they were actually lost somewhere else. When questioned about this, he notes that he's searching under the light because "that's where the light is." In other words, the surveillance state collects all this useless data because they can -- and the costs associated with it (not just the direct costs, but all the damage done to US companies, trust in government and more...) don't really matter.

There's probably a combination of both of those factors at work here, but I'll toss another one on the list which may be at work as well: the CYA theory. That is, most of the people in the surveillance state know pretty damn well that these programs are useless. But they don't want to be the one left holding the bag when the music stops on the next big attack, and the press and politicians are pointing to them and asking why they didn't do "X" to prevent whatever horrible thing just happened. So those officials need to "cover their ass" in being able to claim that they did everything possible -- and that always means more surveillance, because they don't want to be told that they could have gotten some information but didn't (even if having more information obscures finding the important information.)

In other words, many of those involved are doing a cost-benefit analysis, not for the safety of the country or national security but for their own reputations. And that's how bad policy gets made. They don't do the right thing because no one wants to stand up there after there's some sort of attack or problem, and say "well, we didn't know those bad people were doing this because we didn't want to violate everyone's rights." That just doesn't play well, unfortunately.

That's why the point that Bruce Schneier has been trying to make for years is so important: we need to bring society back to a place where people accept that there's some risk involved in everything. That's the nature of being alive. If we can rationally come to terms with that fact, then people don't need to freak out so much. But, unfortunately, it doesn't seem like that societal shift is going to happen any time soon.

Filed Under: budgets, cost-benefit, cybersecurity, effectiveness, keep fear alive, nsa, politics, surveillance

Fark's Drew Curtis Running For Governor Of Kentucky

from the this-is-great dept

If you read Techdirt, hopefully you're also familiar with Fark, the super popular news aggregator that was sort of Digg before Digg, Reddit before Reddit and Hackernews before Hackernews -- but still unique in its own way. It's main claim to fame is the snarky one-line summaries of the various stories that it posts, and it's all around awesome. It's run by a guy named Drew Curtis, who is also pretty awesome, and who has long been engaged on various important issues related to the future of the internet and keeping it viable. Either way, in a bit of a surprise announcement Friday afternoon, he's announced that he's running for governor of Kentucky and his campaign website is like none you've ever seen before. It's not often that a political campaign kicks off with a Douglas Adams quote:

“It is a well-known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.” – Douglas Adams

But Curtis is serious -- and mainly serious about having actual human beings, rather than politicians, be elected to key positions to bring about real change:

We have a theory that we’re about to see a huge change in how elections and politics work. Across the country, we have seen regular citizens stepping up and challenging the status quo built by political parties and career politicians. They have been getting closer and closer to victory and, here in Kentucky, we believe we have a chance to win and break the political party stronghold for good. We are not politicians. We are Citizen Candidates. Citizen Candidates evaluate ideas on merit, not on outside influence, campaign contribution sources, or party ideology. They believe a good idea is a good idea, no matter which political party supports it. Citizen Candidates are regular people with common sense. They are capable leaders who would be fantastic elected officials - if they chose to run.
Most don’t. And we can’t blame them.

The campaign talks about others, like Tim Wu and Zephyr Teachout, who basically came out of nowhere to have a major impact on the governor's race in NY.

While it's all too easy to be cynical about politicians and lobbyists and special interests, it's encouraging to see more people pushing back against those things, and actually looking to make a real difference. Whether or not this effort succeeds, we need more efforts like this, and I'm excited to see Curtis take a shot.

Filed Under: citizen candidates, drew curtis, governor, kentucky, politics
Companies: fark