Politics and voting

[Brian]

I happen to know Don and he is a horse's ass. He was a local precinct chair (which means he was in charge of handing out yard signs, mostly) and I'm glad he was asked to leave. He was on the Daily Show simply because he is an easily manipulated Republican horse's ass, not because he is a party leader.

 

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/10/24/north-carolina-yelton-resigns/3184993/

 

Note, however, that every example of bad behavior on one side the aisle can easily be countered by an example from the other side. Neither party has a monopoly on horse's asses...

 

 

EDIT: I'm not a republican and I don't live in Asheville -- I've had work-related interactions with him.

Edited October 26, 2013 by Brian

[Brian]

Voting for a "third party" is never a wasted vote; voting for a party that will definitely not be elected in the present election is never a wasted vote: in fact, they are probably the most valuable votes. Those smaller parties would have a chance of getting voted into office if it weren't for the common fallacy of Strategic Voting. I personally do "reverse" strategic voting, haha: I intentionally vote for a party that really has no chance (presently) of being elected, even though the party I most identify with is a top contender and has an excellent chance. This latter party doesn't need my vote: they'll be elected--or narrowly miss being elected--without my vote.

 

I choose to help build up the ranks of the smaller parties. One vote for a major party is mostly worthless, but a single vote for a smaller party is worth MANY votes: The more people vote for them, the more we build up their ranks and eventually, they will become major contenders.

 

So please, if you don't like a major party, then vote for a smaller party--any of them--your vote will be worth more than a vote for the status quo.

 

I see your point and generally ascribe to the same philosophy, but I recognize nuanced exceptions which I attempted to highlight.

 

Here's an extreme & highly contrived example. Imagine that you are a pet-lover and the position for chief dogcatcher is up for election. One candidate advocates collecting strays and turning them into stew that very day which will then be served at municipal soup kitchens (where you happen to volunteer), thereby saving money and quickly eliminating the trouble of repeat offenders. A second candidate is a fellow pet-lover who advocates unlimited no-kill shelters. A third candidate is running on a status quo platform.

 

Being a loyal pet-lover, you have quite naturally endorsed and supported the pet-lover's candidate. Exit polling on election day shows the race to be a dead-heat between the first & third candidates with the second far behind. As luck would have it, you are the last person to vote because you've been working at the soup kitchen. Do you vote philosophically or do you vote to avoid serving dog stew?

 

Politics is only philosophical in the abstraction...

 

OK, so how about a less abstract example.

 

Yesterday, the Democrat candidate for Governor of Virginia won by a margin of less than 3% over his Republican opponent. The third-party (Libertarian) candidate received about 6% of the vote.

 

The democrat's campaign sent much more money that the opposition, which is fine, and received far more financial support from external sources (corporations, unions and super-PACs, for instance), which is also fine.

 

Right up until the final weeks, the Democrat was showing a comfortable lead, helped by campaigning by Barak Obama and Bill & Hilary Clinton, among others. When that lead completely collapsed in the race to the finish line, however, an interesting thing happened.

 

The third-party campaign received a significant boost in external funding -- in the neighborhood of an order of magnitude greater than everything they had raised throughout the entire campaign. This marketing blitz primarily targeting the distinction between the Republican and Libertarian candidates was successful in syphoning enough votes away from the Republican to ensure a Democrat victory.

 

The interesting part, though, is that the prime mover in that last-minute funding boom was Obama's leading campaign bundler in the 2012 election. In other words, the Democrats succeeded in bankrolling the split of the conservative vote. Well played, I say -- and congratulations on their victory. (I think many Virginians will be saying, "OMG! What did we do???" in the next year or so but that's a different topic...)

 

My point is, though, that this is a real-life & current situation in which "principled" voting likely backfired. Had just 55,000 of the Libertarian voters voted for the Republican "second-choice," Terry McAuliffe would not be governor-elect.

[zerostao]

it is interesting that in Virginia the tea party candidate lost and , i think you are correct in that it was largely due to funding;

the biznessmen decided not to fund this candidate. i doubt that govt shutdown thing had anything to do with it

so, when obabmacare could have been the focus of this and future elections, i think it is clear which issue made more of an impact with the ones who buy the votes,,, err finance the election

i have been saying on this board for 4 years how the GOP keeps shooting itself in the foot. i think the principled thing would have been for more voters to start voting 3rd or even 4th party. whatever the strategists of the GOP are doing, they are not getting it right. will the tea party congressman hold their seats in '14? imagine the democrats gaining seats in the house rather than gop gaining senate seats. a mcconnell re-election is no sure thing by any stretch. nixon and reagon are far too liberal and progressive for the right wing.. keep rush limbaugh and glenn beck and hannity as the spokesmen of the party and it doesnt seem much like party time any longer does it?

i will say i very much admire mcdonnell(despite his sudden fall from grace) i felt he was an outstanding governor)), the outgoing GOP virginia gov. and some will make the case that cuccinelli wasnt conservative enuff? well, keep going down that path and see where it continues to lead.

maybe yoga was the key issue??

this wasnt even imo a strong candidate put forth by the democrats and he still won and raised a ton of money.

ding

[gendao]

I like some of the guys he's given airtime to (like David Icke), but his own political views seem to be straight out of Marx/Stalin/Mao's playbook of inciting class warfare to revolutionary regime CHANGE into a MASSIVE, unelected, authoritarian state:

I think a

of corporations and MASSIVE responsibility for energy companies and any companies exploiting the environment.

 

I say profit is a FILTHY word!

I think we do need, like there does need to be a centralized administrative system.

 

 

 

But now for some GENUINE liberating info:

 

If just 5% of people would vote 3rd party...then it would actually earn public funding!!! 5% people!! That's ALL! Talk about a low bar to greatly help bust out of our 2-faced gridlock! But as long as people remain ignorant and believe the mainstream propaganda that not voting for them is "simply futile"...then I guess we deserve our increasing global enslavement...

Minor party candidates and new party candidates may become eligible for partial public funding of their general election campaigns. (A minor party candidate is the nominee of a party whose candidate received between 5 and 25 percent of the total popular vote in the preceding Presidential election.

 

A new party candidate receives partial public funding after the election if he/she receives 5 percent or more of the vote.

Edited November 7, 2013 by vortex

[Brian]

You say "centralized administrative system" like it's...

 

Oh, wait...

 

 

 

Another option is to work within the two major parties to reclaim them from the statist machine, regardless of whether you "lean left" or "lean right." I haven't met anyone in person yet who honestly "leans totalitarian..."

Edited November 7, 2013 by Brian

[baiqi]

if we were in a real democracy, we would vote for laws proposed by other fellow citizens, not for politicians.

[Brian]

Personally, I am very glad that I don't live in a democracy...

 

[joeblast]

 

 

oh, that's right, silly me...this doesnt belong here, because they didnt actually vote on it

[Brian]

That's not entirely fair, joblast -- I think it was just a simple pronoun fault. What he meant was, "If I like your plan, you can keep your plan."

 

Seems like an honest mistake that could happen to anyone (a few dozen times...)

[joeblast]

buddy of mine said "yeah, I like my plan, and I can keep it....for 35% more this year than last..."

 

 

 

 

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-11-06/course-obamacare-exchanges-will-be-manipulated

"of course obamacare exchanges will be manipulated"

 

The following exchanges are being widely manipulated by big banks, hedge funds and other players:

• Currency
• Interest rates
• Oil (and see this)
• Energy
• Gold and silver
• Derivatives
• Carbon (i.e. “cap and trade”)
• Virtually all other commodities
• Basically all exchanges

Why do you think Obamacare will be different?

The leverage which huge pots of cash, insider information and high-frequency trading give to the big banks and other big players makes exchanges an easy target.

The big boys play dirty.

And the Obama administration is allegedly exempting the Obamacare exchanges from anti-fraud standards

As the New York Times notes:

Billions could flow from Washington to Wall Street, indeed.

Postscript: True progressives such as Eric Zeusse, Yves Smith and Corrente have long warned that Obamacare is nothing but a giant giveaway to big health insurance companies.

But it is also a new opportunity for Wall Street to extract huge sums by manipulating a new market.

[thelerner]

I'd like to see election cycles get shorter and less moneyed. Say after $100 million or some such number that if the candidates wanted to spend more then it'd be taxed 50%. Every dollar spent collected over X (say $100 million) meant $1 went to the debt or homeless cats, whatever. Joe Billionaire wants to give a $50 million dollar gift, fine he should know 1/2 of it is going into taxes. Same with corporations and unions, and we'd see how members think about how the money is spent.

 

Volunteering might become more valuable then corporate then.

Edited November 7, 2013 by thelerner

[zerostao]

i like the concept even if i feel the xdollar amount should be much lower. our only national elections are for the presidency?

theoretically at least? i doubt the corporations would approve this tho.

[Brian]

i like the concept even if i feel the xdollar amount should be much lower. our only national elections are for the presidency?

theoretically at least? i doubt the corporations would approve this tho.

 

^^^ Or the unions, or the media, or the politicians.

 

A boy can dream though, right?

 

[joeblast]

Congressional term limits are an ABSOLUTE MUST.

[thelerner]

Congressional term limits are an ABSOLUTE MUST.

In the past I've been against this due the philosophy there may be experienced member who get things done. Now I'm not so sure. We've got too many professional politicians. Maybe 2 term limit, 3 at the most.

[Owledge]

Jeremy Paxman is such a brickhead. Probably at least in parts very consciously, because he's there as a representative of his employer.

 

He keeps asking Russell Brand about why people should take him seriously when he's so unspecific. Well, let me tell you Jeremy, Hitler had way more specific ideas, and people took him seriously. Is that the aim here? If you try and coerce people into action, you might not like what you're getting, because this moronic adversity is just pissing people off and making them fanatical and believing you're as dumb as you're acting.

 

Those media puppets are really boring. It's the same whenever someone interviews the Iranian president or any other person who challenges the dominant power structures. And they're also very dumb, because they're giving the interviewed person a great platform to demonstrate how much smarter and more dredible they are. At this level the interviewers are merely practicing fanservice for their already indoctrinated followers.

His smirkness towards the end of the interview reeks of his feeling of comfort being embedded in those power structures. He doesn't even bother to counter with platitudes that actally adresses what Russell is saying, but just throws ad hominems. In internet language he'd almost classify as a troll.

 

I don't even bother that Russell still believes in the climate change scam, because as he's saying himself, he's merely reaising awareness, wanting to have a discussion. He doesn't have to know everything. I still support his general approach. And apparently it is necessary to use somewhat stronger language to wake people up. Many are so deep in paralysis and apathy that they need a slap, or a glass of water in their face to wake up.

 

Jeremy 'Pacman' is too dumb to realize what a great favor he's doing even himself by conducting that interview.

[Owledge]

It is, IMO, a direct contradiction to complain about who was elected and leads a counrty when one has never voted. It is also my opinion that one does not have the right to bitch about who was or was not elected if one has never voted.

This mindset is a result of indoctrinating the people. It is based on authoritarianism. The irony is how much this is the opposite of the truth, because your vote constitutes support for a person, organization and/or system. You are responsible for that. If you keep voting for a system that eliminates better alternatives, then it is only a sign of integrity to not be coaxed into voting for something one does not agree with. Those who voted for a crappy government take all responsibility for their actions. Those who didn't vote for any because they didn't agree with any available are not to blame by those who support the problem. And even if they create alternatives themselves, they are faced with the dominant system cheating and manipulating and using illegal means against them and people still vote for that criminal system, so they're amassing an ever greater burden of responsibility.

 

When an allegedly democratic system becomes all about voting for a supposedly crappy alternative in order to un-vote a supposedly even crappier alternative, then the whole system is ready for the trashcan, because that's as sad and morally bankrupt as it can get. That's merely lab rats trying to escape the labyrinth.

 

To somewhat paraphrase a quote made a long time ago: A revolution cannot happen as long as people are respecting signs saying that you're not allowed to walk on the lawn. It is madness to be embedded in a criminal system and then trying to fight it with its own rules.

[Aaron]

I think it's everyone's right to do what they feel is right for them and since the country is a democracy we have a right to complain about things whether we vote or don't vote. In the same way, I think it's kind of strange to complain about the government and not do anything to actually try to change it.

[Coaster]

 

My point is, though, that this is a real-life & current situation in which "principled" voting likely backfired. Had just 55,000 of the Libertarian voters voted for the Republican "second-choice," Terry McAuliffe would not be governor-elect.

Okay, here is a counter-example:

 

In November 1992, A plurality of voters polled in exit polling (41% IIRC) stated that they would have voted for Perot for President, but they thought they need to vote strategically instead of for their first choice. So, if everyone had voted for their first choice, Perot would have been President instead of a Democrat or Republican.

 

My guess is that would have applied many times in the past, but people are brainwashed by the "strategic voting" argument and by the Democrat/Republican/CNN propaganda machine.