... the best "fix" is proportional voting. Another "fix" is a requirement that everybody vote. Neither thing will happen. The third fix is public funding -- getting the $$$ out of political elections.
but we would get behind serious campaign finance reform, and also eliminating non-profits. Money is money, and being obsessive or irrational should not exempt anybody from paying taxes on income.
...I'm not sure either. It's the best I can come up with.
My favorite idea a voting scheme where, for any given positiion, you vote for all the candidates you could live with This can be shown (in a math sense) to always elect the candidate that satisfies the voters more than any other.
I could be wrong and I'm sure others might have better ideas.
Harry
Boy, you're a Democrat alright.
It's alright, Harry, 95% of Republicans are blowhards. Like that idiot Rush Limbaugh, and all his imitators. And Dick "Other Priorities" Cheney - when he tells you "go fuck yourself" you know the only way that'll happen is if he buys somebody off - it's sure not like he could actually hit anything he aims at.
Public funding is an absolute necessity.
There's a group called Americans for Campaign Reform that says it would cost just $1.8 billion to pay for all Congressional, Senate and the Presidential campaign. That turns out to be $6 per American. We paid $200 per person in Congressional pork last year so this is a real bargain. This group is headed by former Sens. Warren Rudman, Alan Simpson, Bob Kerrey and Bill Bradley.
http://www.just6dollars.org/
... I know about the organization and support it. Glad ou brought it up.
Harry
... and people who have absolute stands on either side of the abortion issue, people who hate GWB / Clinton because he is stupid / immoral, people who find the incursion into Iraq completely right / wrong, ... people who see the world as completely black or right and can't ever see the colors in between.
What about abolishing the Electoral College and electing the Prez via direct popular vote. It's an oldie but a goodie, and it does have the added benefit of helping to dilute the outsized power of some foreign policy lobbying groups in nat'l elections.
If that's too radical, keep the Electoral College but apportion the electoral votes in the same percentage as a state's popular vote. That way, groups like AIPAC and the Cuban lobby in Florida keep some lease on life. Even as undeserving and irresponsible as they have shown themselves to be in the past and no doubt will continue to be in the future.
-- Modified on 5/17/2006 6:21:23 PM
Forcing everyone to vote is a terrible idea.
Think about your average 18-year-old and their degree of political savvy. They're going to vote for candidates like Arnold "Cause his last movie totally rocked man!!!" instead of having any idea what policies he might try to enact, or where he stands on issues important to them.
I would really prefer the poltically apathetic to stay home on election day, and leave the voting to people who bother to find out about the candidates and issues on the ballot.
... and I can't speak for what all 18 year olds would do. Maybe you are right. However, I'm pretty sure that, on the margin, if everyone was forced to vote, they would pick the candidate they liked the most (or disliked the least). Candidates that wanted to win would tend to take majoritian positions. I think that would be a good thing.
Harry
to assume that the candidates are picked by the public and not by some local(or national)interest group.What they say during the campaign may appeal to a majority but doesn't necessarily imply a follow through AFTER the election!
Your effort is laudable, but keep in mind that you're trying to rectify an inherently unstable situation brought about by too many diverse interest groups in our society- I guess a price we have to pay for our democracy!
... nothing can predict the future and electoraes make mistakes and people change when they are in office. That risk will always exist when government is a human enterprise. It's a risk I'm willing to take.
Harry
You're assuming that all these people who don't want to vote but are forced to vote would take the effort to find out about the candidates, and their positions and histories. That's not going to happen.
Instead, they will vote based on sound bites because that's all they've heard on TV. Sound bites will guarentee radicals in government, because they are so brief there's no room for the nuance required by a centrist.
I am sick of this John Mcain BS. Take a stand for something! Believe in something! Greatness doesn't come from being mushy. Were our founding fathers mushy? Was Reagan mushy during the cold war? What if he took a centrist approach? Would we have won? Being a "centrist" means you wait to hear whjat is popular in the polls and embrace it as your own.
... being a centrist may be indeed a crock. Given that is the case, I'm not sure how we should characterize our current group of "philosopher kings" that lead the country today.
I would be happy to have an opportunity to vote for John McCain. I would also be happy to vote for Hillary. Both seem to be intelligent adults that are willing not to fuck the country up for an "idea" or a "principal".
Quite frankly, I would feel OK if you were very dissatisfied with your choices in the next election cycle. You could go back to writing how the country lost its way and was going to hell in a handbasket. The rest of us could get along.
All the best. Harry
Other than the fact we know they both want to be President, what do Hillary Clinton and John McCain actually stand for? Does anyone know? Will they ever tell us? That's why Kerry lost. That's why they will lose. Trashing the other guy doesn't win elections. Saying what you are against and not what you are for doesn't win elections. Anyone can say what they are against. That doesn't require much thought or courage. Sorry Harry, you won't get one of you're guys in until they grow a backbone.
... civality in politics. They both think that, now that we are in Iraq, we have some responsibility to "do the right thing" (both would probably disagree to some extent about what the right thing is), both could be trusted not to destroy democratic society in order to save it, ....
Does this help?
Harry
have in common is support for the Iraq debacle. How exactly is it a centrist position to be so clearly in the minority on this one?
Rome is burning, and all Hillary can do is think about X-rated Video games and flag burning.
Hil..time to give it a rest, and try to serve your constituents as junior Senator from New York.
Actually, you could argue that Reagan had several centrist moments in his two terms.
A couple examples were his massive tax _increases_ (payroll taxes) and his cozying up to Gorby.
Reagan was to the left of the current administration, which could also be used to mean 'centrist'...but that's a little like saying Reagan was to the left of Francisco Franco.
Harry- They are for civility? Vote for me to run the country because I am civil??? You didn't answer the question because you don't know what they stand for. Not your fault. You don't have ESP and they never told you. And when did Hillary become civil?
Foo- Let's not try to revise history about Reagan. He had a massive tax cut to jump start the economy and then he slowly increased taxes. It was still astronomically lower than Carter's and lower than today. He crushed Gorbachev! He refused to end the SDI program no matter what compromises Gorby was willing to make. That was the death blow for the USSR.
So Bush is right of Franco? Medicare,Immigration,
Prescription Drugs, Campaign Finance Reform, Increased Social Spending. Except for Defense and Taxes, Bush is very moderate. He is very much like Nixon domestically. Reagan would have never of gone for all of these programs.
a great Conservative until his poll numbers hit the skids and now that he is wallowing in the low 30s, he is a moderate or liberal. Sorry to break it to you, rightwinger, but the Republicans control all branches. This is what governance by conservatives looks like. You are not going to get out of it that easy.
Bush isn't moderate.
Medicare: Corporate give-away. He helped insert provisions into the bill to guarentee no negotiation with drug manufacturers, and passed a program that will make medium- and low- income seniors pay _more_ for prescription drugs than many private health plans. Those plans are disappearing because Medicare D exists.
Immigration: The White House was the group that pushed for the felony provisions in the house immigration bill. When that caused a major backlash, they abandoned their hard line stance.
Campaign Finance Reform: is a joke. Not to mention, they've been pushing for limitations on 527s (where lots of Democratic donations come from) while loosening restrictions on corporate donations (where lots of Republican Donations come from)
Increased Social Spending: Where? The last 2 budgets have slashed social spending. Remember, social spending has to go up every year just to keep up with population growth and inflation.
You're also leaving out Bush's imperial nature, where he apparently feels he gets to ignore any law he finds inconvenient.
While Reagan did not abandon SDI, he went from the USSR is an "evil empire" to Gorby being a good friend. You can't assess relations between two countries based on one R&D program...especially when the Russians already knew it was too expensive for us to deploy and had already modified their warheads to counter it.
-- Modified on 5/18/2006 12:31:56 PM
I agree that mushy is mushy and not what is needed, especially now.
So, let me define "center" for the sake of this conversation: the perspective that does the most good for the most people.
Well, it follows that the question is "what is that good? Who gets to define it?" And that's the problem. We've gotten ourselves in a position where narrow positions (gay rights, poultry farmers, ad nauseum) are all lobbying for that narrow interest.
But Al Gore is onto something. He's focused on an issue of much larger proportions: global warming. Now of course, there will be the back and forth over the science and validity behind it, but my point is that this is a large issue of common concern, driven by his authentic perception of importance. So is terriorism & WMD's. And energy. Etc, etc.
So, reforming the center means, I think, getting the really core issues in focus first, and the ones that look to where we are heading globally in the Information Age - a time of dramatic and profound change from the Industrial Age.
The one's we all actually worry about not because of some demogogue stirring fear and anger, but because it's really important to all of us.
And this means election reform. It means finding ways to diffuse the power of these single issue groups. It also means creating enough intellectual and moral glue to cut the demogagues' balls right off.
The point is that "center" does not mean "mushy." It means focusing our attention on the really key issues that should, in fact, transcend party. Solutions should vary, but the focal points must remain steady and long-term.
Otherwise, we're in for a hellish time.
That is, somebody else should kill something. I'm not that good of a shot, because I have other priorities. Besides, I might get dirty, or make less money.
Take a stand and kill something!! You can get your dumb ass whacked so I don't. Onward!! For Halliburton, Enron and Wall Street!!!
a couple years military service in some vermin infested hole 250 miles from the nearest female humanoid.
Stand (in the mud a couple years) for something!! Don't be mushy when you're up to your knees in a fucking rice paddy with some fucking sniper taking pot shots at you!! Or at least sober up and come to your NG drills!! Pay your fucking dues for a change!! Stop chipping your teeth about OTHERS doing your dirty work!!
Whatever else you may think of him, John McCain has paid his fucking dues for this and a couple more lifetimes. Your beloved Chimp doesn't have the moral equipment of a pathological shoplifter.
What Republicans believe in is somebody else paying the bills. You can shove that right up your ass.
Because there isn't one.
What kind of a fucking moron would talk as if Bush stood for something, and McCain didn't?
Bush stands for the cheap gibberish of a drunk that gets an entire nation in trouble. Bush stands for somebody else paying the bills and doing the work. He stands for govt by the stupidest and most rapacious. 48 hours in solitary, and he'd be all but dead having DTs.
Is that what you're about?
Yea, McCain is very principled. That's why he's hanging out with the "religious right" as you call them. He's completely rejected the conservative base his entire career and now he's changing his tune. If he gets nominated by the GOP he'll switch back to the so-called center. Way to hang tough Johnnie!
Bush stands for something. If he didn't he would have listened to the "retreat and surrender" crowd. Namely, you guys.
Hey Albert, enjoy the 4 1/2% unemployment and the Dow well over 11,000 in this "nation in trouble".
You want an answer.... You've got one!