Today's date: sunnudagr 2. skerpla eða 26. may 2013 CE

Archive for elections

Elections are over; what’s the score?

The 2010 mid-term elections are complete. I’ve always hated that term: “mid-term”. I don’t like that the election cycle is defined by the president’s time in office. It somehow dumbs-down the legislative elections in the same way that a mid-term exam might not be worth as much as the final when in fact the legislative elections are worth much more.

This is the election cycle that has the potential to drive and shape policy, most accurately voice the will of the voters, and generally set direction for the country in terms of what is likely to be debated. It’s a huge deal. I prefer we go with the term “general elections” and “presidential elections”.

The democrats finished badly — though not as badly as some had said — and it looks like we’re in for an interesting and corruption-filled two years before we try and fix this. I can’t believe you all voted for republicans. What were you thinking? Do you seriously think we’re better off with the same people who supported Bush for eight years? Really?! Why do you think we’re in the mess we’re in. The debt, unemployment, financial crisis, wars, pollution: all of them were inherited by the current administration. Left as a legacy by Bush.

So that’s the national picture, and I’m unpleased. While I’m not by any stretch of the imagination a democrat, I’m certainly not in the fold of the current republicans. Locally, things look a bit better.

My county district voted back in our long-standing representative at the state level — Lucy Leriche — over a former schoolmate of mine, Nicole Ling. I had to learn quickly about the two, and found out that Leriche would be my choice. For one, she’s experienced and has actually accomplished stuff. Secondly, she can spell her position. Thirdly, she’s not republican and doesn’t seem to let religion or morality interfere with her political work. I’m happy there. I don’t know that much about our state senators, but I will find out.

As the dust settles, I’ll be posting data on the turnout and who voted for whom. We’ll see exactly how many people have just decided upon fate for the rest of us, eh?

Posted in elections, politics, thoughts, vermont, voting | Leave a comment

from “Progress Report for a Goodthinking UniSocAm”

I found this fragment buried in a government website a few weeks ago and wanted to share it. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to be public, as I haven’t seen it since. I don’t know the author or to whom it’s addressed, but it’s obviously fairly recent and seems to be part of a larger document or book. Please read it and spread it around. It’s important we don’t allow this kind of thinking to continue. In the meantime, I will see if I can find more.

- sd

There are five primary beliefs that must be imparted upon any citizenry in order to ensure the party’s long life. They are as follows:

  1. Participation in a republic is voluntary
  2. Responsibility for the republic rests solely on the shoulders of the elected
  3. Public is private
  4. Protection is control
  5. War is peace

During the early and middle stages of conversion to a single system of political and social thought, we must put all of our efforts into the five beliefs above. As the years go by and we find that the citizenry truly believes in the five points above, we can turn our efforts to other efforts (outlined in chapter 5 below).

At this point in time, we are very close to a complete adoption of the above beliefs by the majority of the voting public. The rest of this report will outline how we’ve accomplished what many people have said is impossible.

First is the task of getting the public to believe that participation in a republic is voluntary. We worked towards this goal first as it is the single weakness of our current government’s constitution. If enough people are convinced of a voluntary participation, then general human apathy will ensure that only a handful of the total population will turn out to vote. By limiting the numbers of voters, we can ensure a larger percentage of our own sympathizers, or sympathizers of issues that are not important to the running of a government. Recent history can give us many examples: religious freedom, abortion, homosexual marriage. None of those issues are truly important to the longevity of our current republic, but by ensuring that the only people participating are those who see them as issues, we have created a distracted and frustrated citizenry that is – in turn – less likely to vote in the next election.

How have we done this? The primary method is by not revealing to the public the weakness of the constitution. While our publicly funded education programs certainly outline the structure of the government, they do very little to educate students on the reasons for the structure or, indeed, the participation from the governed on which that structure depends. That added to a general human apathy, confusion around what the electoral college is, which election cycle is truly important (as an aside, we have been working very closely with the press on this one and have truly convinced citizens that the presidential election is more important than the congressional), and the convoluted unimportant issues mentioned above, we have come very close to bringing the voting pool down to a manageable and steady 30 percent of the populous.

Second on the list is to convince that the tasks of governing and oversight are the sole responsibilities of the elected and appointed officials. This is a key point. Imagine for a minute what might happen if each citizen took it upon himself to keep track of what government was doing. It would undermine our current progress and become very difficult to implement some of the future changes that are being planned. However, by the combination of human apathy mentioned above and a belief that governing is not a citizen’s responsibility, we can foster feelings of frustration and helplessness within the general public. These feelings lead to a continued trend of non-participation which leads to deeper feelings of alienation. When citizens feel alienated and disenfranchised, it makes it easier to suppress them with work, entertainment, the lottery, etc. (more on our work in those areas in chapter 2).

Third is that the public must believe that the behavior of government is private while their own private information is in fact public. The accomplishment of this step has taken many years and is only 60 percent complete at this point; however we anticipate great strides in this area with our current administration. The keys to this are jargon and volunteerism. Let me explain.

By wrapping governmental work within complicated language specific to certain areas of expertise such as law, science, economics, etc. the government can actually convince citizens that there’s nothing within the information for them. Additionally, our current administration’s pledge of openness will convince citizens to look at only what they are told to monitor – www.recovery.gov for instance – and keep them away from the inner workings that could actually tell a complete story. The press, of course, will request deeper access, but these few individuals are easy enough to control (more on this in chapter 3). With the citizenry volunteering to be left out of public processes, it’s very easy to convince them that those processes are actually private. From there, it’s even easier to convince people to volunteer personal information to the government: spending, travel, food preferences, closest friends’ names, political and religious views, etc. We can accomplish this in one of two ways.

The first is to simply say that we require such information to better understand their needs in order to properly govern. We could conceivably use the current US Census for such a purpose if necessary. The second method – which is also beneficial to our business interests and therefore preferred – is to allow the public to willingly send all kinds of information to their favorite companies. Once that’s gone on for a couple of years, we can institute oversight on the companies to ensure a protection of privacy. Of course, in doing so we gain access to unprecedented amounts of data.

In these ways we can ensure that the information our citizens think of as private becomes public, and at the same time generate a disinterest in government processes without passing any laws that could raise suspicious too early.

Fourth, we must convince the public that protection and control are the same activities with the same ends. Already there is evidence that people believe protection can only be gained by giving up control of their lives. This is a good first step. The next step is to demonstrate how without the government controlling their lives they would lose the protection that it offers. This demonstration has already begun, in fact, with the advent of the current financial crises and our work towards indicating blame.

People already believe that the sole reason for the banks’ collapse was lack of government oversight, and that it had nothing to with greed, mismanagement, and a healthy shove from the Fed. Now are nationalizing the problem banks, increasing oversight, and gaining control of those finances. The people – according to stock market movement – have reacted favorable. It’s apparent that society is beginning to equate control with protection.

Outside of the financial arena, we are using fear and paranoia in order to increase people’s desire for protection. This works especially well where many people are gathered together: airport, subway, train station. This, too, seems to be having a positive effect. We’re able to request identification at our leisure, subject anybody to an invasive and unwarranted search, as well as broadcast messages to everyone that encourage them to be suspicious of others’ behavior. All of this with little or no protest. We are very close to accomplishing our goals in this area much sooner than we expected.

The last important item to discuss is a concept popularized by George Orwell’s 1984. Surprisingly, the widespread popularity of this novel has not prepared people against many of the practices it attempts to vilify, among them the concept that war is peace.

We have been able to quite successfully convince citizens that only by violently protecting our interests in an area of the world can we assure a peaceful existence in our own country. Of course, this is not a new concept and precedent for such a philosophy can be found throughout documented history. Luckily, however, we have at our disposal governmental approvals of such behavior with the Monroe and Truman Doctrines. This ensures that even if a body of citizenry were to point out the fallacies of such a philosophy, we can simply respond that it is in the nature of our country and begin the process of proving them unpatriotic (chapter 6 for more on this).

Admittedly, we have had undreamed of success in this area over the past 20 years. There was some initial concern among some of our group based on how the constitution set forth the rules of declaring war. This was soon overcome, however, through a steady application of principals one through three and we eventually saw put in place a congress fitting our needs. That body put into law the War Powers Act in 1973 which gives the president the ability to preemptively invade another country. This relegated congress to the role of financiers, and while that could theoretically lead to problems, the successful disenfranchisement of citizens has ensure a steady stream of war-bound funds even to the point – if we may celebrate a bit – of bankrupting the country for generations to come. There is always a risk of relapse, however, so we must continue to devise a method of ensuring a steady stream of money (see chapter 4).

We hope you’ve found this overview of principles and application of same to be enlightening. Remember: through the steady, confident, daring, and unwavering application of the five principles outlined here, we will continue to march towards a future we can all be proud of.

Posted in democracy, elections, faction, journalism, philosophy, politics, voting | Leave a comment

How campaigns make us think voting doesn’t matter

It’s 6:30 in the morning here, I’m tired, and rushing to get ready for work. In spite of all of that, however, I need to share the book I’ve just finished reading:”How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative” The author, Allen Raymond, was a GOP campaign manager and operative between 1992 and 2002 and had heavy sway and influence in the messages, tactics, results in elections during that time.

Raymond exposes all of the tactics used by campaigns to twist the truth, distort the message, encourage, and discourage voters from voting. He documents from where these ideas come and shows examples of why and how the work.

The gist of the book, I believe, is summed up in the following paragraphs from the epilogue:

That is everything I can tell you from the inside — how the system is used by people just like me, in both parties, and that they are paid to win at all costs. The tactics will only get tougher, nastier, more brutal, because the tricks of the trade are known, embellished upon, and passed forward by people like me to more people like me, with the competition growing stiffer and the stakes rising higher with every election. So there it is. Now, what are you going to do about it?

Voters must question every shred of information they receive about each candidate using as many critical thinking methods as possible. The five “W’s” from reporting — who, what, where, when, why — are valuable here. When voters see or hear and ad, when they receive a phone call or a postcard or letter, they should be asking themselves who it’s from, what reason was there to send, where it came from, when it was sent, and why was it sent to them.

More so than the actual message, campaigns use targeted mailings with half-truths at key times to sway voters. Oftentimes the purpose of the message is to discourage people from voting at all. To me, this is the most insipid practice of all and is why I will continue to point out that not voting actually feeds the end-game of the system as opposed to — as some non-voters maintain — “sticking it to the man”.

I beg of you, read the book. At the very least, start questioning the information you receive from every campaign. As citizens with the responsibility of getting our country back to working the way it should, we must be informed. Not only through the usual channels of mass-media news and information spew, but also through our own reasoning and interpretation skills.

It’s not easy, but every campaign out there is counting on us not doing it. Is counting on us giving up and taking whatever it is they say as the ultimate truth.

There will be more from me on this subject, but in the meantime: don’t let them win. Use your mind, expose their lies, and vote your conscience.

Posted in allen raymond, campaigns, elections, gop, voting | Leave a comment

Voting: why and why not?

Before I continue my analysis of the U.S. Constitution, I want to explore the topic of voting for a post or two. I’m interested in finding out what voting means to people, why people choose to vote or not, and what the driving issues are behind those decisions.

What I understand from my research so far is that while the voting-age population in the United States has increased since 1930, the percentage of those people who have actually registered and participated have decreased markedly since around 1900. I’ve got data and fancy charts I’ll post in a couple of days.

What I don’t understand is why there’s this drop-off in participation. We’ve gone from nearly 95% participation of registered voters circa 1850 to only 69% of registrants voting for the president in 2004 — meaning George W. Bush won with 39% of registered voters’ approval. The participation is even less during the congressional election cycles.

This is where you come in. Do you vote? If so, why. If not, why not? What are the issues that drive you to vote? Do you feel it makes a difference? If you feel it doesn’t, what about voting makes you feel that way?

I’m trying to understand what people feel about this topic in order to wrestle my observations and see what I can make of them.

Go ahead and post a comment with your response, and send this on to someone — or many someones — you know. Help me try and understand these trends.

I will be posting my findings, calculations, charts, graphs, and analysis on this issue over the next couple of weeks amongst my thoughts on the constitution and the process in general.

Posted in constitution, elections, voting | Leave a comment

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