www.museworld.com/archives/2003_06.html#001027 -> www.museworld.com/archives/2003_06.html
People are going crazy over there on the comments of his weblog, I havent seen so much political optimism for a long time. On the same day, theres more mutterings that Nader might choose to run again. Reading his announcement, I got thoroughly turned off by him for the very first time. He said something about how it didnt seem that the Democrats had anyone who would be able to beat Bush, so hes thinking about running. If he actually had constructive intent, hed run in the Democratic primary. Theyve got Kucinich in there already, its not like Nader would have to compromise his platform to run as a Democrat. But instead he has to make it about increasing the viability of the third party, when actually it turns out that he probably damaged the Green party last time. I dont get the feeling that local and state Green candidacies are taking the nation by storm. This seems to be more about a destructive protest effort than anything else now. It has a whole damn the consequences vibe to it, and even kind of reminds me of the soldier who said he had to destroy the village to save it. Ill say it again - voting Green might be voting ones principles, but if you try to do so through using an unprincipled voting system, the end result is NOT principled. The best way out of this is for Democrats and Greens to come to an agreement - have the Greens support a Democratic candidate in exchange for issue concessions, and in exchange for Democrats using their vast resources to bring about statewide preference voting in as many states as possible. You get Condorcet voting NOT IRV implemented in a few swing states, and then Green and Democrat can both be happy without either turning into a spoiler candidate. Posted by Curt at 09:46 PM Comments 0 TrackBack Calpundit CalPundit Ive checked out this apparent lefty blog four times so far, and every single time I run into a weblog entry that just seems to want to suck the progressive energy away from people. I dont really feel like continuing to read the weblog, not enough to get a firmer opinion, but right now, I dont really feel like the author is necessarily a conservative activist in disguise. Hes probably one of those guys who thinks that its not constructive or something. Theres definitely a place for being measured and reasoned, but you take that to an extreme and you become a passionless apologist. Posted by Curt at 08:44 PM Comments 1 TrackBack The Administrations Language A Nation of Victims An excellent, excellent article about the language of Bushs administration.
Texas Redistricting Texas Lawmakers Head Back to Capitol for Special Session on Redistricting This along with the California recall effort are the two most important state political battles. Either one could lead to a large congressional swing in favor of the republicans. There are no current battles that could lead to many more democratic seats, although the Democrats seem to have recently won their battle in Georgia. Posted by Curt at 01:43 PM Comments 0 TrackBack California Taxes And Denialists So, in California, both houses are controlled by Democrats, and they have a Democratic Governor. This is the root of all its problems, want to bet they dont need a 2/3 majority to cut taxes? This was probably yet another republican trick to manipulate politically unsophisticated people into thinking that Democrats dont have their best interests at heart. You get a whole bunch of people and you give them services they learn to rely on, that you pay for by taxing them. Then you gradually lull them into complacency and encourage them not to see the linkage between the taxes they pay and the benefits they get from the taxes. Then you pound home the message that their taxes are being wasted, over and over and over again. You dont have to prove it, you just appeal to their fear and desperation about money. You of course encourage their desperation about money in the meantime by telling them how horrible their lives will be if they have less of it. You convince them that you have their interests at heart and want to protect their pocketbooks. You tell them you wont let the big bad government take away any more of their money. You appeal to their greed and their fear, and you buy their votes. You pass an amendment saying that you cant raise taxes unless a 2/3 majority accepts it. That way if theres a budget shortfall, you can blame anyone who wants to raise taxes, and you can also blame them for cutting needed services. When theres a surplus, you blame them for taxing too much and for having taxes that are too high, and when theres a shortfall, you blame them for not thinking ahead. You manufacture an electricity shortage by deregulating public utilities and then selling all your state power to other states, claiming a shortage, and massively raising your prices and margins to ration the state. You get the state to bankrupt its surplus while you pocket the profits. If you get sued, thats okay, they wont get enough money back to make up for what they lost. You also get lucky with a nationwide recession that doesnt impact your own party since youre all rich and powerful legislators. You encourage the recession to require more service cuts and tax raises so you can further blame the people that are unable to stop the service cuts and are trying to raise the taxes. You refuse any and all suggested tax raises and rub your hands with glee as your state falls apart around you. You cut up the safety net, you kick the elderly out of their nursing homes, you cancel summer classes in community colleges, you fire thousands of academic faculty. You blame the Governor for attempting to raise taxes after irresponsibly handling the economy. You blame the Governor for cutting needed services after irresponsibly handling the economy. You oppose the Governor taking any action at all, and support a recall of the Governor on the grounds that he isnt taking any action at all. If youre able to stomach doing any part of that, then congratulations - you have what it takes to be a California Republican. That is my term for someone whose only reason for living is to deny subvert, stand in the way of anything that someone else does, while advocating nothing. And if you think about it, its true - these Republicans are advocating nothing .
They amass power and money for no purpose, they use these resources as ends when they are supposed to be used as means to create good. They turn motion into stagnation, energy into density, life into death. They will seek to compromise their opponents integrity at every turn. To battle them you must be skilled with recognizing false choices. You must beat them not at their own game, but instead by forcing them out of their game, by refusing to even accept their rules. And when you start to learn how to expose them, it starts to become easier. When they attack you in front of others, you realize you dont have to be embarrassed, or cover yourself in defense. Instead, you can turn to the audience and explain to them exactly what they are trying to do. You can expose their tricks, their lies, their games, their lack of advocacy. I would love to see a day when we have a leader that can expose these stunts. That can show us how amusing their harrumphs and indignance and donald-duck-like sputterings are when they are called out.
Every ten years after the census, every states congressional districts get redistricted by the legislature. If the republicans are in power of the legislature, then they can redistrict everything in the state so that republicans have the maximum chance of getting elected to the national House of Representatives. This kind of strategy is why over 95 of the house races nationwide are not even competitive, because the districts around the candidate have been districted in such a way that that areas demographics do not threaten the office holder. In Georgia, a democratic legislature tried to redistrict Georgia so there were as many small black majorities as possible in many different districts, so as to create more democratic districts, even though each had less of a strong majority. The Republicans appealed to the Supreme Court on the...
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