Galt's Gulch

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  • Posted by ObjectiveAnalyst 10 years, 10 months ago
    Hello AJAshinoff,
    It is quite astonishing the skill with which the money spent is obfuscated by the liberals while they expertly exploit the spending of the opposition.
    On a positive note, it was quite refreshing to see how Dave Brat could be outspent manifold and still beat Eric Cantor, thus demonstrating that money doesn't always win elections.
    Regards,
    O.A.
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  • Posted by johnpe1 10 years, 10 months ago
    if I were to think "devil's advocate", it would be to
    say that elections are $ vs $;;; may the biggest $ win.

    but $ make the most difference in low-awareness
    elections, mostly local, and in bribery (Joe will give
    you an increased minimum wage) and attack (Joe
    will push your Granny off the cliff), it seems to me.

    the local elections appear to heavily favor name
    recognition, and the national ones favor bribery.

    so, if you can get Joe's name in the lights, locally,
    and bribe enough folks nationally, you have BHO?

    oh, yes, there is the option of having your opponent
    removed from the ballot with false charges.

    didn't the founders have a skin-in provision?
    owning land was a biggie, back then;;; what
    about owning a gun -- just for the sake of a
    jib-jab quality conversation? you have to show
    your gun, or you may not vote, just say.

    there are bound to be some very fine ideas here
    in the gulch about this!!! -- j

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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 10 years, 10 months ago
    A vast conspiracy is something of a contradiction, is it not? I mean, five senators killed Julius Caesar. They sort of kept it to themselves, even against the demonstrative loyalty of Calpurnia. One of my favorite quips about the Kennedy Assassination comes from the nerd crime show _NUMB3RS_ : "... CIA, FBI, hundreds of people would have been involved." "Right. That's why everyone knows about it."

    Liberal conspiracies, Koch Brothers, Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderbergers, Davos... the real conspiracies are the ones you do not hear about. BTW just to say, about 2009-2010, I was in my university library and I found five bound volumes of annual CFR reports. Hardly secret....
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    • Posted by eddieh 10 years, 10 months ago
      I just finished a book "Public Enemies" by Jess Money that notes only one party is running the country, The corporate party and that controls both dems and reps. Great political fiction book by the way.
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        Posted by Boborobdos 10 years, 10 months ago
        YES!!!! America isn't a democracy anymore but a Corportacacy. And corporations, as demonstrated by them moving jobs and seeking tax harbors in other countries, don't support America, but only themselves. Thank you for mentioning that.
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    • Posted by $ AJAshinoff 10 years, 10 months ago
      I just think the quantities of monies being laid out by anyone is simply absurd.
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      • Posted by rbunce 10 years, 10 months ago
        Money does not vote, TV ads do not vote, people vote... and the 99% have 99% of the vote. Your problem is with the voters and not the people who voluntarily give their money to a candidate and the candidate who spends it on TV ads. Voters could end that in one election cycle by simply voting for the candidates who do not participate in that. Now if you want to be worried about vote buying, how about the candidates that promise large groups of voters government benefits and services largely paid for by smaller groups of voters. Difficult to understand how Democrats lose any election since Democrats seem to do this while Republicans promise small groups of voters government benefits and services to largely be paid for by large groups of voters.
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        • Posted by Robbie53024 10 years, 10 months ago
          The reality is that with our current situation, electronic communication is a necessity. That requires money. Of course one who wants to win will try to expand these communications as much as possible. And others who support a candidate will offer their own communications in support.

          Prior to when the congress fixed their size at 435 members, the number of constituents per representative was approximately 50k, considerably lower than the current 700k. At that level of constituents, each representative could have a much closer linkage to each one. It would also reduce the effect of big money donors, as there would be many more representatives in the same coverage area of electronic communications.

          Just a thought.
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          • Posted by scinch 10 years, 10 months ago
            More politicians? Certainly you jest! Can you imagine the squabbling over the bread crumbs and even bigger back room deals just to get a piece of legislation out the door? Nah...keep it where it is at.
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            • Posted by Robbie53024 10 years, 10 months ago
              OK, If more is not to your liking, then how about less? Take that to the extreme and let's just anoint the messiah now?
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              • Posted by scinch 10 years, 10 months ago
                OK Robbie...let me throw this at you and tell me what you think.
                1. Look at a presidential electoral map of the US...when you look at one and see where the blue is highlighted...you wonder why anyone liberal ever wins...but it is population...not geographical area that determines representation.
                2. Conservatives generally fare best in rural areas where the populations are thinner.
                3. Liberals are generally concentrated in urban areas.
                So, in my estimation, and maybe I'm wrong, but if you added more members based on population distribution...you will end up with more liberal voters and politicians within those urban areas as you create smaller representative blocks.
                So I guess if you wanted more...you could anoint that messiah now under that scenario as well.
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                • Posted by Robbie53024 10 years, 10 months ago
                  Your math and analysis doesn't hold up. Take your scenario to the extreme. Make every person their own representative. How many of any specific affiliation will you have? Last I checked, there are more who categorize themselves as conservative than any other stripe. If you start reducing that to one rep for every two citizens, and ask those two to agree on one of them, you are more likely to get an independent or libertarian to accept a conservative than you are a liberal or progressive, thus you will get more conservative than less.

                  What has happened is that the gerrymandering of the districts has stratified the electorate into very strong districts. If it captured all the factions into singular districts, that would be better, but it does not. So, with higher densities closer to population centers, just outside those strong factional districts are heavily weighted districts, and then you get the rest of the state.

                  More districts/reps would stratify this more closely to the 1:1 level than to the 1:700k level.
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          • Posted by rbunce 10 years, 10 months ago
            I do not need a candidate to raise large sums (or any money) and run TV ads to vote for them. I am not unique.
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            • Posted by Robbie53024 10 years, 10 months ago
              But you do in order to know about them.
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              • Posted by rbunce 10 years, 10 months ago
                They just need to pay the fee to get on the ballot. Free media and a (can be free FB or G+) webpage is all I need after that. I vote for candidates all the time that spend very little on their campaigns.
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                • Posted by $ blarman 10 years, 10 months ago
                  You are also a minority in that regard, because you care enough to educate yourself on the candidates, their positions, and their histories. Unfortunately, we live in a nation where 99% of people rely on someone else to educate them.

                  Did you know that the most valuable commodity a politician can have is name recognition? It rarely even matters if the connotations are positive or negative - voters vote for candidates they have heard of. It's one of the primary reasons incumbents are so hard to oust and why an incumbent getting bounced in a Primary Election is such a big deal. It means that they screwed up so bad that people actively voted them out instead of letting them just keep going.
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                  • Posted by Robbie53024 10 years, 10 months ago
                    And why the familial ties are so strong. Wives, children, brothers and sisters of politicians all have advantages regardless of what their actual stance is. It's also why shrewd politicians rarely speak the name of their opponent.
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                  • Posted by rbunce 10 years, 10 months ago
                    Alleged lazy voters is not reason to limit anyone's speech or freedom of action in any way. I have never talked to anyone who said they voted for the candidate that raised the most money or ran the most TV ads... don't know why us "enlightened" voters insist the majority are not capable of making the same choices that we do. Blaming money is just weak.
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                    • Posted by $ blarman 10 years, 10 months ago
                      I place the responsibility for gaining knowledge on each and every responsible citizen in this nation, including myself. That being said, the reality is that 99% of the voting electorate do not educate themselves prior to voting other than to listen to the occasional radio or TV spot. That's the reality of politics. Advertisement costs money, ergo money = advertising and reaching that 99%.

                      It isn't that many don't have the capability to make rational decisions, it is that many lack the information upon which to make those rational decisions. What is even worse is that for those who rely solely upon political advertisements, they often get a skewed perspective on the matter and make rational decisions based on false information, which leads to electing candidates who were effective at advertising, but not necessarily governing.

                      Then you also have a large (and growing) portion of the population that votes Democrat simply because they have a vested interest in maintaining the welfare state. They don't care about anything but their next check, not realizing that their desire for another monthly check threatens not only everyone else's well-being, but theirs as well when the money supply dries up.
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                      • Posted by $ AJAshinoff 10 years, 10 months ago
                        Blarman, I agree with much of what you say regarding the onus is on the individual to educate themselves. However, the reality is in this age 2 parents appear to be a luxury. If two parents are available to children the odds are pretty good that both are working simply to make ends-meet. Combine that with at least 10 separate areas where an evermore liberalized society is snaking into a child's mind and with a parent trying his/her hardest to spend time with their kids its no wonder a great many people are ignorant of the politics surrounding them. Its for these reasons that the individual has a 5-10 second attention-span and politicians speak in sound-bites rather that with substance. Its why hillary clinton can be considered viable when she's throughly incompetent and has murdered people through her incompetence and gross negligence. This is exactly why more money means something, its the ability to put as many sound-bites in front of people as frequently as you can. Politicians know a large portion of voters haven't a freakin' clue that they are being boldly lied to with every statemtent a politician makes and, if they do, they don't care because they are too busy surviving. And yes, the piss-poor economy (unfavorable trade agreements and national debt included) is something politicians have manufactured to encourage our current condition to bring this country down.
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                        • Posted by $ blarman 10 years, 10 months ago
                          Oh, I completely agree. We have ideal (self-education) and we have reality. Marketing is the process of finding the most efficient way to get your message across and increase your return. In today's day and age where time = money, many people do not value the information gathering process as worth more than the sound bites. Then as a result, they make decisions based on hearsay and short-term payback.

                          The ironic thing is that the only cure for the problem is education itself ;)
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