Re: Of The People

1

This would make a great comment, but... a post all it's own? I don't know.


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 9:55 AM
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2

C'mon, Brock, dream the Mr. Comment Goes to Front Page dream!


Posted by: My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 10:00 AM
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3

Mr. Comment Goes to Front Page

Dude!


Posted by: standpipe b | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 10:04 AM
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4

But seriously, this is true. I've daydreamed about politics, but have put it out of my head, because I know I couldn't hack the fundraising.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 10:06 AM
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5

Similarly, maybe politicians are, at some level, so unlikably slimy to prevent average Joe or Jane from getting in on that action.


Posted by: mrh | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 10:06 AM
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6

It's true, the constant fundraising would be a massive pita.

Of course, there's also the desire not to have one's private idiocies become public topics.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 10:15 AM
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7

Similarly, maybe politicians are, at some level, so unlikably slimy to prevent average Joe or Jane from getting in on that action.

I think that if politicians didn't need to fundraise, this would not be true. Maybe one of our British readers can help us out on this. It's my impression that our politicans are stereotyped as glad-handing and insincere, and their politicans are stereotyped as nerdy technocrats, with each party possessing a couple glad-handing insincerity specialists to serve as their public face.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 10:18 AM
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8

1 was, of course, a joke, and this is a very interesting insight. I speculate it's because there are a lot of moneyed interests that have taken it upon themselves to convince the public that repealing the estate tax is in the common interest, selling the American Dream and all that, whereas there is no similar money interested in convincing people that public financing is good for them. In fact, there's a lot of money interested in convincing people exactly the opposite.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: deep capture convincingly explains a disturbingly large part of our political reality.


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 10:22 AM
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9

Related, though not directly on point: can anyone point me to a thought-out and workable proposal for public financing of elections? I'm quite sure they're out there, but I've never really studied the issue, and all the proposals I come up with in my head have obvious problems.


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 10:25 AM
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10

The natural argument against this is that Joe Public wouldn't want to run for office because he thinks politicians are all scumbags (see comment 5). But! If we have public financing of elections, we can send some Decent Hardworking American to Washington instead of the scum.


Posted by: Becks | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 10:26 AM
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11

I think people with embarrasing (but not genuinely immoral or criminal) stuff about them on the internet should run for office. It would be really nice if a lot of stuff that is actually perfectly normal were treated as normal by the electorate.

"Yes, that is a picture of me drunk at spring break in 1992. You never went to spring break in college?"

"Yes, I did go to party with a bunch of other men where we got naked and played with body paint. We also drank a nice merlot. It was fun. We are all adults and no one got hurt."

"Yes, I did major bong hits in my high school parking lot. I promise that my short term memory has recovered, and I will not vote while stoned."


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 10:28 AM
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8: Public financing = "spending your tax dollars." Repeal of estate tax = "keeping your inheritance."

The common link is that people see public monies as money that's been removed from their own, personal pocket.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 10:32 AM
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13

I'd like to run for something but I suspect I'm better suited, in the nearest possible world, to be the person pulling the strings. That, and I'm not a member of the aristocracy that gets to be Senators.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 10:55 AM
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14

11: Remember, that's how Al Gore handled pot-smoking. When asked about it, he said something along the lines of: "Yeah, I smoked a lot for a while there. Enjoyed it a great deal."


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 10:58 AM
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their politicans are stereotyped as nerdy technocrats

Except for the Giant Crustaceans. If I could afford it, I'd run for office just so I could dress as a giant crustacean. (Becks' point is a good one, though.)


Posted by: Paul | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 11:08 AM
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7; Ned, I hate to be a bringdown, but it's exactly the same everywhere. This is our current entertainment. In Ireland the Taoiseach is under investigation, and they're having the same debate in Oz right now. There's never enough money for the pols, wherever you go.

I believe Belgium is one country which restricts spending on elections. Willy would know if it works, but I've seen it suggested that it favours the incumbents.


Posted by: OneFatEnglishman | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 11:13 AM
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9: Brock, I wish I could give you more info, but I'm just dropping by. Briefly, we have a new public financing system in Portland; you can Google for details, and you might want to try the term "voter-owned elections," which is the term that advocates have widely adopted. Albuquerque and a few other places have a similar system.


Posted by: Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 11:59 AM
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18

Portland is so reasonable it should be in Scandinavia.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 12:30 PM
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19

The first part of the post, about people buying into the repeal of the estate tax, touches something venerable and characteristic about Americans.

Here's Hugh MacLennan, in an essay first published in MacClean's in 1946, on the difference between the American and Canadian characters:

"Only in [such] a country...could Matt, a sixty-year-old elevator man, making twenty a week in New York against rising prices, object to OPA as an infringement on his personal liberty. When I, down from Canada and proud of our price control, tried to argue that without OPA his wages wouldn't keep him alive, Matt's answer contained the reason for at least half of Harry Truman's headaches: 'How do you know but what tomorrow may be my lucky day?'"


Posted by: I don't pay | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 12:50 PM
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20

The call for estate tax repeal is usually accompanied by dire warnings that "small family farms" will have to be sold to pay the dreaded estate tax, conjuring up the picture of Ma and her littl'uns bravely walking away from their 40 acres, as the Gummint men rub their hands with glee and start slaughtering Wilbur the Pig.

In reality, there are annual exemptions and clever estate planning and charitable remainder trusts and charitable lead trusts and insurance trusts and all those nifty loopholes put in by members of Congress who have second and third wives, but children from a first marriage, not to mention a history of such things as the Gallo amendment [yes, those Gallos - they machinated to gain a period of time during which they could pass down shares of the company to their grandchildren without incurring gift/estate taxes; other wealthy families have done the same]. But the guy who dreams of winning the lottery doesn't know about any of that - he just sees Ma staggering down the dirt road, toting her worldly goods in an old suitcase, or his kids' pockets being picked by the IRS.

I move, BTW, that we insist that Becks run for office and start a Becks-for-Congress fund in order to provide bumper-stickers and buttons for us all before the next elections, which we could display all around the country, much to the confusion of our local inhabitants.


Posted by: DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 1:20 PM
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21

Thanks DE! How about Becks-For-Congress-After-DC-Gets-Representation?


Posted by: Becks | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 1:30 PM
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22

"Vote It Becks-Style."


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 1:42 PM
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23

I think we should just run a campaign for you without mentioning that you live in a representatively-challenged area. Let people from all over write you in: "A Vote for Becks is a Vote for Becks".

Of course, the fact that "Becks" rhymes with "cheques" doesn't hurt [Support Becks: Send Your Checks". Or "Becks: At No One's Beck and Call".]


Posted by: DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 2:05 PM
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24

if I didn't have all kinds of damning things that could be used against me on the internets

Lucky then that you're totally, uncrackably pseudonymous.

(Becks-style on my afternoon off -- sitting on my porch -- porch, bitches! -- bourbon and soda in hand -- fresh from discussing neighborhood gossip with Marjorie from around the corner, who is walking on her new plastic and metal knees and fretting about whether she will be able to plant bulbs this year.)


Posted by: Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 2:57 PM
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25

Albuquerque and a few other places have a similar system.

This must have been pretty recently, because I wasn't aware of it. Arizona also has a public financing law that's often considered a model.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 3:17 PM
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26

25: It passed during the October 2005 municipal electtion. KKOB and Clear Channel put their energy into defeating the minimum wage increase, so the public funding of city elections passed. Common Cause and others were pushing it.


Posted by: Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 4:29 PM
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27

You know, that's the one election I've missed since I became eligible to vote. Serves me right, I guess.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 11- 9-06 4:33 PM
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28

As regards 20, DEditrix is going to have to face the wrath of the tasseled loafered Leech.


Posted by: Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 11-11-06 10:04 AM
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