2016 Election Cycle Led By Billionaire Donors 370
Nicola Hahn writes: The pluralist stance of American politics contends that true power in the United States has been constitutionally vested in "the people" through mechanisms like the electoral process, freedom of speech, and the ability to establish political parties. The traditional view is that these aspects of our political system result in a broad distribution of power that prevents any one faction from gaining an inordinate amount of influence. And today the New York Times has revealed the shortcomings of this narrative by publishing the names of the 158 wealthy families that have donated almost half of the money spent towards the 2016 presidential race. This group of donors is primarily Republican and is dominated by interests in the banking industry. These facts lend credence to the idea that national policy making is influenced heavily by a relatively small group of people. That the American body politic is largely controlled by a deep state.
Next article: Water is wet (Score:5, Funny)
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Except that, cases like Citizens United relied on the idea that donation is like speech. It's one thing to have a general feeling that American Politicians are corrupt. It's another, completely, to have hard evidence about specific numbers of families. Lots of the scientific process is about questioning basic assumptions and when they turn out to be true, that's science too. In this particular case, last time we had a debate about the USA becoming an oligarchy there were comments warning people that the [slashdot.org]
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If you're dumb enough to vote for someone on the take, you'll get someone on the take. Rich donors don't wield any political power at all unless the people choose to hand it to them.
Real news: MSM is reporting on it (Score:5, Insightful)
The real news is that the mainstream media (NYT) is reporting on it. Also, that money is influential is obvious, but the degree to which it is influential is finally being measured. With numbers backing up observation, and MSM exposure, something may have to be done about it.
Online tech forums are fond of saying the MSM is a puppet of government. Here we have an instance where it isn't.
That's news for nerds.
Re: Next article: Water is wet (Score:4, Funny)
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Why do you single out water? Aren't all liquids wet?
If wetness is a feeling you get from coming into contact with some substances, then I think there are non-wet liquids (and wet solids and gasses.
OTOH, if wetness is shorthand for waterness, then there are definitely wet solids and gasses, and assuredly dry liquids (anhydrous solvents of various kinds, mercury at room temp, etc).
He was on CNN today (Score:2)
Depends how you define "wet".
Re:Next article: Water is wet (Score:5, Funny)
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Martinis are often dry. Of course we need a reasonable sample size. Ten should do it.
Umm (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless they're directly buying votes, then that remains true. I'm not sure why we're equating advertising dollars with votes, because they aren't the same thing.
Take for example the Colorado state senate recall election a few years back: 11 times the amount of money was spent lobbying in favor of the incumbents as there was for the newcomers, yet the incumbents lost anyways.
Larry Lessig found this out the hard way, he assumed (very stupidly I might add) that he could just buy votes for his mayday campaign. Instead he found out that every candidate he spent money on that won was already likely to win anyways, and the rest lost.
Re:Umm (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless they're directly buying votes, then that remains true. I'm not sure why we're equating advertising dollars with votes, because they aren't the same thing.
The point I think is that once elected representatives are more likely to legislate in favour of their donors than their constituents.
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Even this is murky.
You've had a few candidates that made it a point to limit the amount of campaign contributions they got. Granted, none of them won those elections (but Jerry Brown did manage to snag the govenerorship), but the point still stands. Even the influence of lobbying groups can be political suicide if the constituents really dislike the proposal.
Nope, the biggest problem we have is still the vast majority of people don't vote, which means a minority interest is controlling nearly every time. Th
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Of course, in reality, people just give money to politicians whose policies they happen to agree with. When those politicians win, it's no big surprise that they legislate in a way that their donors wanted them to.
Re:Umm (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently that's the exception to the rule, because... [opensecrets.org]
In 93 percent of House of Representatives races and 94 percent of Senate races that had been decided by mid-day Nov. 5, the candidate who spent the most money ended up winning
And that was in 2008. It's only gotten worse since Citizens United (2010). If you think our governance is not hopelessly corrupted by money in politics, then I've got a bridge you might be interested in.
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Oh, politics is corrupted by money. But that's still better than being corrupted by behind the scenes dealings, government propaganda, and party machines, which is what you get when you limit campaign contributions by law.
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In 93 percent of House of Representatives races and 94 percent of Senate races that had been decided by mid-day Nov. 5, the candidate who spent the most money ended up winning
And an apolitical business person is going to donate to a losing campaign why? This does indicate significant corruption, but of the money buying winning politicians rather than money buying votes. Also, I wonder how people can mesh this belief with the notorious short-term thinking common to business. A CEO can't be bothered to think past the next few quarters, but can be bothered to spend years creating and maintaining a political puppet? Yeah right.
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I think it's just more likely that the more popular candidates are more likely to receive campaign funding.
Think about it for a second: If you're an unknown, then who is going to fund your campaign? You can promise the world, but if nobody knows who the fuck you are, you aren't going to raise shit.
Now the Colorado elections obviously would be exceptions because most of the funding that the incumbents received was from out of state. The candidates weren't popular so much as their message (more gun control) w
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Re:Umm (Score:4)
It's not "blame", because that implies that it's fixable. Elected government is always corrupt, and no amount of legislation is going to fix that. The only thing we can do is reduce the harm that government corruption causes, namely by making government as small as possible and as local as possible.
I know my state rep, city council member. Wall St (Score:5, Insightful)
When Wall Street paid for Senator Clinton's campaign, she "represented" 20 million New Yorkers, and saw 0.000001% of them face-to-face. She DID spend face time with Wall Street bankers, she didn't spend (unscripted) face-to-face time with "normal" people. Senators generally don't do that much.
My state representative represents 167,000 people, is my neighbor, and sees me once a week at church.
Who do you think is more influenced by Wall Street bankers vs influenced by people like you and I - my neighbor, who is my state rep and sits two rows down at church, or my federal senator? My state rep has never met any of the Wall street bankers who bankroll federal candidates.
At an even more local level, my city councilman represents a district of about 8,000 people. He's my daughter-in-law's brother. I have his phone number. He's also never met a Wall Street banker.
Proposed solution: federatio of democratic republi (Score:3)
> It may just be that a successful democracy has a maximum limit of size before it ceases to function correctly.
Indeed. A solution that was proposed was that one could have a bunch of smaller democratic republics, and where large- scale action was required (such as a military at war), those sovereign republics would act as one by each republic having a vote on what the coalition (federation) does.
Local citizens would be served by locally elected publics servants for things like noise ordinances, schools
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Unless they're directly buying votes, then that remains true. I'm not sure why we're equating advertising dollars with votes, because they aren't the same thing.
Take for example the Colorado state senate recall election a few years back: 11 times the amount of money was spent lobbying in favor of the incumbents as there was for the newcomers, yet the incumbents lost anyways.
Larry Lessig found this out the hard way, he assumed (very stupidly I might add) that he could just buy votes for his mayday campaign. Instead he found out that every candidate he spent money on that won was already likely to win anyways, and the rest lost.
The "vote buying" isn't that outlandish. There was a lot of talk 4 years ago about the "Sheldon Andelson primary" and how the Republican candidates became a lot more hawkish on Israel when in came up. He single-handedly kept Gingrich in the race for a while and probably swayed the Republican agenda as a result. But you don't even need vote buying, if you give a bunch of money to the candidate who sincerely agrees with you you'll end up with a legislator voting your way.
This is why I think the US needs a mor
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This kind of thing is why, in Mongolia, you can't buy alcohol on election day; anyone walking around with a bottle of vodka probably sold their vote!
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One dollar, one vote.
The dollar of a billionaire is equal to the dollar of the homeless person!
That's the way the 'democracies' of the USA (and UK, increasingly) operate.
Some might say it was a coup by the oligarchy. Some might say our supposed democratic representatives are traitors to the people.
I would find it hard to disagree.
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What problem is that supposed to fix?
Perhaps what we should do instead is limit the amount of power of politicians based on the total percentage of voters voting for them? Every percentage point of the electorate that votes for a governor lets him sign one bill, and every percentage point for a representative lets them vote for one bill?
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Let's fix some of these problems. Mandatory voting anyone?
No, that is evil...
The freedom to vote includes the freedom to NOT vote...
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because mandatory voting quickly devolves into mandatory voting for specific parties.
Horse puckey. Australia, anyone?
Re:Umm (Score:5, Insightful)
Numbers, please? (Score:2, Insightful)
According to the FEC [fec.gov], contributions to Democrats so far total US$64.2 million, while contributions to Republicans total US$61.2 million. Hillary Clinton has received US$47.1 million, more than the top three Republican candidates combined. (Not surprising, given the fragmentation of the Republican field).
The summary's breathless implication that "rich Republican bankers are buying the Presidency" doesn't appear to reflect the facts.
Re:Numbers, please? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're looking at money received directly by campaigns, which are subject to fairly strict limits ($2,600 from an individual to any one candidate, for example). The NY Times article is about political donations given by individuals and families, which can go to PACs; many of these donations are unlimited, by ruling of the Supreme Court:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_in_the_United_States
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In that case (at least according to Russell Brand!) that means any Democrat will beat any Republican. We're not going to be running all the little candidates against each other, it amounts to one lump sum against another lump sum and the Democrats win.
Technically, that means it's time to get Bernie in there (he's pretty well matching Hillary, particularly with actual voter donations) because according to the piles of money, whoever's in the Dem chair will win. Demographics tell a similar story. There's no s
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Following Citizens United, the amount that is contributed to candidates isn't the end of the matter. Super PACs can spend unlimited amounts of money with its source remaining dark during the election cycle. The Super PAC's are apparently able to remain independent of the candidates while they share offices with them.
Bernie Sanders Numbers (Score:5, Interesting)
https://www.opensecrets.org/pr... [opensecrets.org]
bernie sanders largest contribution out of ~15 million is 15,000 from google.
Re:Numbers, please? (Score:4, Interesting)
Hillary is the best republican a republican banker can buy at this point.
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Yeah, bankers are widely known for their lobbying for regulation (seriously asking: are you fucking high?)
And that's why I'm backing Sanders (Score:5, Insightful)
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A thinking man. Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, you have to respect that Sanders is not in the corporatists' pocket, and cares about the people. I would be viewed as holding to a number of relatively conservative and libertarian views, but this man has my respect.
Re:And that's why I'm backing Sanders (Score:5, Insightful)
I would be viewed as holding to a number of relatively conservative and libertarian views, but this man has my respect.
Same here for the most part, and that's why I'm going to vote for him. He's been consistent on his views for the last 30 years and that is something you just don't see among 99.999999999% of politicians.
He voted against the war and against the PATRIOT act, and that counts for something in my book. Those were two incredibly unpopular positions to take, but now he's been vindicated for having the courage not to go along with the masses. .
Re:And that's why I'm backing Sanders (Score:5, Insightful)
I love the "class warfare" narrative for the Left that has become fashionable amoung the Right. Pointing out that for the last half century that wealth inequality has increased while the middle class has shrunk and that maybe we should do something about that is not class warfare. Anyone who has received half a political science education can tell you that massive wealth inequality is one of the most significant threats to successful republican governance.
The Left points to this and says "hey, this threatens not only our way of life but the stability of the republic" and then advocates policies that actually make a small difference. Our Right just keeps advocating policy that will heep even more money onto a wealthy class of citizens who are wealthier then they have ever been in American history.
In fact, I think one might be able to make the case that it is our conservatives who are engaged in class warfare.
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Yay, finger-pointing! This will totally solve our problems.
One style of politics is to divide people into groups, tell them they should hate each other, and then gain power by organizing one group against the other. One argument against "class warfare" in the US is that we never had European-style "classes", and Americans shouldn't be divided up that way for the benefit of power-hungry would-be organization leaders.
Your argument seems to be the opposite: we should hate those other Americans in those other
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So we cant point to problems anymore because then we're succumbing to some nebulous evil? The fact is, people form groups around certain beliefs. They always have and likely always will. Acknowledging that is just acknowleding human nature.
And i said absolutly nothing about "hating" others for having contrary opinions or belonging to different groups. Those are your words, not mine
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So we cant point to problems anymore because then we're succumbing to some nebulous evil?
There's nothing nebulous about it. Dividing people into groups, and encouraging and widening the divisions, hyping up the hostility to gain power organizing one group against the other is almost the definition of evil.
Trying to bring people together, finding common ground, encouraging peace and empathy is the opposite.
Which are you doing? Do you want peace and empathy, or do you want victory for your side and some sort of so-called "justice"?
And i said absolutly nothing about "hating" others ...
Of course not. If you did, you might say... Well, you might say
Re:And that's why I'm backing Sanders (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is exactly what the wealthy are doing—claiming that the poor are trying to steal their hard-earned cash—while the poor are merely arguing for a return to a time when we had a large, healthy middle class. You can lament the use of the term "class" all you want; it's simply a distinction to talk about degrees of wealth and opportunity.
And this is what people seeking equality and justice are calling for. Everyone should have an opportunity to make a decent living without working three jobs, to provide a solid education for their children, and start a business if that's what drives them. Unfortunately, too many people don't have access to that life, one which they would have had forty years ago.
But still you decided to say, "Your argument seems to be the opposite: we should hate those other Americans in those other classes" anyway because . . . it's intellectually honest to put words in someone else's mouth as long as you're making a point? Sure, that makes sense, as much as the rest of your argument.
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The wealthy today are clearly wealthy at the expence of society, not the benefit. No one is saying no one should be wealthy but what an ever increasing number of people are saying is that we need a prosperous middle class to maintain our culture and to avoid massive instability (third world wealth inequality doesnt work so well in a Republic)
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We're talking about a country that had institutionalized slavery up till 150 years ago, slaves who had their child rearing abilities removed resulting in a string of broken families that is still going on. A country that invented the term poor white trash. A country that still has the class distinction of "felon" where certain people have rights permanently removed, often for actions that hurt no-one besides giving offense. A country that puts police in their schools and arrests kids, often for such stupid
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For some reason it is totally fine for right wingers to fingerpoint day in day out even if it is complete garbage. Then when a 'leftie' says hey these guys are fingerpointing youre telling this guy should not fingerpoint?
What is this 'European-style "classes"' you're talking about anyway? First of all in general the European income equality is much better then the US, secondly Europe isn't a single country, each has its own perks and rationale
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No-one's advocating hating other citizens...
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
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Also, Europe had centuries of hereditary nobility. So the case can be made that the nobles and their descendants may owe the common people a sort of class-based debt. The US didn't. Class is just a talking-point in the US -- a way to divide people who have historically been equal under the law.
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The USA has phenomenally low socio-economic mobility
Your linked research doesn't back that claim. It merely shows that US residents overestimate certain sorts of socio-economic mobility factors. The actual numbers do show significant mobility.
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I love the "class warfare" narrative for the Left that has become fashionable amoung the Right. Pointing out that for the last half century that wealth inequality has increased while the middle class has shrunk and that maybe we should do something about that is not class warfare. Anyone who has received half a political science education can tell you that massive wealth inequality is one of the most significant threats to successful republican governance.
Actually, this is typical class warfare rhetoric. The thing to remember here is that wealth inequality is not a significant threat to successful democracy. Our freedoms are not threatened merely because some people have a lot of wealth. They are threatened because a fair fraction of the voting population can be swayed by rather transparent propaganda (which is something that money can buy).
who are wealthier then they have ever been in American history.
Once you adjust for inflation, you find this assertion is patently false. Here's a typical list [cnn.com] with the richest livin
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"Actually, this is typical class warfare rhetoric. The thing to remember here is that wealth inequality is not a significant threat to successful democracy.
"Actually" it is and your comment reflects a poor understanding of the topic which has near universal acceptance from both liberal and conservative academics on the subject. A simple look at first world democracies and third world ones clearly illustrates this point. This point is about as non controversial as they come in political science.
"Once you adj
It's Karl Rove (Score:2)
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What you describe could really be applied to any group formed around ideology. Ideas are formed and acted upon and some of them are good and some of them only seem good at the time. The hope is the bad ones dont become too entretched at the expence of future good ones.
Really what you're describing is not so much the Left but more human history in general
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Bingo. He's the real deal.
I don't agree with everything he says but I agree with a hell of a lot of it, more so than any other candidate by far. I'm voting for him.
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No, I don't support him not *specifically* because he's a declared socialist (although that's comparable intellectually to a creationist in my book) but because of his stated policies on pretty nearly every issue.
Advertising! (Score:2)
Well, with so much regulation, taxation, and rent seeking, "when the means of production are bought and sold, the first thing bought and sold is the legislature."
Translation: If the goverment didn't have such intrusive powers to begin with, especially into the economy, there wouldn't be such fights to wield its power.
inb4 someone yelpz about corporations being citizens with speech rights, needing yet another belabored explanation of the actual Supreme Court ruling.
Why Do They Treat Americans Like Little Bitches? (Score:2)
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For presidential races after 1900 turnout is usually 50-60%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Apathy is our enemy (Score:5, Insightful)
So people elected by 15% of the eligible population ends up as the Representative. No wonder they don't listen to you. You did not elect them. 85% of America did not elect them. You find it in the polls. 85% of America has negative opinion of their Reps.
If mere 15% more people arm themselves with facts, start showing up in the polling booth, register as independents to vote for the best candidate from either party, the influence of money on the politics will wane. Don't blame the rich people for being jerks. Blame the non-so-rich people for being lazy and ignorant.
It's really quite simple (Score:2)
Be that as it may, you can still meet lots of cool friends and get a good education in the USA. We've had a corrupted system by money since at least the late 1800s judging by poli
Control the primaries, control the outcome (Score:2)
In one form of dictatorship, the dictators select the candidates who will stand for election. This is the system in Iran. The people dutifully vote for one or the other candidate.
Here, if one can control who can reach the general election, you stand a decent chance of profiting from whoever wins the election.
Lessig talked about this in his notable TED talk which discussed the very issue of a very few, very wealthy people controlling the primary system, leading to election of the candidates they favor. [ted.com]
The p
What about the Times itself? (Score:2)
Time to put an end to this bullshit (Score:2)
Global election for all (Score:2)
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The truth of it isn't interesting, to me. It's that this sort of guillotine-bait is being publicized when the 'deep state' OP cites, is specifically interested in having no such information be available.
I think it just goes to show the power of the whistleblower, and the instability of extreme injustice. When it gets this obnoxious, it's as fragile as it appears impregnable. Kind of like the USSR, which more or less imploded and balkanized.
News is the interface between the information and the act of communi
Re:Billionaire Donors... So what?! (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is precisely why the advertising industry doesn't exist.
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Ahh, another self-described Homo economicus.
Where would Slashdot be without the powerful man who is 100% rational, informed, and pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
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I'm sorry, you don't understand. Let's say I'm only "50% rational, informed, and self-made". An elected politician or government bureaucrat is on average no better than me on any of those dimensions. But worse yet, their rationality isn't focused on my benefit, it is focused on their own benefit.
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But some "choices" aren't really choices, are they?
And this is how money controls elections. Not by forcing anyone to pick one candidate over another, but to pre-choose the candidates before the voters even know who they are.
There is a "money primary" that happens way before the voters decide who their candidates are going to be. And the "money primary" has now filtered all the way down to town council candidates, county board presid
Mod parent up. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to change the system then you have to be involved a lot sooner than voting day.
And it all starts at the grassroots level.
Don't simply vote for the "lesser evil" in your local elections. Get out and help campaign for someone whom you could actually support.
Get your friends together and form your own voting bloc.
Schedule time to meet with the candidates. Even the ones who "have no chance".
MAKE the change instead of waiting for someone who's already bought to do so for you. Because that isn't going to work.
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Hopelessness is learned, you know, and I believe it is one of those those things that is indeed uniquely human. No, that's not true, you can even teach a dog to be scared to walk through an open door.
Re:Billionaire Donors... So what?! (Score:5, Insightful)
“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"
"What?"
"I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin?"
"I'll look. Tell me about the lizards."
Ford shrugged again.
"Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happenned to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it."
"But that's terrible," said Arthur.
"Listen, bud," said Ford, "if I had one Altairian dollar for every time I heard one bit of the Universe look at another bit of the Universe and say 'That's terrible' I wouldn't be sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.”
For all man's accomplishments, we're still largely at a tribal stage where we will instinctively protect the in-group even when it makes no rational sense to do so. It's millions of years of evolutionary baggage that we need to overcome as we move forward.
Not necessarily irrational (Score:2)
we will instinctively protect the in-group even when it makes no rational sense to do so.
I'm not so sure that it is entirely true. The problem is that the "in-group" make it very much in the rational, self-interest of whomever gets into power to support that in-group. What you need are politicians in power who are willing to go against their own self-interest and act in the interests of the people they represent. These are a rare breed and getting rarer since, when one appears, the "in-group" do all they can to stop them getting into power and/or corrupt them.
The result is a choice between
It's not really much... (Score:2)
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Politics isn't about compeling (Score:5, Interesting)
There's more to it. You Gerrymander so the people who vote against you don't count. You shut down pulling offices so they can't vote. You make it so signing up to vote gets them Jury duty they can't afford to serve. When you're a billionaire with an entire society's wealth at your disposal you can hedge your bets.
There's two really easy solutions to this. a. You're not allowed to donate to a politician you can't vote for and you're not allowed to buy advertisement in a race you can't vote in. There's your free speech issue solved. b. Mandatory voting. It's like Jury duty on steroids. Everyone over 18 votes unless their declared legally incompetent.
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Or maybe you've just made the trap seem bigger so you can't even see the cage any more.
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I hear they are set to rise from their sunken city R'lyeh and devour the world in 2016
Cthulhu / Dagon 2016 - why vote for the lesser evil?
Re:$900 Million from the Koch Brothers (Score:5, Insightful)
The Koch Brothers do not believe in climate change, or in any public policy that would do anything to mitigate it.
Oh, the Koch Brothers believe in climate change, alright. They realize how damaging the reality is to their business interests. That's why they funnel so much money in to conservative candidates and PR groups to create the false impression that there is serious scientific debate.
Suzanne Goldenberg of the London Guardian reports that "conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120 million . . . to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change," helping to "build a vast network of think tanks and activist groups working to a single purpose: to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarizing 'wedge issue' for hardcore conservatives."
What pleases me is that no amount of money can keep the current set of Republican presidential candidates from self-destructing every time they open their mouths. The GOP should heed Bobby Jindal's advice to "stop being the stupid party."
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> Climate change is either provable or not
Yeah, whatever, I'm sure you're all about the science. No scientific theories are *provable*, gravity, evolution, whatever, they're all theories. It's just that the preponderance of evidence that makes them some theories more likely than others.
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* At least, not for an American. Large-ish family, single income.
Re:It's their money, and they pay most of the taxe (Score:5, Insightful)
And with that first comment, you perfectly demonstrate your complete lack of understanding of the desire for a just society. Up until the seventies, the blue collar middle class grew and thrived. People could work a single job and buy a house, raise a family, live a modest lifestyle, and be perfectly content. But since then those with wealth used it to undermine that culture, and thus began the decades-long erosion of the middle class and working families, all while those with wealth saw their prospects improve.
Now you have families where both parents work two or three jobs and still can't improve their economic outlook. There's much less opportunity to start a business. I'm not saying none, but much, much less. People just want a chance to give their children more than they had, to take risks to get ahead, to see their labor rewarded. Instead of taxing the rich more I'd much rather see a livable wage—or better still—a basic income guarantee that would bring these opportunities back to all of society.
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Now you have families where both parents work two or three jobs and still can't improve their economic outlook.
I'll grant that there are some families like that. Most in that situation shoot themselves in the foot by spending beyond their means.
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That's possible, but I haven't read any studies to assess whether it's most or some or few. The problem is that those families used to be able to work a reasonable amount and still spend the same. And it's not like they're buying yachts when they shouldn't; they're eating at McDonald's instead of cooking at home because they have no time or prioritize having at least some leisure time left after working.
It's phrased as the p
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Re:Same way it has always been (Score:5, Informative)
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Good! Money is not the ideal mechanism for selecting candidates and giving them visibility, but it sure beats party machines.
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> Money has alway an important played a role
in the US. Most other countries have sane rules.
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Yeah, that free speech stuff really sucks.
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Political parties have lost much of their clout because candidates no longer need the machinery they provide.
Well, yes, and no. It has always been true that the wealthy, privileged have been able to buy power, and the tendency will always be for them to establish their own ruling elite, as long as wealth is allowed to overrule the will of the people. But I think there is something wider - and possibly more sinister - at play: the fact that the mainstream parties all look the same. We have all been sold the idea that "Capitalism has won, there is no other way" etc, so everybody is trying with varying success to be
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Don't normally post on politics, but have disagree on this one. Money has alway an important played a role, but so did political parties, pecking orders, etc. Nowadays, it's all about the money, and a single well-heeled benefactor can keep an otherwise unviable candidate in the running. Political parties have lost much of their clout because candidates no longer need the machinery they provide.
Whats the difference between the USA and Russia regards elections?
In the USA, the friends of the party use gerrymandering to exclude as much as possible, opposition candidates.
The wealthy make sure to fund their candidates so that post election business can come to the wealthy, or that they can later work with their candidate to influence laws favourable to the wealthy. (eg, spend 500k to win 2-3million in business / year). Its known as one-hand washes the other.
In Russia, its one party. The opposition is
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Well, besides "dumb" and "smart", there's "experienced" and "inexperienced"; and experience shows while this has always been true to some degree, that degree varies over the years.
In particular if you are old enough to remember what the American middle class was like in the early 70s, it's a shadow of its former self. Oh, we're materially better off in some ways, but that's largely a function of (a) technological advances and (b) the shift from single earner households to dual-earner households and (c) a ma
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Democrats also get their money from Billionaires and special interest groups.
Yes, but the summary showed that the majority of billionaires give the majority of their money to republicans. As I said, Samzenpus forgot to tell us why that is a good thing.
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Sure, and it is just as bad for democracy as when Republicans or Independents or anyone else in a position of power over others cave to plutocrats. That's when you know someone has no justification or backing for their position: when their sole argument is "The other side does it too!" Luckily, rational people are able to dislike an aspect of something and work to change it, yet still support that something. It's like supporting y
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And of course that makes it all okay.