Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 12:54:21 -0400
From: hbone <hbone-AT-optonline.net>
Subject: Re: Rights


This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

--Boundary_(ID_aVpMZY2kYGgFw2lE73PAsQ)

Re: RightsJudy/All,

  I don't have the links available, but Google can probably get reliable statistics that about 50 percent of eligibles vote.  A President could be elected with 30 percent or less.



  Based on Census data, the Federal Elections Commission has statistics that are higher than what I was thinking it was (i just checked on the web).  They say, as you indicate, that the percent of eligible voter turnout in presidential elections is in the 50s on average, overall, higher in some states, lower in others.  I'm not sure how reliable census data is, but as it is reported, as you say, the percentage of eligible voters who vote for the winning candidate can be rather low, and the winner take all system disenfranchises a large proportion.  The per cent of voting age population that is registered to vote averages in the mid 60's since 1960, according to the FEC.


    as I remember, that was my source and latest data when i looked was on Clinton re-election
    I was disappointed with NY Times coverage of Blair speech.  They didn't mention that he received 17 standing ovations, and they printed only excerpts, not the entire speech.   Is this their new and reformed approach to accuracy?



  I've been pondering and speculating about what their agenda is.  The info about the Niger forgery and the altered and plagiarized report was available weeks before the onset of the invasion of Iraq, and they buried it.  Now, it's big news, front page and top story every night, somehow seeming as if this info just came to their attention.  As far as Iraq not having WMD, that too was obvious long before the invasion.  So their timing is prominent.  Is it an election related agenda?  Do they want Leiberman for president?


    who knows? the op-ed columnists are pretty consistent, but they don't make corporate politcy
    More turnout and more votes should be the key to more democracy.
  but not necessarily?  Didn't the Soviet Union have high turnouts?  And Saddam's Iraq?  Voting seems ordinarily a rubber stamping exercise, a ritual of legitimation of the system.  The low turnouts in the US, I think, are a symptom more than a cause, of the lack of any democratic spirit or substance.
  that's true of dictator-led countries, but young people and others who do not vote, don't think their votes would make a difference.  I think the Internet could be a powerful campaign tool.
  Most of the nation's universities and colleges are in the 10 largest states whose electoral votes could determine any election if they wer all for the same candidate.  If a third party candidate
  supported by movie and music celebrities staged major events near campuses, they would attract huge crowds, tell them to register and vote, send email, persuade friends to do the same.  College age young people helped win Civil Rights and end the Vietnam War.  



      The Demos are as guilty as Republicans of selling out to lobbyists.  Third Parties are like private clubs.  If they would go after young voters via Internet, and finally come together and all vote for the best Third Party candidate they might have a chance of breaking the two party monoply.



  In such a large diverse society/constituency, to expect two or three parties to be able to represent meaningfully seems unrealistic.  Coalitions tend to be unstable and not cohesive enough to overcome the institutionalized power of the two ruling parties.  That's why i think multi-party proportionate representation systems are less disconnected from the ruled compared to one and two (or three) party systems.

  yes, a represntative system might be better than voting.  we use it to decide matters of life and death with juries.  Imagine the situation if all judges and all juries were selected by the power of lobbyists and TV advertising.


  Given the US constitution, which is designed around two and only two major parties (winner take all), I doubt other parties could achieve any serious formal participation in the government.  The parties control election policies and easily keep other parties out of public debates and restrict access to other publicity vehicles.

  I never thought of the Constitution as being designed around two parties, but they do control and restrict third party action.


    Its ironic that poor people will always win over rich, if they ignore the TV ads, register and vote.


  How will they know who or what they want to vote for, without any ads?  What's your vision of how it could be? 

  How could people imagine that after 15 years the U.S. would lose its first war by exiting Vietnam, or 100 years after freeing the slaves, it would give them Civil Rights?  Howard Dean is said to have used the Internet in raising far more campaign funds than his competitors. Sixteen months before the election there are Internet sites soliciting for Sen. Joe Biden and
  Gen. Wesley Clark, who have not yet decided whether they will run. There are still a few minutes of news in nightly prime time featuring hours-old interviews of govt. officials.  Newspaper give a few lines of political news in an ocean of ads.  Universities and colleges have their own newspapers, are usually independent, sometimes radical.

  I was watching what for me was a depressing "debate" in the House of Representatives on the new Bush healthcare bill (on CSPAN) in which a few lone liberal Democrats were making speeches to each other against the bill, in a near empty room, at around midnight, several days in a row it seemed.  They were making excellent points, but I wasn't seeing this during prime time or on the front page of my paper. It was just on the relatively obscure CSPAN.  I didn't realize so many people were going to Canada to buy medicines. I didn't realize the same medications manufactured by the same companies were being sold in Canada for 25 or 30% of the price that the meds cost in the US.  Do most Americans know about this?  I doubt it.  The Bush bill prohibits remedies to this situation.  If people knew this, i'm sure it would negatively impact Bush's approval rating, and help to undermine his reelection chances.  But I don't think this is well known, and I don't think that it's going to become well known, unless the media choose to give attention to it.  Instead, what I heard in the mass media on prime time was that there was a historic bipartisan bill that was going to help seniors and provide prescription drug benefits. But the Democrats hidden away on CSPAN were showing  how this prescription benefit will cost people more than what they already have. This wasn't mentioned on prime time. 

  I may be wrong, but I think it was mentioned in prime time.  I've known about it for at least two or three years.  Of course its not getting attention it should.   People near the Canadian border know the situation and buy in Canada.


  Using this as an example, if this isn't a reason to join together and form a popular majority against the rule of the corporations, what else is?  Most Americans approve of spending billions and billions for the sake of "Iraqi Freedom."  If this isn't a giant successful boonswaggle, I don't know what is.
  there are plenty of others.  corporations pay huge fines without admission of guilt and it's
  scantily reported and soon forgotten. Enron, Worldcom and others financially ruin stockholder AND their own employees,  Pedophile priests defy the laity and civil justice

  Judy
--Boundary_(ID_aVpMZY2kYGgFw2lE73PAsQ)

HTML VERSION:

I don't have the links available, but Google can probably get reliable statistics that about 50 percent of eligibles vote.  A President could be elected with 30 percent or less.

Based on Census data, the Federal Elections Commission has statistics that are higher than what I was thinking it was (i just checked on the web).  They say, as you indicate, that the percent of eligible voter turnout in presidential elections is in the 50s on average, overall, higher in some states, lower in others.  I'm not sure how reliable census data is, but as it is reported, as you say, the percentage of eligible voters who vote for the winning candidate can be rather low, and the winner take all system disenfranchises a large proportion.  The per cent of voting age population that is registered to vote averages in the mid 60's since 1960, according to the FEC.

as I remember, that was my source and latest data when i looked was on Clinton re-election

I was disappointed with NY Times coverage of Blair speech.  They didn't mention that he received 17 standing ovations, and they printed only excerpts, not the entire speech.   Is this their new and reformed approach to accuracy?

I've been pondering and speculating about what their agenda is.  The info about the Niger forgery and the altered and plagiarized report was available weeks before the onset of the invasion of Iraq, and they buried it.  Now, it's big news, front page and top story every night, somehow seeming as if this info just came to their attention.  As far as Iraq not having WMD, that too was obvious long before the invasion.  So their timing is prominent.  Is it an election related agenda?  Do they want Leiberman for president?

who knows? the op-ed columnists are pretty consistent, but they don't make corporate politcy

More turnout and more votes should be the key to more democracy.

but not necessarily?  Didn't the Soviet Union have high turnouts?  And Saddam's Iraq?  Voting seems ordinarily a rubber stamping exercise, a ritual of legitimation of the system.  The low turnouts in the US, I think, are a symptom more than a cause, of the lack of any democratic spirit or substance.

that's true of dictator-led countries, but young people and others who do not vote, don't think their votes would make a difference.  I think the Internet could be a powerful campaign tool.

Most of the nation's universities and colleges are in the 10 largest states whose electoral votes could determine any election if they wer all for the same candidate.  If a third party candidate

supported by movie and music celebrities staged major events near campuses, they would attract huge crowds, tell them to register and vote, send email, persuade friends to do the same.  College age young people helped win Civil Rights and end the Vietnam War.   

 

  The Demos are as guilty as Republicans of selling out to lobbyists.  Third Parties are like private clubs.  If they would go after young voters via Internet, and finally come together and all vote for the best Third Party candidate they might have a chance of breaking the two party monoply.

In such a large diverse society/constituency, to expect two or three parties to be able to represent meaningfully seems unrealistic.  Coalitions tend to be unstable and not cohesive enough to overcome the institutionalized power of the two ruling parties.  That's why i think multi-party proportionate representation systems are less disconnected from the ruled compared to one and two (or three) party systems.

 

yes, a represntative system might be better than voting.  we use it to decide matters of life and death with juries.  Imagine the situation if all judges and all juries were selected by the power of lobbyists and TV advertising.

Given the US constitution, which is designed around two and only two major parties (winner take all), I doubt other parties could achieve any serious formal participation in the government.  The parties control election policies and easily keep other parties out of public debates and restrict access to other publicity vehicles.

 

I never thought of the Constitution as being designed around two parties, but they do control and restrict third party action.

  Its ironic that poor people will always win over rich, if they ignore the TV ads, register and vote. 

 

How will they know who or what they want to vote for, without any ads?  What's your vision of how it could be? 

 

How could people imagine that after 15 years the U.S. would lose its first war by exiting Vietnam, or 100 years after freeing the slaves, it would give them Civil Rights?  Howard Dean is said to have used the Internet in raising far more campaign funds than his competitors. Sixteen months before the election there are Internet sites soliciting for Sen. Joe Biden and

Gen. Wesley Clark, who have not yet decided whether they will run. There are still a few minutes of news in nightly prime time featuring hours-old interviews of govt. officials.  Newspaper give a few lines of political news in an ocean of ads.  Universities and colleges have their own newspapers, are usually independent, sometimes radical.

 

I was watching what for me was a depressing "debate" in the House of Representatives on the new Bush healthcare bill (on CSPAN) in which a few lone liberal Democrats were making speeches to each other against the bill, in a near empty room, at around midnight, several days in a row it seemed.  They were making excellent points, but I wasn't seeing this during prime time or on the front page of my paper. It was just on the relatively obscure CSPAN.  I didn't realize so many people were going to Canada to buy medicines. I didn't realize the same medications manufactured by the same companies were being sold in Canada for 25 or 30% of the price that the meds cost in the US.  Do most Americans know about this?  I doubt it.  The Bush bill prohibits remedies to this situation.  If people knew this, i'm sure it would negatively impact Bush's approval rating, and help to undermine his reelection chances.  But I don't think this is well known, and I don't think that it's going to become well known, unless the media choose to give attention to it.  Instead, what I heard in the mass media on prime time was that there was a historic bipartisan bill that was going to help seniors and provide prescription drug benefits. But the Democrats hidden away on CSPAN were showing  how this prescription benefit will cost people more than what they already have. This wasn't mentioned on prime time. 

 

I may be wrong, but I think it was mentioned in prime time.  I've known about it for at least two or three years.  Of course its not getting attention it should.   People near the Canadian border know the situation and buy in Canada. 

Using this as an example, if this isn't a reason to join together and form a popular majority against the rule of the corporations, what else is?  Most Americans approve of spending billions and billions for the sake of "Iraqi Freedom."  If this isn't a giant successful boonswaggle, I don't know what is.

there are plenty of others.  corporations pay huge fines without admission of guilt and it's

scantily reported and soon forgotten. Enron, Worldcom and others financially ruin stockholder AND their own employees,  Pedophile priests defy the laity and civil justice

Judy