Maybe stamping $100 bills would be better, that way it’s more likely to be seen by the people the campaign is addressing.
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Horseshit. You’re basically saying ‘Don’t blame the money’. Which was funny when homer Simpson said it, but not when you try astro-turfing with it all gussied-up, like.
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Unfortunately, the folks who won’t go on strike are exactly those you’d normally be voting against.
“For every problem there is a solution which is simple, obvious, and wrong.” Not voting is exactly that.
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4x that if you live in Colorado or Washington.
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Which is exactly the problem. Party politics is a duality, pitting us falsely against eachother whilst the status quo merges into some amorphous singularity, indistinguishable from their constituent parts.
The folks we’re ‘supposed’ to be voting ‘against’ are the sort of folk who are in the same situation as the rest of us. Promised the earth and lied to time and again. We should be working together, not against eachother.
I advocate action in withholding your vote, not inaction in apathy.
I believe it is the only real power we have to change the system.
I wouldn’t pay two bits for one of those stamps - $9.50, $10.50 if you want a self-inking one! REALLY? My advice - get a frickin’ red magic marker and write it out yourself in block letters! Or, if you’ve got a creative bent, do it in a calligraphic style!
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Potato. Or, if you prefer, you could use a potah-to.
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Counsel of despair. We agree that we disagree. Strongly. Almost violently. That’s the advice I’d give the other side to strengthen my own position.
If that’s where your heart leads, go for it. But I do believe you’re abandoning the field.
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Not at all. I’m trying to halt play mid-game and sit in the middle of the field so the game cannot continue until we get the rules changed so that those on the sidelines stop chucking massive sustenance to the players they prefer.
And then a giant mech-bulldozer comes in, digs a massive hole around those sitting on the field and proceeds to fill in the yawning crevasse with cement. Astroturf is loving affixed to the cement. Game on!
If your problem is inherently with democracy, as a political system, then “sitting it out” seems like a valid response. And I can see the logic in that. However if you see the problem as “democracy gone sour,” then abandoning democracy as whole doesn’t really seem like much of a solution, even in our flawed democratic environment. People sacrificed blood and lives in the face of the overwhelming power for the right to cast their vote in this country. There is a reason for this and not merely a symbolic one.
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And then a huge assault chopper comes and blows away the bulldozer etc etc etc. Yeah, we used to talk like that as kids.
Actually I fully believe in the concept of democracy. I believe in the concept of people electing their own leaders. But there has to be rules within that. Rules like limiting terms in office are great safeguards to possible evils. Like I think that there needs to be rules regarding political donations, otherwise things can get skewed pretty badly.
It’s exactly the same as a work strike. You’re not quitting your job because you think it’s unfair, you want to stay there, you believe in the company and its power to do good. So you strike for better conditions.
I’m not talking about abandoning anything. I’m talking about uniting with political ‘enemies’ for a common purpose that would help us all.
Purely on constitutional grounds, adding a Constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United is an absolutely terrible idea, as has been pointed out by various constitutional scholars. The ruling removes limits not only on donations by ‘big corporations’ but by other organizations like the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and left-wing political movies like Michael Moore’s. This ruling upheld the appeal of a biased right-wing documentary, but it could just as easily have been the ‘Michael Moore’ ruling – I wonder who would have been for/against it then?
It has long been established that money is a form of speech and is therefore protected. And as wildly outdated as the ‘corporate personhood’ law is, it is currently the law, even if it is badly in need of amendment/repeal.
in addition, this would be the first amendment since the 18th (Prohibition) to restrict civil liberties (protected ‘speech’ in the form of $$). It is exactlty analogous to many other amendments, typically proposed by the right, to prohibit flag-burning, abortion, etc. etc.
More info here:
The ACLU and Citizens United
Fixing’ Citizens United Will Break the Constitution
Right. What’s needed is to fix the “corporations are people” bullpucky. They aren’t. They never were. That was a legal fiction adopted because it was a convenient way to describe the intent of forming a corporation. That fiction has been deliberately overextended. All we need to do is clarify the law on that one point and and we’re done.
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That just concedes to the two party system. There are parties to the right, to the left, and in just about every other part of the spectrum to vote for or write in instead of D and R. If you can’t find one that you’d feel comfortable voting for then you have impossible expectations.
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I have pointed out before that not voting essentially declares you don’t care about any residual differences between candidates, and so removes any remaining constraint on who is selected to be one. It’s not great writing but I stand by it.
We should be working together - it’s a serious problem that we are not - but since the few working against the rest of us would rather we don’t vote, it’s hard to see why that is any step in making things better.
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I’m so fucking torn with this, as I see nothing but absolute contempt from our politicians, and a craven, toadying press backing them up, and I, too, think, ‘What’s the use?’ I vacillate between thinking each side has a greater point, though I’ll probably hold my nose and vote. or spoil my paper, if there’s no Green or decent independent. Makes no odds, our fat, blairite toady of an MP has been parked in a safe Labour seat anyway. It’s got to the stage where I’d cheer on a revolution just so I could have the chance to get some licks in, and get my fucking own back.
As the russians are wont to say, with a shrug, ‘nichevo’ (what is to be done?).
This would, indeed, help the world along enormously.
Is there a party that endorses a cap on political donations? Is that an impossible expectation? Really?
“you don’t care about any residual differences”.
The difference in party policies is minor, and the difference in what policies they actually implement, even more so.
And surely a party needs to have a mandate in percentage in order to govern? Can a party govern if less than a certain percentage vote? IANAL, so really don’t know the legalities of such an outcome. I’d be interested to be educated on the matter.
