Weather disservice

[altivo]

They struck again with greatly exaggerated warnings and threats and the media all chimed in with dire predictions that we would all either be blown to kingdom come or drowned where we stood.

Needless to say, it didn't happen. The predicted "storm of the century" was a near dud in our area, and though it did a bit of nasty damage here and there to the south and east, it was hardly the spectacular ball of rain, lightning, tornados, and wind gusts we were warned (for three days) to expect. It did not rank second or even third in the most dramatic midwestern storms of the last 100+ years. In fact, it seems that it doesn't even make the top five, though it looked pretty nasty on the radar screens as it was crossing Indiana and Ohio late this morning.

Here in northern Illinois, we don't even have any large tree branches down. The electricity did go off for about three hours this morning, but that is so commonplace that it hardly ranks as a significant event. (We were out for 36 hours last Christmas Eve, for instance.)

In my mail: a large packet of letters and flyers sent by the township supervisor in an effort to convince me to vote for Republican candidates. Sorry, Ersel (that's her name,) but no. I will not be voting for members of the most obstructionist, cantankerous, unhelpful group of politicians I have ever seen in my life, who can only stand around screaming "No! No! No!" to everything like spoiled children rather than making any actual constructive suggestions or even trying to negotiate. While I am completely disgusted with the Democrats too, and have little intention of giving them much support, the Republicans have made me seriously angry with their stupidity and their attitude: "If I can't make all the rules then I refuse to play." Childish petulance is the only way to describe their behavior. This is compounded by the racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia so openly displayed by many of their candidates even for the highest of offices. There was a time, back in the 1960s, when there were "moderate" Republicans and "conservative" Democrats, and government really did consist of compromise, negotiation, and a fair amount of cooperation and working together between groups. Now it's just a waste. Two armed camps who refuse to speak to one another except to fling empty insults, neither of whom will compromise in even the least respect, and both of whom deserve to be taken to the woodshed and whipped soundly like the rotten little child-bullies they actually are. Meanwhile, corporate interests are running amok, the Supreme Court is selling off the key to democracy to the highest bidder, and all levels of government are going bankrupt. It is time for voters to wake up and turn both of these worthless, compromised, dishonest, greedy, stinking, polluted, and corrupt parties out in the cold. Neither is doing us any good. Both are dedicated only to robbing us for their own personal benefit, and that of their wealthy patrons, the multi-national energy corporations, banks, and brokerage houses.

Comments

[ilyena_sylph]

Just from this post, I think you must be awesome.

Here via the Latest Things feed, by the way.

[altivo]

Oh, probably not awesome, just seriously pissed. Which, by the way, is not a state you really want a Clydesdale to get into.

[moonhare]

The storm stories on AP were calling this a Chicalone or some such thing (haven't figured it our or even care to look it up) and even Windacolypse? I've been singing that stupid Lightfoot song off and on all day. We've got rain tonight and clearing tomorrow.

[altivo]

Since I never see television any more, I hadn't heard those terms.

Technically it was a "cyclone" in meteorological terms. Most winter storms in the middle of the continent are the same pattern, like hurricanes, with winds rotating around a central low pressure zone. I suppose "Chicalone" is a backhanded reference to Chicago as the largest city in the path. There's a repeating pattern of such storms forming over the Great Plains and sweeping eastward through the Midwest.

"Windocalypse" is really a stretch. I've lived over 30 years in this area, and seen a good many such storms. Generally they create a lot of sound and fury in the form of roaring winds that last 36 to 48 hours and affect traffic and power distribution somewhat, but the actual wind damage is more in the nuisance category. You know, stuff like empty trash cans blowing around and getting into the roads, shed roofs lifting off and snagging in the nearest trees or shrubbery, and flags blown to shreds.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

With big storms it's the other way around for us, the storm hits, floods etc then they say it was a big storm GAH!!

I'm still amazed how polar opposite the parties seem to be in the US, our Liberal and Labour parties are never that far apart O.O

[altivo]

I think the "extremes with no middle" politics in the US are a result of candidates depending on public relations firms and advertising agencies. The consequence is that everything is presented in simple terms and extra large bold face type, which makes it run to the extremes since the middle is too hard to explain.

Ad agencies know that the best way to get an audience interested is to promise "100% satisfaction" and "total perfection." The product (in this case a candidate) will "always do this" and "never do that" and the only way to define yourself in such terms is by being an extremist to one side or the other.

Since American elections are now decided based on sound bites from television and gut reactions over absolutes, and no one reads newspapers or gets situations analyzed to any depth, extremes are the way to go. Then it's clear cut. You're either for it or against it, and that's that.

It's all a farce, of course. Voters do not run the country. The big corporations do that, because they own the candidates through bribes and campaign contributions. Health care reform was turned into a deal to make sure that insurance and drug companies kept making lots of money, rather than an arrangement to make sure that everyone could get medical care. Retirement funding is in the process of being converted into "private investment accounts" (or will be) because that guarantees that the banks and brokers can steal as much as possible from everyone's retirement money. Best of all, the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are entitled to the same political rights as individual citizens. So General Dynamics or Bank of America are now allowed to give as much money as they want to any political campaign, without restriction. This pretty much sews up the bag for the multi-millionaires and corporate America. They now own the country. The voters will do what they are told to do by manipulating the ad campaigns on television. And believe me, those guys know how to do that.

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

The American political system has become one-dimensional.
Ideally, you want at least a three-party system to solve real-world problems. (just like you need 3 non-coplanar vectors to span three-dimensional space)
With a two-party system, you have at best a flat two-dimensional system, and not all solutions in the real world are even accessible.

But now that both parties are fiscally conservative to differing degrees (except when they lie), socially conservative to differing degrees (except when they lie), and basically just ridicule and call each other stupid on every issue, it is obvious that another dimension of the system has been lost. You basically have two colinear vectors and you can only span a one-dimensional subset of the real world. Even worse, the two vectors point in the same direction, and it is getting more difficult to tell them apart.

Meanwhile, the solution to America's problems lies elsewhere in real non-one-dimensional space, and will never be found.

[altivo]

I hadn't thought of it in terms of analytical geometry before, but I can't dispute your logic. I've known for most of my life that the way in which the U.S. election system has been engineered to squeeze out third parties is the fatal flaw in our so-called democracy.

A large percentage of U.S. citizens, perhaps even a majority, believe that the "two party system" was planned by the founding fathers and enshrined in the Constitution. Of course that's not true, but the way in which history and civics have been taught in the 20th and now the 21st century (if they even teach civics any more) have resulted in this erroneous idea. Seemingly small changes to constitutional election processes over two centuries have in fact helped to entrench the present two parties in their mutually destructive roles, but this was never the intention of the original authors.

The problem is now that it comes down to game theory. There are actually multiple parties on the ballot in most cases. I have a choice next week of four parties for state governor, US senator, US congressman, and most of the elective state officials such as treasurer and secretary of state. The Libertarian party and the Green party are both quite visible. There are also a couple of "independent" candidates in there, most notably one for a judgeship.

However, for most of us, elections have turned into a negative affair. We don't vote for a candidate we like, but rather against a candidate who scares the holy bejasus out of us. In order for such an anti-vote to be at all effective (since it only takes a plurality to win in most cases) we have to vote for the candidate most likely to be able to actually win, thus avoiding the unwanted choice. That means, if you can't stand the Republican, you have to vote for the Democrat and if you can't stand the Donkey, you have to vote for the Elephant. Voting for the Green or the Libertarian under these circumstances achieves nothing useful, since the chances of either actually winning are vanishingly small.

Third parties most often influence U.S. election results when they steal votes, or split the vote for one of the major parties. Thus Ross Perot took away Republican votes for President and helped to elect a Democrat (Bill Clinton) and Ralph Nader took away Democratic votes (notably in Florida) to help slide George W. Bush into the presidency. In game theory, this makes it really difficult for a voter to make use of a third party vote to sway the results. It means, for instance, that if I want to keep right winger Bill Brady out of the Illinois governor's mansion, I should campaign for the Libertarian candidate (who is most likely to attract voters who might otherwise vote Republican) but cast my own ballot for the Democrat Pat Quinn (who is most likely to be able to defeat Brady--in fact has the only chance of defeating Brady.)

So why am I voting for Rich Whitney and the Greens? Because I despise both Brady and Quinn and can't conscionably vote for either of them. Neither of them will do anything good for us here in Illinois. Whitney can't win, and no matter how many votes he gets, he will have no influence whatsoever on political events over the next governor's term of office. But at least I agree with him in substance and can stand to vote for him without spoiling my ballot by throwing up on it. The Libertarians are out of the question entirely, as in general I see them as even farther to the right than the Republicans, whether they admit it or not. They ought to be called the Reactionary Recidivist Neanderthal party in my opinion.

Unfortunately, unless there is a way to unteach U.S. voters so that they no longer think of a third party vote as "wasting your vote," the status quo is unlikely to change.

[altivo]

An interesting footnote to this discussion, I think.

The first election in which I was old enough to actually understand ballot issues and voting took place in 1960, when John F. Kennedy was elected president. As part of a civics exercise, copies of sample ballots were distributed in classrooms. I can still picture that ballot in my mind's eye. This was in Michigan, and there were something like a dozen candidates for U.S. President listed. Besides the Republicans and Democrats, the Socialist Labor, Communist, and other parties were fielding candidates. I most specifically recall the American Vegetarian Party having a presidential candidate listed. Obviously we had minority parties with at least enough clout to nominate candidates and get their names onto the ballot.

I have fiber work presently on display in a gallery over in Woodstock, the county seat. As it happens, that gallery used to be the county clerk's office prior to about 1974. Votes for the 1972 federal election, then paper ballots counted by hand in this county, were tallied in that room on a giant blackboard that extended up to the 14 foot ceiling. (Presumably a ladder was involved.) When the building was remodeled and the county government built a new office building on the east side of town, that blackboard was covered up without being erased. Many years later it was rediscovered and deemed to be of sufficient historical interest that it was preserved intact, in situ, and covered with plexiglass. Having spent many hours over there this month, I can say that in 1972 there were still multiple parties on the ballot. Candidates for U.S. President, Illinois Governor, and U.S. Senate were fielded by the Socialist Labor Party and the Communist Party, and did receive actual votes even in notoriously right wing McHenry County.

Third parties are less visible and less numerous today, I think, because of changes in election law initiated "to save money" by the two controlling parties. Now it requires a huge number of validated signatures to get a third party candidate onto the ballot, or else the third party has to have received some significant number of votes in the previous election. This poses a major obstacle for a new party. The Greens are visible right now because Ralph Nader gave them a big nudge ten years ago. But unless they continue to poll enough votes, they'll disappear soon.

The real problem is the "winner takes all" approach to elections, in which the losing minority is completely shut out until the next election. There are various solutions proposed for that, some of them really quite clever and effective, but they are deemed so "hard to understand" or "hard to implement" that they stand little chance of being used. I'd prefer a ballot in which I could rank the candidates in numerical order of my preference, rather than being permitted only to choose one for each office. Such a system could give third party or independent candidates a much better chance, could well produce happier voters in the end.

Imagine there are three candidates for an office. One is right, one is left, and one is centrist. Voters rank them as desired. It's likely that the extreme right voter will rank the centrist second and the left as third. The left wing voter will do the opposite but still have the centrist as second. Middle of the road voters may well put the centrist first. A computer algorithm determines that the centrist has won because nearly all voters had him as first or second choice, while they placed the extremists in third place more often. That's a bit oversimplified, but systems that use that principle could bring a lot of progress to what is currently an utter stalemate in most of the U.S.