altivo: Rearing Clydesdale (angry rearing)
[personal profile] altivo
In honor of today's political circus in Illinois:

Understanding the GOP
  • Anything that puts more money in the rich man's pockets is good.
  • Birth control is bad. It lowers the supply of serfs, wage slaves and cannon fodder.
  • Mittens, Newt, and San[c]torum don't seem to stand for anything so much as they just stand against things (and each other.)
  • If it doesn't work, cut taxes on the rich. If it still doesn't work, cut taxes on the rich.
  • The environment matters... except when it cuts into the profit margin.
  • Science is too hard to understand, so it must be a lie.
  • Our popularity ratings are down. Quick, let's start a war and wave the flag harder.
  • Anything goes as long as it has the word "family" in the title.


Understanding the Democrats
  • We're short on imagination and vision, but proud of our traditions. Ruts-R-Us.
  • If it doesn't work, throw money at it. If it still doesn't work, throw more money at it.
  • Obama doesn't need to stand for anything. He got this far without standing up for his 2008 promises, so why add more?
  • There is no victory without compromise. Let's compromise everything and call it a victory.
  • Accounting is too hard to understand, so it must be a lie.
  • Our popularity ratings are down. Quick, hand out some more money.
  • Anything goes as long as it has the word "family" in the title.
  • Almost anything goes if it calls itself "Homeland Security" because that's too dangerous to criticize.


No apologies to the loud mouthed and empty headed partisans. Minor apologies to those who already saw me declare most of this on Twitter.

Date: 2012-03-20 11:28 pm (UTC)
schnee: (Default)
From: [personal profile] schnee
There is no victory without compromise. Let's compromise everything and call it a victory.

*snrk*

Date: 2012-03-21 08:33 am (UTC)
From: [personal profile] avon_deer
I remember well the dispair I felt during my politcal awakening (mostly 1993ish onwards) at what the Conservatives were doing to the community in which I lived; and the horror I felt when I became old enough to fully understand the damage they HAD done. I suddenly realised exactly WHY so many children who attended my school from Moorends came to school smelling badly and in poor clothing.

I remember the enormous hope I felt in 1997 when finally 18+ years or Tory dominion came to an end.

I remember the bitter dissapointment I felt when it become painfully obvious that they were exactly the same.

I no longer vote for a candidate expecting him/her or his/her party to do anything to promote an environment in which people from the middle to lower quartile are encouraged to build better lives for themselves and their community. I simply vote for the least objectionable; cross my fingers, and hope for the best.

ALL parties are so busy rolling the clock back 150 years that they barely notice out contempt for them. In our case quite literally.

Date: 2012-03-21 11:05 am (UTC)
From: [personal profile] avon_deer
No way would a miner in Moorends vote Conservative. So in this case, this is not true. But many other working people in the 80s DID. After 30+ years of this, the "I'm alright, Jack" attitude is so firmly embedded it will be hard to shift.

People tend to do counter-intuitive things because they are frightened. They feel that crossing their fingers and hoping for the best is the easiest way forward.

http://youtu.be/8Zxxrw7PwVQ

Date: 2012-03-21 12:18 pm (UTC)
hrrunka: Frowning face from a character sheet by Keihound (kei thinking)
From: [personal profile] hrrunka
I don't understand why, when presented with an option to reform the electoral system, the country voted so overwhelmingly for keeping things the way thay are. Sure, it wasn't the best of options, but it'd have opened the door to further reform, if only by a little, and it would have changed things...

Date: 2012-03-21 12:20 pm (UTC)
From: [personal profile] avon_deer
A combination of cynicism, the natural British tendency to look at the past with rose tinted glasses, and a very poor (some might say deliberatly poor) campaign by the "yes" lobby.

Date: 2012-03-21 12:43 pm (UTC)
hrrunka: Frowning face from a character sheet by Keihound (frown)
From: [personal profile] hrrunka
Oh, the "Yes" campaign might have tried a bit harder to get their message across, but mostly the electorate allowed the "No" campaign to scare them with lies and rose-tinted half-truths into not changing anything.

Date: 2012-03-21 12:45 pm (UTC)
From: [personal profile] avon_deer
This is true, but expacting anything LESS than dirty tricks from a campaign backing an outdated and indefensible system is hopelessly naive. The "Yes" campaign were like rabbits in the headlights when confronted with the smears. They should have been prepared for it.

Date: 2012-03-21 12:57 pm (UTC)
hrrunka: Attentive icon by Narumi (Default)
From: [personal profile] hrrunka
It didn't help that mostly the media didn't do anything to question the FUD either. A thoroughly depressing and demoralising experience, all told.

Date: 2012-03-21 12:59 pm (UTC)
From: [personal profile] avon_deer
Of course! The media was doing exactly as it was told. ;)

Date: 2012-03-21 01:10 pm (UTC)
hrrunka: Attentive icon by Narumi (Default)
From: [personal profile] hrrunka
Despite the fact that at least a part of that media has a duty to balanced reporting...

Date: 2012-03-22 10:12 am (UTC)
davv: The bluegreen quadruped. (Default)
From: [personal profile] davv
I know a bit about voting systems, and AV is really not very good. The referendum put the Liberal Democrats in somewhat of a bind: if they had got AV through, the conservatives could later say "you already got what you wanted, what more are you asking for?"; and if the Liberal Democrats didn't get AV, as was the case, the conservatives could say: "see, there's no desire for reform".

AV is slightly better than "the person who gets the most votes wins" in that instead of two-party rule, it leads to "one party plus a coalition of two minor parties, the latter of which becomes almost a party in its own right". Australia's results are the prime example: you have Labour (first party) and NatLibs (second coalition) - and the NatLibs are seriously considering mergers.

From the voters' point of view, AV is not unequivocally better than "most votes wins". Unlike the latter, and unlike simpler solutions, it has a weird looking-glass effect where, sometimes, moving a candidate higher in your ranking can make him lose, and moving him lower can make him win. It can fail to elect the candidate that would win a two-candidate runoff against every other candidate (granted, so can "most votes wins"). Finally, unlike "most votes wins", it requires extensive logistics; either all of a constituency's ballots have to be transferred to a central counting location for that constituency, or the center and more local areas have to communicate back and forth between each round of the count.

There can be good reasons to reject AV, then. It's a shame the Liberal Democrats didn't get a referendum on what they really wanted -- proportional representation. Now, that could have made a difference.

Date: 2012-03-22 10:40 am (UTC)
hrrunka: Frowning face from a character sheet by Keihound (kei thinking)
From: [personal profile] hrrunka
There was no way either Labour or the Conservatives were going to permit a vote on a true proportional system, so AV was the choice we got. For all its faults, if we'd voted for it then there'd have been a chance for further reform down the line. By voting it out we've kicked any chance of reform off the agenda for a generation.

November 2024

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